History of New York City

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This article traces the history of New York City. For the history of the State of New York, see the article History of New York.

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Lenape and New Netherland: Prehistory:1613-1664

Template:Main Prehistory in the area began with the geological formation of the peculiar territory of what is today New York City. The area was long inhabited by the Lenape; including such tribes as the Manahattoes, Canarsies and Raritan; Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor, in 1524. European settlement began with the founding of the Dutch fur trading settlement in Lower Manhattan in 1613 later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam) in the southern tip of Manhattan in 1624. Later in 1626, Peter Minuit established a long tradition of shrewd real estate investing when he purchased Manhattan Island and Staten Island from Algonquin tribesmen in exchange for trade goods (legend, now long disproved, has it that the island was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads). Minuit's settlement was also a haven for Huguenots seeking religious liberty.

In 1640, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed governor, and ruled as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. He curtailed the city's religious freedoms and closed all of the city's taverns. The colony was granted self-government in 1652. In 1664, the British conquered the area and renamed it New York. The Dutch regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange", then ceded New Netherland permanently to the English in November 1674.

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British and Revolution: 1665-1783

Template:Main This period began with the establishment of British rule over formerly Dutch New Amsterdam and New Netherland. As the newly renamed City of New York and surrounding areas developed, there was a growing independent feeling among some, but the area was decidedly split in its loyalties. The site of modern New York City was the theatre of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. New York was greatly damaged twice by fires of dubious origin during the British occupation that followed the Battle of Brooklyn at the start of the American Revolutionary War and which lasted until November 25, 1783. George Washington returned to the city that same November 25th as the last British forces left the United States. For about a century afterward the day was widely celebrated locally as "Evacuation Day". The Continental Congress met in New York City under the Articles of Confederation.

Federal and early American: 1784-1854

Template:Main New York City became the temporary capital of the newly formed United States on September 13, 1788 under the U.S. Constitutional Convention. On April 30, 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated at Federal Hall on Wall Street. New York City remained the capital of the U.S. until 1790, when the honor was transferred to Philadelphia. New York grew as an economic center with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, and Tammany Hall began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminated in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854.

Tammany and Consolidation: 1855-1897

Template:Main This period started with the inauguration in 1855 of Fernando Wood as the first mayor from Tammany Hall, an institution that would dominate the city throughout this period. During the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration, a visionary development proposal called the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the opening of the Erie Canal, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Mid-western United States and Canada in 1819. By 1835, New York City had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States. Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy pressed for a Central Park, which was opened to a design competition in 1857: it was the first landscape park in an American city.

During the American Civil War (1861–1865), the city's strong commercial ties to the South, its growing immigrant population, and anger about conscription led to divided sympathy for both the Union and Confederacy, culminating in the Draft Riots of 1863, the worst civil unrest in American history. After the Civil War, the rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new and better life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886.

Early 20th century: 1898-1945

Template:Main This period began with the formation of the consolidated city of the five boroughs in 1898. Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs and joined together with three other boroughs created from parts of adjacent counties to form the new municipal government originally called "Greater New York". The Borough of Brooklyn incorporated the independent City of Brooklyn, recently joined to Manhattan by the Brooklyn Bridge, and several municipalities in eastern Kings County, New York; the Borough of Queens was created from western Queens County (with the remnant established as Nassau County in 1899); and The Borough of Staten Island contained all of Richmond County. All municipal (county, town and city) governments contained within the boroughs were abolished. In 1914, the New York State Legislature created Bronx county, making five counties coterminous with the five boroughs.

On June 15, 1904 over 1,000 people, mostly German Immigrants, were killed when the steamship General Slocum caught fire and burned on North Brother Island, in the East River; and on March 25, 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village took the lives of 146 female garment workers, which would eventually lead to great advancements in the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations.

A series of new transportation links, most notably the New York City Subway, first opened 1904, helped bind the new city together. The height of European immigration brought social upheaval. Later, in the 1920s, the city saw the influx of African Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that saw dueling skyscrapers in the skyline. The city suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the election of Republican reformer Fiorello LaGuardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance. The city also played a significant part in World War II.

