Best Places

Wall Street

Written by Sudhir Kumar

Wall Street is a street in lower Manhattan, New York City. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District.Wall Street was the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood.From the physical place called Wall Street, the name itself has also become shorthand for the “influential financial interests” of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area.Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, NYMEX, and NYBOT.

How It Got Its Name

After the Dutch purchased “New Amsterdam” from the Native Americans, a wall was erected that formed the northern boundary of the new colony. That’s how Wall Street got its unusual name. The first “walls” along the street were basic plank fences, but as time passed and tensions with the mother country grew, a stronger, taller wall was built in order to defend the colony against both the British and the American Indians tribes that still dominated the area. The British removed the wall around the turn of the 18th century.

The Charging Bull Statue

One of the Financial District’s most famous symbols is the ‘Charging Bull’ Statue (The bull represents a bull market, a constantly rising market).Inspired by the stock market crash in 1987, sculptor Arturo Di Modica created the 7,000-pound (3175kg) bull statue as a token of optimism. In 1989 he placed it – without authorisation – in front of the New York Stock Exchange in Wall Street. Police removed the statue but thanks to a public outcry it was reinstalled, but this time on Bowling Green, a small square annex park near Wall Street. The statue has become one of Lower Manhattan’s most popular attractions. Wall Street is a Beautiful Place For Vacations.

Buildings: Physical layout

Wall Street’s architecture is generally rooted in the Gilded Age, though there are also some art deco influences in the neighborhood. The layout of streets doesn’t have the rectangular grid pattern typical of midtown Manhattan, but small streets “barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic are bordered on both sides by some of the tallest buildings in the city”, according to one description, which creates “breathtaking artificial canyons” offering spectacular views in some instances. Construction in such narrow steep areas has resulted in occasional accidents such as a crane collapse.

Landmark buildings on Wall Street include Federal Hall, 14 Wall Street (Bankers Trust Company Building), 40 Wall Street (The Trump Building) theNew York Stock Exchange at the corner of Broad Street and the US headquarters of Deutsche Bank at 60 Wall Street. The Deutsche Bank building (formerly the J.P Morgan headquarters) is the last remaining major investment bank to still have its headquarters on Wall Street.The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades; such elaborate aesthetics haven’t been common in corporate architecture for decades. The World Trade Center, built in the 1970s, was very plain and utilitarian in comparison (the Twin Towers were often criticized as looking like two big boxes, despite their impressive height). Excavation from the World Trade Center was later used by Battery Park City residential development as landfill. 23 Wall Street was built in 1914 and was known as the “House of Morgan” and served for decades as the bank’s headquarters and, by some accounts, was viewed as an important address in American finance USA adventure tours. A key anchor for the area is, of course, the New York Stock Exchange. City authorities realize its importance, and believed that it has “outgrown its neoclassical temple at the corner of Wall and Broad streets”, and in 1998 offered substantial tax incentives to try to keep it in the financial district.[18] Plans to rebuild it were delayed by the events of 2001. In 2011, the exchange still occupies the same site. The exchange is the locus for an impressive amount of technology and data. For example, to accommodate the three thousand persons who work directly on the Exchange floor requires 3,500 kilowatts of electricity, along with 8,000 phone circuits on the trading floor alone, and 200 miles of fiber-optic cable below ground.

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Sudhir Kumar

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