Visit Ground Zero and Wall Street

After visit to Liberty Island and Immigration museum, on Ellis Island, we return to Battery Park, south of Manhattan, on this first full day in New York, last stage of our Coast to coast trip through the United States.

Walking past various painters' stalls offering their art, we walked towards the Zero zone, place where the sadly famous Twin Towers, which was how the World Trade Center.

The Twin Towers At the beginning of the 70s, they were the tallest buildings in the world, until the construction of the Willis tower de Chicago.

The colloquially called Zero Zone In the future it will include five skyscrapers, crowned by the new World Trade Center, this time with the so-called Freedom Tower, 541 meters high.

There will also be a memorial to the victims of September 11.

We visit the enormous space that the towers have left and see how this new complex is being built little by little.

We enter a large building overlooking this Zero Zone called World Financial Center.

It is a large urban complex that houses commercial areas, and many stairs and elevators to ascend to the offices of the numerous companies that have their headquarters there.

There are also garden areas with palm trees inside, large staircases, permanent artistic exhibitions, etc.

It even has a marina on its seafront.

From here we could better appreciate the Zero Zone, and we saw that new buildings are being built around the exact place where the two towers were, leaving these spaces for gardens and memorials to the victims.

We also asked if there was any commemorative place currently, and they told us no, that when the anniversary or a special date is celebrated, an area generally closed to the public is opened to the authorities.

It's really impressive to see the area knowing what happened.

We finally eat in a good restaurant in this World Financial Center and we walked through its great facilities.

After eating, we left to explore the city, and headed to Wall Street through narrow streets surrounded by very tall buildings and low cathedrals and churches (comparatively speaking).

Wall Street is the name of a narrow New York street, which is considered the historic heart of the financial district, and is the main and permanent home of the NYSE.

The name of the street derives from the fact that, during the 17th century, it constituted the northern limit of New Amsterdam.

There the Dutch settlers built a wall of wood and mud in 1652.

The wall meant a defense against the possible attack of the Indians lenape, the New England colonists and the British.

Although this wall was demolished by the British in 1699, the name of the street continues to remember it.

On the other hand, at the end of the 18th century there was a tree, right at the foot of the wall, where financial intermediaries and speculators met to trade informally.

This was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange.

We took the opportunity to walk around the area, take photos of the building, small, compared to others nearby, in which the enormous American flag that almost completely covers the façade stood out.

We also saw other notable buildings, all related to the financial world and we also saw the famous Wall Street bull.

Finally we decided to take the subway and cross under the Hudson River, to reach Brooklyn, our next stage in the New York visit.