NYC Decade by Decade: 2000-2009

Way back in March, forty-one Thursdays ago, we started this series with the arrival of Henry Hudson, pre-New York, pre-New Amsterdam.  Today we reach the end of the first four hundred years; with the dropping of the ball tonight, let the next four hundred begin! 

2000--The Yankees win their fourth World Series in five years.

2000--The population exceeds 8 million for the first time.

2000--The new Rose Center Planetarium opens at the American Museum of Natural History.

2001--The World Trade Center is attacked by terrorists using hijacked airplanes.

2002--The removal of 1.7 million tons of debris from the World Trade Center is completed.

2002--The Austrian Cultural Forum, one of my favorite new buildings, opens.

2003--Subway tokens, which replaced nickels in 1948, are sold for the last time in April. 

2004--The newly expanded MoMA opens.

2004--The new Time Warner Center opens and begins the decade's transformation of Columbus Circle.

2006--Suspension is published!

2006--The Hearst Tower, my other favorite newcomer, opens.

2006--7 World Trade Center opens, the first (and only) building to be rebuilt at Ground Zero by the end of decade.

2008--Bear Stearns fails but is purchased by JP Morgan Chase.  In September, Lehman Brothers collapses and the world economy teeters on the brink.

2009--Having won the World Series in 2000, the Yankees will not win a single World Series during the Bush years.  The year Bush leaves the White House, the Yankees win.  (It's pointed out by Ari Fleischer, Bush's first press secretary, that the Yankees won during the administrations of Kennedy, Carter and Clinton, but not Nixon, Ford, Reagan or the Bushes.  The last Republican president who saw a Yankees championship was Eisenhower.)

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 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1990-1999

1990--The Census reports for the first time that the white demographic in New York, while still the largest, is no longer the majority.

1990--Ellis Island reopens as a museum.

1990--The homicide rate peaks in New York City this year with 2,262 murders (i.e., six per day).

1990--I (who am white and who will one day give hundreds of tours of Ellis Island) move to New York City in August to attend college at Columbia.  I am blissfully indifferent to the record-breaking homicide rate and spend most of my college life amazed at the frequency with which vehicles in Morningside Heights backfire.  The lead news story on the day of my arrival is the collapse of a sidewalk grate in midtown that injures several commuters.  I will avoid sidewalk grates until 1992.

1991--The last automat closes in the city.

1991--Crown Heights riots.

1991--An African-American burial ground is discovered north of City Hall during excavations for a skyscraper.

1992--The restored Bryant Park reopens.

1993--The World Trade Center is bombed, killing six and injuring over one thousand.  (This takes place on February 26th.  This attack barely enters my consciousness--it was my twenty-first birthday, which was also a Friday.  This attack also barely enters the national consciousness--eight years later, September 11th will be repeatedly identified as the first foreign attack on U.S. soil.)

1993--Staten Island turns out to vote on a referendum to secede from New York City. (65% vote for secession.) The high turnout from this heavily Republican district is instrumental in the narrow election (50.7%) of Rudolph Giuliani as mayor.

1994--The courts and state legislature prevent the secession of Staten Island.

1994--Silicon Alley is carved out in the West Twenties.

1995--The Victory Theater opens and becomes the city's first full-time performing arts center for children.  (The New Times Square is born.)

1995--Chelsea Piers reopens as a sports facility and the transformation of that neighborhood and the restoration of many of its abandoned buildings begins.  (The changes will grow up the west side towards the Javitts Center and down into the Meatpacking District...or along the eventually restored High Line.)

1997--The New Amsterdam reopens.

1997--The New York Times stops printing in Manhattan after almost a century and a half.

1997--A Palestinian rifleman kills one and injures five before killing himself on top of the Empire State Building. 

1997--I start giving tours of New York City.

1997--Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, is savagely beaten and sexually assaulted in the bathroom of a police precinct. 

1999--West African, Amadou Diallo, unarmed, is shot at 41 times by the police and hit 19 times.

1999--The last Checker cab is retired and auctioned off for $135,000.

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 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1980-1989

Keywords of the 1980's--(polled from fellow guides)--homelessness, deinstitutionalization, crime, poverty, Ed Koch, David Dinkins, graffiti as eyesore, graffiti as art (e.g., Keith Haring, Basquiat), Ronald Reagan, the me decade, investment bankers, Bright Lights, Big City, Black Monday, Bonfire of the Vanities, AIDS, Gay Men's Health Crisis, Donald Trump, racial tension, Central Park Jogger, Cameron MacIntosh (Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera), Fame, Central Park Conservancy, and the Statue of Liberty restoration. 

1980--John Lennon is fatally shot in front of the Dakota by Mark David Chapman.

1981--Construction begins on Battery Park City.

1981--A virus infecting gay men in the city is identified as AIDS.

1982--The Morosco and Helen Hayes are among the theaters demolished despite protests to make room for the Marriott Marquis.

1983--The "antisliver" law is passed, limiting the height of buildings less than forty feet wide.

1985--Columbia University sells the land under Rockefeller Center to the Rockefeller group for $400 million.

1986--The newly restored Statue of Liberty celebrates its centennial.

1987--The stock market crashes; the Dow loses over five hundred points.

1987--The World Financial Center opens.

1989--David Dinkins is elected the first African-American mayor of New York.

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 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1970-1979

1970--The first New York City marathon is organized.  A far cry from thousands running through all five boroughs, the first marathon is run entirely in Central Park with only one hundred twenty-seven runners.

1970--McSorley's, one of the city's oldest taverns, with the motto "good ale, raw onions, and no women" is forced by the courts to amend that last part.

1971--The New York Giants move to New Jersey.

1973--The Twin Towers are completed.

1973--Welfare Island is renamed Roosevelt Island.

1975--The city's economy officially tanks.  After years of taking out loans to pay off debt, New York finds itself with major cash flow problems and on the brink of insolvency.  The federal response is to deny any bail-out.  Later that year, the federal government does offer loans and New York is put into a receivership and its debt restructured.  In the words of Philip Lopate:  "For a time, New York became more like Atlanta or Houston, a city run quite openly by a corporate elite."

1976--The Empire State Building begins illuminating its top thirty stories with colored lighting (red, white, and blue for the Bicentennial).  The following year, a system with a wider variety of colors will be introduced to announce holidays and events of interest to New Yorkers.  (The Yankees winning the World Series that October will be the first of such events.) 

1976--The festivities surrounding the Bicentennial inject life, money, and optimism into the city. 

