Wall Street
For other uses, see Wall Street (disambiguation). |
View up Wall Street from Pearl Street |
 |
NYSE and Broad Street view from Wall Street |
Wall Street is the name of a narrow
street in lower
Manhattan running east from
Broadway downhill to the
East River. Considered to be the historical heart of the
Financial District, it was the first permanent home of the
New York Stock Exchange.
The phrase "Wall Street" is also used as a
metonym to refer to
American financial markets and financial institutions as a whole. Interestingly, most
New York financial firms are no longer headquartered on Wall Street, but elsewhere in
lower or
midtown Manhattan,
Fairfield County, Connecticut, or
New Jersey.
JPMorgan Chase, the last major holdout, sold its headquarters tower at 60 Wall Street to
Deutsche Bank in November 2001.
The
name of the street derives from the fact that during the
17th century, it formed the northern boundary of the
New Amsterdam settlement. There, the
Dutch had constructed a crude wall of timber and earthwork in
1652. The wall was ostensibly meant as a defense against attack from
Lenape Indians,
New England colonists, and the
British, but it was actually used to keep the colony's black slaves from escaping. The wall was dismantled by the British in
1699.
In the late
18th century, there was a
buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which
traders and
speculators would gather to trade informally. This was the origin of the
New York Stock Exchange.
The Wall Street Journal, named in reference to the actual street, is an influential international daily business
newspaper published in
New York City. For many years, it had the widest
circulation of any newspaper in the
United States, although it is currently second to
USA Today. It is owned by
Dow Jones & Company.
Decline and revitalization
The
Manhattan Financial District is one of the largest business districts in the United States, and second in New York City only to
Midtown. In the late
19th and early
20th centuries, the corporate culture of New York was a primary center for the construction of skyscrapers (rivaled only by
Chicago). The Financial District, even today, actually makes up a distinct skyline of its own, separate from but not soaring to quite the same heights as its counterpart a few miles to the north (New York City actually has three distinct skylines, the third being
Brooklyn Heights).
Built in 1914, 23 Wall Street was known as the "
House of Morgan" and for decades the bank's headquarters was the most important address in American finance. At noon, on
September 16,
1920, a bomb exploded in front of the bank, killing 40 and injuring 400. Shortly before the bomb went off a warning note was placed in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. The warning read:
Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you. American Anarchists Fighters. While theories abound about who was behind the
Wall Street bombing and why they did it, after twenty years investigating the matter, the
FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940 without ever finding the perpetrators.
By the
Great Depression, new development of the Financial District had stagnated. The construction of the
World Trade Center was one of the few major projects undertaken during the last three quarters of the 20th Century and, financially, it was never terribly successful. Some point to the fact that it was actually a government-funded project, constructed by the
Port Authority of
New York and
New Jersey with the intention of spurring economic development in downtown. All the tools necessary to international trade were to be housed in the complex. However, at the beginning much of the space remained vacant.
Nonetheless, some large and powerful firms did purchase space in the World Trade Center. Further, it attracted other powerful businesses to the immediate neighborhood. In some ways, it could be argued that the World Trade Center changed the nexus of the Financial District from Wall Street to the Trade Center complex. When the World Trade Center was destroyed in the
September 11, 2001 attacks, it left somewhat of an architectural void as new developments since the 1970s had played off the complex aesthetically. The attacks, however, contributed to the loss of business on Wall Street, due to temporary-to-permanent relocation to New Jersey and further decentralization with establishments transferred to cities like Chicago and Boston.
Wall Street itself and the Financial District as a whole are crowded with highrises by any standard of measure. Further, the loss of the World Trade Center has actually spurred development in the Financial District on a scale that hasn't been seen in decades. This is in part due to tax incentives provided by the federal, state and local governments to encourage development. A new World Trade Center complex, centered on
Daniel Liebeskind's
Memory Foundations plan, is in the early stages of development and one building has already been replaced. The centerpiece to this plan is the 1,776-foot tall
Freedom Tower. New residential buildings are already sprouting up, and buildings that were previously office space are being converted to residential units, also benefiting from the tax incentives. Better access to the Financial District is planned in the form of a new commuter rail station and a new downtown transportation center centered on
Fulton Street.
To say that a
corporation is a "Wall Street company" today doesn't necessarily mean that the company is physically located on Wall Street. It more likely means that the firm deals with
financial services; such a firm could be headquartered in many places across the globe. Today, much of Wall Street's workforce tends to be made up of professionals working in the fields of law or finance who work for medium- to large-sized corporations. Many of the nearby businesses are local companies and chain stores that cater to the tastes of professionals and to the needs of the workforce. Most people who work in the Financial District commute in from suburbs in
Long Island,
Connecticut,
Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and the northern
Hudson Valley.
Wall Street's culture is often criticized as being rigid. This is a decades-old stereotype stemming from the Wall Street's establishment's protection of their interests, and the link to the
WASP establishment. More recent criticism has centered on structural problems and lack of a desire to change well-established habits. Wall Street's establishment resists government oversight and regulation. At the same time, New York City has a reputation as a very bureaucratic city, which makes entry into the neighborhood difficult or even impossible for middle class entrepreneurs. Finally, the New York Stock Exchange itself remains the last great holdout where trading is done entirely on the floor rather than electronically. There is, ironically, no longer really any need for Wall Street the institution to be located on Wall Street the street, except perhaps for prestige. Stocks could easily be traded almost anywhere.
