It’s 200 Candles for New York Stock Exchange

Wall Street, America’s premier street of capitalism, the playground of bulls and bears, begins at a church and ends at a river. For some, it is the mecca of finance. For others, it’s a sinkhole of greed and self-interest.

And on May 17, the New York Stock Exchange--the philosophical center of it all--will celebrate its 200th anniversary. Long a place for trading from nearby ships filled with goods from Europe and the West Indies, the Stock Exchange was founded in 1792 by 24 brokers under a sycamore tree on lower Wall Street, in an effort to control excessive speculation and keep trade among themselves.

Even the area on which Wall Street sits was founded on speculation. The British governor of New York, Thomas Donegan, in 1685 secretly bought land there, later subdivided it and sold it off, lot by lot . . . an early example of insider trading. From that questionable beginning, Wall Street, as it’s been called since 1700, has influenced history as well as the economies of nations around the world.

Visitors can begin a walking tour of the financial district at Trinity Church, 74 Trinity Place, on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street. The walk--a journey along bustling sidewalks through granite, marble, glass, steel and concrete canyons--is slightly more than a mile, and if one tours all the sites mentioned, will take most of a day.

Begin at Gothic-style Trinity Church--with its sculptured bronze entry doors, ornate stained glass windows and impressive spire, now dwarfed by office buildings--that dates from 1846. For a good introduction to the tour, an illustrated timeline in the church’s small museum shows the history and development of New York’s financial district.

In the graveyard next to the church, Alexander Hamilton, a parishioner, is buried in a simple, elegant tomb with a small marble pyramid and four marble lamps. Robert Fulton, designer of the first commercially successful U.S. steamboat, is also buried in the churchyard.

From Trinity walk east down Wall Street two blocks, past the New York Stock Exchange, and turn right to enter the Exchange at 20 Broad St., the widest street in the financial district because it was once a barge canal with towpaths on either side.

The 1903 Exchange building is graced with a classical facade and high pediment containing sculptures illustrating various sources of wealth: farming, mining and manufacturing.

Before entering the second floor visitor’s gallery, view a six-minute orientation video, screened in a small theater, explaining what takes place on the trading floor.

The glass-enclosed visitors’ gallery overlooks a vast trading floor which on busy days looks like the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. But floor activity is actually a well-choreographed financial dance, where orders flow in from across the country.

A few steps away at 26 Wall St. is Federal Hall, a building modeled after the Parthenon of the Athenian Acropolis. The large statue of George Washington marking the approximate spot where he stood on inauguration day is the work of J.Q.A. Ward.

Under the dramatic open spaces of the rotunda, displays tell the story of the building’s history since completion in 1842. Side rooms feature dioramas of Washington’s Inauguration Day parade and related exhibits, including the brown suit made in Connecticut that he wore on inauguration day as a tribute to American manufacturing. The original Federal Hall on this site was built in 1703 as New York’s City Hall and was expanded and refurbished by French architect Pierre L’ Enfant, (who designed Washington, D.C.) to serve as the capitol when New York was the capital of the United States, from 1785 to 1790. The original building was torn down in 1812.

Continue on Wall Street to No. 48, the Bank of New York building. The only portion of the 18th-Century building that remains is a dedication stone on its western end. The present building was erected in 1928. Visitors register in the lobby and proceed to the third-floor museum.

The small, three-room museum is little known, but well worth a visit. Its centerpiece is a scale model of Wall Street in 1800, when it was a mixed residential and commercial street. Find No. 82, the Tontine Coffee House, site of the first New York Stock Exchange.

Continue east on Wall Street to No. 75: the Barclay Bank building. As you cross the street, look back over your shoulder toward Trinity Church. The street took its form during the Civil War but little remains of earlier periods. All the taverns, small businesses and older buildings were torn down to make way for banks, insurance companies and brokerage offices.