1977--Pessimism returns when the city endures the Son of Sam, a looter-filled blackout, and a series of bomb attacks from a Puerto Rican terrorist organization.

1977--A thirty-passenger helicopter atop the Pan Am Building tips over, killing four on the roof and a pedestrian on Madison and Forty-third who is killed by a piece of a rotor.  Five others are injured and helicopter service, which had just been restored, is cancelled permanently.

1977--A Chorus Line begins its historic run and Studio 54 opens.

1978--Both Radio City Music Hall and Grand Central Terminal are saved from demolition.

1978--The city starts cleaning up its shit with the enactment of the Pooper Scooper Law.

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 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Milennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1960-1969

This was a decade of instability and flux.  As the city went through one of its most accelerated transformations (compare a New York movie from 1960 with one from 1970), there were strikes, demonstrations, riots, protests and even a campus seizure.  As neighborhoods were threatened by developers, as buildings were razed and replaced with monstrosities--leading to the creation of the Landmarks Preservation Commission--it seemed that the soul of the city was at stake.  This was played out most dramatically in the battle between the Power Broker, Robert Moses, and the urban writer and activist, Jane Jacobs, who in this decade published her groundbreaking work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and led the campaign against the Master Builder's crosstown expressways, preventing Manhattan from suffering the same fate as the Bronx and helping to topple Moses from power after more than forty years.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1960--The new headquarters for Chase Manhattan Bank, with its open plazas facing both Pine and Nassau Streets, is completed, kicking off the building boom in Lower Manhattan.  (The World Trade Center is proposed this same year.)

1960--Ebbets Field in Brooklyn is demolished.

1961--Inspired by the Seagram and Chase Manhattan Bank Buildings, new zoning laws are passed enouraging public amenities such as plazas and arcades in exchange for taller buildings without setbacks.

1962--Philharmonic Hall, now Avery Fisher Music Hall, becomes the first completed building at Lincoln Center.

1963--A bad year for our train stations.  Pennsylvania Station, one of the grandest in the world, is demolished.  (Its famous eagles are unceremonially dumped in the Meadowlands.)  Meanwhile, the Pan Am Building, one of the city's ugliest skyscrapers (i.e., the architecture of Brutalism) opens above Grand Central Terminal.

1964--The 1964 World's Fair opens in Flushing Meadows.

1964--The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the United States, connects Staten Island and Brooklyn. 

1965--The Landmarks Preservation Commission is established.

1965--New immigration laws open up the city for immigrants from Asia, Greece, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

1963--Malcolm X is assassinated while speaking at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan.

1966--Ground is broken for the World Trade Center.

1966--Subway and bus fare is increased from ten to twenty cents.

1968--Protesting a number of issues--ranging from the university's construction of a private gym in a public park to the university's ties to the war effort in Vietnam--Columbia students take over their campus and occupy several buildings for a week.

1969--The Stonewall Rebellion, three nights of confrontation with the police in Greenwich Village, gives birth to the modern movement for gay civil rights.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1950-1959

1950--The Brooklyn Battery Tunnel finally opens.  This is the last of four underwater tunnels (one per decade since the Twenties) connecting Manhattan to New Jersey or Long Island.

1950-1956--A New York City baseball team--be it the Yankees, the Dodgers or the Giants--wins the World Series every year.

1952--Lever House, the world's first glass box office building, opens on Park Avenue.  A masterpiece.

1952--The Transit Authority is established.

1953--Construction begins on the Cross Bronx Expressway, one of the most expensive ($250 million) and controversial roads ever built.  It will be completed thirteen years later and the borough will be forever transformed.

1955--The Third Avenue El is demolished.

1955--The Brooklyn Dodgers finally win a World Series.

1957--Both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants play their final season as New Yorkers before moving to California in 1958.

1958--Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, considered one of the city's finest post war skyscrapers--with its bronze coating, topaz tinted glass and influential 1/2 acre plaza--opens on Park Avenue.

1959--Ground is broken for Lincoln Center.

1959--Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim opens on Fifth Avenue.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1940-1949...the War and the Aftermath

When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the city's harbor became America's chief port for the war in Europe.  Ocean liners ferried soldiers across the Atlantic and the Brooklyn Navy Yard operated at full capacity, employing both men and women.  The Navy Yard produced many of America's most famous ships, including the USS Arizona, sunk at Pearl Harbor at the start of the war, and the USS Missouri on whose deck the Japanese officially surrendered at the end of the war.

After the war, New York enjoyed one of the greatest periods of euphoria in its history.  With the transformation of Blood Alley into the new home for the United Nations, the city became a true world capital and there were few major corporations that didn't have an office in the Big Apple.  In fact, more office space was built here in the ten years after the war than has ever existed in downtown Chicago.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1940--The Queens Midtown Tunnel opens.

1941--After twenty years, the nave of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is completed.  At the end of the eight-day celebration, Pearl Harbor is bombed.  Major construction will not be resumed. 

1942--A German u-boat sinks an oil tanker in New York Harbor.  The Germans are amazed that the city's lights are still blazing--Dont' they know there's a war on?  New York begins blackouts in May.

1945--World War Two officially ends.  A sailor kisses a nurse in Times Square and the party begins.

1945--An army plane crashes into the Empire State Building.

1946--An army plane crashes into the Bank of Manhattan Company Building on Wall Street.

1946--Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia leaves office after three terms.  Drained and exhausted, LaGuardia, having led the city through the Depression and World War II, dies the following year. 

1946--The United Nations selects New York as the permanent headquarters after Rockefeller purchases prime real estate for the organization.

1947--The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company builds Stuyvesant Town. 

1947--The Collyer Brothers, New York's eccentric pack rats, are discovered dead in their Harlem residence, buried by their trash. 

1948--Subway and bus fares rise to ten cents after forty-four years of the nickel ride. (The fare will rise more frequently and dramatically from this point forward.) 

1948--New York International Airport, known as Idlewild, now JFK, officially opens.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1930-1939

The Great Depression brought unemployment and bread lines (85,000 lined up for food on one day in 1932), but low costs of labor and building materials also contributed to major construction projects.  Mayor LaGuardia and Robert Moses, brilliant visionaries with a thorough understanding of how New Deal dollars could be spent, changed the cityscape during this era.  In fact, almost all of the entries below can be extended with the phrase "under Robert Moses and Fiorello LaGuardia." 

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1930--Riverside Church, the San Remo, the New Yorker, and the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn are completed.

1931--The Empire State Building, the George Washington Bridge, the present-day Waldorf=Astoria, the El Dorado, the Bayonne Bridge, and Floyd Bennett Field all open.

