The Financial District, also known by locals as ‘FiDi’, is at the southernmost tip of Manhattan just below Tribeca, and is often thought as a more affordable alternative to it. FiDi residents appreciate proximity to the best transportation hub in the city, with almost every subway line passing through here. I’ve lived here and can attest to its convenience. It is a bustling business district by day and a relatively quiet neighborhood at night. Historic Stone Street attracts a lively after-work crowd and locals alike, with a variety of restaurants, bars and cafes who spill out onto its Belgian block streets.

This is where the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam began in 1624, leading to the purchase of Manhattan Island in 1626 from the indigenous Lenni Lenape people for 60 guilders. They called it Manahatta or hilly island. The Dutch gave the city its original street plan, and many of lower Manhattan’s street names like Beaver, Pearl, and Nassau evoke the days when New York was a small colonial trading post. Wall Street was literally it’s north-most border where the fortified wall of the city once stood. De Heere Straat, more commonly called by the Dutch colonists “brede weg” or broad road was the widest street in New Amsterdam and the beginning of what is now Broadway. Today, monolithic glass and steel buildings create man-made canyons on the horse-drawn scale of the original Dutch street grid. In FiDi and the Seaport, the historic and the new coexist in a modern, mixed-use neighborhood; with former warehouses and office buildings adapted to new uses as apartments, loft homes, stores, and restaurants.

As part of the origin story of NYC, FiDi is home to many important modern and Landmarked historic sites , including The New York Stock Exchange, Federal Hall, and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum on the World Trade Center site. St. Paul’s Chapel on lower Broadway near Fulton is the only surviving building from the Colonial Period, but other notable architecture includes: Trinity Church, Cass Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, contemporary work like architect Santiago Calatrava’s ‘Oculus’, and a Frank Gehry residential tower on Spruce Street. FiDi’s great museums include Fraunces Tavern  where General George Washington famously addressed the Continental Army at the end of the Revolutionary War; and the Smithsonian’s Museum of the American Indian in the old Customs House on Broadway.