Lower Manhattan is where the city began, and if you know where to look, the old Dutch town is still everywhere.
Why it is called Wall Street
In the 1650s, the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam built a wooden wall across the northern edge of the settlement, to protect it from attack. The wall is long gone, but the lane that ran beside it kept the name. Wall Street is named for an actual wall.
The shoreline moved
Pearl Street once ran along the East River's edge. Over the centuries, the city filled in the water to make new land, and the shoreline kept moving outward. Today, Pearl Street sits blocks from the water, and the streets beyond it, like Water Street and South Street, are built on landfill. If you walk the curve of Pearl Street, you are walking an old coastline.
The oldest park
Bowling Green, at the foot of Broadway, is often called the oldest public park in the city. In 1733, the city leased the land to local residents who agreed to turn it into a bowling green, for the fee of one peppercorn a year. The park is still there, with an iron fence that dates back to the 1770s.
Streets with Dutch names
Look at a map and you will find Dutch traces: Stone Street, one of the first paved streets in the colony, lined today with restaurants and outdoor tables. Brooklyn comes from Breuckelen, Harlem from Haarlem, and the Bowery from the Dutch word for a farm. The Dutch only governed the city for about four decades, but they named most of what we still say every day.
How to see it
Walk Wall Street to Pearl Street, down to Stone Street, and finish at Bowling Green. It takes about 30 minutes and costs nothing.