1932--Corrupt Mayor Walker resigns following the Seabury Investigation. 

1933--Fiorello LaGuardia begins his first of three consecutive terms as mayor. 

1934--The new Bryant Park and the new Central Park Zoo both open.

1935--The original reservoir from 1842, which was surrounded by Central Park in the 1850's and had become a shantytown with the arrival of the Depression, completes its transformation into the Great Lawn and Turtle Pond.

1935--The first race riot in Harlem erupts over rumors of the killing of a teenage shoplifter.  Order is restored by the end of the next day after three are killed and hundreds injured.

1935--The West Side Improvement is completed.

1936--The Triborough Bridge opens.

1937--The Henry Hudson Parkway is completed.

1937--Reginald Marsh paints the panels in the rotunda of the Custom House.

1938--The Cloisters opens in Fort Tryon Park as the only satellite museum for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

1938--Castle Village at the top of Manhattan is completed.

1939--MoMA opens on Fifty-third Street.

1939--North Beach Airport opens...it will soon be renamed LaGuardia airport.

1939--The World's Fair opens in Queens.

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 1930 by Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, Thomas Mellins.

NYC Decade by Decade--1920-1929

Before I began this series, this was the decade I most wanted to visit--the Roaring Twenties, the era of Gatsby and speakeasies, Babe Ruth and the Harlem Renaissance.  At this point in the series, I've changed my mind.  Not only have I found a few other decades more intriguing, but I feel we're living in the Twenties right now--both decades opened with a bang and ended with a crash, a terror attack and a financial meltdown. 

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1920--A Wall Street bombing on September 16th kills thirty-eight and injures 400.  It remains the most deadly terror attack in New York until 2001.  Evidence of the blast can still be seen around one of the windows of 23 Wall.

1923--Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, opens in the Bronx.

1923--Abyssinian Baptist Church is completed in Harlem.

1923--Following up on the resolution of 1916, the Setback Law restricts how skyscrapers are configured, giving the city its famous skyline. 

1923--Unable to withstand Prohibition, Demonico's, America's first fine dining establishment, closes its last restaurant.

1924--Robert Moses, the Master Builder, who will become one of the most powerful New Yorkers in history, begins to build.

1924--The American Radiator Building (New York's first modern skyscraper) at Bryant Park and the Federal Reserve Bank on Liberty Street are both completed.

1924--Hudson View Gardens, one of America's first cooperative apartment complexes, built in a Tudor style, opens in Washington Heights.  (Tudor City will open in the East Forties four years later.)

1925--The most beautiful Madison Square Garden is demolished to make room for Cass Gilbert's New York Life Insurance Building...which will, fortunately, turn out to be a beautiful structure. 

1925--The Great Gatsby is published. 

1926--The Paramount Building in Times Square and the Standard Oil Building near Bowling Green are completed.

1927--The Holland Tunnel opens.

1928--The International Magazine Building is "completed" on Eighth and Fifty-seventh.  ("Completed" in quotes, because that building was designed as a base of a skyscraper that was not built until Norman Foster reimagined the structure in the twenty-first century as the base of his forty-six floor Hearst Tower).

1929--The Museum of Modern Art is founded.

1929--The Beresford Apartment Building, the Daily News Building and the Williamsburgh Savings Bank are all completed.

1929--The Race to the Sky between the Manhattan Bank Building and the Chrysler ends when the Chrysler locks its classic spire in place, becoming the world's first manmade structure to exceed 1000 feet. 

1929--The day after that spire is lifted out of the Chrysler Building, the stock market begins to crash.  Black Tuesday occurs five days later.  The Roaring Twenties comes to a close.

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 1930 by Robert A.M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, Thomas Mellins.

NYC Decade by Decade--1910-1919

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1900-1909...The Subway, Roosevelt, and Construction on a Grand Scale

With the consolidation of New York in 1898, a series of massive construction projects began that were worthy of the world's second largest city and designed in part to connect the boroughs into one unit.

This was the decade of the subway--digging began in 1900 and the first line opened in 1904.  A municipal Staten Island Ferry began to run.  Three of the four East River bridges opened.  Four more bridges crossed the Harlem River.  The Steinway and East River subway tunnels connected Manhattan to Long Island, and New Jersey was finally reached with the first tube underneath the Hudson.  Macy's moved to Thirty-fourth, Longacre became Times Square, several of our oldest Broadway theaters opened, and motorized taxi cabs began to speed through the streets.  Ground was also broken for Penn Station, Grand Central and the New York Public Library. 

Not a shabby decade.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1900--The population of Manhattan reaches 1,850,093.  This is a larger population than Manhattan's population today.  (1910 [2,331,542], 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, and 1960 will all have larger populations.)

1901--The "New Law" tenement is introduced.

1901--NYC's very own Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as vice president.  With the assassination of McKinley, Roosevelt will become president in September and remain in the White House until 1909.

1902--Macy's moves to Herald Square.

1902--Andrew Carnegie's mansion on Fifth (now the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum) is completed.

1902--The Fifth Avenue facade and the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum are finished.

1902--The beloved Flatiron Building opens where Broadway crosses Fifth.

1903--The Williamsburg Bridge opens.

1903--The New York Stock Exchange moves to its new building on the corner of Wall and Broad.

1903--Three of our oldest and most beautiful Broadway theaters are built in the West Forties--the New Amsterdam, the Lyceum, and the Lyric.  These predate "Times Square."

1904--The trains running up and down Park Avenue convert from steam power to electricity.  This will allow the trains to be completely submerged and hidden. 

1904--The Ansonia opens on the Upper West Side.

1904--Longacre Square becomes Times Square.

1904--The first subway line opens.  (Pictured on left, the first line begins at City Hall, runs north to Forty-second, swings west to Times Square and then up Broadway to 145th.)

1904--Carrying 1300 picnickers from the East Village, the SS General Slocum catches fire on its trip up the East River.  Over 1000 passengers, mainly women and children, will perish.  This will remain the city's greatest loss of life in a single day until the attacks of September eleventh.

1905--The Municipal Staten Island Ferry begins operating with a five-cent fare.

1905--City College opens in Harlem. 

1906--Crazy Harry Thaw fatally shoots famous architect, Stanford White, on the roof of White's own Madison Square Garden.

1907--Motorized taxi cabs and the new Plaza Hotel commence operation on the same day.

1907--J.P. Morgan's Library is completed just in time for the Panic of 1907.  (Morgan hosts an all-night meeting with almost fifty bankers at the library.  At one point, he locks dozens of them inside to force them to come to an agreement that will help avert a crisis,)

1907--The elaborate Custom House by Cass Gilbert at Bowling Green is finished.

