Page 2 - Module 1 History of wall street

The
Early Years
Wall Street is an eight-block-long street running roughly northwest to southeast from Broadway to
South Street, at the East River, in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. Over
time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the
American financial services industry (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or New
York-based financial interests.
Anchored by Wall Street, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city
and the leading financial center of the world,and the city is home to the world’s two largest stock
exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Several other
major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including the New York Mercantile
Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange.
There are varying accounts about how the Dutch-named “de Walstraat”got its name. A generally
accepted version is that the name of the street was derived from a wall (actually a wooden palisade)
on the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement, built to protect against Native
Americans, pirates, and the British. A conflicting explanation is that Wall Street was named after
Walloons— the Dutch name for a Walloon is Waal. Among the first settlers that embarked on the
ship “Nieu Nederlandt” in 1624 were 30 Walloon families. The Dutch word “wal” can be translated
as “rampart”. However, even some English maps show the name as Waal Straat, and not as Wal
Straat.
According to one version of the story:
The red people from Manhattan Island crossed to the mainland,
where a treaty was made with the Dutch, and the place was
therefore called the Pipe of Peace, in their language, Hoboken.
But soon after that, the Dutch governor, Kieft, sent his men out
there one night and massacred the entire population. Few of
Depiction of the wall of New Amsterdam on a tile in them escaped, but they spread the story of what had been done,
the Wall Street subway station, serving the 4 5 trains and this did much to antagonize all the remaining tribes against
all the white settlers. Shortly after, Nieuw Amsterdam erected
a double palisade for defense against its now enraged red
neighbors, and this remained for some time the northern limit
of the Dutch city. The space between the former walls is now
called Wall Street, and its spirit is still that of a bulwark against
the people.
In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and
residences in the colony.
Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter
Stuyvesant, using both African slaves and white colonists,
The original city map called the Castello Plan from collaborated with the city government in the construction of
1660, showing the wall on the right side a more substantial fortification, a strengthened 12-foot (4 m)
wall. In 1685, surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of
the original stockade. The wall started at Pearl Street, which was
the shoreline at that time, crossing the Indian path Broadway
and ending at the other shoreline (today's Trinity Place), where
it took a turn south and ran along the shore until it ended at the
old fort. In these early days, local merchants and traders would
gather at disparate spots to buy and sell shares and bonds, and
over time divided themselves into two classes—auctioneers and
dealers. Wall Street was also the marketplace where owners
could hire out their slaves by the day or week. The rampart was
removed in 1699.
The Vigilant Stuyvesant’s Wall Street Gate, 19th cen- Slavery was introduced to Manhattan in 1626, but it was not until
tury painting by John Quidor. December 13, 1711, that the New York City Common Council
made Wall Street the city's first official slave market for the sale
and rental of enslaved Africans and Indians. The slave market
operated from 1711 to 1762 at the corner of Wall and Pearl
Streets. It was a wooden structure with a roof and open sides,
although walls may have been added over the years and could
hold approximately 50 men. The city directly benefited from the
sale of slaves by implementing taxes on every person who was
bought and sold there.
In the late 18th century there was a buttonwood tree at the
foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would
gather to trade securities. The benefit was being in proximity
Conjectural view of Wall Street, as it probably looked at to each other. In 1792, traders formalized their association with
the time of George Washington’s inauguration, 1789 the Buttonwood Agreement which was the origin of the New
York Stock Exchange. The idea of the agreement was to make
the market more "structured" and "without the manipulative
auctions", with a commission structure. Persons signing the
agreement agreed to charge each other a standard commission
rate; persons not signing could still participate but would be
charged a higher commission for dealing.
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Tontine Coffee House, Wall Street in 1797