By TIM ARANGO and JULIE CRESWELL

AS THE proprietor of Harry’s Cafe, a landmark saloon in Manhattan’s financial district, Harry Poulakakos, 70, has seen his share of ups and downs on Wall Street. During the 1987 stock market crash, Harry’s filled up at 4 p.m. and stayed open all night. But the upheaval he’s witnessing now - much of Wall Street evaporating in a swift and brutal reordering - is, he said, the worst in decades.
“I hope this is going to be over,” he said. “If Wall Street is not active, nothing is active.” Mr. Poulakakos isn’t planning to disappear. But the cultural tableau and the social swirl that once surrounded Harry’s are certainly fading.
“It’s the beginning of the end of the era of infatuation with the free market,” said Steve Fraser, a historian and author of “Wall Street: America’s Dream Palace.” “It’s the end of the era where Wall Street carries high degrees of power and prestige. And it’s the end of the era of conspicuous displays of wealth. We are entering a new chapter in our history.”
To be sure, living large and flaunting it are unlikely to exit the American stage, infused as they are in the country’s spirit. But with Congress having approved a $700 billion banking bailout, historians, economists and pundits are busily debating the ways in which Wall Street’s demise will filter into the popular culture.
It’s an era that traces its roots back more than two decades, when suspendered titans first became fodder for books and movies. It’s an era when eager young traders wearing khakis and toting laptops became dot-com millionaires overnight. And it is an era that roared into hyperdrive during the credit boom of the last decade, when business-school graduates and mathematicians raked in millions by trading and betting on ever more exotic securities.
Over all, the past quarter-century has redefined the notion of wealth. In 1982, the first year of the Forbes 400 list, it took about $159 million in today’s dollars to make the list; this year, the minimum price of entry was $1.3 billion.
As finance competed with technology as economic powerhouses, job hunters, fortune seekers and the news media hopped along for the ride.
The financial news network CNBC became must-see TV on trading floors and in hair salons, while people gobbled up stories about private yachts, pricey jets and lavish parties, each one bigger and grander than the last.
“The money was big in the ‘80s, compared to the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Now it’s stunning,” said Oliver Stone, who directed the 1987 film “Wall Street” and is the son of a stockbroker.
“I thought the ‘80s would have been an end to a cycle. I thought there would be a bust. But that’s not what happened.”
Now, with jobs, fortunes and investment banks lost, a cultural linchpin seems to be slipping away.
“This feels very similar, historically, to 1929 and the emotions that filled the air in the months and years that followed the crash,” Mr. Fraser said. “There is a sense of extraordinary shock and astonishment, which is followed by a sense of rage, outrage and anger directed at the centers of finance.” In response, some will inevitably downsize.
“The yacht is probably the first thing to go,” said Jonathan Beckett, in a telephone interview from Monte Carlo as he attended the annual Monaco Yacht Show last month. Mr. Beckett, the chief executive of Burgess, a yacht broker, said that for the past eight years there have been few sellers in the market.
That is starting to change, said Mr. Beckett, who noted that a handful of yachts had been put up for sale, ranging in price from $10 million to $150 million.
Ostentatious homes are also up for sale. While brokers say they have yet to see an avalanche of high-end sales, they do say that the upheaval is present in the minds of buyers.
In all likelihood, the real estate market could be frozen for the next 6 to 18 months or so as buyers and sellers struggle to reach agreement on prices, said Barbara Corcoran, who has spent years selling high-end luxury properties to New York’s elite.
“The buyers have jumped to the sidelines and the sellers refuse to budge on their prices, completely in a state of disbelief that anything has changed,” she said.
Even if the current crisis leads to a prolonged slowdown, people may still flock to finance jobs. But they may have to recalibrate their expectations.
“There’s no question that people on Wall Street are going to make less money,” said Jonathan A. Knee, a Columbia Business School professor and author of “The Accidental Investment Banker.”
Like any cultural force concerned about preserving its legacy, the financial world has a custodian of its past.
On Wall Street, the custodian can be found at the Museum of American Financial History, just a block from the New York Stock Exchange.
Located in a grand space once occupied by the Bank of New York, it features a long timeline charting major market events. The last event it notes is the popping of the dot-com bubble earlier this decade.
Robert E. Wright, a financial historian at New York University who is a curator of the museum, said that there were still many unknowns about how recent events would be recalled.
“If the economic system shuts down and we go in for a deep recession, it probably is the end of an era,” he said.
The museum has already started collecting mementos from the current crisis to post on its wall.