Quick answer
Wall Street is the eight-block street in Lower Manhattan where American finance was born: a Dutch defensive wall in 1653, the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792 that began the New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall where George Washington was inaugurated in 1789, and the Charging Bull that has guarded Bowling Green since 1989.
Full transcript
A wall that made a street
In 1653 the Dutch director Peter Stuyvesant ordered a wall of dirt and wooden planks across the northern edge of New Amsterdam — 2,340 feet long and 9 feet tall, meant to keep out invaders. It was torn down in 1699, but the name stuck. In 1792 a group of traders signed the Buttonwood Agreement under a tree at the foot of the street, founding what became the New York Stock Exchange. The street itself runs 8 blocks and just 1,984 feet from Broadway to the East River. Start at the corner of Broadway and follow it east, past the doorways that hold more money than any other street on earth.
The birthplace of the republic
At the corner of Wall and Broad, Federal Hall hosted the first United States Congress and, on April 30, 1789, George Washington's first inauguration — the same rooms where the Bill of Rights was passed. The Greek Revival building standing there today was completed in 1842. Across the street, the New York Stock Exchange's colonnaded home went up in 1903, designed by George B. Post. And on September 16, 1920, a bomb exploded outside the J. P. Morgan bank, killing 38 people; the case was never solved. Pause on the steps of Federal Hall and picture the oath taken there in 1789.
Meet the bull
The Charging Bull is not a city commission. Sculptor Arturo Di Modica cast the bronze after the 1987 market crash, and in December 1989 he trucked it downtown and dropped it outside the exchange without a permit. The police impounded it; the public objected; the city reinstalled it at Bowling Green, where the 7,100-pound bull, 11 feet tall, has stood ever since. Touch its nose, then walk up Broadway to Trinity Church and the grave of Alexander Hamilton, the man who built the financial system the bull has come to stand for.