1907--The Steinway tunnels connect Manhattan and Queens.

1908--The East River subway tunnel connects Bowling Green and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn and the McAdoo Tunnel connects the west side of Manhattan and Hoboken, New Jersey.

1908--The Singer Building becomes the tallest building in the world.

1909--The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower becomes the tallest building in the world.

1909--Both the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges are opened.

1909--The beautiful Police Headquarters on Centre Street (between Grand and Broome) opens for business.  For fantastic pictures of one of my favorite buildings in the city, click here.

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.

With the consolidation of New York in 1898, a series of massive construction projects began that were worthy of the world's second largest city and designed in part to connect the boroughs into one unit.

This was the decade of the subway--digging began in 1900 and the first line opened in 1904.  A municipal Staten Island Ferry began to run.  Three of the four East River bridges opened.  Four more bridges crossed the Harlem River.  The Steinway and East River subway tunnels connected Manhattan to Long Island, and New Jersey was finally reached with the first tube underneath the Hudson.  Macy's moved to Thirty-fourth, Longacre became Times Square, several of our oldest Broadway theaters opened, and motorized taxi cabs began to speed through the streets.  Ground was also broken for Penn Station, Grand Central and the New York Public Library. 

Not a shabby decade.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1900--The population of Manhattan reaches 1,850,093.  This is a larger population than Manhattan's population today.  (1910 [2,331,542], 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, and 1960 will all have larger populations.)

1901--The "New Law" tenement is introduced.

1901--NYC's very own Theodore Roosevelt is sworn in as vice president.  With the assassination of McKinley, Roosevelt will become president in September and remain in the White House until 1909.

1902--Macy's moves to Herald Square.

1902--Andrew Carnegie's mansion on Fifth (now the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum) is completed.

1902--The Fifth Avenue facade and the Great Hall of the Metropolitan Museum are finished.

1902--The beloved Flatiron Building opens where Broadway crosses Fifth.

1903--The Williamsburg Bridge opens.

1903--The New York Stock Exchange moves to its new building on the corner of Wall and Broad.

1903--Three of our oldest and most beautiful Broadway theaters are built in the West Forties--the New Amsterdam, the Lyceum, and the Lyric.  These predate "Times Square."

1904--The trains running up and down Park Avenue convert from steam power to electricity.  This will allow the trains to be completely submerged and hidden. 

1904--The Ansonia opens on the Upper West Side.

1904--Longacre Square becomes Times Square.

1904--The first subway line opens.  (Pictured on left, the first line begins at City Hall, runs north to Forty-second, swings west to Times Square and then up Broadway to 145th.)

1904--Carrying 1300 picnickers from the East Village, the SS General Slocum catches fire on its trip up the East River.  Over 1000 passengers, mainly women and children, will perish.  This will remain the city's greatest loss of life in a single day until the attacks of September eleventh.

1905--The Municipal Staten Island Ferry begins operating with a five-cent fare.

1905--City College opens in Harlem. 

1906--Crazy Harry Thaw fatally shoots famous architect, Stanford White, on the roof of White's own Madison Square Garden.

1907--Motorized taxi cabs and the new Plaza Hotel commence operation on the same day.

1907--J.P. Morgan's Library is completed just in time for the Panic of 1907.  (Morgan hosts an all-night meeting with almost fifty bankers at the library.  At one point, he locks dozens of them inside to force them to come to an agreement that will help avert a crisis,)

1907--The elaborate Custom House by Cass Gilbert at Bowling Green is finished.

1907--The Steinway tunnels connect Manhattan and Queens.

1908--The East River subway tunnel connects Bowling Green and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn and the McAdoo Tunnel connects the west side of Manhattan and Hoboken, New Jersey.

1908--The Singer Building becomes the tallest building in the world.

1909--The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower becomes the tallest building in the world.

1909--Both the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges are opened.

1909--The beautiful Police Headquarters on Centre Street (between Grand and Broome) opens for business.  For fantastic pictures of one of my favorite buildings in the city, click here.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1800-1899

We're now thirty weeks into the project, NYC Decade by Decade.  Here's an abbreviated recap, highly compressed and distilled, of the third century.

1800-1809--Robert Fulton demonstrates his steamship on the North River and transforms maritime trade.

1810-1819--In 1811 two crucial reports are delivered--one divides Manhattan into a grid and the other proposes the construction of the Erie Canal.

1820-1829--The Erie Canal opens in 1825, connecting New York Harbor to the American interior.

1830-1839--With money pouring into the city, three upper class enclaves are built.  Two disasters follow--the Great Fire of 1835 and the Financial Panic of 1837.

1840-1849--Fresh water from the Croton River is brought to the city...thirty million gallons a day.

1850-1859--Central Park is approved and the construction commences.

1860-1869--The Civil War and the 1863 Draft Riots paralyze New York.

1870-1879--The corrupt Tweed Ring is broken.

1880-1889--Architecturally speaking, New York City starts looking familiar (the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty open along with several skyscrapers and housing stock).

1890-1899--The city grows overnight in 1898 with the Consolidation of Greater New York.

FOR GREATER DETAIL, SEE THE PROPER ENTRY...POSTED EVERY THURSDAY

COMING THIS THURSDAY:  THE TWENTIETH CENTURY BEGINS...1900-1909

NYC Decade by Decade--1890-1899...New York Gains Three Hundred Square Miles

After losing the World's Columbian Exposition to Chicago--a major ego blow--New York dedicated itself to restoring its primacy, an obsession that led to more cohesive urban planning (later known as the City Beautiful Movement inspired by the architecture of the very same Chicago World's Fair) and to the Great Consolidation of 1898 wherein Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the rest of the Bronx were joined with Manhattan to become Greater New York.  The city grew from twenty-three square miles to over three hundred, doubling its population (3.4 million) to become the second largest city in the world after London.  So there, Chicago!

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1890--Jacob Riis publishes How the Other Half Lives, a photojournalistic call to arms.

1890--The New York Cancer Hospital (now condos) opens next to Central Park between West 105th and 106th Streets.

1890--Architecturally speaking, the most beautiful Madison Square Garden (the one designed by Stanford White) opens on Madison Square.

1891--Carnegie Hall opens.

1891--The Metropolitan Club opens.

1892--"The Circle" becomes Columbus Circle with the dedication of the Gaetano Russo sculpture. 

1892--The federal government begins processing immigrants on Ellis Island.

