Wadi Manhattan

Two views of Nassau Street, and one of Wall Street, downtown Manhattan. Streets like this are what make Manhattan special. The skyscraper was invented essentially to make the most of the small lots peculiar to the curving streets of old New Amsterdam. Here you find century old buildings flanking streets that rather than following the Cartesian rules of the mid-town and up-town grid, once followed the lay of the land, bending around now long-gone creeks and trees and rocks.

Nassau St., looking south.

Nassau St., looking south.

Wall St., looking west at Trinity Church.

Wall St. of course was originally not a street at all, but the site of the fortifying wall protecting the city built in 1653. When this church was built in 1846 it was the tallest bulding in Manhattan. It replaced an earlier church, built in 1790, which had replaced the original chuch built in 1698 which had burned in 1776. This church is flanked by Manhattan's oldest graveyard, with graves dating back to the early 1600's. The building on the left is the stock exchange.