# 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/New York City

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​NEW YORK (CITY), the largest city of New York state, U.S.A., situated at the junction of the Hudson river, here called the North river, with the narrow East river (actually a strait connecting Long Island Sound with the Upper Bay), and between Long Island Sound and the Atlantic Ocean. It is composed of five boroughs: the Borough of the Bronx on the south-easternmost part of the mainland of New York state; the Borough of Manhattan on Manhattan Island (including also other small islands) immediately S. and S.W. of the Bronx, and bounded on the W. by the North river, on the E. by the East river, and on the S. by New York Bay; the Borough of Richmond (Staten Island, q.v.), the southernmost and westernmost part of the city; and on the western end of Long Island, the Borough of Brooklyn (q.v.), and, N. of it, the Borough of Queens. The city hall, in the southern part of Manhattan Island, is in lat. 40° 42′ 43″ N. and long. 74° 0′ 3″ W. The greatest width of the city E. and W. is 16 m., and the greatest length N. and S. is 32 m.; its area is about 326·97 sq. m. (285·72 sq. m. more than in 1890), of which Manhattan Borough constitutes nearly 21·93 sq. m., the Borough of the Bronx about 41·7 sq. m., the Borough of Queens about 129·5 sq. m., the Borough of Brooklyn 77·6 sq. m., and the Borough of Richmond 55·2 sq. m. The total waterfront of the city is 341·22 m., and much of it, especially on the lower part of Manhattan, is made ground.
New York harbour is one of the most beautiful, largest and best of the world’s great ports. Over the bar (Sandy Hook), about 20 m. S. of the S. end of Manhattan Island, is the “Main Ship Bayside-Gedney channel,” 1000 ft. wide and 30 ft. deep; By 1909 the Federal government had completed 71/2 m. of the Ambrose channel farther to the E. and 40 ft. deep, and 950–1600 ft. wide (2200 ft. is the projected width). A third ​ channel, the South and Swash, is used by coasting vessels drawing about 20 ft. The harbour is divided into three parts: the Lower Bay, the Upper Bay and the North and East rivers. The Lower Bay (about 88 sq. m.) of which Raritan Bay on the S.W., Sandy Hook Bay on the S.E., and Gravesend Bay on the N.E. form parts, and to which the channels mentioned afford entrance from the ocean, has Staten Island to the W. and N., Brooklyn to the N. and E., and the New Jersey shore to the S. and W. The Upper Bay has an area of 14 sq. m., is the immediate embouchure of the North and the East river, is connected with the Lower Bay by the Narrows (minimum width 1 m.) and with Newark Bay to the W. by Kill Van Kull, immediately N. of Staten Island, and, except for these four narrow water-ways, is enclosed by land. The North river (maximum depth, 60 ft.) is here about 1 m. wide and the East river (maximum depth more than 100 ft.; in Hell Gate channel about 200 ft.) is about 3/4 m. wide and, from the Battery to Throg’s Neck and Willett’s Point, where Long Island Sound proper begins, about 20 m. long. The north-east entrance to the harbour, from Long Island Sound by the East river, used principally by New England coasting vessels (especially coal barges), was made navigable for vessels of 25–27 ft. draft by the Federal government, which in 1870–1876 and in 1885 widened and deepened the formerly dangerous narrows and removed the reefs of Hell Gate, between Manhattan Island (E. 88th Street), Blackwell’s Island, Astoria (on the Long Island shore), and Ward’s Island. The third great entry and commercial feeder to the harbour is the North river, by which the great inland water-borne traffic of the Hudson river and the Erie Canal is brought to the port of New York. On the North river are the piers of the transatlantic steamship companies, part of them on the New Jersey side at Hoboken (q.v.). The coastwise trade with New England, especially through Long Island Sound, is largely from the East river, to which a part of the Hudson river traffic makes its way by the Harlem river. The Harlem is a place of anchorage for small craft.
The narrow approaches to the harbour from the ocean and from Long Island Sound make its fortification easy. On Sandy Hook, less than 8 m. from the nearest points of Rockaway Beach and Coney Island on the other side of the entrance, is Fort Hancock, established as a military reservation (1366 acres) in 1892; it received its present name in 1895, and has an artillery garrison. Between the lower and upper bays, on the Narrows, are Fort Wadsworth (1827; named in honour of General James S. Wadsworth (1807–1864), killed in the battle of the Wilderness), on the Staten Island side, a reservation of 230 acres, including Fort Tompkins, on higher ground than Fort Wadsworth proper, and, across the Narrows, on the Long Island shore, Fort Hamilton (1831), with a reservation of 167 acres. Older fortifications are Fort Lafayette (1807; called Fort Diamond until 1823), between Forts Hamilton and Wadsworth on an artificial island, now used to store ordnance and supplies, and Fort Columbus (1806), South Battery (1812) and Castle Williams (built in 1811 by Jonathan Williams (1750–1815), who planned all the earlier fortifications of New York harbour; it is now a military prison), all on Governor’s Island, where are important barracks and the New York arsenal of the Ordnance Department. The north-eastern approach to the harbour, at the entrance to Long Island Sound, is protected by fortifications, Fort Totten, at Willett’s Point (1862), and directly across from this battery by Fort Schuyler (1826; post established 1856) with a reservation of 52 acres on Throg’s Neck.
Geology.—Manhattan Island (131/2 m. long; maximum width at 14th Street—21/4 m.; average width about 2 m.) is a “group of gneissoid islands separated . . . by low levels slightly elevated above tide and filled with drift and alluvium” (L. D. Gale in W. W. Mather’s Geology of New York, 1843), with a steep west wall from Manhattanville (125th Street W. of 8th Avenue) S. beyond 81st Street, and a much steeper east wall. Upon its first occupation by the Dutch the island was rough and rocky with brooks, ponds, marshes and several swamps. Superficially the island may be divided into: an area of drift, S. of 21st Street on the East river, of 13th street on Broadway and of 31st Street on the North river; a second, narrow area of drift running from Hell Gate N.W. to Manhattanville in a line parallel to the Harlem; a limestone (Inwood limestone) area on the Harlem from its mouth to the sharp turn in its course; a second and smaller limestone area on the Spuyten Duyvil in the north-westernmost part of the island; and the remainder areas of gneiss, the larger part being in two great “islands,” one between the line of E. 21st Street, 13th Street and W. 31st Street, already mentioned, and a line from Hell Gate to Manhattanville, and the other nearly joining the first at Manhattanville and covering all the narrow N.W. part of Manhattan Island except the second limestone area on the Spuyten Duyvil. These two gneiss areas have a southerly tilt; they are named respectively Washington and Morningside Heights. In all these areas, except the limestone, the underlying rock is what is styled Manhattan schist (see U.S. Geologic Atlas, N.Y. City, folio No. 83). The waterfront of Manhattan does not correspond in direction with limestone belts, but is probably due to lines of fracture (see W. H. Hobbs, in Bulletin, Geological Society of America, xvi. 151-182).
The Borough of the Bronx is made of high N.E. and S.W. ridges, sloping E. to the lower shores of Long Island Sound; and the Boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens form part of the great terminal moraine. Low serpentine hills (300-380 ft.), with a N.E. and S.W. trend, occupy the central part of the northern end of Staten Island; W. of this is Jura-Trias formation, crossed in its centre by a narrow strip of igneous dike rock; the E. and S. part of the island is Cretaceous. Yellow gravel is one of the many evidences of glacial drift; but the S.E. part of the island was not encroached upon by the moraine.
Climate.—A combination of marine and continental influences produces a humid climate subject to sudden changes of temperature. The temperature, however, rises above 90° F. only six days in a year on the average; it rarely falls below zero; and in a period of thirty-eight years, from 1871 to 1908, extremes ranged between 100°, in September 1881, and −6°, in February 1899. The mean winter temperature (December, January and February) is 32°; the mean summer temperature (June, July and August) is 72°; and the mean annual temperature is 52°. The average monthly rainfall ranges from 3·2 in. in May to 4·5 in. in July and in August, and the mean annual precipitation is 44·8 in. The average annual fall of snow amounts to 37 in., of which 11·5 in. falls in February, 8·7 in. in January and 8·2 in. in March. The average number of hours of sunshine ranges from 150 in November to 271 in June. The prevailing winds are N.W., except in June when they are S.W.