1892--The cornerstone is laid for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

1895--William Randolph Hearst acquires The New York Morning Journal and begins a circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer.

1895--The Harlem Ship Canal opens after a channel is dug south of Spuyten Duyvil. 

1895--Stanford White's permanent Washington Square Arch is completed.

1897--Columbia University moves to its fourth and current home on Morningside Heights.

1897--Grant's Tomb is dedicated.

1898--The Great Consolidation.

1899--The Bronx Zoo opens.

1899--The Park Row Building becomes the world's tallest building.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1880-1889...The City Starts Looking Familiar

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1870-1879

1870--Construction on the Brooklyn Bridge begins.

1870--The Equitable Life Assurance Building is completed by George B. Post.  Considered the world's first office building, some trace the birth of the skyscraper to this structure--the first to cohesively incorporate an internal skeleton, passenger elevators and modern utilities.

1870--The Metropolitan Museum of Art is established with its acquisition of 174 paintings and a Roman sarcophagus.

1870--Grand Army Plaza is built on Fifth Avenue at the start of a decade that will see a proliferation of mansions in the area.

1870--Steinway begins buying up lots in northeastern Astoria.  He will construct factories and homes for employees, an entire town devoted to the manufacture of pianos.

1870--Alfred Beach completes his pneumatic subway, built secretly beneath Broadway to prove the feasibility of a subway system.  Nifty, many people think, but elevated railroads will be the form of transit capitalized and expanded during this decade.  The city's first true subway line will not open for 34 years.

1871--The Tweed Ring is exposed and Boss Tweed is arrested.  He will escape jail in 1875, be returned in 1876, and die there in 1878.

1871--Grand Central Depot opens at Forty-Second Street.

1871--The New York State Legislature forbids the dumping of refuse in key waterways including the Hudson, the East River and the Upper Bay.

1873--Another financial panic.  (It wouldn't be a decade without a panic.)

1873--The Angel in the Waters, the famous Central Park statue by Emma Stebbins, first floats above Bethesda Terrace.

1874--A part of the Bronx is annexed to New York City.

1876--Liberty's hand and torch are displayed in Madison Square in order to help raise funds for the Statue's pedestal.

1876--The Tweed Courthouse is finally completed.

1876-1877--The never-ending and stolen election of 1876.  An election won by most accounts by New York governor Samuel Tilden (who prosecuted Tweed) is disputed for months.  Far worse even than the Recount Debacle of 2000, the crooked commission's decision to give the election to Rutherford B. Hayes is announced THREE days before the inauguration.

1877--The Museum of Natural History opens at its current site.

1877--Work on Riverside Park begins.

1878--One of the first telephone exchanges in the world begins operation in Lower Manhattan with a directory of 252 names.  Long before the White Pages, the directory is simply a double-sided card.

1879--St. Patrick's Cathedral is dedicated on Fifth Avenue.

1879--The New Tenement House Law is approved which aims to eliminate the dark rooms and provide more ventilation.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1860-1869

During this decade, the city exploded in three days of rioting.  Still considered the greatest urban insurrection in U.S. history, the Draft Riots took place in July  of 1863 and paralyzed the city.  119 deaths have been verified, but historians generally believe that as many as 1000 perished during the chaotic days of rampage and during the aftermath when order was restored by the military.  (Five regiments of the Union Army were rushed to the city from the battlefield at Gettysburg.)

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1860--The population of Manhattan now exceeds 800,000.

1860--Henry Ward Beecher holds his most famous slave auction at Plymouth Church when he brings a nine-year-old named Pinky in front of his congregation and implores them to buy her freedom.  He then places a ring on her finger and "weds thee to freedom."

1861--The Civil War breaks out.  With so much of the city's economy tied to southern exports, there is talk of the city's secession and the creation of Tri-Insula. 

1861--Brooks Brothers receives their first contract for 12,000 Union uniforms.

1862--The Monitor, the Union's first ironclad, designed by John Ericsson, is launched.  Parts of the ship are built in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and in Manhattan where Thirteenth Street meets the Hudson River.

1865--Abraham Lincoln is assassinated within a week of the end of the Civil War.  He is honored in New York with a massive funeral procession up Broadway.

1865--A municipal fire-fighting system replaces the gangs of volunteer companies.

1866--Henry Bergh establishes the ASPCA.

1866--The rest of Manhattan is incorporated into the grid.  (The 1811 Plan only reached 155th Street.)

1867--Prospect Park in Brooklyn opens.

1867--The stock ticker is patented.  Brokerage houses proliferate.

1868--Andrew Green proposes consolidation for the first time.  Thirty years later, five separate cities will become the five boroughs of Greater New York.

1868--The first elevated railroad is erected in the city, running up Greenwich from the Battery to Cortlandt Street.  (You might as well walk.)

1869--Fisk and Gould corner the gold market.  For the first time in American history, the federal government, (i.e., President Grant) intervenes on a large scale to bring stability to the marketplace. 

1869--Mary Mason Jones and her sister move from Wavery Place to a lot WAY uptown--the northeast corner of Fifty-Seventh and Fifth.  Other wealthy citizens will follow north, "keeping up with the Joneses."

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1850-1859...Central Park, Macy's and McSorley's

The landscape was literally transformed in the 1850's.  The state legislature authorized the city to accumulate hundreds of acres north of Fifty-ninth Street.  By the end of the decade, Olmsted and Vaux's Greensward Plan was chosen as the official design for Central Park.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1851--The New York Times begins publishing as The New York Daily Times with an anti-immigrant platform.

1852--Boss Tweed enters politics as an alderman in the Seventh Ward.

1853--The World's Fair opens in the Crystal Palace beside the Reservoir in what is now Bryant Park.  Otis will demonstrate his elevator safety brake here.  The Crystal Palace, a glass and iron structure, will burn down in 1858. 

1854--McSorley's opens on East Seventh Street.

1855--The theater known as Castle Garden becomes an immigrant depot through which eight million immigrants will pass over the next few decades. 

1855--The first "model tenement" opens at Elizabeth and Mott. 

1856--George Washington by Henry Kirke Brown is erected at Union Square.  It is Manhattan's oldest outdoor bronze and the second equestrian statue carved in the United States.  

1857--Another Financial Panic.

1857--The E.V. Haughwout Building, one of the city's most important landmarks, is built on Broadway and Broome.  The first building in the world to have an Otis safety passenger elevator, it's known today as the Parthenon of Cast Iron Architecture.

1858--R.H. Macy opens a dry goods store on Sixth Avenue and Fourteenth Street.

