The Financial District in New York is known for large office
towers of glass and marble facades of old buildings. It is considered the epicenter
of the financial world.
Many of the large banking institutions that comprise the
symbolic “Wall Street” are located in midtown now. And very little actual stock
trading happens on Wall Street itself. Most actual stock trading happens on
giant data servers in New Jersey. But the name is going to stay and new banks
will move in to replace the old ones.
There is a charm to lower Manhattan that is missing from
midtown and other parts of the island. The streets retain the narrow dimensions
of the early Dutch settlers, and now they are lined with tall buildings instead
of brick homes. The chaos of the streets is part of what makes it different.
You have to know where you are going, and the logical numerical grid of midtown
is choked off for good farther uptown at Houston Street. South of there, you
have to know where you are going.
Lower Manhattan retains some of the old world charm of the
early settlers, even though Manhattan today looks nothing like it did when it
was New Amsterdam. You can still see remnants of Revolutionary War history and
the days of our nation’s founding. If you are close enough to Battery Park, you
can wander away from some of the tourists to the KoreanWar Memorial or one of the gardens that are quieter, or see
working beehives.
An additional charm to lower Manhattan generally and the
Financial District in particular is the scattered network of small alleyways.
When I first started working downtown, I had more time to take walks on my
lunch hour and whenever I came across a small alley I had not experienced
before, I had to walk down that alley. It still seems a sin not to.
Near where I work now is one such alleyway: Liberty Place. It’s
among the alleys that populate lower Manhattan and serve as secluded getaways
that are enticing for midday walks.
ForgottenNY points out that LibertyPlace used to be called Little Green Street and dates to the era
of the early Dutch settlers. People who walk or drive on the extremely narrow,
one-way street are traveling where there once was a graveyard and Quaker
meeting house.
I make a point to walk down Liberty Place whenever I can.
It’s an oasis of old New York City grit in a scrubbed land of tourists and high
finances. I often smell skunk weed and see people taking a break from work. The
people who linger there are sharing a joint, drinking discreetly, or making a
phone call away from the usual noise and bustle of the New York workday.
And even though I don’t drink or smoke weed I walk down this
alleyway feeling I am among my people. I also would rather loaf and feel at
ease and spend my days enjoying the random beautiful madness of our city
streets rather than sit at a desk and answer emails for hours. I too should
have stayed a rambling, impoverished poet looking for eternity in the eyes of
strangers.
Liberty Place is just that, a place we can seek a breath of
liberty even within a shadowy alleyway. I try to make it part of my daily
routine, another way to get through the everyday and be a tourist in your own
city.
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