Streets.—In the downtown portion of Manhattan Island, a strip about 2 m. long, some streets follow the irregular water-fronts and others cross these; and on the west side this irregularity extends farther N., in the former Greenwich village (W. and N.W. of Washington Square), where West 4th Street, running N.W., crosses West 12th Street, running S.W. north of Houston Street, then North Street, the northernmost limit of the occupied city; in 1807 a commission laid out the island into streets, which were numbered from S. to N. and were called East and West, as they were E. or W. of Broadway, below 8th Street, and of Fifth Avenue, above 8th, and into avenues, which were numbered from E. to W., Twelfth Avenue being on the North river waterfront. East of First Avenue in a bulge of the Island S. of 23rd Street four additional avenues were named A, B, C, and D, Avenue A being one block E. of First Avenue. Afterwards Madison Avenue was laid out midway between Fourth and Fifth Avenues, N. from 23rd Street, and Lexington Avenue, midway between Third and Fourth Avenues, N. from 21st Street. The most important of the avenues is Broadway, an unfortunately narrow street in the busy downtown part of its course. From Bowling Green, immediately N. of the Battery, it goes in a straight line (E. of N.) for about 21/2 m. to 10th Street; then bears off to the W. It is called the Boulevard from 78th Street to 162nd Street in its course between Amsterdam Avenue and West End (or Eleventh) Avenue (to 104th Street), and then as a continuation of West End Avenue; and thence to the Yonkers city line is called Kingsbridge Road. The monotonous regularity of the rectangular street plan of Manhattan above 14th Street is partly redeemed by this westward trend of Broadway, the only ​ old street in this part of the city. The Bowery, extending N. from Chatham Square to East 4th St. (practically continued by Fourth Avenue), is not now a street of commercial importance, being largely taken up with Yiddish tenements. Broadway, in its southernmost part, is a financial and business street; the financial interests centre particularly about Wall Street, which is about one-third of a mile above the Battery, runs E. from Broadway, and was named from a redoubt built here by the Dutch in 1653 on news of a threatened attack by the English. The wholesale dry goods district is on Broadway and the side streets between Reade and Prince Streets and the wholesale grocery district immediately W. of this. In Maiden Lane is the wholesale jewelry trade. The leather and hide trade is centred immediately S. of the approaches to the Brooklyn Bridge. A little farther up-town on the East Side is the tenement district, one of the most crowded in the world. The principal shopping districts are on Broadway from 17th Street to 34th Street; on Sixth Avenue from 14th Street to 34th Street; and to an increasing degree on Fifth Avenue from 23rd Street to 42nd Street, and on the cross-streets in this area, especially 23rd, 34th and 42nd Streets. Next to Broadway the best known of the avenues is Fifth Avenue, which extends from Washington Square to the Harlem river (143rd Street) in a straight line. On Fifth Avenue there are a few residences in its lower part and between 34th and 45th Streets; but N. of 50th and on the E. side of Central Park are many fine residences. The cross streets within one block to the W. and two blocks to the E. of Fifth Avenue, Central Park West, and in general the upper West Side and in particular Riverside Drive, high above the North river, are the newer residential parts of the city.
Parks.—The park system in 1908 included property valued at $501,604,188. The principal parks are: Central Park in Manhattan; Prospect Park in Brooklyn (q.v.); and Bronx Park, Van Cortlandt Park and Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. The first park (as distinguished from “square”) of any size in Manhattan was Central Park (840 acres; between 59th and 110th Streets and between 5th and 8th Avenues; about 21/2 m. long and 1/2 m. wide), which was laid out (beginning in 1857) by F. L. Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Nearly one-half is wooded, with a variety of native and foreign trees and shrubs. The park contains a large pond, the Mere, in the N.E. corner; the Croton retaining reservoir and the receiving reservoir, and other sheets of water. Near the 65th Street entrance from 5th Avenue is the Arsenal, the executive quarters of the Department of Parks, with a meteorological observatory (1869).
Pelham Bay Park (1756 acres), in the north-easternmost corner of the city, lies on Long Island Sound, includes Hunter’s Island and Twin Islands, and has a total shore front of about 9 m. Bordering on the city of Yonkers, S. (from 262nd Street) to 242nd Street, is Van Cortlandt Park (1132 acres), in which are the Van Cortlandt Mansion (1748), for a time Washington’s headquarters and now a Revolutionary Museum under the Colonial Dames, a parade-ground (75 acres), and Van Cortlandt Lake, a skating pond. East of Van Cortlandt Park is Woodlawn Cemetery. Mosholu Parkway (600 ft. wide and about 6000 ft. long) leads from Van Cortlandt Park to the S.E., and Bronx and Pelham Parkway (400 ft. wide and 12,000 ft. long) from Pelham Bay Park to the S.W. connecting these parks with Bronx Park (719 acres) on either side of the Bronx river, a small stream which here broadens into lakes and ponds and has a fall at the lower end of the park. Bronx Park reaches from 180th Street to 205th Street. The northern part is occupied by the New York Botanical Gardens and the southern part by the Zoological Park.
Battery Park is at the southern end of Manhattan; here are the New York Aquarium (in what was until 1896 Castle Garden, on the site of Fort Clinton) and a children’s playground (1903). In City Hall Park are the public buildings mentioned below.
The other down-town open spaces are small; many of them are recreation grounds, some, such as Mulberry Bend Park and Hamilton Fish Park, being on the site of former slums, condemned by the city at great expense. Especially in this part of the city municipal recreation piers and free baths have been constructed. Washington Square (1827), between Waverley Place, Wooster and Macdougal Streets, at the foot of 5th Avenue, became a pauper burial-ground about 1797, and was laid out as a park in 1827; on the N. side of the square there are still a few fine old residences. Union Square, between Broadway and 4th Avenue, is a favourite place for workmen’s mass meetings. Madison Square is reclaimed swampy ground on which there was an arsenal in 1806–1815, then a parade-ground, and in 1825–1839 a municipal House of Refuge in the old barracks, and which was then laid out as a park and was a fashionable centre in 1850–1875. Bryant Park on Sixth Avenue, between 40th and 42nd Streets, was a Potter’s Field in 1813–1823, and in 1853 was the site of a world’s fair with Crystal Palace, which was destroyed in 1858. In De Witt Clinton Park between 52nd and 54th Streets on the North river, there was the first children’s farm school in New York. Riverside Park (140 acres; 1872), between 72nd and 129th Streets, on the North river front, is a finely wooded natural terrace with winding paths. Morningside Park (311/5 acres), between W. 110th and 123rd Streets, beautifully wooded, and Mount Morris Park (20 1/6 acres) from 120th to 124th Streets, interrupting Fifth Avenue, are high rough ground, Mount Morris being the highest point on Manhattan Island.
Among the other parks in the north part of Manhattan Island are: Roger Morris Park, between 160th and 162nd Streets, containing the Roger Morris or Jumel Mansion (1763), Washington’s headquarters for five weeks in 1776, then the headquarters of Sir Henry Clinton, and after 1777 of the Hessian officers; High Bridge Park (731/4 acres) at the Manhattan end of High Bridge, between W. 170th and 175th Streets; Audubon Park between 155th and 158th Streets, from Broadway to the North river, the home in 1840–1851 of John James Audubon; and Ft. Washington (404/5 acres) from 171st to 183rd Streets on the North river, the site of Ft. Washington in the War of Independence. Along the W. bank of the Harlem river for about 3 m. N. and N.W. is the Harlem River Driveway (or speedway), about 95 ft. wide. Besides the large parks in the Bronx the more important are Crotona (154·6 acres), and Poe Park (21/3 acres) on E. 192nd Street, the site of E. A. Poe’s Fordham cottage. The great baseball grounds of the National and American leagues furnish amusement to the crowds interested in professional baseball. Coney Island (q.v.), similar resorts on Staten Island, on the shores of the North river and on Long Island on the Sound, and on the Hudson river are popular amusement places.
Buildings.—The city’s sky-line is broken by the tall business buildings, known as “sky-scrapers,” the construction of which was made necessary by the narrowness of the down-town portion of the island in which the increasing business population had to be accommodated. The ten-storey Tower Building (1889; 21 ft. wide; first 9 then 11 storeys; replaced in 1908–1910 by a taller and wider building) was the first of these, and was soon followed by much taller ones.