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. Interborough Rapid Transit (the first New York subway company) began operating in 1904, and the railroads operating out of Grand Central Terminal thrived. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century. Despite the effects of the Great Depression, the 1930s saw the building of some of the world's tallest skyscrapers, including numerous Art-Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline today. Both before and after World War II, vast areas of the city were also reshaped by the rise of the bridges, parks and parkways of coordinator Robert Moses, the greatest proponent of automobile-centered modernist urbanism in America.

Post-World War II: 1946-1977

Template:Main A post-World War II economic and residential boom was associated with returning veterans and immigration from Europe, and huge tracts of new housing were constructed in eastern Queens. In 1951, the United Nations relocated from its first headquarters in Flushing Meadows Park, Queens, to the East Side of Manhattan. Like many U.S. cities, New York suffered population decline, an erosion of its industrial base, and race riots in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation for being a crime-ridden relic of history. In 1975, the city government was on the brink of financial collapse and had to restructure its debt through the Municipal Assistance Corporation, headed by Felix Rohatyn. The city was also forced to accept increased scrutiny of its finances by an agency of New York State called the Financial Control Board.

Modern period: 1978-2001

Template:Main The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and the city reclaimed its role at the center of the world-wide financial industry. In the 1990s, crime rates dropped drastically and the outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination not only of immigrants from around the world, but of many U.S. citizens seeking to live a cosmopolitan lifestyle that only New York City can offer. In the late 1990s, the city benefited disproportionately from the success of the financial services industry during the dot com boom, one of the factors in a decade of booming residential and commercial real estate value increases

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 from:1898 till:2010 color:red    
 from:1524 till:1664 color:blue   
 from:1664 till:1783 color:green  
 from:1783 till:1898 color:yellow 

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 at:1835 text:"1835 Great Fire" 
 at:1863 text:"1863 Draft riots"
 at:1883 text:"1883 Brooklyn Bridge"   shift:($dx,-2)  
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 at:1904 text:"1904 IRT Subway"
 at:1929 text:"1929 Stock market crash"
 at:1939 text:"1939 World's Fair"
 at:1964 text:"1964 New York World's Fair"
 at:1975 text:"1975 Near-bankruptcy"
 at:2001 text:"2001 WTC disaster "

Post 9/11: 2001-present

New York City was the site of a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 people were killed by a terrorist strike on the World Trade Center, including those employed in the buildings, passengers and crew on two commercial jetliners, and hundreds of firemen, policemen, and rescue workers who came to the aid of the disaster. Thick, acrid smoke continued to pour out of its ruins for months following the Twin Towers' fiery collapse. The city has since rebounded and the physical cleanup of the World Trade Center site was completed ahead of schedule. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for construction between 2006 and 2010.

See also

Histories of New York City neighborhoods, such as Harlem, San Juan Hill, Upper West Side, Lower East Side, Chinatown, the Financial District (which includes the South Street Seaport) and others. New York has many famous thoroughfares, including Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Broadway and others. The city also has numerous smaller streets with rich histories, including Wall Street.

Some of the islands of the city have surprisingly rich local histories: Liberty Island, Governors Island, City Island, Roosevelt Island and others.

The history of New York City's Water Supply System.

There is also a Timeline of New York City crimes and disasters.

Compare history of Brooklyn, New York.

Kenneth T. Jackson, a preeminent authority on the history of New York City.

Sources

• The Encyclopedia of New York City, ed. by Kenneth T. Jackson, 1350 pages, Yale University Press 1995
• Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Oxford University Press, 1998, hardcover, 1416 pages, ISBN 0195116348, trade paperback, 2000, 1424 pages, ISBN 0195140494

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External links

• A history of NYC by cosmopolis.chhe:היסטוריה של העיר ניו יורק

nl:Geschiedenis van New York City zh:紐約市歷史