In the 1640's the Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam built a 12' wall to keep

..out the zombies. Yeah yeah we all read pride prejudice and zombies.

In the 1640's the Dutch inhabitants of New Amsterdam built a 12' wall to keep the bad hombres out. In 1664 the British ignored the wall and took New Amsterdam by sea. It's now called New York. They took down the wall and built a street. It's called Wall Street. (title from reddit)

Yeah. The history of success with walls isn’t full of success stories. It seems that motivated people tend to keep finding ways around them. The beat success one can have with a wall tends to be where one can’t easily go around said wall via waterway. That’s why “build a wall next to large body of water...” isn’t a widely used defense strategy through the 19-very early 21st century. Most people were smart enough to figure out they didn’t do the job before they built them. The Dutch learned the hard way.