Wall Street, the symbol of wealth and power
New York had become the great symbol of wealth and power, with Wall Street representing the embodiment of that prestige. The Dutch, several years after Henry Hudson’s initial tour of duty, laid claim to a “new” Amsterdam. Their goals were not to advance the cause of human liberty but to get rich. Unlike Pennsylvania Quakers, New England Puritans, or Maryland Catholics, who came to the New World to worship God as they saw fit, the Dutch had their hearts set on trade and exploitation.
Beaver trading was the prime avenue to this end and, tragically, slavery a means to achieve it. The Dutch, whose winding streets are all that remain of their four-decade control of the island, were swept away bloodlessly by the British. The period of British rule saw the further development of New York as a center for commerce and early industry.
Far more interested in money than politics, New Yorkers’ adjustment to British leadership was none too difficult. Despite the devastation wrought by the war, independent New York regained its financial footing rather quickly, spurred on by commercial wizards such as Alexander Hamilton and geographic advantages such as the city’s location on the mouth of two rivers.
With the institutionalization of the stock exchange, the rise of business and manufacturing, and the riches guaranteed by the digging of the Erie Canal, New York City became the premier financial center in America. The twentieth century only furthered the empowerment of New York’s moneyed classes.
Wall Street Architecture
The first skyscrapers emerged around Wall Street’s canyons during the initial years of the twentieth century and many could claim to be the world’s tallest at different points in time. The postwar period secured America’s economic hegemony, reflected in the transition to glass and steel edifices dotting the downtown skyline. The older skyscrapers often were built with elaborate facades, which have not been common in corporate architecture for decades. There are numerous landmarks on Wall Street, some of which were erected as the headquarters of banks. These include:
1 Wall Street, a 50-story skyscraper built in 1929–1931 with an expansion in 1963–1965. The intersection of Wall Street and Broadway in New York City was called the “most expensive real estate in New York” when the Irving Trust Company commissioned Voorhees, Gmelin & Walker to build a 50-story Art Deco skyscraper. Having outgrown office space in the Woolworth Building, Irving Trust became part of NYC’s building boom, in spite of the Stock Market crash of 1929.
14 Wall Street, a 32-story skyscraper with a 7-story stepped pyramid, built in 1910–1912 with an expansion in 1931–1933. Originally the Bankers Trust Company Building, it is a skyscraper at the intersection of Wall Street and Nassau Street in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. The building is 540 feet (160 m) tall, with 32 usable floors.[b] It is composed of the original 540-foot tower at the southeastern corner of the site, as well as a shorter annex wrapping around the original tower.
The original tower was erected on the site of the Stevens Building at 12–14 Wall Street and the Gillender Building at 16 Wall Street. It was built in 1910–1912 and was designed by Trowbridge & Livingston in the neoclassical style as the headquarters for Bankers Trust. An 25-story addition with Art Deco detailing, designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon, was constructed in 1931–1933 to replace three other structures. After new buildings for Bankers Trust were erected in 1962 and 1974, the company moved employees away from 14 Wall Street, and eventually sold the building in 1987.
23 Wall Street, a single-story headquarters built in 1914, was known as the “House of Morgan” and served for decades as the bank’s headquarters and, by some accounts, was considered an important address in American finance.
Even though property prices in the area were very high, the Morgan building was purposely designed to be only four stories tall; the contrast to the surrounding high-rises is reinforced by the astylar exterior, rendered as a single high piano nobile over a low basement, with a mezzanine above, and an attic story above the main cornice. The plain limestone walls are pierced by unadorned windows in deep reveals. The foundations were constructed with a depth and strength to support a tower of up to 40 stories. Cosmetic damage from the 1920 Wall Street bombing is still visible on the Wall Street side of this building.
Federal Hall is a historic building at 26 Wall Street in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. The name refers to two structures on the site: a Federal-style building completed in 1703, and the current Greek Revival-style building completed in 1842. While only the first building was officially called “Federal Hall”, the current structure is operated by the National Park Service as a national memorial called the Federal Hall National Memorial.
The current structure, one of the best surviving examples of Greek Revival architecture in New York City, was built as the U.S. Custom House for the Port of New York. Later it served as a sub-Treasury building. The current national memorial commemorates the historic events that occurred at the previous structure.
40 Wall Street, also known as the Trump Building, is a 71-story, 927-foot-tall (283 m) neo-Gothic skyscraper on Wall Street between Nassau and William streets in the Financial District of Manhattan in New York City. Erected in 1929–1930 as the headquarters of the Manhattan Company, the building was originally known as the Bank of Manhattan Trust Building, and also as the Manhattan Company Building, until its founding tenant merged to form the Chase Manhattan Bank. It was designed by H. Craig Severance with Yasuo Matsui and Shreve & Lamb.
The building is on an L-shaped site. While the lower section has a facade of limestone, the upper stories incorporate a buff-brick facade and contain numerous setbacks. Other features of the facade include spandrels between the windows on each story, which are recessed behind the vertical piers on the facade. At the top of the building is a pyramid with a spire at its pinnacle. The Manhattan Company’s main banking room and board room were on the lower floors, while the remaining stories were rented to tenants.
48 Wall Street, formerly the Bank of New York & Trust Company Building, is a 32-story, 512-foot-tall (156 m) skyscraper on the corner of Wall Street and William Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Built in 1927–1929 in the Neo-Georgian and Colonial Revival styles, it was designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris.
The current structure is the third to be erected on the same plot, as the Bank of New York had previously erected buildings on the site in 1797 and 1858. The structure was erected during a period when many skyscrapers were being erected in Lower Manhattan. 48 Wall Street is designed with many neo-Georgian details. The lowest three stories, built over a raised basement, were used as the banking floor and feature large arched windows on the second story, as well as pediments over the entrances. The top of the building contains a cupola designed in the Federal style and topped by a statue of an eagle.
55 Wall Street, also formerly known as the National City Bank Building, is an eight-story building on Wall Street between William and Hanover Streets in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. The lowest three stories were built in 1836–1841 as the four-story Merchants’ Exchange and designed by Isaiah Rogers in the Greek Revival style. Between 1907 and 1910, McKim, Mead & White removed the original fourth story and added five floors.
55 Wall Street contains a facade of granite, with two colonnades of twelve columns facing Wall Street, one on top of the other. Inside is a cruciform banking hall with a 60-foot (18 m) vaulted ceiling, Corinthian columns, marble floors and walls, and an entablature around the interior. The banking hall was among the largest in the United States when it was completed and was later turned into a ballroom. The offices of National City Bank, predecessor bank of Citibank, were located in the corners of the banking hall. The fourth through eighth floors were used as office space, but have since been converted to residential units.
60 Wall Street is a 47-story, 745-foot-tall (227 m) skyscraper on Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City. The tower was designed by Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo & Associates to fit its surroundings with a postmodern, Greek revival, and neoclassical look to emphasize both height and size.
New York Stock Exchange Building
Another key anchor for the area is the New York Stock Exchange Building at the corner of Broad Street. It houses the New York Stock Exchange, which is by far the world’s largest stock exchange per market capitalization of its listed companies. 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.
Plans to rebuild it were delayed by the September 11 attacks. The exchange still occupies the same site. The exchange is the locus for a large amount of technology and data. For example, to accommodate the three thousand people 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.