For some, Wall Street has been the road to wealth.To others, it is the boulevard of broken dreams. But there's no denying it is rich in history, and Thursday, the city's financial capital celebrated a landmark anniversary.

NY1's Elizabeth Gerst reports.

Community boosters and well-wishers gathered in lower Manhattan Thursday for a birthday party for Wall Street. In 1653, settlers built a stockade that would become synonymous with the stock market.

“Three-hundred and fifty years ago today, the City Council of New Amsterdam, the city at that time, voted to create Wall Street, which is the wall around the city, which is now known as Wall Street,” said Paulette Crooke, the vice president of HSBC Bank.

Arturo DiModica, who sculpted the bull in Bowling Green Park, reflected on the milestone.

“It means life, energy, and progress for everyone,” DiModica said.

Meg Ventrudo of the Museum of American Financial History said Wall Street will always hold a mythic place in our city and our nation.

“It’s the place where the nation's financial system was developed,” said Ventrudo said. “It's the place where the nation's first capital was.”

Among the multitude of Wall Street milestones was the Buttonwood Agreement of 1792, in which 24 brokers and merchants ushered in the first formal stock trading.

Fast forward to1903, when the New York Stock Exchange moved into its current site at the corner of Broad and Wall.

October 29, 1929 was a dark day on Wall Street, as the stock market crashes, ushering in the Great Depression. And in an October, some 58 years later, the Dow falls more than 500 points, echoing the crash of 1929.

Wall Street went on to enjoy the golden years of the late 1990s, where an Internet boom spawned meteoric growth for the markets. But in the new century, the economy waned and the dot-com mania lost its mojo.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 tore a hole in the physical and emotional heart of the financial world. Amid the devastation, the New York Stock Exchange was closed for four days but managed to reopen on September 17, 2001.

“It is consistently amazing to everyone across the world how we are able to consistently rebound,” said Crooke.

But the street still has a tough road ahead. Among the potholes: a looming war, a sagging economy, slumping stocks, and a crisis in confidence.

“Investors were shaken up in the last few years, partly by world events and partly because some not-so-above-board events happened on Wall Street,” Ventrudo said.

But despite the market's recent slide, historians and analysts are optimistic.

“Sometimes those ups take more time than the average investor would like it to,” said Ventrudo “But over time, things do come back.”

Indeed, these celebrants are banking on it, and on a bright future for Wall Street.

--Elizabeth Gerst