Wall street
Located in Manhattan, New York, Wall Street is most well known for housing the addresses of New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), American Stock Exchange and a number of other financial giants. A reference to Wall Street today mostly implies the power of the American economy. It represents the financial sentiments of the entire nation.
Wall Street got its name from a wall built by the Dutch to keep out Englands ambush attack on its colony in the vicinity. Little did anyone suspect then, that it would go on to acquire world famous status and prestige.
During the 17th century Wall Street was originally the name for the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. Back then it was a crude barrier made from timber and earthwork in 1652. Apart from the British, the wall was also intended to ward off attacks by Lenape Indians and New England colonists. The murkier and more practical reason behind its erection was to prevent escapes by the colonys black slaves. In 1699, the British tore down the wall.
In the late 18th century, a buttonwood tree at the base of Wall Street became a meeting point for traders and speculators to gather informally. These meetings formed the origins for the New York Stock Exchange.
The inauguration of NYSE in the year 1792 was the first major event that thrust Wall Street on the road to fame. In 1907, Wall Street got its first taste of mega news status with the panic that was on the verge of bringing the entire US economy to a standstill. The crisis was resolved with JP Morgans creation of a banking trust to calm the fears of the people.
1929 witnessed Wall Streets close brush with fatality as the historic great depression entered its first year. Inside trading grew rampant sending stock prices spiraling to unrealistic heights. The inevitable crash was devastating, claiming lives of players. The incident was serious enough to bring the US economy to a grinding halt. It served to dispel any lingering doubts about the significance of Wall Street as a financial phenomenon.
Impending doom loomed once more over Wall Street in 1987 on Black Monday. In a single day investments accounting for a third of the life savings of millions of American citizens were wiped clean. Inside trading was once again the culprit. Today, Wall Street is not limited to stocks and bonds alone and straddles a vast spectrum of almost every financial activity possible. Mergers, acquisitions, deals, buyouts and takeovers are all done in a days work. Some of the worlds greatest finance mavericks ply their trade here and it also serves as the venue for the worlds biggest deals.
Curiously enough, most of the Financial firms in New York have ceased to have their headquarters in Wall Street, preferring to relocate to lower or midtown Manhattan, Fairfield county, Connecticut or New Jersey. JP Morgan Chase was the last of the leading lights to abandon its headquarters tower at 60 Wall Street, which was bought by Deutsche Bank in November 2001.
Named after the legendary street, the Wall Street Journal, a modern day legend in itself, is a prestigious international daily business newspaper published from New York City.
For much of its history, it boasted of the widest circulation figures among the nations newspapers. In recent years however, the Wall Street Journal has been relegated to second place by USA Today. The owners are Dow Jones & Company.
The Manhattan financial district features among the largest business districts in the country with only Midtown ahead of it in New York City. The late 19th and early 20th century was when New Yorks corporate culture was caught in throes of a skyscraper building boom on a similar scalke to Chicago. To this very day the financial district has a skyline of its own.
23, Wall Street came up in 1914, initially as the House of Morgan. In the decades to come, the headquarters of the bank was undisputed in importance in American finance. It was to become the scene of a great tragedy on September 16, 1920, when at noon there was a bomb explosion in front of the bank. 40 lives were lost and another 400 were injured. Moments before the explosion, a warning note was found in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. It demanded that political prisoners be freed, failing which many lives would be lost. Speculations and theories about those responsible for the incident and the reasons behind it, were rife. However even 20 years of investigation by the FBI into the case proved fruitless and it was officially closed in 1940 with no conclusive proof of who was behind the attack.
The development progress came to a virtual standstill in the financial district by the time of the Great Depression. Among the few exceptions that came up in the last three quarters of the 20th century was the World Trade Center. Originally a government funded project, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey were behind the construction with which they hoped to spark off economic development in downtown. But the project failed to take off for some time.
Eventually a couple of leading corporations bought space in the World Trade Center which led to other major businesses following them to the neighborhood. It has been said that the World Trade Center moved the nerve center of the financial district to the Trade Center complex. More recently the World Trade Center was completely wiped out in the infamous terror attacks on September 112, 2001. Since then, businesses shifted some on temporary basis, some permanently to New Jersey. Further decentralization took place with relocation to other cities including Chicago and Boston.
The tragic devastation of the World Trade Center had its advantages in renewed development in the financial district with greater intensity than in the preceding few decades. Credit for the development in part goes to the federal, state and local governments for their tax incentives.
Wall Street first and foremost stands for the financial and economic clout of the US economy. Though it has been criticized for its association with elitism, power politics and ruthless capitalism, Wall Street is also a source of infinite pride for most Americans.
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