1858--Theodore Roosevelt, the only U.S. president to be born in New York City...is born in New York City.

1859--The Cooper Institute opens.  See Little Byte below.

 

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; The Works by Kate Ascher; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1840-1849

What was the most significant event of this decade?

From an 1842 diary entry by Philip Hone:  "Nothing is talked of or thought of in New York but Croton Water; fountains, aqueducts, hydrants, and hose attract our attention and impede our progress through the streets...It is astonishing how popular the introduction of water is among all classes of our citizens, and how cheerfully they acquiesce in the enormous expense which will burden them and their posterity with taxes to the last generation.  Water!  Water! is the universal note which is sounded through every part of the city..."

Two years after the Fire of 1835 (and after decades of disease resulting from polluted water), New York began the massive task of bringing fresh water to the city from Westchester County.  The Croton River, more than thirty miles north, was dammed near the Hudson and then diverted through an elaborate series of aqueducts, tunnels and reservoirs.  From The Works:  "Entirely gravity-fed, the system could provide 30 million gallons a day--enough to meet the growing city's need through the turn of the century."

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1841--St. John's (now Fordham) opens in the Bronx.

1842--John Jacob Astor's library opens.  (This collection, opening the same year as the Croton Reservoir, will become part of the New York Public Library whose building in the next century will replace the original Reservoir structure at 42nd and Fifth.) 

1844--Matthew Brady opens his gallery at Broadway and Fulton.

1844--William Cullen Bryant publishes an editorial entitled A New Public Park, launching the movement to create what will become Central Park.

1845--Edgar Allen Poe publishes The Raven in January and becomes an overnight sensation.

1846--The third Trinity Church building--the one that still stands today--is consecrated on May 1st.

1846--The Potato Famine in Ireland will send waves of Irish immigrants to the city.

1846--Twelve blocks up Broadway, at Chambers, A.T. Stewart opens America's first department store and revolutionizes retail.  (In today's dollars, Stewart is ranked as the twenty-fourth wealthiest individual in history.)  See the Little Byte below for more information.

1847--Madison Square is first laid out as a park.

1848--The political uprisings in Germany during this year would send waves of German immigrants to the city.

1849--The Pfizer Pharmaceuticals plant opens in Williamsburg.

1849--Plymouth Church opens in Brooklyn Heights where Henry Ward Beecher will become America's most famous preacher.

1849--James Bogardus designs New York's first complete cast-iron facade.  Cast iron architecture will rise and reign in the next decade. 

1849--More than twenty are killed and more than one hundred are wounded in the Astor Place Riots.  See the Little Byte below for more information.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; The Works by Kate Ascher; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell; The Encyclopedia of New York City, edited by Kenneth T. Jackson.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1830-1839

Following the opening of the Erie Canal, the city became very wealthy...or some people in the city did.  (From this decade onwards, New York would always have the largest gap between its wealthiest and its poorest citizens.) Not one but three upper class enclaves were built in the first three years of the 1830's--the Row on Washington Square, La Grange Terrace on Lafayette, and Gramercy Park.

The decade would also see the first crime of the century and the birth of the tabloid, a financial crisis, and the Great Fire of 1835, one of the worst disasters ever to befall New York.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1831--NYU is founded under the name the University of the City of New York.

1831--The Northern Dispensary (still standing near Sheridan Square) is built north of the city in Greenwich Village.

1832--The New York and Harlem Railroad build the city's first line, which runs on Bowery and Fourth between Prince and Fourteenth Streets.

1833--The New York Sun is founded.

1835--James Gordon Bennett establishes The New York Herald and revolutionizes journalism with the first tabloid.  A penny paper, The New York Herald seems to cater to what the people want to read and its circulation will explode with its sensational coverage of the murder of Helen Jewett (1836). 

1834--The village of Brooklyn becomes the city of Brooklyn.

1835--Executions are no longer public.  The first private execution takes place with a dozen witnesses inside Bellvue.

1835--The tradition of the Christmas tree (brought over by Germans living in Brooklyn) first appears in a piece of American fiction by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.

1835--The Great Fire of 1835 destroys 674 buildings, everything to the southast of Broad and Wall.  The glow of the fire can be seen as far away as Philadelphia. 

1837--The Panic of 1837.  New York loses sixty million dollars.

1837--The New York and Harlem Railroad reaches Harlem.

1838--Green-Wood Cemetery is established.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1820-1829

The 1820's was a decade that forever transformed the city and confirmed its status as the leading financial engine in America.  The year itself was 1825 when the Erie Canal opened, connecting New York Harbor to Lake Erie, and the city to the interior of the nation.  At the time, the longest canal in the nation was twenty-seven miles long.  The Erie Canal, starting at the Hudson just north of Albany, moved like a snake to Lake Erie for three hundred sixty-three miles.

Finding or creating a water passage that would eliminate the expensive portage costs was an important goal in the early years of the Republic.  One of the reasons the capital was moved to the shores of the Potomac was because certain Virginians (e.g., Washington and Jefferson) believed the Potomac was the key to trade with the west.  But it was the economic capital of New York that would finance and build one of the greatest engineering projects in history.  Geographically, New York was also suited for the canal since only New York contained a gap in the mountain chain between Maine and Georgia.

Regarded as the largest public work project until the Interstate Highway Act of 1956, the Erie Canal was completed more than three years ahead of schedule.  Governor DeWitt Clinton, the man behind the project (it was derided as "Clinton's Ditch"), presided over the inaugural passage from Buffalo to New York, through the eighty-three docks and eighteen acqueducts, and ceremonially poured water from Lake Erie into New York Harbor. 

According to the Ric Burns' PBS Documentary on the history of New York, a ton of wheat from Buffalo that used to take three weeks and cost $100 to transport, now reached Manhattan in seven days and only cost $6.  New York became the only city to connect Europe with the American heartland and the Erie Canal would spur a growth (from 1825-1860) that no other U.S. city could rival.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

Manhattan becomes the center of book trade in the U.S.  Harper Brothers almost singlehandedly invents the backlist. 

1820--New York's population reaches 123,706. 

1821--The cornerstone is laid for St. Luke in the Fields.

1821--Across the ocean, Holland sells for scrap paper all remaining records of the Dutch East and West India companies, erasing much of New Amsterdam's history.  (Twelve thousand pages from the colony's early days have recently been discovered in Albany and are currently being translated.  See Russell Shorto's The Island at the Center of the World for the fruits of the first translated batch.)