The prominent business buildings include the Singer Sewing-Machine Company’s Building (612 ft. high, built in 1905–1908 by Ernest Flagg); the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s Building (693 ft.; completed in 1909); the Produce Exchange (with a 225-ft. tower); the Manhattan Life Building (with a 360-ft. tower); the Empire Building (20 storeys); on Wall Street, the Drexel Building, the Trust Company of America (23 storeys), and the National City Bank; on Broad Street, the white marble Stock Exchange (1903), the Broad Exchange Building (276 ft. high), and the Commercial Cable Building (317 ft. high); in Cedar Street, the New York Clearing House; in Liberty Street, the New York Chamber of Commerce (1903), built of white marble and granite, with Ionic columns, the Trinity Building (with a Gothic façade) and the United States Realty Building (both by F. H. Kimball), the City Investing Building (32 storeys; 486 ft. high); in Church Street, the Hudson Terminal Buildings (1909, Clinton & Russell), 22 storeys high, with four storeys below ground (including the terminal of the down-town Hudson tunnels), office buildings with a tenant population of 10,000; in Park Row, the Park Row Building (30 storeys; 390 ft. high), and the office building of the World (the Pulitzer Building, with a dome 310 ft. high); the white marble Home Life Insurance Building with its sloping red tiled roof; the Fuller (or “Flatiron”) Building (290 ft. high); and the New York Times Building (363 ft. high) at 42nd Street and Broadway.
The principal public buildings are: the Custom House (1902–1907; by Cass Gilbert), on the site of Fort Amsterdam, built of granite in the French Renaissance style; in Wall Street, the United States Sub-Treasury, on the site of Federal Hall, in which George Washington was inaugurated first president of the United States; and in and about City Hall Park, the Post ​ Office, the Italian Renaissance City Hall by John McComb, Jr., 1803–1812 (architecturally the best of the public buildings); the Court House, the Hall of Records (French Renaissance), and a new Municipal Building with a lantern 559 ft. high, the main building of 23 storeys being pierced by an arcade through which Chambers Street runs; a little farther N. and E. of Broadway, the Tombs (1898–1899), the city prison, connected by a flying bridge called “the Bridge of Sighs” with the Criminal Courts; at Madison Avenue and 25th Street, the elaborate Appellate Court House (J. B. Lord); and on Fifth Avenue (40th-42nd Sts.) the new Public Library (1911). There are several large armouries of the state militia in the city, the best known being those of the 7th, 69th and 71st regiments.
Churches.—Historically the foremost religious denomination in New York City is the Dutch Reformed. The consistory of the Collegiate Church, controlling several churches, is the oldest ecclesiastical organization in the city, dating from 1628, when there was a Dutch church “in the Fort.” After the city passed into the hands of the English the Protestant Episcopal Church rapidly increased in power, and in 1705 received the grant of the “Queen’s Farm” between Christopher and Vesey streets. This immense wealth is held by the corporation of Trinity Church. Its present building (1839–1846; by R. M. Upjohn) is on the site of a church built in 1696, at the head of Wall Street on Broadway. The bronze doors are a memorial to J. J. Astor, and the altar and reredos, to W. B. Astor. In the churchyard are the graves of Alexander Hamilton, Robert Fulton, Captain James Lawrence, Albert Gallatin, William Bradford, the colonial printer, and General Phil Kearny. Many of the largest Episcopalian churches in the city were founded as its chapels, including St Paul’s (1766), the oldest church building in the city. Trinity has several important chapels dependent on it. The Presbyterian Church is relatively stronger in New York than in any other city in the country with the possible exceptions of Philadelphia and Pittsburg. The first Methodist Episcopal society in the United States was formed in New York in 1766 and still exists as the John Street Church. The varied immigration to the city had brought in the other Protestant sects; the large Irish immigration of the first two-thirds of the 19th century, and the great Hebrew migration of the last part of the same century, made the Roman Catholic and the Jewish denominations strong. The city became the see of a Roman Catholic bishop in 1808 and of an archbishop in 1850. The Roman Catholic Cathedral, St Patrick’s (50th-51st Streets; Fifth-Madison Avenues), is the head of the archdiocese of New York; it is the largest and one of the most elaborately decorated churches in the country, designed by James Renwick and erected in 1850–1879, with a Lady Chapel added in 1903. It is in Decorated style and is built principally of white marble. Behind the Cathedral on Madison Avenue is the archiepiscopal residence. The Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, on 112th Street near Morningside Park, was begun in 1892; the crypt and St Saviour’s Chapel were completed in 1910. Other prominent Episcopalian churches are: Christ Church, organized in 1794, the second parish in age to Trinity; St Mark’s, an old parish with a colonial church (1829); Grace Church (organized in 1808), since 1844 in a commanding position at Broadway and 10th Street, at the first turn in Broadway, with a building of white limestone in Decorated style with a graceful stone spire; the Church of the Ascension (1840) with John La Farge’s mural painting of the Ascension, a chancel by Stanford White, and Sienese marble walls and pulpit; and the Church of the Transfiguration (1849), nicknamed “The Little Church around the Corner,” and famous under the charge of Dr George H. Houghton (1820–1897) as the church attended by many actors. It has a memorial window to Edwin Booth by John La Farge. Of Presbyterian churches the First (organized in 1719) long occupied a brick church on Wall Street, near the old City Hall, and since 1845 has been on Fifth Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets; and the Madison Square Church was organized in 1853, and after 1907 occupied one of the most striking ecclesiastical buildings in the city, in a quasi-Byzantine style, with a golden dome and a facade of six pale green granite Corinthian columns. The First Baptist Church (organized 1762; present building on Broadway and 79th Street) is the oldest and the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church (1841) is the richest society of that denomination in the city; the Memorial Church (1838) is a memorial to Adoniram Judson. The first Congregational Church was built in 1809, but it was soon sold and the congregation disbanded; the Broadway Tabernacle on Broadway, near Worth Street, was a famous church in 1840–1857; the present church is at Broadway and 56th Street. St Peter’s (Roman Catholic; 1785) is the oldest Catholic organization in the city; St Patrick’s (1815) was formerly the cathedral church, and St Paul the Apostle (Paulist; 1859; rebuilt 1876–1885, with decorations by John La Farge) was established by Isaac Hecker. There are many Jewish synagogues and temples.
Hotels.—The principal hotels, clubs and theatres of New York City have steadily been making their way up-town. Both hotels and clubs had their origin in the taverns of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Fraunces’s Tavern, on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, built in 1719, used as a residence of the De Lancey family, sold in 1762 to Samuel Fraunces (Washington’s steward after 1789), who opened it as the Queen’s Head or Queen Charlotte, used for a time (1768) as the meeting-place of the Chamber of Commerce, and the scene, in its assembly room, of Washington’s farewell to his officers in 1783; it was restored in 1907 by the New York State Society of The Sons of the Revolution, which owns the building. There are now few first-class hotels in the down-town district, the Astor House being the principal exception to the rule that the hotel district is bounded by 23rd and 59th Streets, and by Fourth and Seventh Avenues. With the rapid increase in the value of New York City real estate many apartment-hotels have been built, especially on the upper west side. The most widely-known restaurants are Delmonico’s and Sherry’s, both at Fifth Avenue and 44th Street.
Clubs.—The clubs of New York are even more important to the social life than those of London, and most of them are splendidly housed and appointed. The oldest of the social clubs is the Union Club, organized in 1836. The Union League Club (organized 1863, incorporated 1865) was formed by members of the U.S. Sanitary Commission, and is the club of the leaders of the Republican party in the city. The Democratic organizations corresponding to it are the Manhattan Club (organized 1865, reorganized in 1877), and the Democratic Club, more closely allied with the local organization of Tammany Hall. The Metropolitan Club was formed in 1891 by members of the Union Club, with which the Calumet Club (1879) also is closely connected. The Knickerbocker Club was founded in 1871 by descendants of early settlers; and the St Nicholas Club by descendants of residents of the city or state before 1785. The University Club (1865, for college graduates only) has one of the handsomest club-houses in the world. Among the special clubs chiefly for writers, artists, actors and musicians, are the Century Association (1847, membership originally limited to 100, devoted to the advancement of art and literature); the Lotos Club (1870, composed of journalists, artists, musicians, actors and “amateurs” of literature, science and fine arts); the Salmagundi Club (1871, artists); the Lambs’ Club (1874, “for the social intercourse of members of the dramatic and musical professions with men of the world”); the Players’ (1887, actors and authors, artists and musicians), whose building was the gift of Edwin Booth, its founder and first president; the Grolier Club (1884, bibliophiles); the Cosmos Club (1885, members must have read von Humboldt’s Cosmos); and the New York Press Club (1872, journalists). The Sorosis (1868) is a women’s club, largely professional. Other clubs are the New York Bar Association (1870), the Engineers’ Club (1888), the New York Athletic Club (1868), the Racquet and Tennis Club, the New York Yacht Club (1844, incorporated 1865, the custodian of the “America’s” cup): and the Riding Club (1883); the Freundschaft Society (1879) and the Deutscher Verein (1874) for Germans; the Army and Navy Club (1889); several Hebrew clubs, notably the Harmonie and the Progress (1864); the Catholic Club of New York, and the clubs of Harvard (1865), Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell University and Princeton.
