Under the 30-foot American flag draped across six of the NYSE’s Corinthian columns, a line of people waiting for the markets to open presented a unique Wall Street sight: the suited brokers clutche steaming coffees in one hand and cell phones in the other, plotting stock strategy through surgical masks to fend off the soot and smoke that still fogged the air.

Throughout the week, open spaces throughout Manhattan have served as epicenters of public grief, memorials for the dead and spaces of desperate hope for the lives of the missing.

In Washington Square Park, adjacent to New York University, the emptied water fountain sprouted thousands of candles and American flags, and hundreds have congregated for the nightly vigils held near the towering memorial arch.

Further uptown, Union Square hosted a bustling donation site over the weekend, as volunteers from NYU and elsewhere accepted overwhelming gifts of food, clothing and rescue equipment for the rescue workers and those displaced by the collapse.

Handmade posters bearing snapshots and excruciatingly detailed descriptions of the missing have multiplied exponentially since last Tuesday, as the fenced perimeter of Union Square’s lawn has become the “Wall of Hope/Mural de Esperanza” under a paper blanket of grief.