Turn south (right) onto Pearl Street and walk about three blocks to Hanover Square, named after King George III, of the House of Hanover, and one of the oldest squares in New York City. The 1854 five-story brownstone facing the square is India House, 1 Hanover Square, originally the Hanover Bank building, and one of the few commercial brownstone buildings in the city. (Brownstone, a reddish-brown form of sandstone, was used primarily for residential construction.) On the lower level is Harry’s at Hanover Square, a well-known restaurant and bar that is a popular lunch spot and early evening watering hole for bankers, brokers and traders.

On the right side of India House, as you face it, is a small marker about 12 feet up the side of the building marking Stone Street--the crooked lane that was the first paved street in New York. Walk one block down Stone Street, turn left and then walk one more block and turn right back onto Pearl Street.

Walk one block south and turn left at Coenties Slip then walk one block to Water Street. Cross the street to the plaza adjacent to 55 Water St. to see New York’s Vietnam Veterans War Memorial: a glass block wall with phrases from soldiers’ letters home etched in its surface. The memorial was designed by architects Peter Wormser and William Fellows, and erected in 1985.

Retrace your steps to Pearl Street, turn south (left) and walk about two blocks to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets to the Fraunces Tavern National Historic District: a block long row of Federal and Greek Revival buildings dating from the 1770s to the 1820s. On the corner of Pearl and Broad, at 54 Pearl St., is the three-story Georgian-style Fraunces Tavern, which was built in 1719. Only about half the original building remains; it was refurbished to resemble a typical city tavern of the period, not a faithful reproduction of the original Queens Head Tavern. The ground floor is still a restaurant and the two upper floors are a museum.

At the top of the stairs on the second floor is the Long Room, furnished the way it was believed to have looked on the night of Dec. 4, 1783, when George Washington bade an emotional farewell to Continental Army officers there. An adjacent room is furnished in the manner of a tavern’s private dining room in the 18th Century.

Cross the street and then bear right onto Broad Street and follow it west one block to South William Street. Turn right onto South William and three blocks away at the corner of South William, Beaver and William streets is Delmonico’s Restaurant, at 56 Beaver St., in an eight-story brick and brownstone building dating from 1891. Delmonico’s has been the most famous restaurant in the financial district since its opening in 1837. Mark Twain celebrated his 70th birthday here and the dessert baked Alaska was invented by the restaurant’s chef in honor of the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867.

From Delmonico’s turn left and walk north along William Street for six blocks through the office canyon lands of narrow streets and towering buildings. At the corner of William and Liberty streets, a small triangular park features large-scale abstract sculptures by the famous American sculptor Louise Nevelson. Turn left and the building on your right is the imposing block-long Italian Renaissance-style New York Federal Reserve Bank at 33 Liberty St.

The 1924 building of sandstone and limestone is graced by ornate wrought iron lamps by Samuel Yellin, a well-known Philadelphia metalworker and artist. Visitors must have advance reservation for the hour-long tour of the Federal Reserve Bank building and its underground gold vault.

Tour guides lead visitors through the highly secure building to an upper floor counting room, where it is possible to see machines with optical scanners count and sort money and attendants package the funds into plastic trays.

Some of the financial statistics will impress even the most jaded lottery players: The New York Fed processes $140 million a day; receives about 125 counterfeit bills a day, mostly twenties, and shreds $40 million a day, which is replaced by new currency. An additional bit of trivia: Shredded cash is considered toxic waste and can’t be burned because of the lead in the ink. It is buried in special landfills.

From the counting room, groups descend five stories below street level to the gold vaults where $126 billion worth of gold bars--considerably more than Fort Knox--is stored. During World War II, European and other nations left their gold for safekeeping with the New York Fed, and because its stringent security and accounting systems, that practice has continued to this day.

Just north of the Federal Reserve building, at 33 Maiden Lane, is one of the branches of the Whitney Museum of American Art in a large one-room, below street level gallery, entered through the building’s arcade. The exhibits of contemporary American art change every three months or so.

Turn right on leaving the Whitney and walk down Maiden Lane one block to Broadway.

