Things to Do in the Financial District, NYC: The Ten We Actually Send People To
By 17John ·
Quick answer
The best things to do in the Financial District, NYC are mostly free and mostly within a 15-minute walk of each other: the 9/11 Memorial pools and the Oculus, Federal Hall and Trinity Church on Wall Street, the Charging Bull at Bowling Green, dinner on Stone Street, the Seaport and Pier 17 on the East River, Battery Park, and the free Staten Island Ferry from Whitehall. Start at John Street, work south to the harbor, then come back up the East River side. You can do the whole loop on foot in a day without ever getting on a train.
The Stock Exchange facade on Broad Street, about a four-minute walk from John Street. · Photo by Cara Willenbrock on Unsplash
The Financial District is small. That's the thing most visitors get wrong about it. People plan a whole day for Wall Street and another day for the Seaport and another for the 9/11 Memorial, and then they find out all three sit inside a fifteen-minute walk of each other.
We're on John Street, roughly in the middle of it. Wall Street is two blocks south. The Seaport is a few blocks east, downhill toward the water. The World Trade Center campus is west, past Broadway. So this list is ordered the way we'd actually tell you to walk it, not the way a top-ten list usually goes.
A few honest notes before you start. The streets down here are old and crooked, so your phone's walking estimate is usually off by a minute or two in either direction. Weekday lunchtime (roughly noon to 2) is the one time the sidewalks near Broad and Wall get genuinely crowded, and weekends are the opposite: quiet, easy, good for photos. And almost everything on this list is free, which is not something you can say about many parts of Manhattan.
The 9/11 Memorial pools and the Oculus
· 8-minute walk west · Memorial free; museum ticketed
Go early, before 9am if you can manage it, when the plaza is nearly empty and you can hear the water. The two pools sit in the footprints of the towers, and the names cut into the bronze are worth reading slowly rather than photographing. The Oculus next door is a working transit hall with shops in it, so you can duck in when the weather turns. The museum below is a separate ticket and takes about two hours if you read the exhibits.
Federal Hall National Memorial
· 4-minute walk south · Free
The Greek revival building with the George Washington statue on the steps, directly across from the Stock Exchange. Washington was inaugurated on this site. Most people photograph the steps and move on, but the rotunda inside is free to enter and almost always calm, which makes it a good ten-minute break in the middle of a walking day. Hours are limited and it's usually closed weekends, so check before you count on getting inside.
Trinity Church and the churchyard
· 5-minute walk west, at Broadway and Wall · Free
The churchyard is the reason to stop. Alexander Hamilton is buried here, along with a lot of eighteenth-century New York, and the headstones sit in the shadow of office towers, which is the whole story of this neighborhood in one frame. Five minutes if you're moving, twenty if you start reading the stones.
The Charging Bull and Fearless Girl
· 10-minute walk south · Free
The bull is at the north end of Bowling Green, not on Wall Street where people expect it, which is why you see confused tourists on Broad Street. There's a line for the photo most of the day. Fearless Girl now stands across from the Stock Exchange on Broad, a few blocks away from the bull, so if you want both you're doing two separate stops. Go at 8am and you'll have the bull to yourself.
Stone Street
· 7-minute walk south · $$
One cobblestone block, closed to cars, lined with restaurants and pubs that put tables down the middle of the street from spring through fall. It's our default answer when a guest asks where to eat without thinking too hard about it. Loud and crowded after work on weekdays, much calmer at lunch and on weekends.
The free Staten Island Ferry
· 15-minute walk south to Whitehall Terminal · Free
The best harbor view in New York for zero dollars. Boats run around the clock, the crossing is about 25 minutes each way, and you pass the Statue of Liberty on the right heading out. You do have to get off in St. George and walk back around to re-board, which adds maybe fifteen minutes. Sit on the right side going out and the left coming back.
Battery Park and Castle Clinton
· 15-minute walk south · Free; Statue ferry ticketed
The green edge of the island, with Castle Clinton (a round sandstone fort from 1811) sitting in the middle of it. This is also where the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island ferries leave from, so if that's your plan, book the ticket ahead and come early. If it isn't, the park is still worth a slow twenty minutes for the harbor air.
South Street Seaport and Pier 17
· 5-minute walk east · Free to walk; rooftop shows ticketed
The closest thing to us and the one we'd pick on a warm evening. Cobblestones on Front and Fulton, tall ships tied up at Pier 16, and the Pier 17 rooftop with the Brooklyn Bridge lined up behind it. In summer the rooftop hosts concerts. Any other time it's a free deck with one of the better views in the city.
The Brooklyn Bridge walk
· 10-minute walk north to the pedestrian entrance · Free
The Manhattan-side entrance is up near City Hall, and the full walk across takes 30 to 40 minutes at a normal pace. Do it at sunrise or in the last hour of daylight. Mid-afternoon in summer, the promenade is shoulder to shoulder. Once you're across, DUMBO is right there for coffee and a walk back along the water.
Fraunces Tavern Museum
· 9-minute walk south, 54 Pearl Street · $
The building where Washington said goodbye to his officers in 1783. It's a small museum on the upper floors of a working tavern, cheap to enter, and it takes under an hour. Good rainy-afternoon stop, and the bar downstairs is a reasonable place to sit afterward.