Theatres, &c.—The first dramatic performances in New York City were given in September and December 1732 by a company from London which played at Pearl Street and Maiden Lane; the first playhouse was opened on the 5th of March 1750, but in 1758 became a German Reformed Church; and the second was opened with Rowe’s Jane Shore on the 28th of December 1758, but remained a theatre only a little more than six years. What has been called the first New York theatre, opened on the 7th of December 1767 in John Street near Broadway, was the Royal Theatre during the British occupation in the War of Independence, and was destroyed in 1798. In that year was built on Park Row the Park Theatre (burnt 1820; rebuilt 1821; burnt 1848) in which George Frederick Cooke (1810), James W. Wallack (1818) and Junius Brutus Booth (1821) made their American débuts, in which Edmund Kean, Charles Kean, Fanny Kemble and Edwin Forrest played, and in which Il Barbiere di Siviglia, the first Italian opera given in the United States, was rendered in 1825, and the first ballet was danced by Fanny Ellsler in 1840, Rivals of the Park Theatre were: the Chatham Garden and Theatre in 1823–1831, and later the Bowery Theatre (opened in 1826; burnt in 1828, 1836, 1838 and 1845; named the Thalia in 1879, when it became a German theatre; and since 1892 Yiddish). Among famous theatres of the 19th century the following may be mentioned: Niblo’s Garden (built in 1829; burned in 1846; rebuilt in 1849; destroyed in 1895) was long owned by A. T. Stewart, and after 1866 was the scene of many spectacular shows. Palme’s Opera House (1844–1857) was the home first of Italian opera and after 1848, under the management of William E. Burton (1802–1860), of comedy. In Mechanics’ Hall (1847–1868) E. P. Christy’s minstrels, George Christy’s minstrels and the Bryant Brothers appeared. The Astor Place Opera House (on the present site of the Mercantile Library; 1847–1854) is best known because of the riot at Macready’s appearance on the 19th of May 1849, in which many were killed by the police and militia. Tripler Hall (1850–1867) was built for Jenny Lind’s début but not completed in time. Here Rachel played in ​ 1855, and Patti made her début in 1859. The hall was managed in 1855 by Laura Keene and in 1856–1858 by William E. Burton, and in it in 1864 the three Booths played Julius Caesar, and Edwin Booth played Hamlet for one hundred nights. It was burned in March 1867. In Booth’s Theatre (1869–1882; managed and afterwards leased by Edwin Booth), Sarah Bernhardt made her American début (November 1880); and in the Park Theatre (Broadway and 21st Street; 1875–1882) Stuart Robson and William H. Crane first played together. Light opera was first introduced in 1864, opera bouffe in 1867, and Gilbert and Sullivan light opera in 1879; and The Pirates of Penzance was produced in New York before it was seen in London. Most of the older theatres still in existence have become houses of vaudeville, melodrama or moving pictures, as, for example, the Academy of Music (14th Street and Irving Place; opened in 1854), until about 1883 the home of the best opera, in which Christine Nilsson, Parepa-Rosa, Salvini and Emma Nevada made their American débuts. The Broadway (1888) was the scene of Edwin Booth’s last performance, as Hamlet, in March 1891. In connexion with the Empire Theatre (1893) is the Empire Dramatic School. The two largest places of amusement are the Madison Square Garden (opened in 1890) and the Hippodrome (Sixth Avenue and 43rd-44th Streets). The principal concert halls are Carnegie Music Hall (1891; built by Andrew Carnegie for the Symphony and Oratorio Societies) and Mendelssohn Hall. The Metropolitan Opera House (1882; burnt 1892; immediately rebuilt) gave in 1884 the first season of German opera in America, under the direction of Leopold Damrosch. The Manhattan Opera House (built in 1903 by Oscar Hammerstein as the Drury Lane) was opened as an opera-house in December 1906. In 1910 grand opera ceased to be given except in the Metropolitan. Grand opera in New York has always been dependent for financial success on season subscriptions, and (like the great museums and the zoological and botanical gardens) has been supported by millionaires. The New Theatre (1909) is practically an endowed house.
Music.—Musical societies were formed in the 18th century, an Apollo Society as early as 1750, a St Cecilia Society, which lasted less than ten years, in 1791, and the Euterpean Society, which lived a half century, in 1799. A New York Choral Society was established in 1823, a Sacred Music Society in the same year and a Philharmonic Society in 1824, succeeded in 1828 by the Musical Fund Society. The present Philharmonic Society, composed of professional players, was organized in 1842 by a New York violinist, Uriah C. Hill (d. 1875). In 1847 was formed the Deutscher Liederkranz, which has given much classical German music; a secession from the Liederkranz in 1854 formed the Arion Society, which has been more modern than the Liederkranz, furnished in 1859 the choruses for Tannhäuser, the first Wagner opera performed in America, and brought from Breslau in 1871 Leopold Damrosch (1832–1885) as its conductor. He founded the Oratorio Society in 1873 and the Symphony Society in 1877, and was succeeded as conductor of each of these societies by his son Walter (b. 1862). Musical instruction in the public schools has been under the supervision of Frank Damrosch (b. 1859), another son of Leopold, who formed in 1892 the People’s Singing Classes, picked voices from which form the People’s Choral Union.
Art.—Many private collections have been given or lent to the public galleries of the city, in which are held from time to time excellent loan collections. The largest public art gallery is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for which a committee, including art patrons and members of the National Academy of Design, drew up a plan in 1869, and which was chartered in April 1870. General Luigi Palma di Cesnola (q.v.) became its director in 1879 and was succeeded (1905–1910) by Sir Caspar Purdon Clarke, director of the South Kensington Museum, and in 1910 by Edward Robinson (b. 1858). In April 1871 the legislature appropriated $500,000 for a building for the Museum in Central Park: in 1878 the trustees took possession of the building in a tract of 181/2 acres in Central Park on Fifth Avenue between 80th and 85th Streets; and in March 1880 this building was opened. Additions were made to the south (1888) and the north (1894). In 1902 the central part of the E. front of a new building was opened, and under an appropriation of $1,250,000 in 1904 the building was again enlarged in 1908. Among the benefactors of the Museum have been: its presidents, John Taylor Johnston (1820–1893), Henry G. Marquand (q.v.), who gave it his collection (old masters and English school), and J. Pierpont Morgan, and Miss Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, who gave the Museum $200,000 and her collection of paintings, Jacob S. Rogers (1823–1901) who left the Museum about $5,000,000, Frederick T. Hewitt, who gave more than $1,600,000, and John S. Kennedy (1830–1909), who left it $2,500,000. Besides paintings and statuary the Museum has collections of glass, Egyptian antiques, Babylonian and Assyrian seals and cylinders, tapestries, ancient gems, porcelain and pottery, armour, musical instruments, laces and architectural casts. The New York Historical Society since 1858 has had the collection of the New York Gallery of the Fine Arts; in its art gallery are several examples of Van Dyck and Velazquez, the best collection in the United States (except the Jarves collection at Yale) of the primitives and the early Renaissance of Italy and the Low Countries, and a good American collection, rich in portraits and in the work of Thomas Cole. There is a small collection of paintings with some statuary in the Lenox Library and there are many private collections of note. The National Academy of Design (organized in 1826; incorporated in 1828) has an art library, and students’ classes. The Society of American Artists (1877) was a secession from the Academy which it rejoined in 1906. This Society with the Art Students’ League (1875), and the Architectural League of New York (1881) formed in 1889 the American Fine Arts Society. In its building on W. 57th Street there are good galleries, it is the headquarters of the American Water Color Society (1866), the New York Water Color Club, the National Sculpture Society (1893), the National Society of Mural Painters and the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects; and the exhibitions of the National Academy of Design and of the Society of American Artists are held here. The National Arts Club and the Municipal Art Society (1893) have club houses in Gramercy Park. The Decorative Art Association (1878) has classes and sales-rooms for women artists. There are art classes at Cooper Union (q.v.). Columbia University has a School of Architecture (1881).