Next, turn right and walk one block north to St. Paul’s Chapel, the oldest public building in continuous use in the city and part of Trinity Church. George Washington worshiped in the 1766 Classical Revival-style church following his inauguration. He also regularly attended church services here and his enclosed pew, with the first oil painting of the Great Seal of the United States above it, has been restored to that time period.

Leave the chapel through its rear churchyard to Church Street, turn left and walk the two blocks south to the World Trade Center. Although the twin towers and the adjacent World Financial Center aren’t part of the traditional Financial District boundaries, their economic activities put them squarely within the tour.

The easiest way to navigate through the World Trade Center is from the open, five-acre plaza, opposite Dey Street.

As your facing west, the commodities exchange is located on the ninth floor of the second building on the left.

The glass-enclosed gallery overlooks a 17,000 square foot trading floor shared by four independent commodity exchanges: the Coffee, Coca and Sugar Exchange; the New York Mercantile Exchange; the New York Cotton Exchange and the Comex.

The hyperactive brokers and traders in the four trading pits make the New York Stock Exchange look like a model of business decorum. Visitors watch the frenzied finance while a taped narration explains the action. The commodities range from refined white sugar to precious metals, from Treasury bills to foreign currencies.

From that building walk to the high-rise building that houses the observatory. A quarter mile above the financial district, it offers vistas west into New Jersey and north toward Connecticut, as well as dramatic views of the lower Manhattan financial district where buildings look like toys.

About two blocks west of the World Trade Center are the restaurants and shops of the World Financial Center, which was created from landfill excavated from the construction of the World Trade Center. This 92-acre development is a combination office park and residential and entertainment area with 14 restaurants and 34 shops centered on the impressive glass-barrel-vaulted Winter Garden.

An adjacent half-mile esplanade running along the Hudson River, offers excellent views of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and utilizes the riverfront that for many years New York ignored as an amenity. The World Financial Center is accessible from the World Trade Center’s U.S. Custom House building’s elevated walkway.

This latest expansion of lower Manhattan is in keeping with its Dutch heritage. Only a few years after the purchase of the island in 1624, the Dutch started throwing dirt into the rivers that encircle Manhattan and creating more land than they originally bought for their $24.

Manhattan 1. New York Stock Exchange 2. Hanover Square 3. Vietnam Veterans War Memorial 4. Fraunces Tavern 5. Federal Reserve Bank 6. Whitney Museum Branch

GUIDEBOOK

New York’s Financial District

Where to stay: The Marriott Financial Center, 85 West St., New York, N.Y. 10006; (212) 385-4900. Double approximately $209, weekend specials.

New York Vista Hotel, World Trade Center, New York, N.Y. 10048; (212) 938-1990. Double approximately $240, special weekend plans.

Where to eat: Fraunces Tavern; seven dining areas with varied prices in a Colonial setting. Jacket and tie recommended. Reservations (212) 269-0144.

Harry’s at Hanover Square; moderate to fairly expensive. Jacket and tie recommended. Reservations (212) 425-3412.

Delmonicos, expensive. Jacket and tie recommended. Reservations (212) 422-4747.

Windows on the World, World Trade Center, 107th floor, dramatic views; at lunch, a private club, non-members assessed $7.50; expensive. Jacket and tie required, reservations required (212) 938-1111.

Steamers Landing, on the Esplanade, World Financial Center. Moderate prices, informal (212) 432-1451.

For more information: The New York City Convention and Visitors Bureau, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, N.Y. 10019; (212) 397-8200. Ask for brochure “Map and Guide to Lower Manhattan.”

World Financial Center activity and entertainment information: World Financial Center, Arts and Events Programs, 18th floor, 200 Liberty Street, New York, N.Y. 10281; (212) 945-0505.

Federal Reserve Bank Tours: Public Information, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 33 Liberty St., New York, N.Y. 10045; (212) 720-6130. Book tours at least a week in advance.