New York City Travel Information

A BRIEF HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY

Before the Europeans (15,000 BC – 1609 AD)

New York City was created about 17,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The glacier that had covered the present city began to retreat and in doing so it carved out the geographical features we recognize today: the deep, protected harbor, the Hudson River basin, and—at the center of it all—an island.

When the Algonquin-speaking Native Americans came to settle, probably 10,000 years ago, they named the island "Mana hata," which means rocky or hilly island, and they chose not to live on it, settling instead on the fertile plains of Long Island and New Jersey, which were more suitable for farming.

The Dutch Mercantile Colony (1609 – 1664)

In 1609, Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch, sailed into New York harbor. Hudson was employed to find a shortcut between Holland and Indonesia and he sailed as far north as Albany—about 120 miles north of Manhattan—before discovering that the river grew too shallow to continue. While his Dutch employers were annoyed at his failure, other merchants were intrigued by the report of his voyage. The river he charted—today called the Hudson in his honor—led into a land bursting with natural resources, the most important of which was beaver, then one of the top luxury imports in Europe. By 1623, a Dutch West India Company had been established to export beaver fur and a colony called New Amsterdam was quickly established on Manhattan.

New Amsterdam began as a frontier town; from the beginning the goal was not to colonize but to make money. As a mercantile settlement, New Amsterdam attracted a diverse group of people; by the 1640s more than sixteen languages could be heard on the street. But the company realized they needed to spur growth and attract not just fur traders, but families willing to settle, farm the land, and create a real community.

New Amsterdam was at its best under its last Director, Peter Stuyvesant, in charge from 1647 to 1664. So successful was he in building up the colony that in 1664 the English deemed it ripe for the taking. James, Duke of York, sent three war ships and demanded that Stuyvesant surrender. After three days he did, and the colony changed from New Amsterdam to New York without a shot being fired.

The British Colonial and Early American City (1664-1810)

The English recognized that New York was unique and endeavored, at least at first, not to change its character. But by the time of the American Revolution, it had become in some regards a very British city. When George Washington retreated in 1776, it became the center of British military operations and remained so until Washington returned, triumphant, in 1783 to take back the city and then step down as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army.

Six years later, Washington was back; New York had been selected to be the capital of the new United States of America and on April 30, 1789, he was inaugurated on the balcony of the old British City Hall on Wall Street. Two of Washington's cabinet members—Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton—then struck a deal that moved the capital only a year after it had been established. In a compromise, Hamilton was permitted to issue bonds to pay back the States for debts incurred during the Revolution while Jefferson built an agrarian capital built on the banks of the Potomac River. The bonds that Hamilton issued were soon being traded under a tree on Wall Street—and thus the New York Stock Exchange was born. Finance had defined the city from the beginning and the establishment of Wall Street as a trading center solidified the city's commercial prominence.

Uptown Growth—the Grid, Greenwich Village, and the Five Points (1811-1859)

From the time of the first Dutch settlement, New York existed on a sliver of land at Manhattan's southern tip. In 1811, in order to regularize land sales, the city commissioned the grid of east-west streets and north-south avenues that now defines the city. The grid allowed real estate speculation to begin and provided a plan for northward expansion.

However, the two neighborhoods that first drew the city northward were not part of the grid. As the population grew downtown—as many as 60,000 people lived there in 1800—so too grew the likelihood of diseases, in particular cholera and yellow fever. When an epidemic swept through the city, the rich headed to the countryside, many of them to a village called Greenwich. In 1822, yellow fever was so persistent that many wealthy New Yorkers decided to leave the city altogether; thus Greenwich Village as a neighborhood—Manhattan's first suburb—was born.

At the same time, the city was in final stages of filling in the old fresh water pond just north of the city limits. It had once been a pleasant country retreat, but by 1800 it had been contaminated by slaughterhouses. The city drained the pond, filled it, and began to expand. However, the pond was so poorly filled that houses built there began sinking into the ground and the owners abandoned them. Immigrants—mostly German and Irish—began to come into the city in the 1820s, and many arrived with little or no money and few prospects. Conveniently, the city had a neighborhood full of poor-quality housing awaiting them. And so was born the Five Points, which was to become over the next four decades the most densely populated and worst slum in the entire world.

Central Park, the Civil War and the Creation of “Uptown” (1859-1884)

The Irish who came in the 1820s and 1830s were poor, but many made so much money in New York that they were able to send it home to bring over relatives. This became crucial after the potato blight in 1845 threatened to starve most of the Irish population. Five Points grew quickly—by 1855, more than half of the city's population had been born in a foreign country.

In the 1850s, the city broke ground on a remarkable project—a large, public park. Central Park was designed to serve all citizens of the city; as the country edged toward civil war, the park was held up as an example of the democratizing spirit of the Union. But even though Central Park was designed to be shared by all, it was not that way when first built, even though intended. Then, it was mostly the province of the rich who drove their carriages, promenaded on the Mall, and skated in winter on the lake.

The end of the Five Points came with the Civil War. Manufacturing that had been located in the south relocated to the city bringing employment; as the Irish in Five Points climbed the economic ladder they left the neighborhood and by the 1880s the surge of Italian and Eastern European immigrants were settling in the Lower East Side.

Meanwhile, the rich, who had been moving uptown as the city expanded, began to relocate onto Fifth Avenue opposite Central Park. The mansions they built were the most opulent the city has ever known and the avenue was nicknamed "Millionaires' Mile." (It is still the richest neighborhood, per capita, in the country.)

