Worked at 120 and 110 Wall from 1982 to 1989.. what a blast, south street seaport was just built they were still working on the pier and the Fulton street fish market was operating. You could kind of see some older five or six story buildings being renovated as condos, but never thought it would wind up like it is today. When I go there now it’s just really different, good I guess, but different. I really loved working downtown, always thought it was much better than midtown and a lot less tourists. Worked hard during the day and partied hard at night. Long live the 80’s…..
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My husband worked on William Street years ago, and when I would go downtown to see him at work, there was a great fish and chip shop in a dark little store that used the huge wood “cable” holders as tables. The food was great and my children loved it and exploring the Fulton fish market and the old seaport. Went down again a few years later and it was a zoo, fish market gone, overpriced food and drinks, it looks like it’s gotten worse. Also, is it just me or is there an abundance of Asian tourists overwhelming the place?
@Terrierdem what's wrong with lots of Asian tourists? They're part of what fuels the City's economy post COVID-19. We should be thankful they decide to visit NYC - especially with all the backlash against Asian Americans.
Wow. A bunch of people that really know nothing about the Financial District.
We moved in way back in 1988. Moved out in 2004.
There was Century 21, The Happy Deli, and the cobbler.
It was wonderful.
The newspaper guys in kiosk on corner knew us. Even after we left, and I came back to visit friends, they still remembered us.
WTC was a fun place to hang out. We had single malts at Windows for $5. The bottom of WTC was a mall. Barnes and Noble. Alexanders! No schools. PS 234 opened in the 90's.
Wish I was still there. All you other experts, stay out!
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As someone who worked smack dab in the midst of this chaos for >10 years, starting just 3 weeks before 9/11, I saw it go through a lot of change. Some good (e.g., grittier side streets got cleaned up in order to exist in the shadow of Freedom Tower), some not so good (more tourists, more crowds than ever before); and some blah (a few condos popped up), but no amount change—or, frankly, hallucination—could turn this area into anything remotely “village-like.” The 2 photos of Coenties Slip and Stone Street are literally it, as far as any character. And ok, Fraunces Tavern. (And did the Times photog take these on a Sunday? Never have I’ve seen an empty seat in any of these spots.) most of it is just what folks imagine: steel, glass, deco-era steel, the Bull, and some cobble stones.
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Weird to recall the place becoming a ghost town after 5pm when working on Broad Street twenty years ago and to now see a lot more restaurants and bars (beyond Killarney Rose !) and younger people walking around the neighborhood after dark. Certainly a lot of history and charm with the narrow streets and access to waterfront. On the other hand, with the onslaught of new residents and pet owners, be prepared to smell and dodge a lot of dog pee and excrement on the sidewalks, hear the collection of trash (when not piled up on the street as another reader commented) and maintenance of all the tall office buildings which have been converted into residential buildings throughout the early hours of the morning, and deal with the seemingly non-stop construction.
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Had an apartment down in FIDI, had to turn the lights on in the middle of the day in order to see in the apartment...zero natural light and that is what you will get with most of the apartments. Add to that it is still a ghost town on the weekend, which some will like, but you have to travel so far for the nearest Wholefoods or any sign of normal living. My dogs loved it!!!
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The “Living In...” articles usually describe neighborhood amenities like schools, libraries, grocery shopping, etc. Nothing about that kind of thing in this story. What gives?
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@Susan Levy LOL Because there are none! :-)
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My husband lived at 100 Beekman Street for about 20 years and I joined him for 5 of those, before we moved to Southern CA where we now live. I found the area to be very vibrant but overrun with tourists 24/7, and was becoming really overdeveloped by the time we left. NYC is urban, it goes without saying, but FiDi is especially urban and lacks green space IMO. While I wax nostalgic at times, for what we left (1 bedroom, around 650 sq. ft), I now look into a backyard filled with potted flowering plants, an orange and lemon tree, and a fountain. Too different to compare maybe but I'll take my suburban So Cal life over the other...
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Felt weird reading this article, having lived at 55 Liberty and then 3 Hanover for the first 13 years of my life (1997 - 2013). I'd say the people there now that moved in around 2008 are a little delusional to think they're "trailblazers" of the residential areas of the FiDi. The community with a "village feel" was already there for them, built by families like mine that moved there when it was almost all office buildings and suits. Families that wanted to buy a big apartment without the big price tag (at the time) (we bought out house apartment for well under 1mil and sold it for over 1mil). We were the ones that experienced 9/11 together, grieved for lost family members and our neighborhood together. Almost every Halloween and birthday spent with my neighbors. We created that. Sorry, but...these new families didn't create anything, they paid their way into a community and neighborhood that was already there.
