Wall Street on the Weekend

Showing my family Wall Street was a little like giving them a tour of our apartment, only more exciting. After all, I spend the majority of my waking weekday hours in the Financial District, and I think I know it pretty well. I must look like I know it pretty well, too -- a few weeks ago I was standing outside of the stairs to my subway tapping out a message on my phone, and three different people approached me with questions.

In any case, no visit to Lower Manhattan is complete without a look at the New York Stock Exchange. Sorry, no tours since 9/11, but it's still a sight to see.


We were there on a Sunday afternoon. Dozens of people milled around Wall Street's pedestrian-only zone, but it was a far cry from the weekday crowds of tour groups and school trips. You can probably find Paul in the photo below; on, say, a Monday afternoon it would have been much more difficult.


Paul is regularly in the area for work meetings, but both he and I discovered something new on this trip: the four-story J.P. Morgan Building, once the home of J.P. Morgan & Co. It doesn't look so grand now. It's actually empty and rather drab. It didn't even occur to me to take a picture of it. In any case, the photo on Wikipedia makes the building look nicer than I remember it in person.

Reason #523 that I love New York: You can learn something new, even a hundred visits later.