Description
Wall Street is the narrow street in Lower Manhattan that gave its name to American finance. It runs eight blocks, under 2,000 feet, from Broadway to the East River, between old banks and towers, and its name means the whole financial world.
The New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest by market capitalization, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are in the area.
The place to start is the Stock Exchange building at the corner of Broad Street, with its columns and flags. Opposite it, Federal Hall National Memorial, at number 26, stands where George Washington took the oath as the first president.
At number 23, the old "House of Morgan" headquarters, known as The Corner, was once at the center of financial America. At the Broadway end, the churchyard of Trinity Church holds the grave of Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the country's financial system.
Wall Street really had a wall. In 1653 Peter Stuyvesant, governor of Dutch New Amsterdam, feared an English attack from New England, so he had a ditch dug across the island and a palisade of wooden planks raised behind it, nine feet tall, by colonists and enslaved Africans.
The English took the city in 1664 all the same, and in 1699 the wall came down: the city had outgrown it. The name stayed. Within a century it would start to mean money.
In 1792 a group of traders who used to meet under a buttonwood tree at the foot of the street signed an agreement on their commissions. It was the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange.
Before that, the street had seen both shame and glory. From 1711 to 1762 the city's first official slave market stood at its corner with Pearl Street. In 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall, Washington was sworn in.
On September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded at the corner of Broad Street, outside the Morgan bank, killing 38 people. No one was ever caught. Nine years later, in October 1929, the crash that led to the Great Depression began here.
Don't miss
• The Stock Exchange building.
• Federal Hall National Memorial.
• 23 Wall Street, the "House of Morgan."
• The churchyard of Trinity Church.
Did you know?
• The marks of the 1920 bomb still show on the facade of 23 Wall Street.
• Some historians once thought the name came from "Walloon Street": the Dutch actually called it Het Cingel, "the Belt."
The New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest by market capitalization, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are in the area.
The place to start is the Stock Exchange building at the corner of Broad Street, with its columns and flags. Opposite it, Federal Hall National Memorial, at number 26, stands where George Washington took the oath as the first president.
At number 23, the old "House of Morgan" headquarters, known as The Corner, was once at the center of financial America. At the Broadway end, the churchyard of Trinity Church holds the grave of Alexander Hamilton, the architect of the country's financial system.
Wall Street really had a wall. In 1653 Peter Stuyvesant, governor of Dutch New Amsterdam, feared an English attack from New England, so he had a ditch dug across the island and a palisade of wooden planks raised behind it, nine feet tall, by colonists and enslaved Africans.
The English took the city in 1664 all the same, and in 1699 the wall came down: the city had outgrown it. The name stayed. Within a century it would start to mean money.
In 1792 a group of traders who used to meet under a buttonwood tree at the foot of the street signed an agreement on their commissions. It was the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange.
Before that, the street had seen both shame and glory. From 1711 to 1762 the city's first official slave market stood at its corner with Pearl Street. In 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall, Washington was sworn in.
On September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded at the corner of Broad Street, outside the Morgan bank, killing 38 people. No one was ever caught. Nine years later, in October 1929, the crash that led to the Great Depression began here.
Don't miss
• The Stock Exchange building.
• Federal Hall National Memorial.
• 23 Wall Street, the "House of Morgan."
• The churchyard of Trinity Church.
Did you know?
• The marks of the 1920 bomb still show on the facade of 23 Wall Street.
• Some historians once thought the name came from "Walloon Street": the Dutch actually called it Het Cingel, "the Belt."