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@Tay
My thought exactly. I moved to Lower Manhattan in 1976 and remember cycling around the Wall Street area when it was a ghost town on weekends. Most importantly, all this building in a major flood zone is questionable since the "Big U" is still on the drawing boards. I was told to evacuate for Hurricane Irene (August 2011) and for Hurricane Sandy (October 2012).
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@Tay True but those families in the 90s were only really cashing in on all the hard work done by so many to crash the commercial real estate values in the 90s and start the condo conversion wave. And that was only really possible because of the hard work of the Dutch getting the area set up when times were really tough. Broadway was uphill both ways then...
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I've lived in the neighborhood over 5 years now and it is definitely underappreciated (shh don't tell anybody!). As the WTC and the Seaport have mostly been built out, the neighborhood has been stitched back together again, but now with plenty of dining, entertainment, and shopping options.
As mentioned it's less expensive than many Manhattan neighborhoods.
Do I mind that it quiets down after working hours and on the weekends? Nope, going for a Sunday morning run down an empty Broadway fits me just fine.
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Surprised no mention of the huge piles of trash bags on many narrow streets making it impossible to walk on sidewalks and turning the area into a rat festival. This is the really bad new normal situation on William, Nassau, John, Fulton and Beekman. Go take a look.
The piles of garbage are the result of transforming an area from small commercial buildings to huge luxury residential high rises. Not much garbage from the traditional 5 story buildings that were torn down and replaced by 50 story buildings. But the rats are happy!
The overdevelopment has also resulted in major vehicle congestion (construction, service, Uber, ecommerce delivery etc). Ambulances, police etc can hardly get through on Fulton or William. Before 2010, some streets did not even have traffic lights and none were necessary as there was so little traffic.
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@SLM As someone who just moved from the village to Fidi, I have to say this is a complaint that fits both neighborhoods and NYC in general. Love NY, but clean it is not. Personally, I find Fidi a lot cleaner than the village. There are some streets that aren't great, but many of the major thoroughfares (wall street, greenwich, the seaport and WTC) are pretty wide and open.
Not one image or discussion of the actual housing options.
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@SweePea yes there is. they have entire sections devoted to what you'll find, and what you'll pay.
Sense of community? You mean like in the master and servant sense? Which is what you have there with the haves and the have-nots who work there but couldn't afford to live there working their entire lives.
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Who said everyone is entitled to live where they work? SMH
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Oh, yeah, great "deals" at 40 Broad Street - as long as you don't care that their tax abatement ends in 2020, which will push the monthly charges into the stratosphere!
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Right. A "village like quality". I've heard the financial district described as many things, but never that. Who writes these headlines anyway?
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@Tom: The times has to "push" some neighborhood every weekend, and I'm sure all the people who can afford to raise families in FiDi *are* a "village" - a village of very wealthy people who can afford whatever they want. I wonder how many of them weekend in the Hamptons?
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Every time I read an article by Aileen Jacobson about another area in the city, I'm ready to live there. As usual, she captures the reason why the area is unique and wonderful. Keep those neighborhood profiles coming!
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@Katherine Heaviside Don’t fret. This week’s feature isn’t accurate!
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I do not in decades past remember seeing larger-than-life photographs of United States presidents at the lower-level entrance of the National Museum of the American Indian, but last month I saw enormous, propped-up photographs of Donald Trump and Mike Pence to the right as you go in.
Ghastly. What a strange grin our Commander-in-Chief has. The other is too smooth-faced to bear looking at.
I like the Financial District. Have had a few lunches at Fraunces Tavern. Nice breeze from New York Harbor.
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@B.The museum is in the old custom house. It's a Federal building. Those photos of POTUS / Vice POTUS are pretty much required. So it was Obama / Biden not too long ago, and so forth.
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Well, I know it's the old Custom House, but I do not remember seeing George W. Bush's face plastered onto a a plywood stand. Or anyone else's, is all.
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A great article, check out FiDi fan club for more details. It’s the best source of Info for for our neighborhood.
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Great article. There is even more to see and love about our neighborhood. Check out Luis Vasquez’s FiDi Fan page on Facebook or Instagram. That is where we get all the neighborhood news.
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Wow....Living In photos actually showing a diversity of people and not some white suburban enclave as per usual. Unfortunately most still can’t afford multi million dollar apartments.
