WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- The Museum of American Financial History in planning a mid-November town-meeting and forum in lower Manhattan to address the future of New York City's financial district in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center towers.
The financial district of New York took a heavy hit from the destruction of the Trade Center buildings, a massive business hub, and also faces a death toll estimated at more than 5,000 persons, many in the financial industry.
More than 700 people from the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald were killed in their offices on several floors of the World Trade Center.
The forum, hosted in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, will look at NYC's financial district in the historical context of the resilient and often hopeful culture of Wall Street, according to planners.
"Our role today is to offer a platform and a context to help our community collect its emotions, and to draw strength from our shared history," said Brian Thompson, the Museum of Financial History's executive director.
The town meeting, moderated by CNN senior financial editor Myron Kandel, will take place in the auditorium of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, home to the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian George Gustav Heye Center.
"Wall Street is more than a trading venue," says Dr. Nancy Groce, a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. "From the late 18th century when New Yorkers founded an exchange in the shade of a buttonwood tree, to today's technologically sophisticated trading floors, the heart of Wall Street has always been its people -- generations of financial workers who have established and maintained a culture and community all their own."
The Museum of American Financial History, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, is the nation's only independent public museum dedicated to the "American Dream" story of opportunity and entrepreneurship in the free market.
For additional information, visit the Museum's Web site at: financialhistory.org
