By Janet Kwon
A group of about 40 gathered on the front steps of the former United States Customs House on a particularly humid Thursday. Fanning themselves with anything they could get a hold of, some sat on the stone steps while others moved about searching for shade from the harsh noon sunshine. The crowd, many toting digital cameras in one hand and a New York guidebook in the other, waited to begin the Wall St. walking tour.
Although the tour is given by Big Onion Walking Tours, it doesn’t cost patrons the usual $15 to take the Downtown tour. In fact, the Wall Street Walking Tour doesn’t cost a penny, thanks to the Downtown Alliance, a Lower Manhattan business improvement district, which has subsidized the tour since 1998.
The 90-minute tour, which meets at noon every Thursday and Saturday, begins in front of One Bowling Green and weaves through the nooks and crannies of the Financial District, hitting various Downtown historical hotspots on the way. Although the trail might differ slightly from tour to tour, the main stops of the tour remain fairly consistent.
That particular Thursday, the large group had to be split in two and each group was assigned a Big Onion guide. One of the guides, Campbell Kennedy, began the tour by describing the group’s immediate surroundings: the former U.S. Customs House, now home to the Indian Museum. After describing the various sculptures on the building’s façade, Kennedy led the group to Bowling Green Park, just across the street.
Aside from being New York’s first park, Kennedy explained, Bowling Green Park used to have a King George III statue – before it was torn down in 1776 by an angry mob and ultimately melted for bullets to be used in the American Revolution. It is rumored, Kennedy added with a smirk, that these 42,000 bullets killed 400 British soldiers in the war.
Similar to a teacher leading his classroom on a fieldtrip, Kennedy, clad in jeans, a navy blue Atari tee-shirt and a full head of dreadlocks, next led the flock of 18 to Fraunces Tavern Museum, briefly stopping by the Goldman Sachs headquarters at 85 Broad St., where the group was bombarded by hoards of suited workers rushing out of the revolving doors for their lunch break.
At Fraunces Tavern, many took out slim digital cameras and snapped away at the replica of the 18th-century brick structure, the site where George Washington said his last goodbyes to his soldiers at the end of the Revolutionary War.
The group was now getting visibly weary from the heat, but they followed Kennedy obediently — soaking in the sights and sounds of Downtown Manhattan. According to a 2004 Downtown Alliance survey, 70 percent of those who take the Wall St. walking tour are tourists, and the rest vary from Downtown employees to people on business trips. Only 5 percent of those surveyed were Downtown residents. These numbers haven’t shifted considerably in the last few years, and the tour itself hasn’t changed much since the 9/11 attacks, said Bruce Brodoff, the Alliance’s spokesperson. The tour always has and still focuses mainly on the Financial District, south of Wall St.
The recent Thursday group was made up mostly of Americans. Karl and Kathy Englert and their 9-year-old daughter Meg were touring the northeast for a month, away from their Seattle home. Karl carried Meg on his back, when she grew tired of walking, but clutching her doll, she said that she was learning new things and was still having fun.
“It’s our first official guided tour,” said Karl, adding that they’ve explored on their own, but it was more informative to hear the historical anecdotes from a guide.
Walking alone was Ji Yon Bang. She snapped pictures of Wall St. as the group arrived at the intersection of Wall and William Sts. After living on the Upper East Side for the past five years, she was moving back to California that Sunday for a new job.
“I’m trying to soak it all in before I leave,” said Bang. She added that she rarely comes Downtown, and the tour seemed like a good way to take one last look around before heading west.
The group passed the Trump building on 40 Wall St., then came to the Federal Hall National Memorial, the site where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States. Right across the way, he also pointed out the former J.P. Morgan headquarters as well as the New York Stock Exchange.
Kennedy then led the group to Trinity Church, where he got a few oohs and ahhs from the crowd when he listed Alexander Hamilton and John Peter Zenger as high profile historical figures that are buried there. He also drew a few gasps when he mentioned that it now costs about $1.5 million to be buried in a plot at the church. Walking up Wall St. facing the church straight on, Kennedy commented that Trinity Church was the tallest building in New York when it was first built in 1846. He told the group to use the height of the church to imagine the landscape of Lower Manhattan before soaring skyscrapers were built much later.
Kennedy, who has a history degree from Adelphi University and is in the process of getting his Ph.D. in American History at CUNY, said that he asked Big Onion to let him do the Downtown tours.
“This is where New York began,” he said. “You can trace the city’s entire history starting from this one neighborhood.”
The free Wall Street Walking Tour meets outside One Bowling Green at noon on Thursdays and Saturdays. Reservations are not required.
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