Finally! For eight years I’ve been trying to book for a tour, a very limited and hard to get tickets for tour. It’s free. It runs twice a day, four times a week. Space is limited to 12 people each tour. And security is tighter than airport security.
So where and what is it? It is the Federal Reserve tour, including a tour of the gold storage held in New York’s Federal Reserve building.
We arrive in plenty of time and sit across the road from the non-descript door at the rear of the Federal Reserve building. We see a queue starting to form ten minutes or so before or tour, so join it. A large policeman then appears and walks down the line, stopping at each person and having a conversation. When he gets to us he asks us some details and asks to see our passports and tickets. This is before we even get inside the building. He marks our details off a list he holds.
We are then ushered into the vestibule where we are put through a metal detector, then have a wand scan over our bodies. Bags are thoroughly checked.
We then move through to another area, where we are asked to take the lift and wait.
We are then greeted by a bubbly guide who will take us through our tour. We first tour the banking floor, which once operated as a traditional bank. Teller windows are still in place as are desks where deposit and withdrawal slips were once filled out. As part of the tour the old banking floor has been converted into a museum and it tracks the development of finance, the financial markets, currency and money making and printing. It’s a fascinating space. We read about the global financial crises , the great depression, the impact wars have on inflation and government stimulus to boost economies. We see how money is made and learn about bullion and the gold market.
After our tour we are ushered into another lift and we descend four floors below street level. We walk a long corridor when we exit the lift and are ushered through a massive vault door. Before us, behind bars is a mass of gold bars. It must be 30 feet wide, 50 feet deep and 15 feet high. More gold is stored here than in Fort Knox. And this is all private gold. Owned by other countries, wealthy companies and individuals. It is a sight to see. Another room houses as much gold again as we move to the next vault. It is an astonishing amount of gold.
We are told about the security in place, well some of it anyway, much of the security remains a secret.
At the end of the tour we are returned to the museum floor and invited to look around. We take another look around and explore the exhibits in more detail. After about another hour or so we leave the building through the front door!
We then walk around the financial district and World Trade Centre area. We visit Fearless girl as she stares down the raging bull at the top of Bowling Green. We walk around the memorial gardens where the original World Trade Centre Twin Towers were. Mardi sits for a while while I walk around and take some photos.
We stay in the area for dinner and find a nice little local Italian place, Da Claudio. We enjoy some delicious pasta and sit and enjoy our surroundings for a few minutes.
After dinner we find a subway station and head home.
