A street six hundred metres long, born as a Dutch wall, ended up governing the economy of the planet. In October 1929 its stock market collapsed, and the crisis that followed left one in four Americans out of work and pushed Europe towards the abyss. Thirteen stops between the bronze bull nobody commissioned, the tavern where Washington said goodbye to his officers, the wall and the slave market that gave the street its name, the tree where the exchange was born, the bank of the most optimistic salesman of the Twenties, the first president's balcony, the Morgans' nameless building, the hall of Black Thursday and Black Tuesday, the church that watched it all from above, Hamilton's grave, the square of the protesters, the Twin Towers memorial and the tower that rose again. Approximate audio duration: 27 minutes.
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Wall Street: la semana de 1929 en que el dinero arrastró al mundo
Una calle de seiscientos metros que nació como muralla holandesa terminó gobernando la economía del planeta. En octubre de 1929 su bolsa se derrumbó, y la crisis que siguió dejó sin trabajo a uno de cada cuatro estadounidenses y empujó a Europa hacia el abismo. Trece paradas entre el toro de bronce que nadie encargó, la taberna donde Washington se despidió de sus oficiales, la muralla y el mercado de esclavos que dieron nombre a la calle, el árbol donde nació la bolsa, el banco del vendedor más optimista de los años veinte, el balcón del primer presidente, el edificio sin nombre de los Morgan, el salón del Jueves y el Martes Negro, la iglesia que miró todo desde arriba, la tumba de Hamilton, la plaza de los indignados, el memorial de las Torres Gemelas y la torre que volvió a levantarse. Duración aproximada de audio: 27 minutos.
Tour stops
13 stops · ~27 min of audio · 2.38 km on foot (~35 min walking) · about 1 h 15 min in total
You are standing before the most photographed bronze bull in the world. It weighs more than three tonnes, lowers its head and seems about to charge up Broadway.
Nobody ordered it. It was made by a Sicilian-born sculptor, Arturo Di Modica, with his own money, as a response to the stock market crash of October 1987. He wanted a symbol of strength for a country that had just had a fright.
In the early hours of 15 December 1989 he brought it on a truck and left it, without permission, in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Police hauled it away that same day. But the public had already fallen …
2
The Tavern Where Washington Said Goodbye
You are in front of Fraunces Tavern, a red brick building with white windows, surrounded by glass towers. It looks out of place. And in a way it is: a memory of New York before the banks.
In 1762 Samuel Fraunces bought it and turned it into a tavern. Merchants, conspirators and officers met here. What you see today is largely a 1907 reconstruction, but it respects the shape of that colonial building.
On 4 December 1783, with the War of Independence over, George Washington gathered his officers in the first-floor room. He raised a glass with them and said goodbye, one by one. Many wept. He in…
3
The Wall and the Market That Named the Street
You are on the corner of Wall Street and Water Street. Look west along the street: it is narrow, curved and short. It measures just over six hundred metres. And yet its name stands for all the money in the world.
The name is literal. In 1653, when this was New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony, the settlers built a wooden palisade across the island from shore to shore. They feared an attack by the English or by Native peoples. The road running alongside it became the street of the wall.
The wall was not much use. In 1664 the English took the town without a fight and renamed it New York. By the end o…
4
The Tree Where the Exchange Was Born
You are in front of number 68 Wall Street. There is nothing special to see. But according to tradition, right here, outside this door, grew a sycamore, a tree known in New York as a buttonwood.
In its shade, at the end of the eighteenth century, gathered the men who bought and sold the new government bonds and the shares of the first banks. They traded in the open air, on their word, with no common rules.
In the spring of 1792 it all fell apart. A speculator named William Duer, who had held a senior post at the Treasury, went bust after gambling with borrowed money. He dragged many down with…
5
The Bank of the Most Optimistic Salesman
You are in front of number 55 Wall Street. Look at the two rows of granite columns, one above the other. The lower row dates from 1842, when this was the Merchants' Exchange. The upper one was added at the start of the twentieth century.
From 1908 it was the headquarters of National City Bank, the ancestor of today's Citibank. And in the Twenties it was run by the most enthusiastic banker of the age: Charles Mitchell. On Wall Street they called him Sunshine Charlie.
Mitchell had an idea that changed the market. Until then, buying shares was something for the rich. His bank set up an affiliat…
6
The First President's Balcony
You are in front of Federal Hall, the Greek marble temple with the bronze statue of George Washington on its steps. The statue dates from 1883 and marks the exact spot of an oath.
On this site stood New York's old city hall. When the city became the first capital of the United States, it was remodelled for Congress. On 30 April 1789, on its balcony, Washington was sworn in as the nation's first president.
That same year, in this building, Congress approved the amendments known as the Bill of Rights. And it appointed a thirty-four-year-old as the first Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Ham…
7
The Morgans' Nameless Building
You are on the corner of Wall and Broad Street, in front of number 23. Look for a name on the facade: you will not find one. This was the headquarters of J.P. Morgan and Company, the most powerful bank in the United States. It had no need to introduce itself.
