This was a decade of reform. Work conditions were improved following the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire and the country's first zoning resolution was passed in 1916 as new buildings began to block out the sun. The city was divided into zones designated for commercial and residential purposes and the height and bulk of buildings began to be regulated.
ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:
1910--The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower on Madison Square becomes the tallest building in the world.
1910--Pennsylvania Station opens to the public.
1910--Ships begin to dock at the Chelsea Piers.
1910--The first apartment building (998) opens on Fifth Avenue.
1911--The Winter Garden Theater replaces Vanderbilt's American Horse Exchange.
1911--The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire kills 146 young women near Washington Square.
1911--The Brooklyn Botanic Garden opens.
1911--The home of New York Public Library is completed on Fifth Avenue.
1912--The Titanic, scheduled to dock at Pier 54 on the Hudson, sinks in the Atlantic.
1913--The Woolworth Building becomes the tallest building in the world.
1913--Grand Central Terminal is completed.
1913--The Pulitzer Fountain next to the Plaza begins to cascade.
1913--The famous Armory Show, a watershed in modern art in America, is held at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue.
1913--Four more of our greatest Broadway theaters are built--the Booth, the Longacre, the Shubert, and the Palace!
1914--The Frick mansion on Fifth Avenue is completed.
1914--The Municipal Building--one of the world's tallest city office buildings, and the first skyscraper designed by McKim, Mead and White--opens on Chambers Street.
1915--The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences (also by McKim, Mead and White) opens on Eastern Parkway.
1916--The Lusitania leaves Pier 54 (the same pier where the Titanic was supposed to dock) and is sunk by a German u-boat off the coast of Ireland seven days later.
1916--New York City institutes the first urban zoning resolution in the nation.
1916--The Black Tom explosion in New York harbor--suspected to have been the work of German saboteurs preventing the use of munitions by Allied troops--damages the Statue of Liberty (the arm and torch henceforth closed to the public) and Ellis Island (immigrants were transferred to Manhattan and the roof of the Great Hall was replaced).
1916--The U.S. enters World War I.
1918--The 1918 Flu Epidemic kills between twenty and twenty-four thousand New Yorkers. Spitters are fined and arrested. (So are coughers and sneezers who don't cover their mouths.)
1919--The Treaty of Versailles is signed, ending World War I. Parades of returning troops begin marching up Fifth Avenue.
1919--Emma Goldman is deported via Ellis Island during the Red Scare.
Sources: 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; New York 1900 by Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and John Massengale.
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