Architecturally speaking, this was the decade that began to shape the physical landscape we know today. So many of the icons we now associate with New York were built, opened or dedicated during this ten-year period--think of the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, and the Metropolitan Museum's home in Central Park. Much of how we live and work can also be traced back to this time when architects were devoting much of their careers to the design of apartment buildings, office buildings, and grand family homes. A large number of "old" buildings we walk by today--from tenements on Ninth Avenue to brownstones in Harlem--were built in the 1880's.
This was also the decade when skyscrapers began to lift the skyline. In 1885, the Home Insurance Company, the first to use a structural steel skeleton, was built in Chicago. (There are those who argue that because the Home Insurance Company relied partially on load bearing masonry, the first true skyscraper was built in New York in 1888--the Tower Building [see below]. There are also those who trace the first skyscraper to New York in 1870 when George B. Post used a primitive skeletal frame for the Equitable Life Assurance Company and also effectively incorporated elevators and utilities [see last week's entry].) Regardless, by the second part of this decade, the city was rising into the clouds.
ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:
1880--There are 300 people per acre on the Lower East Side. By the end of the decade, there will be 400 per acre.
1880--The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens in Central Park.
1881--New York's most famous Egyptian obelisk, Cleopatra's Needle (1600 B.C.), reaches its new home behind the Metropolitan Museum.
1881--The groundbreaking Farragut Monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White is dedicated in Madison Square.
1882--The Eldridge Street Synagogue opens on the Lower East Side.
1882--Sylvan Row--two rows of ten wooden houses--is built next to the Morris Jumel Mansion.
1882--Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act which will shape the demographics of Chinatown for more than half a century.
1882--The Edison Company illuminates part of Lower Manhattan (between Nassau, Pearl, Spruce and Wall) with electric light.
1883--The Brooklyn Bridge, the Eighth Wonder of the World, is completed and opens above the East River.
1883--The new Metropolitan Opera officially opens on Broadway between Thirty-ninth and Fortieth with Charles Gounod's Faust starring Chritina Nillson.
1884--The first long distance line is laid between New York and Boston. (Philadelphia is reached in 1885 and Chicago in 1892.)
1884--The Dakota Apartment Building is completed at West Seventy-Second.
1884--Yet another financial panic. (This one involves former President Grant, his bubble-headed son, and a scam artist named Ferdinand Wood.)
1885--The Villard Houses are completed behind St. Patrick's.
1885--The first elevated railroad in Brooklyn is erected.
1886--Manhattan and Brooklyn are connected by elevated rail.
1886--The Statue of Liberty is dedicated in New York Harbor and the city celebrates by throwing ticker tape out of the new skyscrapers.
1887--Morningside Park is completed.
1888--The spires of St. Patrick's are completed.
1888--The Great Blizzard of this year drops twenty-two inches of snow in one day. The eighty-five mile per hour winds create drifts up to twenty feet in places. Afterwards, all wires formerly above ground willl be relocated beneath the streets.
1888-1889--The first building with a structural steel skeleton--the Tower Building--is erected on Broadway just north of Bowling Green.
1889--The Educational Alliance is founded on the Lower East Side.
Sources: Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York: An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson; Blue Guide New York by Carol von Pressentin Wright, Stuart Miller, and Sharon Seitz; Inside the Apple by Michelle and James Nevius.
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