Trip to New York City, Part II – Financial District, Wall Street
Ellis Island and Lady Liberty are reached by ferry from Battery Park: This strip of green along the Hudson River was named for the line of cannons that once stood here to protect the city. You can still visit Castle Clinton. When it was built in 1807, it was located about 109 yards from the shoreline, but since then, years of landfill have connected it to the financial district, known as Wall Street. The wall in question was built by the Dutch colonists of New Amsterdam to mark the boundary between Indian territory and their own.
Wall Street may now be synonymous with high finance, but it’s also the custodian of some of New York’s oldest memories, starting with Trinity Church, notable especially for its tall Gothic steeple. The current structure is the third church to stand on this site (the first was erected in 1697, making it one of the oldest Anglican churches in America); until 1860 it rose above the surrounding buildings.
Federal Hall National Monument offers another historical testimony as this is the site where, in 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States. Though dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers, this neoclassical building is an imposing and fitting tribute, with a large statue of the president at the head of an exhibit on the Constitution. No less significant are the Federal Reserve Bank, the US government bank where there are huge vaults full of gold, and the New Stock Exchange, the center of world finance. We may have seen the New York Stock Exchange in countless movies, but someone ignorant of the subtleties of financial markets is unlikely to truly understand how it works.
Officially established in 1972 by a small group of brokers, it has been the scene of huge stock market crashes (the most famous of all in 1929) and miraculous recoveries, respectively breaking or making investors in the space of hours. Now that computers seem to run the show, the frenetic activity on the trading floor seems to have lost some of its appeal. But the public can still watch the proceedings from the visitors’ gallery as runners and pages race back and forth in hopes of making their clients’ fortunes.