Wall Street Transportation, 1853

Wall Street Ferry Terminal
While landfill may conjure thoughts of a certain neighboring state to the west, landfill was also a major component to lower Manhattan's development and subsequent transportation.

Wall Street was once the location of a physical wall during the Dutch occupation in the 1660s, terminated near the water's edge--today's Pearl Street. Since the 1660s, landfill has expanded lower Manhattan into the surrounding waterways.

Old docks, ship ballast and earth from construction progressively pushed lower Manhattan's east side from Pearl to Front to Water and finally to South Street. By the 1850s, three additional artificial Wall Street blocks had been added, extending a street that contains some of the most valuable real estate in the world.

A precursor to today's Water Taxi and New York Waterway ferries, the ferry service at the east end of Wall Street in the 1850s [pictured above] transported passengers to and from a Manhattan that was still three decades away from the Brooklyn Bridge, or downtown's first fixed link to the outside world.