A narrow, shadowed street named after a Dutch stockade, with the Stock Exchange at one end and a bronze bull two blocks away that has nothing to do with it.
The wall
There was an actual wall. In 1653 the Dutch built a twelve-foot timber palisade across the northern edge of New Amsterdam, running from river to river, to keep out the English and, they told themselves, the Lenape. It was never tested by an army; the English took the town in 1664 by sailing in and asking. The British pulled the stockade down in 1699 and the street kept the name.
The curve of the street and its narrowness are both inherited from that line. It is one of the few streets in Lower Manhattan that follows something older than the grid, which is why walking it feels nothing like walking Midtown.
What is actually there
The New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street has been closed to the public since shortly after 11 September 2001. You cannot go in, you cannot see the floor, and no tour operator can get you in either, whatever they tell you. What you can do is stand outside and look at the 1903 façade with its enormous Corinthian columns and the pediment of allegorical figures. The building flies a very large flag.
Federal Hall at 26 Wall Street is the one to actually go into, and it is free. This is where George Washington took the oath as first president in 1789 and where the first Congress sat and wrote the Bill of Rights. The building you see is not that building — the original was demolished in 1812 — but it is a fine 1842 Greek Revival customs house, and the stone Washington stood on is inside under glass. It is run by the National Park Service, entry is free, and it takes twenty minutes.
Trinity Church closes the west end of Wall Street, its spire lined up down the middle of the street. Alexander Hamilton is buried in the churchyard, along with Robert Fulton and a number of colonial New Yorkers whose stones are illegible. It is worth ten minutes and it is free.
The Charging Bull is not here. It is on the Broadway median at Bowling Green, a short walk south-west. Arturo Di Modica made it without a commission, dropped it outside the Stock Exchange in the middle of the night in December 1989 as a piece of guerrilla art, and the city impounded it before relenting and installing it where it now stands. The queue to photograph the front of it is permanent. Almost nobody queues at the back, where the other traditional photograph is taken.
Getting a feel for it
Come on a weekday if you want the district populated — this is an office quarter and on a Sunday it is close to deserted, which is atmospheric in a completely different way. The streets are narrow enough that the light only reaches the pavement around noon.
The whole loop — Bowling Green, the Bull, Broad Street, Federal Hall, Trinity Church — takes an hour at a slow walk, and the 9/11 Memorial is a further ten minutes north.
More Landmarks
Statue of Liberty
A French gift that arrived in 214 crates and spent a year in pieces on an island nobody wanted. The ferry is the ticket — everything else is an upgrade.
Brooklyn Bridge
Fourteen years, three Roeblings and twenty-odd deaths to build. Free to walk, best at seven in the morning, and the direction you cross matters more than the time.
Times Square
Loud, bright, and genuinely worth twenty minutes once. Go after dark, keep your hands on your bag, and do not eat here.