Now go closer to the wall facing Wall Street and look at the stone at eye level. Those marks and holes are not wear. They are the scars of a bomb.
On 16 September 1920, at one minute past noon, a horse-drawn wagon loaded with dynamite and shrapnel exploded here. Thirty-eight people were killed and hundreds injured. No culprit was ever f…
8
Black Thursday, Black Tuesday
You are in front of the New York Stock Exchange. Six Corinthian columns, a pediment full of figures and, almost always, a giant flag. The building opened in 1903. Look up: the sculptures depict Integrity Protecting the Works of Man.
Behind that facade lies the trading floor. In 1929 it was a hive of shouting brokers, paper on the floor and a machine, the ticker, printing prices on paper tape sent all over the country.
On Thursday 24 October nearly thirteen million shares changed hands, a record. The ticker fell so far behind that across the country nobody knew what their holdings were worth.…
9
The Church That Watched the Fall
You are on Broadway, in front of Trinity Church, right where Wall Street ends. Turn around for a moment and look at the street you have just walked: from here the church seems to close it off like a curtain of dark stone.
This is the third church on the same spot. The parish received its charter from the English king in 1697. The present neo-Gothic building dates from 1846, and its eighty-six-metre spire was the tallest point in New York until 1890. Ships used it as a landmark to enter the harbour.
From this doorway, in the Thirties, people watched what came after the crash. For the fall of …
10
The Grave of the Man Who Invented the Nation's Finances
You are in front of Alexander Hamilton's grave, a white monument topped by a small pyramid, among headstones blackened by time. Next to him lies his wife, Elizabeth, who outlived him by fifty years.
Hamilton was born in the Caribbean, illegitimate, and lost his mother as a child. He reached New York as a teenager, fought in the War of Independence alongside Washington and was one of the authors of the essays that defended the Constitution.
As the first Secretary of the Treasury, from 1789, he took a bankrupt country and gave it a financial system. He had the federal government take over the …
11
From the Rules of 1933 to the Protesters of 2011
You are in Zuccotti Park, a stone plaza with rows of trees and a large red sculpture of crossed beams on the corner. It looks public, but it is private: a company created it in 1968 in exchange for permission to build the tower opposite taller.
Before telling you what happened here, let us go back to 1933. After the crash and the wave of bank failures, the new president, Franklin Roosevelt, changed the rules. The Glass-Steagall Act separated the banks that hold people's savings from those that speculate in shares. And deposit insurance was created.
In 1934 came the Securities and Exchange Co…
12
Where the Twin Towers Stood
You are beside the South Pool of the 9/11 Memorial. Water falls nine metres down all four walls and disappears into a central void whose bottom you cannot see. This square fills the exact footprint of the South Tower of the World Trade Center.
The Twin Towers opened in the early Seventies. Each had a hundred and ten floors, and they were the symbol of New York's financial power, a vertical extension of Wall Street.
On 11 September 2001, two hijacked planes crashed into them. In less than two hours both towers collapsed. That day, in the attacks on New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, almos…
13
The 1,776-Foot Tower
You are at the foot of One World Trade Center. Look up: the glass tower tapers until it ends in a spire. From down here, on a cloudy day, the tip disappears into the clouds.
It stands 1,776 feet, about 541 metres, including the spire. The number is no accident: it is the year of the Declaration of Independence, the one read in July 1776 while a crowd pulled down the king's statue at Bowling Green, where you began this walk.
It opened in November 2014 and is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. Its base, of reinforced concrete and almost windowless on the lower floors, is a lesson …
How long does the "Wall Street: the Week in 1929 When Money Dragged the World Down" audio tour take?
It has about 27 minutes of audio across 13 stops and a 2.38 km walking route (~35 min on foot). Plan roughly 1 h 15 min in total, or split it up: you can pause and resume anytime.
Where does the tour start?
At stop 1, "The Bull Nobody Ordered" (coordinates 40.70558, -74.01342). The app guides you from stop to stop with a map.
Is it free?
Trevurs is a free app for iOS and Android. There is also an optional Premium version, from USD 1.99, with unlimited offline downloads, access to every tour and no ads. It also helps keep an independent app alive.
Why use an audio tour instead of a guided group tour?
No group to keep up with and no guide to wait for. Start at any time of day, on your own schedule. Go at your own pace: pause, rewind or skip any stop. No need to commit 2 or 3 hours to a single tour: do one stop or the whole route. Works offline once downloaded.
What languages is this audio guide available in?
This tour is available in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, Italian. Switch languages anytime from inside the app.
Do I need wifi to listen to this tour?
No. Download the tour over wifi before you go, then listen without any data connection.
How do I access this tour?
Download Trevurs on iPhone (App Store) or Android (Google Play), then open New York and pick "Wall Street: the Week in 1929 When Money Dragged the World Down". No account required to start.
