10 Incredible Things You Didn’t Know About New York State and Its Contributions to America

Wall Street

The term Wall Street refers to much more than just a street in lower Manhattan. Wall Street is often used to refer to America’s investment market as a whole. It covers banks, stocks and bonds, mutual funds and all of the arcana of the national and often international financial system. Wall Street was the site of the first stock market in New York when several local traders signed the Buttonwood Agreement, which legend says was so-called because the act of signing the agreement took place beneath a buttonwood tree. The agreement led to what is now the New York Stock Exchange.

Before it was the name of the center of American finance Wall Street was a wall. The first European settlers of the area which is now lower Manhattan were the Dutch. They used the Hudson River as their highway to a trading post near present day Albany. There they traded items such as blankets and tools in return for beaver pelts. Beaver pelts were prized in Europe as a material which was used to manufacture waterproof hats. In 1624 Dutch settlers (who were scattered in small settlements on Long Island and other areas) were relocated to the southern tip of Manhattan.

There they erected a fort for protection of the colony from pirates, which were prevalent along the coasts of early colonial America. They also built a wall which traversed the tip of the island, again as a protection against attacks from pirates or foreign invasion. The Dutch enjoyed good relations with the Indians with whom they traded, but wars between Indian tribes led them to exercise caution in their dealings with them, and the strengthening of the colony’s defenses. Similar preparations were made at the Dutch settlement of Albany.

By the 1660s the Dutch settlements on Manhattan had reached as far north as today’s 74^th Street, and the Dutch made use of many of the creeks and streams on the island as a source of power for mills and manufacturing. When the British seized the colony from the Dutch (during a time of peace) they did not displace many of the settlers, but they were forced to accede to British rule. In 1699 the British tore down the wall traversing the city, but the pathway which ran along the former wall had acquired the name Wall Street by then, and the name remained when the wall was removed.

The street had become by then a thriving trading area, where merchants made deals for cargoes and where beaver pelts were bought by shippers. Dutch settlers had made wampum, prized by the Indians as a form of currency, in buildings and residences along Wall Street. It became natural for the newly arrived English settlers to do business in the area and it became the center of trade for the new English colony named for the Duke of York, who would later become King James II of England. The Dutch would reclaim the city in 1673, naming it New Orange, but in the treaty which ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War it was returned to the British and again named New York.