1822--Clement Clark Moore, part of the Knickerbocker set, writes A Visit from St. Nicholas and helps transform a raucous street holiday centered on class into the cozy, domestic one celebrated with family.  (Click here for a longer explanation.)

1823--New York buys present-day Bryant Park for a potter's field.

1824--65 Mott Street is built.  Thought to be the first tenement ever constructed in the United States, 65 Mott would influence decades of the city's housing stock.

1824--Lafayette returns to America for a farewell tour.  Astor will soon rename a local street Lafayette Street in honor of the Revolutionary War hero and America's first honorary U.S. citizen.

1825--Sing Sing, a larger prison to replace Newgate is built farther "up the river" in Ossining.  With the razing of Newgate, Greenwich Village is able to develop as a desirable residential district.

1826--Castle Clinton, the fort at the southern tip of Manhattan, is turned into a theater and renamed Castle Garden.  

1826-1828--On the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, one of the city's potter's fields is renamed Washington Square and is landscaped as a small park in 1828.  It is intended to increase the value of real estate in the area, which in the following decade will become home to one of the city's first wealthy enclaves.

1827--Slavery is abolished in New York State on the Fourth of July.

1829--The Five Points is given its name.

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.

NYC Decade by Decade: 1810-1819

1811 became one of the most important years in New York history with the presentation of two reports ordered by DeWitt Clinton (frequent mayor and two-term governor).   

The first report had been in the works since 1808.  It was called the Commissioner's Plan or the Randell Plan after John Randell, Jr., who led the team that walked every prospective block of the island from Houston Street up to 155th.  What they surveyed is now known as the grid and it is regarded as one of the most spectacular predictions in urban planning.  That large chunk of Manhattan was broken up into lots twenty-five wide by one hundred feet deep.  Twelve avenues were laid out north-south along with one hundred fifty crosstown streets, twenty to a mile, that facilitated access to the rivers, an important feature for such a nautical city.  The grid would also influence the city's traffic patterns and architecture.

In the following year, Clinton would lose his presidential bid to the incumbent, James Madison, whose name would actually be affixed to a parade ground (Madison Square) that was part of the Commissioner's Plan and a later avenue (between Fourth and Fifth) that was not.

The second report was a proposal for Erie Canal, delivered in March, 1811.  Clinton would be the major proponent in its construction after 1816 and its opening in the following decade would transform the city and nation.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1810--Robert Fulton opens steam ferry service between Manhattan and New Jersey.

1811--The new City Hall building opens north of much of the city.  It is considered one of the most sophisticated architectural achievements in America at the time and remains in operation almost two hundred years later.

1807-1811--New York Harbor is fortified in preparation for a second war with Britain.  Most of these now decommissioned forts remain, most notably Castle Clinton in Battery Park, Castle Williams on Governor's Island, Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, and Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island.

1812-1814--The War of 1812.  Unlike the Revolution, the British never invade New York.  Cornelius Vanderbilt (who owned boats before railroads) makes a name for himself (and a hefty income) as a smuggler in defiance of the British blockade.

1814--A steam ferry begins to run between Manhattan and Brooklyn.

1815--Saint Patrick's between Mulberry and Mott is dedicated. 

1816--The village of Brooklyn (present-day downtown) is incorporated. 

1817--Due to the speed of trade for canal-related securities, the New York Stock and Exchange Board is born as a revisionary update of the twenty-five-year-old Buttonwood Agreement.

1818--The Black Ball line revolutionizes shipping by initiating scheduled service.  Whether or not its hold is full, the ship will begin its journey.  Skeptical crowds gather on the first day to see if the Black Ball line will carry through with this insane idea.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1800-1809

1800-1801--John Jacob Astor, no longer working for his mother-in-law, sends off a ship full of furs to China.  By 1808, when the state charters his American Fur Company, he will be the city's only millionaire.  He will then use his profits to purchase New York real estate and become even richer.

1801--The Brooklyn Navy Yard opens.

1801--Alexander Hamilton builds the Grange in what is now called Hamilton Heights.

1802--The American Company of Booksellers meets in June for the first literary festival in the United States.

1803--The cornerstone is laid for the new City Hall.

1804--Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fight their famous duel across the river in Weehawken, New Jersey.  Hamilton dies the next day. 

1805--In the early part of the decade, Bunker Hill was leveled and tossed into the polluted Collect Pond, which simply made the area a noxious marsh.  In 1805, a canal opens to drain the swamp into the Hudson River.  (Unfortunately, the Hudson often pours its water in the opposite direction and the original water sources help keep the land moist.)  Houses built in this area frequently cave in or collapse. This neighborhood will be known as the Five Points by the end of the decade.

1806--The first free school opens in the city.

1807--Robert Fulton demonstrates his steam ship on the Hudson or North River.  At the time his ship is called the North River Boat, but after his death will be known as the Clermont.  Fulton's invention transforms maritime trade forever.

1807-1809--Washington Irving begins writing for Salmagundi, a magazine that lampoons New York culture.  In November of 1807, he gives the city the name Gotham.  In 1809, Irving publishes his Knickerbocker's History of New York, which is a satire, parody, spoof and false history of the city.

1808--Federalists from eight states meet in New York for the first national political convention in American history.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1700-1799

We're now twenty weeks into the project, NYC Decade by Decade.  Here's an abbreviated recap, highly compressed and distilled, of the second century.

1700-1709--Lord Cornbury, a fierce Anglican and possible drag queen, governs New York and is reviled...and recalled.

1710-1719--The city expands its slave trade by opening a municipal slave market and soon suffers the first of two major slave revolts.

1720-1729--Nothing much seems to happen.  This is possibly the least news-worthy decade in the city's history.  Ironically, this is also the decade when William Bradford begins publishing New York's first newspaper.

1730-1739--The famous Zenger trial takes place on Wall Street, a benchmark in the history of both the freedom of the press and of the sanctity of juries.

1740-1749--This is the decade of the city's second major slave uprising.  Today, most historians believe there was no slave uprising and that this was a case of hysteria--New York's very own Salem Witch Trial.

1750-1759--Thanks to the French and Indian War, New York becomes richer and a true gentry begins to form.

1760-1769--Thanks to the French and Indian War, New Yorkers and other colonists are threatened with taxation.  The Stamp Act Congress meets in New York, there are protests, and the Stamp Act is repealed.

1770-1779--The Crown still presses for compensation and the colonies revolt.  Washington tries to save New York but it falls to the British and to a massive conflagaration in 1776.

1780-1789--The British evacuate and Washington returns triumphant.  New York becomes the capital of both the state and federal governments.

