Possibly the first deal that got done on Wall Street was sale of Manhattan. For 24 dollars the Lenape tribe sold the island to the Dutch, who built a settlement in what is now the Financial District. A protective wall ran from East to West along what is our modern Wall Street, separating their colony from New York mainland and uptown Manhattan. In those early days, the main trade was beaver fur. But as the colony expanded, and was eventually taken over by the British, it would become one of the trade capitals of the New World. 

In those early years, securities were traded en plein air, under an old Buttonwood tree on Wall Street. In an effort to cut out out middlemen, but also charge a fair and standard commission, these colonial traders signed The Buttonwood Agreement in 1792, creating what we now know as the New York Stock Exchange. 

With the 19th century came huge changes in the economic structure of the United States. The abolition of slavery and the Civil War (1860-1865), brought both an end to the South's free labor market and created an economic boom in the North. Agriculture was replaced by industry, which was replaced by a financial market as huge trusts, like John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil, came to dominate the economy. New York became one of the largest financial capitals in the world, second only to London. Towards the end of the 19th century Charles Dow began to track the rise and fall of the stock market using what would become known as the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He also coined the terms "Bull" or "Bear," for when the market was going up, or down. His stock reports became the basis of The Wall Street Journal, one of the most widely read newspapers today. 

The golden era of Wall Street was the 1920's, a time of great wealth, excess--The Great Gatsby. Despite prohibition, people were living large, and the stock market was booming. But this bull market came to a crashing halt in 1929, when the stock market took a huge plunge. The speculative investing of the decade finally caught up with stock market gamblers. In a panic to sell, the market lost 14 billion dollars on October 29th alone. This stupendous crash signaled the beginning of The Great Depression--as millions of Americans lost their jobs, homes, farms, and businesses. 

The economy was helped not only by Roosevelt's New Deal, which put many Americans to work and provided help for struggling families, but also by the jobs created by World War II in the 1940's. By the 1950's the economy was booming again, with new consumer products being marketed and sold to the Baby Boomer population that grew up in the post-war years. The 60's brought greater racial and economic equality to the United States, through the Civil Rights Movement and President Johnson's Great Society Act, which created social security, welfare programs, and educational reforms. 

In the 1970's the economy took a plunge before the loosening of certain regulations allowed for greater freedom on Wall Street. Fixed commissions for brokers were eliminated, and electronic trading began to flourish. Lower prices meant more people could freely trade on the US stock market, with a greater volume of trades available. Traders made big money in the 1980's, and their riches were glorified in movies like Wall Street, featuring the infamous Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas. The World Trade Center towers became a symbol for the power of this famous place, once a humble market sheltered only by the branches of a Buttonwood tree. In 2001, the towers were felled in the 9/11 attacks. In the memory of the victims of those attacks now stands One World Trade Center and the 9/11 Memorial and Museum. 

In the course of this rebuilding many banks and financial institutions moved either to Midtown Manhattan or New Jersey. Since most financial transactions have moved online in the past decade, one might think there is less and less of a need for real-life financial hubs such as the trading floor of the NYSE. Though the NYSE now belongs to parent company ICE, it insists the Big Board remains a vital part of its growing business. If anything, the US Stock Market seems to be outgrowing the physical constraints of that colonial Wall Street. And the name Wall Street has come to mean much more than a street where a wall once stood. It has come to mean instead, Opportunity, for those brave enough to reach out and grab it.