New York

History

Four hundred years ago, the present-day site of New York City was forest land inhabited by Algonquin and Iroquois Indians who called the central island "Manhattan," which meant "city of hills." In 1609 Henry Hudson (c. 1550–1611), an Englishman employed by the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river that now bears his name, and settlement of the region began five years later. In 1625 the first permanent European settlement—a trading post called New Amsterdam—was formed on Manhattan, and the Dutch "purchased" the island from its Native American inhabitants by bartering items that amounted to the modern equivalent of $24.

By 1664, the Netherlands' colonial rivals, the British, had taken control of the growing settlement and renamed it New York, and it became their second-busiest trading port in North America, surpassed only by Boston to the north. The rapidly growing town had about 4,000 residents by the turn of the century, and had nearly doubled its population by 1720, becoming the third-largest population center in the British colonies. New Yorkers played an active role in the agitation that led to the American Revolutionary Revolutionary War (1775–83). The city was overrun and occupied by British forces early in the war, and the occupation continued throughout the conflict. In the period after the colonies won their independence, New York served briefly as the seat of the new nation's government (from 1785 to 1790).

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, New York—with a population of 30,000—had become the nation's second-largest city, after Philadelphia. In the first half of the century, the city's growth was further bolstered by the opening of the Erie Canal linking the East Coast with the Great Lakes, and by the first waves of mass immigration, from Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia. Although New York was a center of the abolitionist movement, pro-slavery feeling was strong among unskilled laborers who feared that their jobs would be threatened by freed slaves. The Civil War (1861–65) brought a new economic boom, and the city's population reached one million by the 1870s. By this time, New York's government had become a locus of graft and corruption under the infamous Tammany Hall political machine, which spurred a series of political reforms. The last two decades of the century saw new waves of immigration, much of it from Eastern Europe, and the completion of some of the city's greatest landmarks, including the Metropolitan Opera House and the Statue of Liberty (1882), and the Brooklyn Bridge (1883). The immigration station at Ellis Island opened in 1892.

In 1898 New York achieved its present form with the official consolidation of its five boroughs to form

Greater New York City, with a population of three million. The shape of things to come was previewed in the first years of the new century: the Flatiron building—one of its first skyscrapers—went up in 1902, and the first subway line opened in 1904. During World War I (1914–18), New York was a major shipping center for Allied weapons and military equipment. The 1920s brought an era of cultural brilliance marked by the achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table and the founding of the New Yorker magazine, and the growth of Greenwich Village as a bohemian mecca for writers and others involved in the arts. In 1929 New York was the epicenter of the stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression of the following decade. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia (1882–1947; mayor, 1933–1945) led the city through these dark times, which nevertheless saw the construction of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and the Chrysler Building, the reform of local government, the hosting of two World's Fairs, and the introduction of the Art Deco style into art and architecture.

New York's international stature was further enhanced with the establishment of United Nations headquarters in the city following World War II (1939–45). It was also during the post-war era that the city became an international leader in the fields of culture and fashion. In every decade, the city became a focal point for trends in popular culture, from the literary "beat generation" of the 1950s to the counterculture of the 1960s and the opening of the disco club Studio 54 in the 1970s. Beginning in the 1950s, a wave of Puerto Rican immigration and increased migration of blacks to the city from rural areas transformed the city's ethnic makeup, leading to the flight of whites from the city and the eruption of racial tensions in the 1960s. The erosion of the city's tax base, aggravated by the flight of businesses, brought the city to the point of bankruptcy by 1975. It was rescued by the newly formed Municipal Assistance Corporation, and a new mayor, Ed Koch (b. 1924; mayor 1978–90) helped reverse the city's decline through his policies and his popularity with ordinary citizens.

By the late 1980s New York, together with much of the country, was slipping into recession. In 1989 the city elected its first black mayor, David Dinkins (b. 1927; mayor 1990–1994), who was replaced in the 1993 mayoral election by U.S. attorney Rudolph Giuliani (b. 1944; mayor 1994–), the first Republican to hold the post in 28 years. The city's fortunes revived in the 1990s as the city shared in the country's economic upswing, and tourism boomed. Giuliani was credited with a major decrease in the New York's crime rate, although the city's police department drew universal condemnation in the late 1990s for widely publicized incidents of brutality against members of minority groups.