1790-1799--New York loses both the state and federal governments, but retains its status as the financial capital.  The Buttonwood Agreement is signed and what will become the New York Stock Exchange is born.

FOR GREATER DETAIL, SEE THE PROPER ENTRY...POSTED EVERY THURSDAY

COMING THIS THURSDAY:  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY BEGINS...1800-1809

NYC Decade by Decade--1790-1799...Capitalizing and Decapitalizing

When the decade opened, New York was the capital of both the state and the nation.  In the summer of 1790, however, the federal government would decamp and move to its temporary home in Philadelphia.  In 1797, the state government would move to Albany (where today the legislature is hailed as the country's preeminent clown college).

Thomas Jefferson didn't trust Alexander Hamilton or the moneyed men of New York who were now cheek by jowl with the lawmakers.  Jefferson was not a fan of the town, which he frequently referred to as Hamiltonopolis and described as "a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature."  His fellow slave-holding agrarian southerners also feared a capital located in one of the most commercial of the northern cities.  Southerners thought their fears realized when Hamilton, as first Secretary of the Treasury, proposed a federal absorption of state debts incurred during the Revolution.  Most of the southern states, including Virginia, had paid off their debtors.  Most of the northern states had not.  New York, in fact, had the highest debt.

Jefferson saw in this an opportunity to relocate the capital closer to Monticello.  He invited Hamilton and Madison to dinner at his home on Maiden Lane where they came to a preliminary agreement that would later be called the Compromise of 1790.  Jefferson and Madison agreed to support Hamilton's proposal for the federal absorption of state debt.  In exchange, Hamilton would persuade northern legislators to vote for the transfer of the capital to a swamp between Maryland and Virginia.  (Pennsylvanians later pledged their support as long as the government met in Philadelphia while the new city was being built.)  Congress had their last meeting in Federal Hall on August 12, 1790, and the president left on August 30.

From New York:  An Illustrated History:  "Known after as 'the deal,' the simple swap of power for money had profound consequences for the future of New York.  Never again in its history would the city be asked to represent the entire spectrum of the nation's political interests.  Nor would it be weighted down with the symbolic obligations and ceremonial trappings a national capital entailed.  Henceforth, New York would go it alone, and dedicate itself unswervingly to what since the days of the Dutch had come most naturally:  making money.  Some New Yorkers were devastated by the loss of the capital.  But Hamilton was philosophical.  To fund the huge new debt he had gotten the federal government to assume, he immediately had the Treasury Department issue $80 million in government bonds, and soon money was pouring into New York City, as the trade in stocks and bonds soared."

Because of the influx of money, there was some unscrupulous activity that led to the Panic of 1792.  Later that year, twenty-four brokers who had been trading beneath a buttonwood(sycamore) tree on Wall Street, signed the Buttonwood Agreement, wherein they pledged to trade with each other and set a system of standard fees.  This was intended to separate honest, legitimate investors from crooked speculators and it is regarded as the birth of what would become the New York Stock Exchange.  

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1790--The second Trinity Church building opens.

1791--The New York Dispensary opens at Beekman and Nassau and the state government finances the reopening of New York Hospital, which provides free health care to the poor and houses the nation's first nursing hospital.

1794--The Common Council authorizes the renaming of streets with royal monikers.  King Street becomes Pine, Little Queen becomes Cedar, Crown becomes Liberty, Prince becomes Rose, Princess becomes Beaver, and Duke becomes Stone.  (New York itself, named after a duke who became a king of England, remains New York.)

1794--The city buys an estate on the East River called Bellevue and opens up the first contagious disease hospital.

1794--The city's first grand hotel, named simply the City Hotel, opens on Broadway just north of Trinity Church.

1796--South and West Streets are laid out and graded.  (Around this time, Wall Street is improved and the last few blocks of Broadway are made to slope gently down to Bowling Green.)

1797--Washington Square is purchased to serve as a potter's field for the victims of the numerous yellow fever epidemics downtown.  Greenwich Village is developed by citizens fleeing the outbreaks.  One year later, in 1798, the worst of the epidemics will kill 2,086.

1797--The first state penitentiary, Newgate Prison, opens "up the river" at present-day Hudson and Tenth Streets.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.

NYC Decade by Decade--1780-1789...Out with the Brits, In with the Feds

On October, 1781, word reached New York that the British forces had surrendered at Yorktown.  Hostilities were officially suspended in February of 1783.  The British finally left Manhattan in November--two years after the final battle.  On November 25, Evacuation Day, Washington led his army into the city and claimed New York for the Americans.  (Click for more on Evacuation Day.)

With the occupying forces gone, there was work to do:  buildings to rebuild; new trading strategies to devise; and punishments to mete out.  No colony turned its wrath against former Loyalists like New York.  (No colony probably had as many to punish.)  There were mass confiscations of property belonging to sympathizers of the crown. 

Alexander Hamilton, now a married lawyer at twenty-seven, moved back to New York and became a star.  Hamilton played a persuasive role in making New York the de facto capital for the nation in 1785 when the Continental Congress decided to meet there.  Along with James Madison and John Jay, Hamilton wrote multiple essays in what were known as the Federalist Papers and was instrumental in convincing New York to ratify the Constitution.

New York and Rhode Island, however, did hold out until they were assured that certain amendments would be made to the Constitution.  A second Constitutional Congress was held in New York and the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were drafted.  Hamilton was so loved in the city for his advocacy for a federal government that there was talk, at least during enthusiastic rallies, of renaming New York Hamiltoniana.

New York became the official capital in March of 1789 and George Washington was inaugurated on Wall Street on April 30th.  Hamilton became the first Secretary of the Treasury; Jay, the first Chief Justice; Thomas Jefferson, the first Secretary of State; and John Adams, the first vice president.  Madison, John Monroe and so many other Founding Fathers worked and lived in Lower Manhattan.  Plans were made to create grand avenues and vistas appropriate for a capital, but by the following August the federal government would be gone.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1784--New York's first bank opens.  Aptly named the Bank of New York, it will be the first traded stock of the New York Stock Exchange (1792).

1784--John Jacob Astor, twenty-one years old, arrives in the city where he works at his mother-in-law's store on Queen Street selling musical instruments.  He will eventually turn to the fur trade and then real estate and will become the richest man in the United States.

1785--The cornerstone is laid for St. Peter's Church (the oldest Catholic parish in the city) on Barclay Street.  That church will stand until 1836 when the modern Greek Revival structure replaces it.

1789--In the summer, the old fort dating back to the early years of the Dutch colony, is demolished to make room for a new federal district.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; 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.