Wall Street was once home to the major banks. 9/11 led to a radical reinvention

Wick Simmons, the former CEO of Nasdaq, started working on Wall Street in lower Manhattan after graduating from business school in 1966. Today, he barely recognizes the neighborhood.

“Wall Street, as I knew it, is gone,” Simmons says.

Wall Street was home to the largest banks in the world for centuries. The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center completely changed that, as many executives questioned the wisdom of consolidating an entire industry in one place.

And shortly thereafter, many banks and financial service providers increased their commitment. Some of them moved to other New York City neighborhoods, while others left for Connecticut and New Jersey.

Simmons himself decided to relocate Nasdaq’s staff to Times Square, which is now the exchange’s global headquarters.

Facing an exodus, developers and city officials decided to reinvent and reinvent Lower Manhattan.

They envisioned a neighborhood that would attract residents and new businesses. It would be anchored by a gleaming tower that would be part of the new World Trade Center complex, along with a transit hub designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava.

It worked.

Meet the new Wall Street

On a rainy September morning, Wall Street is buzzing. Yes, there were businessmen and bankers in suits running over the cobblestones in front of the iconic New York Stock Exchange building.

But these financial workers were outnumbered by parents with children on their way to school. There are now more than twice as many apartments and condominiums as there were before September 11, according to data from the Alliance for Downtown, a local trade group.

Jonathan Corpina, who has been a Wall Street trader for 23 years and is now a senior managing partner at Meridian Equity Partners, still marvels at the changes.

“This area down here has become a very warm area from a residential standpoint,” Corpina says, pointing to buildings that were previously anchored by banks but have been repurposed by developers.

It is far from what it used to be.

“It was all business here,” Corpina says. “And then, at 4:30 PM, everyone would just leave and go back home wherever they lived. It was very, very quiet.”

Today, narrow, winding streets are home to new bars and restaurants, boutiques, and high-end retailers, including Herms and Tiffany & Co.

The pandemic has dampened the neighborhood’s nightlife, but residents have begun to return and many businesses have welcomed workers back.

Today Uber and Spotify are calling Wall Street home

The professional character of Wall Street has also changed.

Before 9/11, nearly half of the jobs here were in finance, insurance and real estate, according to the Alliance for Downtown. Last year that was a smaller share: about a third of them.

Dino Fusco, the COO of Silverstein Properties, a major real estate developer responsible for much of the World Trade Center complex, acknowledges the changes.

“There are fewer people dressed as financial services executives, and a lot more people who work in technology companies, media companies, and advertising companies,” he says.

Many of them are located in Silverstein Properties buildings, including Spotify and Uber. Cond Nast is headquartered in One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.

Still, some Wall Street long-timers miss the old neighborhood.

Fred Price was the president and co-founder of Sandler O’Neill when the attacks happened. Price’s offices were on the 104th floor of the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and he lost more than 60 colleagues that day.

The company had been based in the Wall Street neighborhood since 1988, but Price and his colleagues on the executive committee decided it was time to move.

Today, the company now known as Piper Sandler is in Midtown, not far from Barclays and JPMorgan Chase.

Price, a director of Piper Sandler, acknowledges that the moves after 9/11 have changed Wall Street.

“When you landed in that southern tip of Manhattan, you knew you and everyone else were doing pretty much the same thing,” he recalls. “You were all in one way or another in the financial services industry.”

Looking to Wall Street’s Past and Future

Still, not every financial company decided to move out of the neighborhood.

Ken Chenault, then the chairman and CEO of American Express, says a significant number of his colleagues wanted to move to another part of town, or even out of New York altogether.

But for Chenault, the past mattered: American Express has been based in lower Manhattan since the 1850s. And he decided he wanted to be a part of Wall Street’s future, even if it would be drastically different from what he knew.

“I had a strong feeling that American Express could play an important role in the revitalization of Downtown New York,” he says.

So American Express returned to its building on Vesey Street, across from One World Trade Center, back to the neighborhood it’s called home for over a century.

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