Since the founding of the
Federal Reserve banking system, the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the Financial District has been the point where
monetary policy in the United States is implemented (although it's decided in
Washington, D.C. by the Federal Reserve Bank's Board of Governors). As such, New York State is today unique in that it's the only state that constitutes its own district of the Federal Reserve Banking system. This is perhaps partly owed to population distribution in the United States of the time, however. Until the
1960s, New York was the most populated state in the U.S.; it now ranks third, behind
California and
Texas. The NY Federal Reserve's president is the only regional Bank president with a permanent vote and is traditionally selected as its vice chairman. The bank has a gold vault 80 feet (25 m) beneath the street. This depository is the largest in the world, larger even than
Fort Knox.
Wall Street's architecture is generally rooted in the
Gilded Age, though there are also some
art deco influences in the neighborhood. Landmark buildings on Wall Street include
Federal Hall, and the
New York Stock Exchange at the corner of
Broad Street.
For a more complete list of buildings, see List of buildings in Lower Manhattan.
Over the years, certain persons associated with Wall Street have become famous, even legendary. Although their reputation is usually limited to members of the
stock brokerage/
banking community, several have gained national and international fame. Some earned their fame for their investment strategies, financing, reporting, legal or regulatory skills, while others are remembered for their greed.
See
List of personalities associated with Wall Street.
Wall Street vs. Main Street
As a figure of speech contrasted to "
Main Street," the term "Wall Street" can refer to big business interests against those of small business and the working or middle class. It is sometimes used more specifically to refer to research analysts, shareholders, and/or financial institutions such as investment banks. The idea of "Main Street" conjures images up small town and
suburban single-family homes and
small businesses.While the phrase "Wall Street" is commonly used interchangeably with the phrase "
Corporate America", it is also sometimes used in contrast to distinguish between the interests, culture, and lifestyles of investment banks and those of
Fortune 500 industrial or service corporations.
Perceptions
The
Gilded Age architecture and culture of the time gave rise to many modern stereotypes about corporate culture that exist to this day, at least in the United States. Some of these stereotypes can perhaps be said to have existed well beyond their time. Mentioning Wall Street of years past conjures up images of
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant businessmen seated around mahogany
boardroom tables
smoking cigars and discussing their holdings and making backroom deals. To
labor unions, small businesses all over the country and the world, and even to the
middle class, Wall Street culturally could easily serve as a symbol of aloofness to the concerns of every day people.
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).
Social and spiritual ramifications cannot be overlooked when examining Wall Street's aesthetic. Great buildings in past centuries, and throughout human history, often were centers of worship in the form of temples, or at least served primarily a cultural or political role.
Museums,
opera houses,
cathedrals,
fortifications, and seats of
government were at times elaborate, but almost always built at the expense of the public for popular consumption, or at least to provide a service for a particular class of people (fine arts were once considered the province of the wealthy). This is true even in New York—one only needs to look at the elaborate institutions like the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the
Metropolitan Opera, or
Saint Patrick's Cathedral, or even New York's relatively elaborate City Hall and neighboring municipal buildings. The architecture of the Financial District, by and large, was privately constructed and conveyed the message of America's success and growing might in the world economic community.
Wall Street, more than anything, represents financial and economic power. To Americans, Wall Street can sometimes represent elitism and power politics and cut-throat capitalism, but it also stirs feelings of pride about the market economy. Wall Street, despite the inevitable corruption, became the symbol of a country and economic system that many Americans see as having developed not through colonialism and plunder, but through trade, capitalism, and innovation.
In literature and popular culture
Herman Melville's classic short story
Bartleby the Scrivener is subtitled
A Story of Wall Street and provides an excellent portrayal of a kind and wealthy lawyer's struggle to reason with that which is unreasonable as he is pushed beyond his comfort zone to "feel" something real for humanity.
In
William Faulkner's
novel The Sound and the Fury, Jason Compson hits on other perceptions of Wall Street: after finding some of his stocks are doing poorly, he blames the
Jews.
Wall Street was the subject of a
1970s pop song,
"Wall Street Shuffle" by
10cc.
The film
Wall Street exemplifies many popular conceptions of Wall Street, being a tale of shady corporate dealings and insider trading.
In
Godzilla ,
Godzilla walks down Wall Street after stomping through
Fulton Fish Market.
The financial clout of Wall Street is most rivaled only by:
*
London's "
Square Mile," the financial heart of the
United Kingdom *
Tokyo's financial institutions
Smaller international rivals include:
*
Mumbai, Dalal Street
*
Frankfurt, nicknamed "Mainhattan" (for Manhattan on the river Main) because it is the center of the German Economy and has many
highrise buildings
*
Sand Hill Road in
Menlo Park,
California, is the heart of the
venture capital industry.
*
I.I Chundrigar Road,
Karachi - Known as "The Wall Street of
Pakistan"
*
Makati City (the
Philippines' financial center)
*
Avenida Paulista,
São Paulo, the economic
hub of South America
In North America, the nearest rivals are:
* commodity exchange markets in
Chicago,
Illinois, USA, most notably the
Chicago Mercantile Exchange (the CME is listed on the
New York Stock Exchange)
* Historically, the
Pacific Stock Exchange in
San Francisco was the major exchange on the
West Coast, although its been replaced entirely by electronic trading
*
Bay Street in
Toronto,
Ontario,
Canada (Canada's financial heart)
*
Global settlement (2002)
*
Robert Sobel The Big Board: A History of the New York Stock Market (1962)
*
Robert Sobel The Great Bull Market: Wall Street in the 1920's (1968)
*
Robert Sobel Inside Wall Street: Continuity & Change in the Financial District (
1977)
*
Frontline: The Wall Street Fix - PBS