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@MB The diversity disappears after dusk... when they all go home to real neighborhoods where you can at least grab a gallon of milk on a Sunday and dry cleaning doesn’t cost $20 per sleeve.
I see many celebrities lounging down there. The other day I saw Shelly Silver sipping a mint julep at an outdoor cafe, hi fiving it with a young female companion and laughing like la dolce vita. Such a nice old school memory. What a saint that man is, what he went through. He's teaching a course at LaGuardia College of Political Ethics next fall. I heard the class is full already.
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I have worked down here (lower Broadway at the bull) for over 10 years now. The old portion of the city and architecture are interesting, but quality of life I think is pretty terrible. It's mostly (large) groups of tourists and there is very little of interest in terms of shops and/or even restaurants. It does not feel at all like a residential neighborhood and I would really not like to be a child growing up here - as some mentioned they did. I find this article very misleading.
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@MG Head to Stone Street, Governor's Island Ferry, and Fulton/Seaport areas. Tourists avoid those areas like the plague (save perhaps Governor's Island) and they're the best parts of Fidi. On the weekend certain sections are swamped by tourists, but they have a tendency to congregate where I woudn't spend my time anyway. Think why would anyone go to Times Square when Bryant Park or Madison Park are not far? They're always in front of Charging Bull and the Liberty Island ferries.
A wonderful story of good neighborly feelings in the Financial District, even if it is a $2-million-neighborhood. Perhaps the smell of money and the feel of gold makes there all the troubles disappear.
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The value-proposition for renters is high. Tenant profiled in the piece is paying same rent in doorman building with amenities that he was paying on les walk up with no amenities (and older housing stock). Very attractive to the dog-and-or-stroller set. Also young professionals splitting two or three bedrooms. Obviously without the grittiness-bonafides of les.
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I've hosted a drag brunch at Cowgirl Seahorse in the seaport for two and a half years and couldn't love the neighborhood more. Join us every first Saturday for BRUNCH BECOMES HER and every third Sunday for DRAG BINGO!
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@BP We love Brunch Becomes Her!
Thank you for hosting!
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To Mr. Kennell's point, the crush of commercial vehicles and ride-hail vehicles is the biggest (only?) quality of life issue in the neighborhood. Ubers block traffic on Wall Street (and similar streets) waiting to pick up passengers (who obviously can't be bothered to be on time, or pick up on Water Street). Commercial delivery trucks park on sidewalks, forcing pedestrians into the street. Tax all these people to the heavens (for abusing a public resource), remove on-street parking or simply make these narrow, 17th-century streets pedestrian only.
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I grew up there. I did not enjoy it as a kid, but I can see why many people might like it.
You definitely have access to the river and Battery Park, which is a plus. There are a lot of options for transportation too. My father and I would ride the Staten Island ferry and then bike over to my aunt's house. Unfortunately , anything that opened there was never opened for very long - shops closed down quickly and it felt like you never really got time to enjoy anything new. Also, I believe iPic filed for bankruptcy, so I'm not sure how long that will last for residents.
From what I recall, it was relatively safe. Fulton Street can get a little weird once it gets dark, but nothing dangerous.
I never thought the place had a village feel at all. The neighborhood is swamped by tourist and people going to work. If you live in a co-op or condo, maybe the "village feeling" applies within the building, but certainly not the whole neighborhood. This might not necessarily be a bad thing - I got to meet people from all over. However, at times it felt like living at an amusement park rather than a village.
I'd also like to add that, as a kid, I did most activities in neighboring Tribeca or Battery Park City. Things might be different now, but growing up those neighborhoods were more family friendly.
Overall, I always thought the financial district was a relatively safe area. There is a lot to offer adults .
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Although I didn’t grow up in the area, I did grow up in Manhattan and always found this neighborhood to be lacking in any sense of community or even population after 8 o’clock at night. Battery Park City seems like another planet entirely than the rest of New York, with all the finance industry pod people pushing strollers. There are certainly some lovely aspects of the area, but community is not one of them.
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The residential population has more than doubled since 2000. The office product and tenants have also changed. Fewer and fewer business suits. More and more tourists (for better or worse). More and more public spaces.
It’s not the same neighborhood it once was.
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@CJ
“Fulton Street can get a little weird once it gets dark, but nothing dangerous.”. How about in broad daylight. Stand for a while and you can actually spot the hustlers and pickpockets hand signal each other up and down the block when they spot an unwary mark.
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