Sublime

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is perched in a gray sandstone slab in the heart of Wall Street.

While VOC operated in the Indian Ocean, the Dutch West Indies Company, or WIC, plied the Atlantic. In order to control trade on the important Hudson River, WIC built a settlement called New Amsterdam on an island at the river’s mouth. The colony was threatened by Indians and repeatedly attacked by the British, who eventually captured it in 1664.

With no way to cover their shorts, firms up and down Wall Street faced bankruptcy, as did the banks who had been financing their positions; Harriman had no choice but to back off the fight, so Morgan and Schiff could unwind their positions and forestall a crash.

New York in 1932 was half-completed skyscrapers, work on them long since halted for the lack of funds, that glared down on the city from glassless windows.

to be torn down as soon as the city got around to it. When they did, 295 was replaced with the universally abhorred high-rise that currently bloats the space between Houston and Stanton. The building is tall and reflective, covered in futuristic (if by “future” you mean 1984) windows. They enable the residents to live on the Bowery but not live on

Weckquaesgeeks, who lived on Manhattan and really owned it, weren’t so happy. For years afterward they warred sporadically with the Dutch. Perhaps the most famous street in America, Wall Street, was named for the wall the Dutch built to protect New Amsterdam from the Weckquaesgeeks, evidence that the Dutch hardly imagined they had bought Manhattan