The Mercantile Exchange is the newest commercial building in Battery Park City, dating from 1997. The two trading floors and a museum can be visited during business hours. The granddaddies in this World Financial Center part of the complex are the corporate headquarters of Dow Jones and American Express. They opened eight years earlier.

The Exchange puts a contemporary architectural face to the public. Inside, however, the trading is old style—vociferous, manual, you might even say chaotic. Using a system called "open outcry," commodities from gasoline to gold are bought and sold at a speed of almost 1,000 contracts a minute. If a trader doesn't have a strong or distinct voice, he or she is out of the game.

While the bargaining is done hands on and full throated, once the deal is made, the end results do get processed electronically. First though, the selling terms are rapidly jotted down on a pit card, the card thrown into the trading ring, and the handwritten data entered into a computer.

Seen from the water, the buildings of the World Financial Center provide a foreground for the towers of the World Trade Center. North Cove Yacht Harbor, the only large yacht marina next to a commercial center, and the plazas and gardens around it are the setting for many community activities and public events for the residents and workers of Battery Park City. Historic ships, private luxury yachts, and charter boats dock here, continuing lower Manhattan's long-standing association with the waterways around it.

Here ends our Newest to Oldest Tour of Lower Manhattan. You many wish to extend it by relaxing in one of Battery Park City's public areas, perhaps Rockefeller Park, further north along the Esplanade. Or you might take a walk through the see-through Winter Garden where 16 palm trees luxuriate under a 120-foot-high vaulted glass dome. Or, by taking an escalator or the grand marble staircase in the Winter Garden, you can get to a pedestrian bridge that connects to the World Trade Center and your choice of subways.