This monumental 28-by-82-inch horizontal panorama documents Wall Street in New York City—the physical center of American capitalism and the narrow canyon of buildings housing the financial institutions that shape global economics. The nearly seven-foot width captures the street’s dramatic compression between towering facades.

Created in 1990, the work documents Wall Street at the height of the financial boom that would culminate in various crises. The street’s physicality—narrow, shadowed by skyscrapers, packed with humanity during trading hours—contrasts with the abstraction of the financial transactions occurring within its buildings. Hayashi’s documentation captures the street as physical space rather than economic symbol.

The extreme horizontal format emphasizes Wall Street’s corridor nature: a canyon cut between buildings that rise beyond the composition’s edges, pedestrians and vehicles compressed within the narrow passage. The photo collage technique fragments this compressed space while capturing the multiple perspectives available only to someone moving through the street.

Wall Street’s architecture spans eras of American finance: the Federal Hall memorial marking where Washington took his oath, the New York Stock Exchange’s classical facade, early skyscrapers alongside later towers. The resulting streetscape documents American capitalism’s physical evolution from colonial mercantilism through industrial monopoly to contemporary finance.

The street’s symbolic weight—“Wall Street” naming the entire financial sector regardless of where offices actually locate—makes physical documentation particularly valuable. This panorama captures the actual street that metaphor has abstracted, the physical location where American capitalism concentrated before dispersing to midtown Manhattan and beyond.