The Rise and Fall of the Richest Street in the World: Wall Street, New York

In 1653, Dutch colonists built a twelve-foot wooden wall across the southern tip of Manhattan to keep the English out. It failed. The English tore it down in 1699, but the street that ran along its base kept the name — and over the next three centuries, Wall Street became the richest stretch of pavement on Earth. From the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792 to J.P. Morgan's personal rescue of the U.S. Treasury, from the unsolved 1920 bombing that scarred the House of Morgan to the skyscraper race that briefly made 40 Wall Street the tallest building in the world, this is the story of how seven blocks in lower Manhattan came to hold more financial power than most nations — and what happened when the money no longer needed the street. The grand trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the Art Deco masterpiece at 1 Wall Street, the neoclassical bank buildings that once housed the most powerful firms in American finance — nearly all of them are condominiums now. The wall came down in 1699. It took the street three hundred years to follow it. Sources Beverly Gage, The Day Wall Street Exploded: A Story of America in Its First Age of Terror (Oxford University Press, 2009) Robert Sobel, The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market (The Free Press, 1965) SEC Historical Society, "The Institution of Experience: Self-Regulatory Organizations in the Securities Industry, 1792–2010," sechistorical.org New York Stock Exchange, "The History of NYSE," nyse.com New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, designation reports for 23 Wall Street and the 1 Wall Street Banking Room The Skyscraper Museum, "Wall Street: 1 Wall Street / Irving Trust Company Building," skyscraper.org