Walk on Wall Street to Broad Street and make a right to see the New York Stock Exchange, with its iconic Corinthian-columned facade. It used to have a visitors’ gallery, but since 9/11 it’s difficult to get in—or even too close—without a major security clearance.
Turn back to Wall Street and admire Federal Hall, a handsome Greek Revival building with steep steps (a wheelchair-accessible entrance is around the corner). This building has an amazing history: It served first as New York’s city hall, then as the first capitol of the fledgling United States. It was also the site of George Washington’s inauguration. If you use the main entrance, bid hello to the eagle statue above the clock.
Upon leaving Federal Hall, walk left to 37 Wall St., the Tiffany & Co. building, a 1907 Beaux Arts treasure originally built for Morgan Guaranty.
Make a left on William Street. The building at the northwest corner houses the Museum of American Finance. Affiliated with the Smithsonian Institution, it’s the only independent museum in the United States dedicated to the history of money, banking, and business. Go one block to Our Lady of Victory Church, a Roman Catholic site also known as the War Memorial Church. It was dedicated in 1947, but its redbrick Georgian Revival design makes it look older. The sanctuary has a stirring half-rose stained-glass window of a sunrise over lower Manhattan, highlighting the Twin Towers that fell on 9/11.
Continue along William Street until you reach the triangular park at Liberty Street, Louise Nevelson Plaza. Nevelson designed the sculptures and other aspects of the small park, which opened in 1978 and was one of the first plazas in New York City to be named for a woman, and the first to be named for an artist. To the left, along Liberty Street at Nassau Street, is the stern-looking Federal Reserve Bank of New York, built in a subdued Renaissance Revival style. Guided tours are available; among the locations you see is where gold bars are stored in a sub-basement.
Walk left along Liberty Street. At 55 Liberty stands a 33-story skyscraper built in 1909; it’s now a largely residential building called Liberty Tower. Next door to the left is #65, the former Chamber of Commerce building (now a Chinese bank), which has ostentatious round windows on one level and dormer windows higher up. Walk farther, and at Broadway you’ll come to the large, dark, modern office building that houses the investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman. The plaza in front is home to the curious red sculpture The Cube by Isamu Noguchi.
Cross Broadway and enter Zuccotti Park. This used to be called Liberty Plaza Park because 1 Liberty Plaza (a.k.a. the US Steel Building) is the large modern building to the right. (I worked a student internship in that building in 1985, for the Financial News Network.) Zuccotti Park, which was the site of the Occupy Wall Street encampment, has a large, bright-red modernist sculpture on the Cedar Street side and a sunken seating area with lush plantings. Walk around, take a rest on a bench, and admire a side view of the ornate building on the left at 115 Broadway, the US Realty Building. Decorating it are a few styles of gargoyles, some of them quite macabre.
Walk through the park to Trinity Place and check out the statue of a seated businessman rummaging through his briefcase. Called Double Check, it was sculpted by J. Seward Johnson. (Note the vintage cassette recorder in the businessman’s case.)
Cross Cedar Street on the south side of Zuccotti Park, and walk on Trinity Place. Across the street, look onto narrow Thames Street. On the next block of Trinity Place, see #86, the former site of the American Stock Exchange, opposite the west side of Trinity Church and its cemetery. Designated as a landmark by the city in 2012, the handsome Art Deco structure has remained vacant since 2008.
Walk back to Liberty Street, then go left on it. At #120 is the 9/11 Tribute Center, a project of the nonprofit September 11th Families’ Association. Its exhibits are powerful, but in my opinion, the tribute at 124 Liberty is even more moving. Here, at the FDNY Ladder Co. 10/Engine Co. 10 firehouse, a 56-foot-long bronze bas-relief sculpture is dedicated to the firefighters who perished during 9/11. Flanking a tableau of the Twin Towers on fire are scenes of firefighters at work on that day, along with inscriptions reading DEDICATED TO THOSE WHO FELL AND TO THOSE WHO CARRY ON and MAY WE NEVER FORGET. The names of the fallen are engraved below the sculpture, flanked by twin Maltese crosses (the traditional fire-service symbol) bearing the number “343”—the total FDNY death toll.
If you want to visit the site of the original World Trade Center, go across Greenwich Street. If not, look over your shoulder to see the new 1 World Trade Center (formerly named Freedom Tower). This sleek combo of glass, metal, and ingenuity is the tallest building in the western hemisphere and the fourth tallest in the world. Also gaze at the flags of the 9/11 Memorial. Admission is free for the memorial—reflecting pools in the Twin Towers’ footprints, with the names of those who died engraved on the pools’ perimeters—but there’s a charge for the museum on the grounds (see website for details).
Walk east along Liberty Street until it meets Broadway, then turn left to reach the ultramodern Fulton Street station, a hub bringing together several subway lines.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Trinity Church trinitywallstreet.org, 74 Trinity Pl., 212-602-0800
New York Stock Exchange nyse.com, 18 Broad St., 212-656-3000
Federal Hall nps.gov/feha, 26 Wall St., 212-825-6990
Museum of American Finance mcaf.org, 48 Wall St., 212-908-4110
Louise Nevelson Plaza Bounded by William Street, Maiden Lane, and Liberty Street
Federal Reserve Bank of New York ny.frb.org, 33 Liberty St., 212-720-5000
Zuccotti Park Broadway at Liberty Street
9/11 Tribute Center tributewtc.org, 120 Liberty St., 212-393-9160
FDNY Memorial Wall fdnytenhouse.com/fdnywall, 124 Liberty St.
1 World Trade Center onewtc.com, bounded by West, Vesey, Fulton, and Washington Streets
9/11 Memorial (National September 11 Memorial & Museum) 911memorial.org, 180 Greenwich St., 212-266-5211
ROUTE SUMMARY
1 Begin at Wall Street and Broadway, and see Trinity Church and its cemetery.
2 Walk on Wall Street to Broad Street and go right.
3 Return to Wall Street and continue in the direction you’d been heading.
4 Walk left on William Street.
5 Walk left at Liberty Street.
6 Cross Broadway and enter Zuccotti Park.
7 Walk left on Trinity Place, then reverse direction.
8 Walk left on Liberty Street to Greenwich Street.
9 Return on Liberty Street to Broadway, then go left to Fulton Street for the train.
CONNECTING THE WALKS
The
