Wall St. Looking More Like Main St.
Though It Still Draws Tourists, Storied Financial Hub Is Increasingly Residential

By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008

NEW YORK -- Every day in recent weeks, tourists have poured onto Wall Street to catch sight of its demise, only to discover that the financial center of their imaginations, which once stretched the length of the fabled street, has long since ceased to exist.

Only a few major financial institutions still have national headquarters on Wall Street. Others have moved over the decades to more spacious and modern offices in Midtown Manhattan or New Jersey, or to distant outposts such as Iowa and South Dakota.

Wall Street is, in fact, an increasingly residential strip, with the dogs, babies, fitness clubs and juice bars to prove it. Its workers are just as likely to be lawyers or architects, nonprofit agency directors or researchers, artists, writers or broadcasters, as they are to be bankers.

"Wall Street is shorthand for an industry that is no longer on Wall Street," said Mitchell Moss, a professor of urban planning at New York University.

Before Sept. 11, 2001, there were 23,000 residents in Lower Manhattan, said Nicole LaRusso, vice president for planning and economic development at the Alliance for Downtown New York, which manages the area's business improvement district. Now, there are more than 56,000 residents, including those in more than 2,000 apartments on Wall Street itself.

"Wall Street is the model for the new, 21st-century central business district, where people live and work in the same place," LaRusso said. "Of course, 300 years ago, this was 100 percent a live-work community. There was no place else to live or work."

As financial leaders give up the risky practices that gave Wall Street its reputation, the street itself has become a mecca for microphones, cameras and visitors, an impulse to bear witness to history. But some feel let down, finding that the street is actually a difficult vantage point from which to view the crisis.

"I'm a little disappointed in Wall Street," said Richard Whittaker, 26, an engineering PhD student visiting from the United Kingdom with a friend. "We thought it'd be on a grander scale, less touristy, more business, more banks."

Changes in the banking industry began affecting the ecology of the area years ago. Once, brokerages clustered on Wall Street so that runners could deliver stock certificates, but the advent of computers reduced the need for physical proximity.

Financial firms began to leave for Midtown in the 1960s, Moss said, seeking big, new buildings with large floors for trading and the capacity for extensive wiring. Employees were also moving to the suburbs and wanted to be closer to the commuter trains at Grand Central Station in Midtown.

In the 1970s, some financial firms moved to the World Trade Center. In the 1980s, companies began moving farther afield, to cheaper, tax-advantageous states.

In the 1990s, government used incentives to encourage the conversion of empty banks to apartments. The terrorist attacks of 2001 accelerated the exodus of financial institutions, and federally backed Liberty Bonds were later made available to help with the conversion to housing.

Now some businesses, such as Giovanni Orlando's Hirsute Inc. hair salon at 82 Wall St., are clinging to a client base that has mostly moved away with the banks.

"My clientele comes from New Jersey. They live and work there now because their firms have left New York, but they still come in to see me," Orlando said. "It's like a loyal group of friends."

Secundino Diaz, assistant manager of Kenjo, at 40 Wall St., where watches sell for as much as $50,000, notes the street's increasingly casual atmosphere. "Everything is different now," he said. "You got loose collars. You got nightlife."

Other new businesses cater to tourists. Alfred Lavery, a street vendor, sells bull figurines symbolizing the boom market -- which now seem like relics of a bygone era. He joked: "I sold out of bears." If there's one place booming, it's the Museum of American Financial History, which on a recent day was crowded with European visitors.

But most businesses have little to do with finance. On a recent afternoon, Jahaira Duverge, 29, was on her way to apply for a Wall Street job -- not in a bank, but as a chef at a catering company. "It's a typical neighborhood; it's not all about money," she said, cradling her month-old son.

At 120 Wall St., nonprofit, arts and media tenants include the United Negro College Fund, Girls Incorporated, Vibe Magazine, Lambda Legal and the United Way.

But perhaps the biggest change in the area is represented by the influx of new residents.

LaRusso said that on the southern side of Wall Street, almost every building has been converted or is being converted to housing or hotels. Residents here, however, must accept a police SWAT unit in riot gear that has been stationed a few blocks away since the Sept. 11 attacks, as well as barricades designed to prevent a car bomber from reaching the New York Stock Exchange. It is difficult to hail a cab, and a walk to the nearest grocery store is substantial.

But it works well for Nathan Berman, the principal of Metro Loft Management, which owns two buildings on Wall Street. He said people like an address that connotes money: "It's a status symbol, I think."

In his brick-and-limestone apartment tower at 63 Wall St., a 10,000-square-foot second-floor space that once housed rows of bank-teller windows has been converted to a lounge for residents that includes wireless Internet access, a pool table and a 25-seat movie-screening room.

"At first, the age ranged from 22 to 26," Berman said, with people renting apartments whose prices range from $2,200 a month for a studio to $5,000 for a two-bedroom. Then the apartments became popular with young couples and their children.

"It's fun here," said Edward Chernick, 27, an account executive with NYFIX who lives at 37 Wall St. and walks home for lunch. "There's a good vibe down here deep in the markets. It's better bang for your buck than other places in town."