Visiting Wall Street New York

New York has always been a magnet for capitalists, but not even the most opti­mistic Dutchman could have conceived the amount of money exchanged—and the number of fortunes buoyed and busted—over the years on Wall Street.

A Bit of History
Running for less than a mile between Broadway and the East River, Wall Street derives its name from the short wooden wall built along its path by the Dutch in 1653. The wall marked the northern boundary of the fledgling trading post Nieuw Amsterdam and was meant to protect the residents from Indian attack. It was never tested in battle, however; in fact, colonists considered it a handy source of firewood. In 1699 the British, who had taken over the colony in 1664, dismantled the wall for good and replaced it with a street lined with houses and administrative buildings, including the colony's second city hall, at Broad and Wall streets, site of today's Federal Hall National Memorial. (The first city hall, or Stadt Huys, was founded in a tavern on Pearl Street in 1653.)
After the Revolution, the east end of Wall Street harbored a number of coffee­houses and taverns, earning the area around Wall and Water streets the nickname "Coffeehouse Slip." The famous Tontine Coffee House, built in 1792 at that corner, served as the first home of the New York Stock Exchange.

Visit
What you'll find on Wall Street today depends entirely on when you see it and from what vantage point. On weekdays when the Exchange is open (stocks are traded between 9:30am and 4pm), it is full of frenetic bankers, traders and other office workers. During business hours, you're most likely to be allowed to step into the lobbies of some of the more historic buildings, though don't be surprised if you're refused; security all over the district has been drum-tight since 9/11 and will likely remain that way indefinitely. On weekends and holidays the street is dominated by tourists. At night it is practically deserted. Also note it's impossible to see the tops of many of Wall Street's tallest buildings from the street itself—or from anywhere in the district, for that matter. Your best bet is to take the Circle Tour boat and let the tour guide point them out to you.

Sights on Wall Street are ordered west to east bystreet numbers (not star order), beginning with 1 Wall Street.

Bank of New York Building - 1 Wall St. Originally completed for Irving Trust Com­pany in 1932, the 50-story white limestone tower rises 20 stories without a setback, then tapers into a graceful spire. It makes a fitting companion to neighboring Trinity Church. If you can get in, take a peek at the Art Deco lobby.

New York Stock Exchange - 8-18 Broad St. at Wall St. Formerly one of New York's top tourist attractions (visitors were treated to a bird's-eye view of the gigantic trading floor), the stock exchange was closed to the public following the September 11,2001, attacks. The eight-story building (1903, George B. Post), which remains surrounded by guarded barricades, resembles a Roman temple with its majestic facade of Corinthian columns, each crowned by an elaborate pediment with sculptures representing commerce. Yet the exchange itself far predates this structure. New York had an active securities market by 1790, when Alexander Hamilton, US secretary of the Treasury, first issued bonds to consolidate and refund debts incurred during the American Revolution. The small buttonwood tree (better known as a sycamore) to the left of the Broad Street entrance memorializes the legendary "but­tonwood agreement." Though perhaps more fiction than fact, the story goes that in 1792 a group of 24 brokers met at the corner of Wall and Williams streets, beneath a similar tree, and founded the stock exchange. The New York Stock Exchange wasn't formally organized, however, until 1817. Despite the predictable boom and bust cycles, it grew exponentially, fueled by railroad securities, war bonds and ever-pres­ent speculators. By 1865, when it took possession of the current site, it had had 10 homes of increasing size. Today, the classical facade hides one of the most technically sophisticated financial operations on the globe, where about $54 billion worth of shares are exchanged daily.

Morgan Guaranty Trust Company - 23 Wall St. at Broad St. This austere white marble building (1913, Trowbridge & Livingston) is better known for its history than its architecture. On September 16,1920, just as the Trinity Church bells chimed noon, an anarchist ignited a wagonload of explosives outside its Wall Street facade. John Pierpont Morgan Jr., the target of the attack, was unharmed, but 33 civilians were killed and 400 were injured. Look closely at the area around the fourth window from the corner and you can still see pockmarks in the marble from the explosion.

Federal Hall National Memorial -26 Wall St. at Broad St. Grand though it may be, this structure itself is not among the most historic in the city, but the site certainly is. It was initially occupied by New York's first official city hall, on land donated by wealthy Dutch merchant Abraham dePeyster, whose statue you can admire in nearby Hanover Square; in 1702 the city government, then British, moved in. Also used as a debtor's prison, the site later became a staging ground for the American Revolution. In October 1765 the building hosted the Stamp Act Congress to protest "taxation without representation," a slogan that ended up driving the war for independence. After ratification of the Constitution in 1788, Pierre Charles L'Enfant (who laid out Washington, DCs radial street grid) was hired to remodel the city hall for use as the nation's capitol. Though Federal Hall hosted the first congress and the swearing-in of George Washington in 1789, its time in the national limelight was short-lived. After the capitol moved to Philadelphia in 1790, the building housed city offices again, and in 1812 it was demolished and sold as salvage for $425.

Visit
The present building was designed by the firm Town and Davis and completed in 1842. It held the custom house, the US Subtreasury and various government offices before being designated a historic site in 1939 and a national memorial in 1955. The towering bronze statue of George Washington (1883, John A.Q.Ward) at the top of its wide steps is a popular place for photos. Inside the memorial, 16 marble Corinthian columns support a splendid central rotunda rimmed with balconies.

Open year-round Mon-Fri 9am- 5pm (closed for renovation through early 2006).
212-825-6990
www.nps.gov/feha.

Trump Building - 40 Wall St. Though this 1930s building bears The Donald's signature gold imprimatur, "TRUMP," above its revolving doors, the architectural highlight, a pyramidal crown, can be seen only at a distance. Adjoining the now-lackluster lobby is Mangia, a gourmet salad bar and sandwich maker that's justifiably popular with time-pressed Wall Streeters and sore-footed visitors.

Bankof New York Building -48 Wall St. Designed in 1927 by Benjamin Wistar Morris, who's better known for his exuburant Cunard Building at 25 Broadway, 48 Wall Street is topped by a Corinthian-columned temple and mounted bronze eagle. As with the Trump Building, it's visible only from afar, but if you step inside, Morris' original pen-and-ink architectural drawings, on display in the lobby, will give you a sense of its upper reaches.

Second Merchants Exchange Building - 55 Wall St. A double colonnade of Ionic and Corinthian columns fronts this unusual structure, most recently home to the Regent Wall Street Hotel. In 1841 Isaiah Rogers designed a three-story building with a central domed trading hall to replace the original merchants exchange, which burned down in the Great Fire of 1835. When it was converted to use as the Custom House in 1907, the prolific architectural team of McKim, Mead and White added the upper tier of columns (and three more floors), doubling the building's volume. The magnificent

Great Hall, with its 72ft coffered ceiling, is now used by the Cipriani restaurant for private functions only, unfortunately. The American Institute of Architects calls the space "unequaled in America."