Stan O'Connor's Tour of Money
The Financial District: This is where America’s money has come from, historically and now.
We’ll start at Battery Park, seeing the lobby of a major ocean liner company, transformed into a bank. Then cross the street to the U.S. Customs House of 1900, where not only did shippers pay taxes before the birth of income tax, but where Batman, Ghostbusters II and the remake of Arthur were filmed.
Nearby Bowling Green is the oldest of NYC’s many parks. Opened in 1738, it was surrounded by a fence bearing British crowns in 1770. Six years later, as the American Revolution began, all those crowns were sawn off the fence. You can still feel the saw-marks!
After the Revolution, the US departments of State, War and Treasury all worked over a nearby pub that we’ll poke our heads into, a pub that opened in the 1760s, though destroyed by fire and rebuilt back in 1904. From its front door we will see the NASDAQ, the Goldman-Sachs building and Standard & Poors. The remains of an even older pub are across the street: one run by the English governor of colonial New York!
Watch your step as we climb up to Stone Street, the first paved street in old New York. Cars don’t travel Stone Street, which is decked out with long wooden tables belonging to bars and restaurants fronting it. The bars are housed in original 1835 counting-houses and warehouses, built after the Great Fire of that year.
Hanover Square comes next. And with it, the India House, where the tea-importing business was long centered. It was featured in the time-traveling romance film, Kate & Leopold. Venerable old Harry’s Bar, a favorite of stock traders, is in the basement.
We will pass the original office of an institution that made banking safe for regular people: The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC. Take a peek inside Delmonico’s, the first great American restaurant, where Delmonico steaks are still served; where Charles Dickens, Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln all dined. In fact, Delmonico’s invented a new dessert for Lincoln’s party: Baked Alaska. Over the lobby fireplace hangs an oil portrait of chef Charles Ranhofer with his signature creation, Lobster Newburgh.
Then we head up the hill to Wall Street itself. You’ll turn the corner from William Street, where both stocks and slaves were traded under shade trees in the 18th and early 19th century. See 40 Wall, the tallest building in the world…for a couple of days in 1930. Pass Tiffany’s on the way to the House of Morgan, offices of J.P. Morgan, world’s first billionaire. Across Wall Street from Morgan’s is old Federal Hall, an 1842 US Customs House, the site of an earlier City Hall, where George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, and which housed the US Congress for two years.
At the top of the hill is Trinity Church, first built in the 1690s and rebuilt after the Great Fires of 1776 and 1835. This large, Gothic brownstone structure was the Episcopal (think Anglican) cathedral of New York until the early 1900s. The climax of the film, National Treasure, was done here.
Gravestones in Trinity’s churchyard include those of Robert Fulton, Alexander Hamilton, Francis Lewis -- a Declaration Of Independence signer -- and an Astor or two. And I’ll take you to another gravestone that is misspelled. Badly. It mentions a parishioner who was born in ‘Oldingland’! A nearby plaque reminds us of the peopling of Canada in the decade following the Revolution.
Just up Broadway -- this is written in late 2011 -- is the encampment that has become world-famous just in the last few weeks. Occupy Wall Street wants to change how the government uses and produces money. For one thing, they want to end the role of the nearby Federal Reserve. We will see The Fed and, if it’s still there, Occupy Wall Street as well.
The final leg of your tour takes you to two complexes built side by side, as the places of worldwide financial exchange: the World Trade Center and World Financial Center. You’ll go in a wide circle all around the sites, taking in Saint Paul’s Chapel, St. Peter’s RC Church, Tower 1, Building 7, The American Express Building Memorial, The Firemen’s Memorial, and the NYPD Wall of Honor as well. If possible, and this is not guaranteed, we will visit the World Trade Center Memorial Pools. At this time, it’s difficult to procure tickets on short notice, though that may change in the months to come. And if there’s something you do or don’t want to see on this tour, it can be customized to your tastes.
The tour ends at Essex World Café, where a good deal of 9/11 memorabilia is on display.
4 hours - $60 per person, minimum 2
$200 per group of 10 - 20
Stair climbing and hill walking.