Traveling Magazine: Travel Anywhere EASY GOGO New York City A Brief Look. Spring 2008 History Colonial American Revolution and the early United States March, 19th century growth 2008 The 20th century New York City A Brief Look. Spring 2008 Manhattan is an island borough of New York City, New York, USA, coterminous with New York County. With a 2000 population of 1,537,195[1} living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.47 km), it is the most densely populated county in the United States at 66,940 residents per square mile (25,846/km).[2] The borough consists of Manhattan Island, Roosevelt Island, Randalls Island, almost 1/10th of Ellis Island,[3] the above-water portion of Liberty Island, several much smaller islands, and a small section on the mainland of New York State adjacent to the Bronx. Manhattan is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of the United States and, to varying extents, of the world.[4][5][6] Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums, and universities. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations. Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States, is the site of both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and is the home the west and east sides of the Mauritius River to the largest number of corporate headquarters in (later named the Hudson River). The word the nation. It is indisputably the center of “Manhattan” has been translated as “island of New York City and the New York metropolitan many hills” from the Lenape language.[8] The region, holding the seat of city government, Encyclopedia of New York City offers other and the largest fraction of employment, business, derivations, including from Munsee language and recreational activities. words manahachtanienk (“place of general inebriation”), manahatouh (“place where timber The name Manhattan derives from the word is procured for bows and arrows”), or menatay Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook (“island”).[9] of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson’s yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon).[7] A 1610 map depicts the name Manahata twice, on both 1 A Brief Look. EASYGOGO History Colonial The area that is now Man- hattan was long inhabited by the Lenape. In 1524, Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to pass New York Harbor, although he did not enter the harbor past the Narrows.[10] It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped.[11] Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there on September 11, 1609, and continued up the river that bears his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present day Albany. [12]A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625 construction was started on a citadel and a Fort Amsterdam on [16] In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant of provisional transfer with Manhattan Island, later called was appointed as the last the British which sought to New Amsterdam (Nieuw Am- Dutch Director General of guarantee New Netherlanders sterdam).[13][14] Manhattan the colony.[17] The colony liberties, including freedom Island was chosen as the site was granted self-government of religion, under British rule. of Fort Amsterdam, a citadel in 1652 and New Amsterdam [20][21] for the protection of the new was formally incorporated as arrivals; its 1625 establishment a city on February 2, 1653.[18] is recognized as the birth In 1664, the British traded the date of New York City.[15] area against Suriname and In 1626, Peter Minuit acquired renamed it “New York” after Manhattan from native people the English Duke of York and in exchange for trade goods, Albany.[19] Stuyvesant and often said to be worth $24. his council negotiated 24 articles EASYGOGO History Colonial. 2 American Revolution and The Early United States Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the disastrous Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city became the British political and military center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war.[22] Manhattan was greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the British military rule that followed. British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city.[23] From January 11, 1785 to Autumn 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress residing city in the United States. Tammany Hall, a at New York City Hall then at Fraunces Democratic Party political machine, began to Tavern. New York was the first capital grow in influence with the support of many of under the newly enacted Constitution of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election the United States, from March 4, 1789 to of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in August 12, 1790 at Federal Hall.[24] 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped park in an American city and the nation’s first public park.[25][26] During the American Civil War, 19th Century Growth the city’s strong commercial ties to the South, its growing immigrant population (prior to then largely from Germany and Ireland), anger New York grew as an economic center, first about conscription and resentment at those who as a result of Alexander Hamilton’s policies and could afford to pay $300 to avoid service, led practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury to resentment against Lincoln’s war policies, culminating and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in the three-day long New York Draft Riots of in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to July 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern disorder in American history, with an estimated United States and Canada. By 1810, New York 119 participants and passersby massacred.[27] City had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest After the Civil War, the rate of immigration 3 American Revolution. EASYGOGO from Europe grew steeply, and New York created Bronx County, and New York County became the first stop for millions seeking a new was reduced to its present boundaries.[31] and better life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France.[28][29] The new European immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city was a hotbed of revolution, syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization. In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a surface connection across the East River. In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed.[30] The City of Greater New York was formed in 1898, with Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York State Legislature EASYGOGO 19th Century Growth. 4 The 20th Century The construction of the time in the Prohibition era affluence to the working New York City Subway, first that saw dueling skyscrapers class, the city’s government opened in 1904, helped bind in the skyline. New York City and infrastructure underwent the new city together, as did became the most populous a dramatic overhaul under additional bridges to Brooklyn. city in the world in 1925, LaGuardia. Despite the effects In the 1920s, Manhattan overtaking London, which of the Great Depression, the saw the increasing influx of had reigned for a century. 1930s saw the building of Blacks as part of the Great [32] On March 25, 1911, the some of the world’s tallest Migration from the American Triangle Shirtwaist Factory skyscrapers, including South, and the Harlem Renais- fire in Greenwich Village numerous Art Deco mas- sance, part of a larger boom took the lives of 146 garment terpieces that are still part workers, which would eventually of the city’s skyline today. lead to great improvements in the city’s fire department, Returning World War II building codes, and workplace veterans and immigrants regulations.[33] from Europe created a postwar economic boom and The period between the led to the development of World Wars saw the election huge housing developments, of reformist mayor Fiorello targeted at returning veterans, LaGuardia and the fall of including Peter Cooper Village— Tammany Hall after eighty Stuyvesant Town which opened years of political dominance. in 1947.[35] In 1951, the [34] As the city’s demographics United Nations relocated stabilized, labor unionization from its first headquarters in brought new protections and Queens, to the East Side of 5 The 20th Century. EASYGOGO Manhattan.[36] Like many major U.S. cities, New York suffered race riots and population and industrial decline in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation as a graffiti-covered, crime-ridden relic of history.[37] In 1975, the city government faced imminent bankruptcy, and its appeals for assistance were initially rejected, summarized by the classic October 30, 1975 New York Daily News headline as “Ford to City: Drop Dead”.