Municipal Art, Monuments, Statuary, &c.—The city charter of 1897 established an art commission consisting of the mayor, the president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the president of the New York Public Library, the president of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, one painter, one sculptor, one architect and three lay members, the last six to be appointed by the mayor from a list presented by the Fine Arts Federation of New York. Without the approval of this commission no work of art can become the property of the city either by purchase or by gift. Whenever requested by the mayor and board of aldermen it must act in a similar capacity with respect to the design of any municipal building, bridge or other structure, and no municipal structure that is to cost more than one million dollars can be erected until it has approved the design. The City Hall contains a valuable collection of portraits. In front of the Custom House are groups symbolical of the continents by D. C. French. The Hall of Records has historic and allegorical statues by Philip Martiny, H. K. Bush-Brown and Albert Weinert. In the Criminal Courts Building are mural decorations by Edward Simmons. The statuary of the Appellate Court House is by T. S. Clarke, K. F. T. Bitter, M. M. Schwartzott, D. C. French, F. W. Ruckstuhl, C. H. Niehaus and others; and it has excellent mural paintings by E. H. Blashfield, Kenyon Cox, C. Y. Turner, H. S. Mowbray and others. Of the city’s great monuments the greatest is the tomb (1897; designed by John H. Duncan) of General U. S. Grant (q.v.); this mausoleum is in Riverside Park, commanding the North river, at 122nd Street. In the same park at 90th Street is the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument (1900; C. W. Stoughton, A. A. Stoughton and P. E. Duboy), a memorial to those who fought in the Union army during the Civil War; it has marble and granite stairways leading up to a pedestal on which are twelve fluted Corinthian pillars arranged in a circle and covered with a white marble canopy. On Bedloe’s Island in the harbour is the colossal bronze “Liberty Enlightening the World” (F. Bartholdi; dedicated 1886; presented to the people of the United States by the people of France), which is 151 ft. 5 in. from its base to the top of the torch held in the uplifted hand of the female figure. On the N. side of Washington Square at the foot of Fifth Avenue is the granite Washington Arch (1889; by Stanford White) commemorating the hundredth anniversary of the inauguration in New York City of George Washington as first president of the United States. Among other public statues and monuments are: Augustus St Gaudens’s W. T. Sherman (1903), an equestrian statue in gilt bronze on a polished granite pedestal in Fifth Avenue at the S.E. entrance to Central Park, his D. G. Farragut (1880; with a granite exedra for pedestal, designed by Stanford White) in Madison Square, and his Peter Cooper (1894), a seated figure on a marble pedestal and beneath a marble canopy (designed by Stanford White) immediately below Cooper Union on the Bowery; F. W. MacMonnies’s Nathan Hale (1893) in City Hall Park; J. Q. A. Ward’s William Shakespeare (1870), Seventh Regiment Memorial (1873), “Indian Hunter” (1868), and “Pilgrim” (1885) in Central Park, his George Washington (1882) on the steps of the sub-treasury, his Greeley in front of the Tribune building, and his William Earl Dodge (1885) at Broadway and 34th Street; E. Plassmann’s Benjamin Franklin (1872) in Printing House Square; Alexander Doyle’s Horace Greeley (1890) in Greeley Square; K. F. T. Bitter’s Franz Sigel (1907) in Riverside Park at 106th Street, D. C. French’s Memorial to R. M. Hunt (1900), a bust with a semicircular granite entablature at Fifth Avenue and 70th Street; and a Columbus Memorial (1894; by Gaetano Russo; erected by the Italian residents), a tall shaft with a statue of Columbus, at 59th Street and Seventh Avenue. There are many other statues in the city, especially in Brooklyn (q.v.) and in Central Park. In Central Park on a knoll S.W. of the Metropolitan Museum stands the Egyptian obelisk, of rose-red Syene granite, the companion of that on the Thames embankment, London, and like it popularly called “Cleopatra’s Needle,” but actually erected by Thothmes III.; it was presented to the city by Ismail Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, in 1877, was brought to New York at the expense of W. H. Vanderbilt in 1880, and was erected in the park in 1881.
Scientific Collections and Learned Societies.—The New York Aquarium in Battery Park has excellent exhibits of marine life; since 1902 it has been under the direction of the New York Zoological Society (organized 1895), a private corporation which has relations with the Park Department and the city like those of the corporations in control of the Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum ​ and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Its Zoological Park (opened 1899) forms the southern part of Bronx Park, in which the animals (5528 individuals, 1146 species—246 mammals, 644 birds and 256 reptiles in 1910) are almost perfectly housed—in large houses, flying cages, pools, dens and ranges. The Botanical Gardens (incorporated in 1891 and 1894), occupying the N. part of Bronx Park, contains two large conservatories (the largest in America), the largest botanical museum in the world (1900), with lecture hall and museum of fossil botany in the basement, a collection of economic plants on the main floor, and a library, herbarium, laboratories, type exhibits of vegetation on the upper floors, and a natural hemlock grove and bog garden, pinetum, herbaceous grounds, flower garden, fruticetum and deciduous arboretum. The American Museum of Natural History was incorporated in 1869, and is governed by a board of trustees. On the ground floor of its building (77th–81st Streets; Eighth–Ninth Avenues) are a lecture hall, meteorites, the Jesup collections of the woods of North America and of building stones, and anthropological and ethnological collections, particularly rich in specimens from the North Pacific region, collected by an expedition sent out by Morris K. Jesup (q.v.). On the main floor are the mammals, insects and butterflies; on the second floor the palaeontological collections, the Cope collection of fossils and (presented by J. P. Morgan) the Bement collection of minerals and the Tiffany collection of gems; and on the top floor are a collection of shells and the library, including that of the New York Academy of Sciences, which was founded in 1817 and incorporated in 1818 as the Lyceum of Natural History, received its present name in 1876, and publishes Annals (1824 sqq.) and Transactions (1881 sqq.). Other learned societies are: the New York Historical Society (founded in 1804 and incorporated in 1809), which has a library rich in Americana, the Lenox collection of Assyrian marbles, and the Abbott collection of Egyptian antiquities; the American Geographical Society (founded in 1852; incorporated in 1854), which issues a Bulletin (1859 sqq.); the American Numismatic Society (1858), with an excellent numismatic library and collection; the American Society of Civil Engineers (1852; with a club house and library); the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (1880), which occupies with the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the American Institute of Mining Engineers (1871) a building given by Andrew Carnegie; and the New York Academy of Medicine (1847), with a technical library.
Literature.—In literature New York’s position in America is largely due to the city’s being the home of the principal publishing houses and, as the American metropolis, the home of many authors. Charles Brockden Brown, the first American professional “man-of-letters,” although a Philadelphian by birth, was connected with New York City throughout his literary career; after him came the brilliant Knickerbocker school, including Irving, Cooper, Bryant, James Rodman Drake, Fitz Greene Halleck, Charles Fenno Hoffman (who in 1833 established the Knickerbocker Magazine), N. P. Willis, Edgar Allan Poe, J. K. Paulding, George P. Morris and Gulian C. Verplanck. In this early period New York literature centred largely about the Knickerbocker and the Mirror; and in the later period the monthlies Harper’s (1850), the Century (founded in 1870 as Scribner’s; present name 1881), and Scribner’s (1887) were great literary influences under the editorship of such men as George William Curtis, Josiah Gilbert Holland, William Dean Howells, Henry Mills Alden (b. 1836) and Richard Watson Gilder. Richard Henry Stoddard, Richard Grant White, Bayard Taylor, Edmund Clarence Stedman, H. C. Bunner and John Bigelow are other literary names connected with New York City and with its periodical press. The success of the older magazines has brought into the field lower-priced monthlies. The oldest religious weekly still published is the New York Observer (1823; Presbyterian); its great editors were Samuel Irenaeus Prime from 1840 to 1885 and afterwards his son-in-law Charles Augustus Stoddard. Others are the Churchman (1844; Protestant Episcopal), the Christian Advocate (1826; Methodist Episcopal), the Examiner (1823; Baptist), the Christian Herald (1878) famous for its various charities under the control (1892–1910) of Dr Louis Klopsch (1852–1910), the Outlook (founded in 1870 as the Christian Union by Henry Ward Beecher and carried on as a household magazine by Lyman Abbott), and the Independent (1846) after 1870 edited by William Hayes Ward.
