By Lucas Compan

Today, Wall Street is a synonym for power and money, and has withstood its share of chaos–market crashes, bombings, recessions, Occupy movements – in its years as the financial center of New York. Resilience is even in the street’s name, as it pays tribute to the Dutch wall that once stood in the seventeenth century as protection from hostile British and Native Americans. Well, the Native Americans were here way before anybody else. So it's a weird situation. It would be like somebody invades your house and, then, build a wall to protect themselves from you – so you could not get into "their" space. Anyways...

That Dutch fortification almost wasn’t built, however, because of a few unruly residents: a herd of persistent pigs (and not metaphorical ones, either).

The wall began as a picket fence in 1653 before the Dutch slowly expanded it to a 12-foot-high barrier over the years. At the time of the fence’s construction, the settlers let their livestock run loose around the settlement, and the hogs often uprooted orchards and gardens. Many of the animals foraged in areas along the wall, interfering with its construction. In a letter addressed to the city government in March 1653 (during the wall’s construction), Dutch Director-General Peter Stuyvesant urged the government to take precautions against the pigs at nearby Fort Amsterdam. He detailed with “great grief the damages, done to the walls of the fort by hogs, especially now again the spring when the grass comes out.”

Prepared in the summer of 1660 by New Amsterdam's surveyor general, Jacques Cortel you, the celebrated Castello Plan - named for the Florentine villa where it was rediscovered in 1900 - offers a breathtaking aerial view of the colony in the first years of Dutch rule.

‘De Waal Straat’, as it was also known, was also the center of a small Walloon community in New Amsterdam, and some believe the name comes from them. The Walloons were French-speaking Belgians who were among the first European settlers, arriving in the New World as part of a contingent hired by the Dutch West India Company.

Then, as now, Breede Wegh (the larger street on the map) -- later Broadway -- ran south to the Bowling Green, where the famous Charging Bull (or Wall Street Bull or Bowling Green Bull) statue now stand.

The gently curving canal that once cut into the heart of the closely built-up town, runs along of the present-day Broad Street, nearly all the way up to the 2,340 feet wall -- built where Wall Street now stands.

With its limits sharply defined on all sides by the man-made wall and two great rivers (East and Hudson), the city was a kind of miniature of Amsterdam, whose density and compacteness made it convenient for business and easy to defend. 

In the detailed map above, 342 houses and buildings can be seen, along with the stout ramps of Fort Amsterdam, the company pier and windmill, and the tidily laid out gardens, orchards, and backyards. 

A Dutch sea captain named Jacob Jansen Hays, wrote on September 30, 1660, one month after the Castello Plan was made:

The British took over New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York, but the wall still remained, becoming more a relic than a serious defense.

By the turn of the century, the fear of land attacks had almost completely subsided and the city was beginning to feel crowded. So in 1699 the wall was torn down with some of the material salvaged to help construct a new City Hall at the corner of Nassau Street and the newly created Wall Street.

When you are at the Wall Street subway station, you will find a depiction of the New Amsterdam wall on the tiles of the station (image below).

The Slave Market

In 1711 a slave market was built on Wall Street along the eastern shore, remaining there until 1762. 

Whether under Dutch, British, or American control, New York’s early development was supported by slavery. The Municipal Slave Market on present-day Wall Street between Water and Pearl streets operated from 1711 to 1762, and over three centuries since it was founded this history is finally recognized on an official city plaque.

The marker at Wall Street and Water Street was dedicated on  June 27, 2015, by Mayor Bill de Blasio. It was initially conceived back in 2011 during the activism of Occupy Wall Street, when Brooklyn-based artist and writer Chris Cobb began to research the site.

A Landmark

When the British were forced out in 1783 by the Americans, the City Hall building was finally renamed Federal Hall — the first official center of American government.A plaque honoring the old wall sits today at the corner of Wall and Broadway, where the gate to the city once opened:

TheWall Street Journal

The inception of The Wall Street Journal, on July 8, 1889, was done by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. Since then, the Journal has been printed continuously. Below you can see the front page of the first edition of the Journal.

"Light in the Dark" a sunrise moment capture by Lucas Compan in 2008 in the Financial District

The architecture of the New York Stock Exchange building

On April 22, 1903 the new New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) building at 8–18 Broad Street opened for business. The Corner of Wall Street and Broad Street is a fairly open area for the financial district of New York City. Architect George Post made use of this open space to maximize the natural light to the trading floor within. The open view from Wall Street is an architect's gift. The grand facade is imposing from even a block away.

Standing on Wall Street, you can see the 1903 building rise ten stories above the sidewalk. Six Corinthian columns steadily rise from a seven-bay-wide podium set between two rectangular pilasters. From Wall Street, the NYSE building appears stable, strong, and well-balanced.

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