Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Attraction in New York

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is an interesting place to visit, and the guided tour is very informative about a variety of topics. The tour guide was very friendly to the entire class, and was able to answer any questions we had. The tour was interactive enough, and I was able to gain a better understanding of the Federal Reserve's job and impact on the economy of the country. I was not aware before that the Federal Reserve was in charge of the seperation and destruction of old and unusable bills. The vault, however, was very underwelming, at least when compared to the rest of the tour. Though it was an interesting experience to be in the same room with and see so much real gold, there was so little time spent talking about the why and how of the gold that I left feeling a little dissapointed. To summarize, the Federal Reserve is a great trip for schools and for anyone interested in the economy, but i would have liked to know more about the gold itself. The tour guide didn't spend any time explaining why we use gold to store wealth instead of some other form of currency, or how the bars are made. It would have been interesting to learn more about that instead of simply spending a few minutes explaining how heavy gold is and how they weigh it. It also would have been nice if the tour guide had spent a little more time talking about the gothic architecture. She did explain that some of the archways were meant to symbolize strength, but I feel there could have been more time spent on the designs and why they were important. TL;DR The Federal Reserve is a very informative trip that teaches about the history of our economy, and could be a great trip for anyone interested...

I had a good experience at the federal reserve that included a learning experience as well as good hospitality. The tour guide was really nice and knew the answer to every question that someone asked her. It was fun to learn about the federal reserve, but to be honest there wasn't much to do after we went down to the gold storage. On the tour they should have more then just quotes on a tv screen. For example they could show a documentary on how the federal reserve was made and the process of what the federal reserve does. This would make the experience better instead of standing around looking at a poster with little pictures. Other then that it was a cool building to be in with the great architecture throughout the building.

Some things I learned on the trip were that the Federal Reserve holds a quarter of the worlds gold. I found that interesting that countries would trust us with all that gold. I believe we should charge countries to hold their gold because we are doing them a service with little in return except for the title of having the biggest gold storage in the world. I also learned about money and the process it goes through. For example I didn't know the government shredded money to circulate in new money. This made me realize why old money is such a good collectors item because a lot of the old money gets replaced by the new ones. It was also cool how we learned about the stamps that each dollar has that shows where the bill came from. This isn't very important, but I found it very interesting.

TBL: The Federal Reserve is a great place to visit for an educational experience and I recommend other schools to go here on...

Summer of 1960 I worked as a 'runner" [ie; messenger] for a Wall Street firm that specialized in trading US Treasury Bills, Notes and Bonds. Every Monday the Fed held an auction of said securities, mostly 90 day "T" Bills. A small number of Primary Dealers (about 12) were allowed to submit bids. These dealers would talk to each other via telephone to get a sense of "the Market" The bids, on hand written cards, had to be in at a special Tellers Window on the first floor by 1:30 pm at which time the window was physically closed. The traders were I worked waited until the last minute to complete their bids and then handed them to me. An elevator was waiting to take me to the ground floor. I had to hit the street (Broad Street) running, from Exchange Place, past Wall, Pine, and Cedar Streets to Liberty Street were the Fed Building sits. I was almost hit by a taxi more than a few times on the way. A number of we runner would flop to the floor after delivering our bids {no benches} until the guards kicked us out, Great memories.

As an aside, someone commented that the Fed is on 3rd Street. There is no 3rd Street in the Wall...