The city’s cosmopolitan character is suggested by the great number of its newspapers published in other languages than English: in 1905 of all the periodical publications in New York City almost one-seventh (127 out of 893) were printed in languages other than English, 20 languages or dialects being represented. German, Yiddish and Italian newspapers have large circulations, and there are Bohemian, Greek, French, Croatian, Hungarian and Slavonic dailies. To a degree the New York press is metropolitan, also; but the American press is not dominated by the newspapers of New York as the English press is by that of London (see Newspapers: United States).
Education.—The Dutch West India Company was bound by its charter to provide schoolmasters. Its first schoolmaster emigrated in 1633 and his school still exists in the Collegiate School, the property of the Collegiate (Dutch) Reformed Church. Down to the middle of the 17th century the support and control of the schools remained with the Dutch Church. Later the desire of the English to hasten the substitution of the English for the Dutch language in the colony led to an unsuccessful attempt by the colonial government to reserve to itself the appointment of the schoolmasters. An English public school was established in 1705 under an Act of 1702, and in 1710 was first opened in connexion with the Anglican Church. It still exists as the Trinity School. In 1754 King’s College, now Columbia University (q.v.), was established; the Dutch Reformed Church made a vain effort to secure control of it, but it became Anglican in its sympathies and its teachers were mostly Loyalists. Before the War of Independence the English language had practically carried the day, and taken possession of the schools and churches.
In 1787 the Manumission Society established a free school for negroes, which was incorporated in 1794. A Quaker society (1798), the “Association of Female Friends for the Relief of the Poor,” opened a school in 1801, which soon became a school for white girls only; until 1824 it shared in the school fund and it carried on an infant school only from 1824 to 1846. An association known in 1805–1808 as the Society for Establishing a Free School in the City of New York (afterwards the “Free School Society,” and after 1826 the “Public School Society”) opened its first school in May 1806; got an appropriation from the state legislature in 1807; in 1819 brought from England a Lancasterian teacher—for the sake of economy the society’s schools had always been conducted under the Lancasterian system with student “monitors” or assistant teachers; until 1826 was largely under the control of the Friends, giving religious instruction; and was supported in part by voluntary contributions, in part by subscriptions from those who desired to share in its management, and in a small degree after 1815 by a contribution from the school fund of the state. For fifty years it did virtually all that was done for popular education in New York City, and for nearly thirty years caused the exemption of the city from the operation of the common-school system of the state; and about 600,000 children passed through its schools.
The Roman Catholic parochial schools opposed the Protestant character of the text-books used in these public schools, and in 1840, followed by Hebrew and Presbyterian schools, attempted in vain to secure a part of the common-school fund. In 1842, as a result of this controversy, the city was brought under the general state system, but the Public School Society retained control of its own schools. The Board of Education opened its first schools in 1843. The right of the Public School Society to put up new buildings was definitely withdrawn in 1848; and in 1853 the Society was voluntarily dissolved, and its seventeen schools and property (valued at $454,422) were handed over to the city authorities; from its trustees fifteen commissioners were appointed to hold office through 1854, and in each ward where there had been a school of the Society three trustees were chosen. After 1856 the control of the schools was entirely in the hands of the Board of Education. A compulsory education law came into effect in 1875. Since 1874 the Board has controlled a Nautical School, a training ship being lent to the city by the Federal Navy Department. The separate schools for negroes were abolished in 1884; free lecture courses were established in 1888; in 1893 seven kindergarten classes were established, and after 1896 a supervisor of kindergartens was appointed by the Board; and in 1894 a teachers’ retirement fund was established, the first in any American city.
In Brooklyn also the early Dutch schools were under the clergy. In 1815 the schools first received a part of the state common-school fund. There were separate district schools until 1843 when a Board of Education was organized.
By the consolidation of 1898 the Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx became a unit for school purposes, the former city Board of Education becoming the School Board for these two boroughs; the former Brooklyn Board remained in control in that borough; and there was a Central Board of Education for the entire city consisting of eleven delegates from the Manhattan and Bronx Board, six delegates from the Brooklyn Board, and one each (the president) from the Richmond Board and the Queens Board. The revised charter of 1901: abolished the borough school boards and established a single board with 46 members (22 from Manhattan, 14 from Brooklyn, 4 from the Bronx, 4 from Queens and 2 from Richmond), and 46 local school boards (distributed as above) of seven members each, who took the place of the former inspectors in Manhattan and the Bronx. In the City Board there is an executive committee of 15 members. The borough superintendents were done away with in 1901; the powers of the city superintendent were increased, and a board of superintendents (the city superintendent and eight associate superintendents) was created. A board of examiners, nominated by the city superintendent and appointed by the Board of Education, supervises examinations taken by candidates for teaching positions, appointments to which are governed by rigid civil service rules. The development of public high schools has been rapid since the consolidation. In 1909–1910 trade schools and schools for the anaemic were established. There is an excellent system of evening and vacation schools.
A Free Academy founded in 1848 for advanced pupils who had left the common schools was empowered to grant degrees in 1854, ​ and in 1866 became the College of the City of New York, with the Board of Education as its Board of Trustees. In 1900 a separate Board of Trustees (nine members appointed by the mayor) was created. Before 1882 no one was eligible for entrance unless he had attended the city’s public schools for one year. In 1907 the College removed to new buildings on St Nicholas Heights between 138th and 140th Streets, the old buildings at Lexington Avenue and 23rd Street being used for some of the lower classes of the seven years’ course. The retention of the secondary school in connexion with college, although there are now well-equipped public high schools, is one of the anomalies of the New York educational system. In 1871 a Normal School for Girls, since 1910 the Woman’s College of the City of New York, was established as a part of the public system. Since 1888 public lectures for adults have been given under the auspices of the Board of Education, usually in school-houses; and in 1899 the Board opened evening recreation centres in school-houses, in which literary, debating and athletic clubs meet. For the charitable schools see § Charities.
The oldest institution of higher education is Columbia University (q.v.). New York University was chartered in 1831 as the University of the City of New York, and in 1896 received its present name. The University Council is the corporation; it consists of 32 members, eight going out of office annually. The University Senate has immediate control; it is composed of the chancellor, two professors of the University College, and the dean and a professor from each of the following schools—law, medicine, pedagogy, graduate and applied science. The work of the collegiate department was begun in 1832; a university building at Washington Square was erected in 1832–1835; a law school, on a plan submitted by B. F. Butler of New York, was established in 1835, a medical school in 1841, the School of Applied Science in 1862, a graduate school in 1886, a school of pedagogy in 1890, a veterinary college (formed by the union of two previously existing schools) in 1899, and a School of Commerce, Accounts and Finance in 1900. In 1894 the College of Arts and Pure Science and the School of Applied Science were removed to a commanding and beautiful site on Washington Heights (about E. 181st Street) above the Harlem river, the schools of law and pedagogy remaining at Washington Square where a Collegiate Division was opened in 1903; in 1895 the Metropolis Law School was consolidated with the University; in 1898 the Bellevue Hospital Medical College became a part of the University school of medicine. On the Washington Heights Campus the principal buildings are the library (1900), around a part of which extends an open colonnade, 500 ft. long, which is known as the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, and in which the names of great Americans (chosen at intervals by the ballots of 100 prominent educators, historians, &c.) are inscribed on memorial tablets; and Gould Hall, a dormitory, which like the library and the Hall of Fame was the gift of Miss Helen Miller Gould. In 1909–1910 the University library contained about 65,000 vols. and the law library 22,000, and there were 254 instructors and 4036 students (966 in the School of Commerce and 739 in the Law School).
