New York City

The Financial District

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in Manhattan. To protect themselves from attacks, they built a sturdy wooden wall. Although it’s now long gone, this wall gave it`s name to a street in Lower Manhattan and the street, in turn, became synonymous with American capitalism. The street, of course, is Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange are both in the Wall Street area. So there are many stockbrokers, investment blanks and others bank, and headquarters of many large corporations.

To escape the commotion of Wall Street you can visit the nearby South Street Seaport, an open area of low buildings on the East River. In addition to many shops and restaurants, the seaport has a museum.

Two good ways to get the larger picture of New York are to circle it in a boat and to hover over it in choppers. In the financial district, though, there’s another way to see New York. There were a place where twin towers of the World Trade Center rise 1,350 feet above the city. There was observation deck on the 107th floor of one of the towers. This tin towers collapsed after the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. The Al Caida high jacked planes crushed themselves into WTS.

Appropriately, the very first business deal in Manhattan was made in what became the financial district. As every American schoolchild knows, the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians, for the ridiculously low price of 24 dollars worth of beads and trinkets. There is, however, another, less known side of this: evidently, the Indians who had sold Manhattan did not themselves live there or in any sense own it. The Dutch and the Indians alike walked away pleased.