Most of the structures that stand today date from the turn of the 20th century, along with more modern buildings constructed after the 1950s.

Originally an inlet from the East River, the canal was flanked by two solid ranks of three-story houses, with paths in front.

[6][7][8][9] New York Mayor Stephanus van Cortlandt built his home in 1671 on Broad Street, on the future site of Fraunces Tavern.

[citation needed] The canal was filled in 1676 because fruit and vegetable vendors, including Native Americans who came by canoe from Long Island, left the area littered, and fewer and fewer water craft were small enough to use the canal.

[citation needed] The street saw a lot of change as the centuries progressed from Dutch to British rule and finally independent America.

Two years later, on December 16, 1737, the colony's General Assembly created the Volunteer Fire Department of the City of New York.

Before the American Revolution, the building was one of the meeting places of the secret society, the Sons of Liberty.

[21] As the area became the center of financial activity, all smaller buildings in turn were replaced with grand banks.

Buyer and seller, speculator and investor, operator and spectator, agent and principal, met face to face, upon the curb and beneath the sweltering sun, opened their mouths wide and screamed all manner of seeming nonsense at each other, while their hats tipped far toward the small of their backs, their eyes strained fiercely and their arms waved wildly above their heads, from which rolled rivers of profuse perspiration.

[23] As of 1907, the curb market operated starting at 10'clock in the morning, each day except on Sundays, until a gong at 3 o'clock.

He argued the curb exchange served "no legitimate or beneficial purpose" and was a "gambling institution, pure and simple".

[41] In 1920, journalist Edwin C. Hill wrote that the curb exchange on lower Broad Street was a "roaring, swirling whirlpool" that "tears control of a gold-mine from an unlucky operator, then pauses to auction a puppy-dog.

After a group of curb brokers formed a real estate company to design a building, Starrett & Van Vleck designed the new exchange building on Greenwich Street in Lower Manhattan between Thames and Rector, at 86 Trinity Place.

[42][43] When the high-profile New York firm Edward M. Fuller & Company went bankrupt in 1922, it had offices at 50 Broad Street.

[49] After NYSE officials called police,[49] it was later reinstalled two blocks south of the Exchange, in Bowling Green.

[50] In 2011, the New York City Opera moved its offices to 75 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan.

The famous neo-Roman facade of the New York Stock Exchange Building and its main entrance is located on 18 Broad Street.