For Fordham University see Fordham. Other Roman Catholic colleges are: the College of St Francis Xavier (Society of Jesus; opened 1847; chartered 1861); and Manhattan College (Brothers of the Christian Schools; opened 1853; chartered 1863) at Broadway and 131st Street, in the district formerly known as Manhattanville.
Among the technical and professional schools, excluding those of Columbia University and New York University, are: the General Theological Seminary of the Protestant Episcopal Church (opened 1819; in 1820–1822 in New Haven; then re-established in New York City), beautifully situated in “Chelsea Village” on a block (Ninth-Tenth Avenues and 20th-21st Streets) given for the purpose by Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863) in buildings largely the gift of Eugene Augustus Hoffman (1829–1902), dean of the Seminary in 1879–1902, and of his family, who put it on a sound financial basis; the Union Theological Seminary (1836; Presbyterian), which is representative of the most liberal tendencies in American Presbyterianism (q.v.), especially in regard to text-criticism; the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1886), chiefly supported by the synagogues of New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore; the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the City of New York (1892; see Columbia University); the Cornell University Medical College (1897; see Cornell University); the Eclectic Medical College (1865); the New York Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital (1882); the New York Polyclinic Medical School and Hospital (1882); the New York Medical College and Hospital for Women (1863); the New York College of Dentistry (1865); and the College of Dental and Oral Surgery of New York (1892). Among the normal schools are: the Teachers’ College of Columbia University (q.v.); the School of Pedagogy and the kindergarten training school of New York University; the kindergarten training school of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn (q.v.); the Kraus Seminary for Kindergarteners; and the Kindergarten Normal Department of the Ethical Culture School under the Ethical Culture Society. Of the many private secondary schools in New York the oldest are the Collegiate School and Trinity School (see above). The Columbia Grammar School (1764) was originally a preparatory department of Columbia College.
Other educational institutions of a popular character are Cooper Union (q.v.) and the People’s Institute (incorporated in 1897), which holds its meetings and lectures in the Cooper Union Building. Its most active promoter and long its managing director was Charles Sprague Smith (1853–1910), who was professor of modern languages at Columbia University in 1880–1891, and in 1896 organized the Comparative Literature Society; he was especially assisted by Richard Heber Newton (b. 1840), a Protestant Episcopal clergyman of broad and radical religious and social views, and by Samuel Gompers. The aim was to supply a “continuous and ordered education in social science, history, literature and such other subjects as time and demand shall determine” and “to afford opportunities for the interchange of thought upon topics of general interest . . . to assist in the solution of present problems.” The Institute is primarily a free evening school of social science and a forum for the discussion of questions of the day. There are, besides, Sunday evening ethical services, “a people’s church,” which has attracted much attention, and several “Institute Clubs” of a social nature, some of them for children. The People’s Institute organized a censorship of “moving pictures” to which most American manufacturers of these films voluntarily submit. Cheap concerts are given in Cooper Union by the People’s Symphony Concert Association in conjunction with the People’s Institute.
For the Brooklyn Institute see Brooklyn. The Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations have classes, especially for working people.
Libraries.—“The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations,” was the result of the consolidation in May 1895 of the Astor Library (founded by the bequest of $400,000 by John Jacob Astor; incorporated in 1849; opened in 1854; further endowed by William B. Astor, who gave it about $550,000 and by John Jacob Astor, the younger, who gave it about $800,000 and built the hall in Lafayette Street in which the library, for general reference, was housed until 1911), the Lenox Library (originally the private collection, particularly rich in incunabula, Americana, genealogy and music, of James Lenox (1800–1880), a bibliophile and art amateur, given by him to the city in 1870 and until 1911 housed as a special reference library, in a building, designed by R. M. Hunt, on Fifth Avenue, between 70th and 71st streets), and the Tilden Trust (to which Samuel J. Tilden left his private library and about $4,000,000 (most of his estate) for the establishment of a public library, but which, owing to a contest by the heirs, was unable to secure the entire bequest and received only about $2,000,000 from one of the heirs). In 1902–1911 a new building was erected to house these collections. With the Public Library the New York Free Circulating Library (incorporated in 1880; re-incorporated in 1884) was consolidated in 1901; and in the next two years several other free libraries, including one for the blind. In 1901 Andrew Carnegie gave more than $5,000,000 for about 65 branch libraries, the city to furnish sites for them and maintain them. The largest and best equipped of the college libraries is that of Columbia University. The library of Cooper Union has a complete set of patent office reports and files of newspapers. The Mercantile Library (1820; established by an association of merchants’ clerks) is a subscription library at Astor Place; the New York Society Library (on University Place) is a subscription library, the oldest in the city, being the outgrowth of a reading room established in the City Hall in 1700 by the earl of Bellomont; it was incorporated in 1754 as the City Library and in 1772 under its present name. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen (founded in 1785) since 1820 has had a circulating library; which with the DeMilt (reference) and the Slade (architectural collections), contains about 99,000 volumes.
Charities.—The city has a commissioner and two deputy commissioners of public charities, but this municipal department works largely through private organizations, the municipal appropriations to which exceed the amount actually expended through institutions controlled by the city. Municipal institutions include: Bellevue Hospital (opened 1816), which in 1869 established the first hospital ambulance service in the world, near which there is an Emergency Hospital (1878) for maternity cases, and in connexion with which ​ are the Gouverneur Reception Hospital (1885), the Harlem Reception Hospital and Dispensary (1887); and the Fordham Reception Hospital and Dispensary (1892); the City Hospital (1853) and the Metropolitan Hospital (1875), both on Blackwell’s Island; for contagious diseases Willard Parker Hospital (1866) and Riverside Hospital (1885; on North Brother Island in the East river); and for the sick, crippled and idiotic destitute children, the New York City Children’s Hospitals and Schools (1837; on Randall’s Island). The Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island (1871; now used for patients from New York and Richmond counties only) Central Islip State Hospital, on Long Island, in Suffolk county (for Queens county and outside of New York City, Suffolk county) and the Long Island State Hospital (for the county of Kings) are the state insane asylums for the population of New York City.
The Charity Organization Society (organized and incorporated in 1882) investigates claims for charities and secures employment for applicants, has a bureau of information and a sociological library, has done much effective work through its Tenement House Committee and its Committee on Prevention of Tuberculosis, has a school of philanthropy begun as a summer school in 1898 but with a two-year course since 1904, and publishes a weekly journal, the Survey. In the United Charities Building (1891–1893; in E. 22nd Street), a gift of John S. Kennedy, there is housed, besides the Charity Organization Society, the Children’s Aid Society (1853), which was founded by Charles Loring Brace (1826–1890), its first secretary, has established industrial schools and lodging houses (the earliest 1854, being a Newsboys’ Lodging House in New Chambers Street), vacation schools, kindergartens, evening classes, summer houses at Bath Beach (for crippled girls) and West Coney Island, and a farm school at Kensico, and finds homes for orphans and homeless children. In the same building are the New York City Mission and Tract Society (1822, incorporated in 1867; undenominational), the first American organization to introduce district nursing, whose work is all done below 14th street, and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (1843; incorporated in 1848), which has a department of relief, does fresh-air work at West Coney Island, supports people’s baths, and has founded the Hartley House (a memorial to Robert M. Hartley, who established the Association), a neighbourhood settlement. The Society of St Vincent de Paul in the City of New York (organized 1835; chartered 1872) is the local Roman Catholic charitable organization. The United Hebrew Charities was formed in 1874 by the union of four Hebrew societies. The Russell Sage Foundation (1907) has headquarters in New York, but is not merely local in its work; it has a charity organization department, a child helping department, and a school hygiene department. “Institutional work” by the churches is well developed.
Trade and domestic schools include the Hebrew Technical Institute and the Hebrew Technical School for Girls; the New York Trade School; Grace Institute, endowed by W. R. Grace (twice Mayor of New York City) for the instruction of women in trades; the Manhattan Trade School for Girls; the American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless; the Baron de Hirsch Trade Schools, in connexion with which there are day and evening schools for the instruction of immigrants (Russian, Galician and Rumanian) in the English language, and a colony with an agricultural and industrial school at Woodbine, N.J.; the Clara de Hirsch Home and Trade Training School for Working Girls; the New York Cooking School; and the Association of Practical Home Making Centres. The New York Diet Kitchen Association (1873) has established diet kitchens in connexion with many dispensaries. The City and Suburban Home Company (1896) provides good apartments at cheap rentals; the Society for Ethical Culture has promoted the same work; and the Mills Hotels, erected by D. O. Mills (1825–1910), are low-priced but self-supporting lodging houses.
