Walking Tour: Wall Street Canyons, Walking the Byways of the First New York

From the spectacular skyline to the underground archeological relics, downtown Manhattan is one of the world’s great urban treasures. Its reputation was tarnished in the ’80s as a symbol of greed and corruption, in the ’90s with the stock market crash and empty skyscrapers, and again in the ’00s in the wake of 9/11, but the area is making a strong come-back. The tour covers colonial-era relics and narrow Dutch streets, private banks and public squares, nineteenth-century church steeples, and twentieth-century skyscraper towers. Admire public art from Daniel Chester French’s “Four Continents" at the old Custom House to Arturo diModica’s giant bull (to cheer up the stockbrokers after the ‘87 crash) at Bowling Green. Take in the waterfront scenery from Castle Clinton in Battery Park to Steamship Row on lower Broadway. Stroll past famous institutions like Delmonico’s Steak House, the first American restaurant to popularize “continental cuisine,” whose last (and very handsome) surviving building stands on William Street.