Layout
Lower Manhattan has an irregular street grid system, a throwback to the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. This street pattern seems even more irregular when compared to the neat grid system seen just about everywhere else in Manhattan. Major avenues here run in a north-south direction - West Street along the Hudson River, Church Street and Broadway through the middle of the district, and Water Street and South Street the former running beneath the elevated FDR Drive along the East River. With the exception of these roads, almost every street in the financial district is very narrow and often clogged with traffic during the day. The blocks immediately surrounding the intersection of Wall and Broad Streets where the stock exchange and Federal Hall are located are blocked off to automobiles; only pedestrians may enter.
History
Located at the southern tip of Manhattan, Lower Manhattan was the site of earliest European settlement in the New York area - the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. Established in 1625, the settlement became the capital of New Netherland, the colonial Dutch province which controlled the area along the Hudson River. In 1664, the British conquered New Netherland and New Amsterdam became "New York".
In the late 18th century, with the American Revolution brewing, New York became a major political center for the colonists. Protests against the Stamp Act led the so-called "Stamp Act Congress" to convene here and sign a Declaration of Rights and Grievances, asserting the concept of "no taxation with representation." British soldiers captured New York and maintained control of the city until the war ended, when George Washington triumphantly returned to Manhattan. He would return again in 1789 to take the oath of office and become the nation's first president, as New York briefly served as the first capital of the United States, where the Bill of Rights was drafted and ratified.
Shortly after the creation of the United States, Lower Manhattan started becoming an economic and financial center for the new nation. In 1792, a group of stock brokers signed the Buttonwood Agreement, which created the New York Stock Exchange, underneath a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the corporate culture of the area fueled the construction of many skyscrapers in the district, and as the financial power of New York grew, so did its influence; as evidenced by the 1929 Wall Street Crash, which ushered in the Great Depression.
Through the 1940s and 50s, new economic growth on Manhattan was centered on Midtown. Wishing to concentrate new growth on Lower Manhattan, and coming in at the height of the urban renewal movement, local leaders destroyed most of the old structures to make way for the gleaming office towers of today's Lower Manhattan, not least of which was the World Trade Center, built in the 1970s, which defined the Lower Manhattan landscape until it was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Currently, a new World Trade Center is being constructed on the site alongside the new memorial to the September 11 victims.