Narrow one lane streets in shadow between some of the tallest buildings in the city. Wall Street and Broad Street have not taken cars since 2001.
What Financial District looks like
The streets are narrow and irregular, most of them one lane wide. They run between some of the tallest buildings in the city, so the roadway is in shadow most of the day.
stands at the west end of Wall Street, with the Rector Street subway entrance set into the wall below its churchyard. The middle of the district is east of it, where Wall Street meets . The New York Stock Exchange is on one side and the old JP Morgan bank at is on the other. Neither street has taken cars since 2001. The bollards have bronze faces.
Open ground is rare and mostly private. stands on about a quarter of its block and the rest is plaza, with Jean Dubuffet's Group of Four Trees on it and Isamu Noguchi's sunken garden below. A plaque at the Pine Street stair says gatherings of twenty five or more are not allowed up there.
is the triangle at Maiden Lane and William Street. Behind it the has a whole block of rusticated stone with barred windows.
Shot in Financial District
The Dark Knight Rises shot its Gotham exchange on Wall Street. Die Hard With A Vengeance put its heist under the Federal Reserve.
The Dark Knight Rises, 2012
The Gotham exchange at Wall and Broad
Played the Gotham City Stock Exchange, Gotham City
The outside of the Gotham City Stock Exchange is the old JP Morgan bank at 23 Wall Street, on the south corner at Broad Street. Bane and his men go in at the front of it. The trading floor they take once they are inside is an Art Deco bank hall on South Spring Street in Los Angeles, and the motorcycle chase afterwards is on Los Angeles streets too. Street View
Die Hard With A Vengeance, 1995
The bank the gold comes out of
Simon Gruber's target is the Federal Reserve Bank at 33 Liberty Street. The block is harder to recognise now than it was. The Wall Street subway entrance the film puts beside the building was built for the shoot, and the small green park in those scenes has a tower on it. Street View
What Financial District can double for
LaSalle Street in Chicago, Illinois
LaSalle Street is Chicago's own narrow canyon of bank and exchange buildings. A domed City Hall stands at its north end the way Trinity Church stands at the end of Wall Street, and the street has carried the same stand-in role on screen before. LaSalle runs wider than Wall Street and the buildings step back more. A tight frame low on the block, cutting the sky, holds the canyon feeling better than a wide shot. Try searching narrow bank street canyon now.
Downtown Los Angeles in Los Angeles, California
The Spring Street bank blocks are Los Angeles's own former financial row, and The Dark Knight Rises itself cut from this district's Wall Street exterior straight to an Art Deco banking hall on Spring Street for its trading floor. Spring Street's banking halls read Art Deco rather than Beaux-Arts, so an interior frame on coffered ceilings and teller cages matches better than trying to double the exteriors. Try searching Art Deco bank hall interior now.
The City of London in London, England
The City of London is a comparable historic financial core, narrow lanes laid out long before cars, stone bank facades and a cathedral holding the same sightline Trinity Church holds at the end of Wall Street. London stone runs paler and greyer than New York's. The lanes twist rather than running straight, so a short frame on one facade works better than trying to match a long straight run. Try searching narrow lanes stone bank facade now.