Immigrant City: The Brooklyn Bridge and the Building Boom (1884-1917)

Between 1889 and 1924 more than 12 million people passed through Ellis Island and two-thirds of them settled—some briefly, some for generations—on the Lower East Side. This surge of immigration coincided with the city's greatest building boom. Building on the success of Central Park—still the greatest piece of landscape architecture in America—New York embraced engineering and architectural progress. The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, was the first major steel suspension bridge, and it proved that New York was an emerging city. With the introduction of the skyscraper and the building of the subway system—built by immigrant labor—New York demanded respect. And it got it. By the outbreak of World War I, New York was seen by many as America's Paris or London.

One direct result of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge was the unification of the five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island—into one large city in 1898. At a population of 1.5 million, New York was already the largest city in America; overnight, its population doubled. (For more on the other boroughs, see "The Outer Boroughs" – page 6.)

NYC Between the Wars (1918-1941)

New York was firmly anti-Prohibition, but this was a city that knew how to have a good time and it wasn't going to let a pesky federal law stand in the way. The 1920s saw New Yorkers embracing speakeasy culture, from the jazz clubs of Harlem to the bohemian bars in Greenwich Village. Through the Twenties New York's "playboy" Mayor, Jimmy Walker, oversaw the good times from his perch at the Casino, a speakeasy in Central Park.

When the market crashed in 1929, New York's large population was immediately hit hard. The lines between rich and poor were starkly drawn, sometimes literally—the residents of Millionaires' Mile could look out their windows through the 1930s and see the shanty towns in Central Park.

Jimmy Walker had crashed, too, brought down by his lifestyle, and in his place came Fiorello LaGuardia, a reforming Republican. LaGuardia was immensely popular and kept New York running through the Depression and oversaw its rebuilding after World War II. In particular, La Guardia worked hard to stem the tide of suburbanization, creating housing projects and rent laws that ensured that New York would remain a viable place to live.

The Modern City (1945-the present)

Immigration had waned during the Depression and war, but resurged in the 1960s with waves of Puerto Ricans and other Latin American émigrés settling in the city. This was joined by the creation of Chinatown, with nearly 150,000 Chinese coming the late 1960s and early 1970s. Today more than 400,000 Chinese live in Lower Manhattan.

By the late 1960s, the city was beginning to shows signs of stress. In particular, crime was up and the economy was soft. As the real estate market bottomed out in the 1970s, the city discovered it was bankrupt; after the city requested Federal aid, President Ford famously replied: "Drop dead."

New York refused. And, as inflation declined, the city emerged in the 1980s stronger than ever. Its cultural institutions, such as Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum, and Broadway, were now all firmly established as destinations for visitors from around the world. The city had always been about business, and in the 1990s, after decades that saw large corporations moving out, the city reiterated its role as the country's commercial capital.

The most visible symbol of the city's commercial prominence was the World Trade Center; the two towers silhouetted against the skyline became shorthand for New York and—in the eyes of many—of America itself. When terrorists wanted to choose a target that would strike at the heart of Americans, the World Trade Center seemed an obvious choice. Perhaps they felt that if they were able to crush the towers, they would crush New York and the country.

New York refused.

The post-September 11 city is a different place; some changes are subtle, some are obvious. No New Yorker is unaffected by the attack and none will ever forget those terrible events. But the city is remarkably resilient. While the World Trade Center attack is certainly the worst event in the city's long history, the terrorists did not—and could not—succeed. It is impossible to break New York.

As the city looks ahead to the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's arrival, it brings with it four centuries of remarkable history that has shaped this country and the world. There is no doubt it will continue to shape lives for many centuries to come.

The Outer Boroughs

Today, Brooklyn is the most populous of the boroughs, with nearly 2.5 million residents. At the time of New York's unification it was the third largest city in America. The area remained rural throughout the nineteenth century until the section nearest to the East River developed into an industrial center following the Civil War. Brooklyn's prosperity peaked around World War II, but a growing suburban population and shifting business needs saw the borough in economic decline from the 1950s to the 1980s, a decline symbolized to many by the removal of the beloved Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957. Though much industry is now gone, the borough remains a cultural center in the city and contains many of the most sought-after residential neighborhoods.

Queens, which, like Brooklyn, is on Long Island, makes up more than a third of the city's land mass (about 120 square miles), and is home to 2.25 million people. The most ethnically diverse of the boroughs, Queens saw its population swell after the U.S. loosened immigration laws in 1965. More than any other part of the city, Queens' residents identify with their neighborhoods, many of which are ethnic enclaves such as Astoria (Greek), Corona (Dominican), Jamaica (Guyanese), and Woodside (Irish). Queens is also home to both of New York's airports, the Mets baseball team, the largest urban wildlife refuge in the country, and Flushing Meadows Park—home to the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs as well as the U.S. Open.

The Bronx (pop. 1.3 million), the only part of the city on the mainland, is world famous as home of the New York Yankees, who relocated there in 1923 at the time when the borough was in its ascendancy. After being hit hard by the Depression, the Bronx revitalized as a center for east coast food distribution, most famously at the Hunt's Point Market, and as a focal point for Puerto Rican immigration. Though the South Bronx came in the 1970s to stand for urban decay, the population is now steadily increasing as Manhattanites choose the lower rents and less-hurried pace that the Bronx has to offer.

Staten Island (pop. 465,000) has always been the most remote and least populous section of the city. An almost completely residential borough, the island was cut off from both New Jersey and the rest of the city for most of its history, and today still feels like a small town. (While bridges now connect the island to Brooklyn and New Jersey, the quickest route to Manhattan is still the Staten Island Ferry.) Over the years, many residents have grown increasingly frustrated at the borough's lack of representation in city government, and in 1994 the island voted to secede from New York City—only to have the referendum annulled by the state government in Albany. Historic Richmond Town, at the island's center, provides visitors with a glimpse of what life was like in Colonial New Amsterdam and early New York.