There are many orphanages and day nurseries and there are about thirty permanent homes for adults in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was incorporated in 1875, and the children’s court movement in the city has been connected with this society; in its work and in that of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Henry Bergh (1820–1888) was the American pioneer. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents (1824) maintains a House of Refuge on Randall’s Island; and the New York Catholic Protectory (1862), under the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Sisters of Charity, is of a similar character. An important work has been done by the Society for the Suppression of Vice (1873), and by the Society for the Prevention of Crime, organized in 1877 and re-organized in 1891 by its president Charles Henry Parkhurst (b. 1842), a Presbyterian clergyman.
The New York Institution for the Blind was incorporated in 1831 and originated the New York point system of tangible writing and printing for the blind; the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Blind (1869) and the New York Association for the Blind (1906) are noteworthy. The New York Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (1817), of which Harvey Prindle Peet (1794–1873) was principal in 1831–1867, is a free state school and the first oral school for the deaf in America; the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes (1867) is a free city school; St Joseph’s Institute for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes (Roman Catholic; 1869) has a school for boys and one for girls.
Among special hospitals the foremost are: the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (1820), the New York Ophthalmic Hospital (1852), the Manhattan Eye and Ear and Throat Hospital (1869), the New York Orthopaedic Dispensary and Hospital (1866), the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital (1882), the General Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancer (1884), the New York Bacteriological Institute (1890; maintaining the New York Pasteur Institute), and the Neurological Institute (1909). Important research is undertaken by the richly endowed Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The St John’s Guild (1866, non-sectarian) maintains floating hospitals for tuberculosis patients and a sea-side hospital at New Dorp, Staten Island. There is a roof camp for tuberculous patients on the Vanderbilt Clinic (1886), a free dispensary, connected with the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Many of the general hospitals have already been mentioned in the list of medical schools; others are: the New York Hospital (1771), St Luke’s (1850), Mt. Sinai (1852), the Roosevelt (opened 1871), the Presbyterian (opened 1872; undenominational), the J. Hood Wright Memorial (1862; called the Manhattan Dispensary until 1895), the Hahnemann (1875), and the Flower (1890; homoeopathic; surgical).
Population.—New York is by far the largest city in the United States in population, the census of 1910 returning its numbers as 4,766,883, and in the whole world is second to London only. Seven-eighths of the present area was annexed in the decade 1890–1900; and in those years the population increased from 1,515,301 (for an area of which the population in 1900 was 2,050,600) to 3,437,202. In 1905 the population by the state census was 4,000,403; of the separate boroughs: Manhattan, 2,102,928 (in 1900, 1,850,093; in 1890, 1,441,216); Bronx, 271,592 (in 1900, 200,507; in 1890, 88,908); Brooklyn, 1,355,106 (in 1900, 1,166,582; in 1890, 838,547); Queens, 197,838 (in 1900, 152,999; in 1890, 87,050); Richmond, 72,939 (in 1900, 67,021; in 1890, 51,693). In 1900 there was a slight preponderance of females (1,731,497 females; 1,705,705 males); the ratio of native born to foreign born was about as 176 to 100 (2,167,122 native born; 1,270,808 foreign born); less than 1·8% (60,666) were negroes; and less than 0·19% (6321) were Chinese. Of the native population seven-eighths (1,892,719 out of 2,167,122) were natives of New York state. Of the foreign-born population (1,270,080) in 1900, more than one-fourth (322,343) were Germans; more than one-fifth (275,102) were Irish, nearly one-eighth (155,201) were Russians, principally Jews; more than one-ninth (145,433) were Italians; and the next largest numbers were: 71,427 from Austria, 68,836 from England, 31,516 from Hungary, 28,320 from Sweden, 25,230 from Russian Poland, 19,836 from Scotland, 19,399 English Canadians, 15,055 from Bohemia, 11,387 from Norway, 10,499 from Rumania, 8371 from Switzerland and 5621 from Denmark. In 1900 more than two-thirds of the entire population was of foreign parentage, 2,643,957 being the number of all the persons of foreign parentage and 2,339,895 the number of persons having both parents foreign-born; of this latter number 658,912 were German, 595,267 were Irish, 237,875 were Russians, 214,799 were Italians and 103,497 were Austrians—these numbers as compared with the figures just given for the foreign-born furnish a hint as to priority of the Irish and German immigration to that of the Russian Jews, who like the southern Europeans and the Slavs came to New York in comparatively few numbers more than a generation before 1900. There are in New York City more Germans than in any city of Germany, save Berlin, and more Irish than in Dublin. There are many well-defined foreign communities in the city, such as “Little Italy” about Mulberry Street, “Chinatown” on Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets, the Hebrew quarter on the Upper Bowery and east of it, a “German Colony” east of Second Avenue below 14th Street, French quarters south of Washington Square about Bleecker Street and on the west side between 20th and 34th Streets; a Russian quarter near East Broadway, a “Greek Colony” about Sixth Avenue in the 40’s, and negro quarters on Thompson Street and on the west side in the 50’s; and there are equally well-defined Armenian and Arab quarters. In 1900 35% of the total working population were employed in trade and transportation (in Boston 34%, in Chicago 32%, in Philadelphia 24%) and 37% in manufacturing and mechanical ​ arts (in Philadelphia 41%; in Chicago 35%; in Boston 32%). In 1661 the population of Manhattan Island was about 1000. In 1700 it was probably about 5000, the Dutch and English being about equally divided, and there being a few French, Swedes and Jews. In 1732 the population was 8624. During the War of Independence the city lost heavily; but the recovery at the close of the war was rapid, and although the population probably fell during the war from 20,000 to 10,000, in 1790 it was 33,131, then first being greater than that of Boston. From 60,515 in 1800 the population increased to 123,706 in 1820; to 312,710 in 1840; to 813,669 in 1860 and to 1,206,299 in 1880. This rapid growth, the large part which immigration plays in the growth, the marked falling-off in the character of the immigrants, and the fact that it is usually the weaker and less enterprising immigrant who stays in New York while the more capable go West—all these circumstances combine to make a serious social problem. The low scale of living of this poorer class operates with the peculiar physical character of the city, especially on the lower East Side, where so many of the more recent immigrants live, to make the question of housing difficult. In Manhattan and the Bronx 66·7% of the population in 1890 and 72·6% in 1900 lived in dwellings in which the minimum number of dwellers was 21; for the whole city in 1900 the percentage was 54·4, the corresponding percentage for Chicago in 1900 was 17·9. For the entire Borough of Manhattan the average density was 149·0 inhabitants per acre; but in the Eighth Assembly District (98 acres; on the lower East Side, bounded S.E. by Henry Street, E. by Clinton Street, N. by Stanton Street, and W. by Chrystie Street), in which more than two-thirds of the population is foreign-born, the density in 1900 was 735·9 per acre, and in 1905 727·9 per acre. In twelve tenement blocks in Manhattan in 1905 the density was over 1000 per acre, the maximum being 1458 per acre in a block bounded by Cherry, Jefferson, Monroe and Rutgers Streets. A Citizens’ Association with a “council of hygiene and public health” in 1865 employed sanitary experts to investigate the city’s tenements. In 1879 a prize offered for the best plans for tenements was unfortunately awarded to the so-called “dumb bell” tenement, in which the court for air-space gives little air or light, and many of these tenements, which, however, were a great improvement on the older types, were built. In 1902 the further building of “dumb bell” tenements was forbidden and a new Tenement House Commission was appointed. Model apartments have been built: in 1855 by the Workmen’s Home Association, organized by the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor; by the Improved Dwellings Company of Brooklyn and the Improved Dwellings Association of Manhattan (1879); by the City and Suburban Homes Company (1896); and by some individuals. The city is comparatively healthy; for the five years 1901–1905 the average death rate was 18·99 per thousand for the entire city, 20·96 for the Borough of the Bronx, 18·64 for the Borough of Brooklyn, 19·49 for the Borough of Manhattan, 16·12 for the Borough of Queens and 18·98 for the Borough of Richmond.
Communications.—The physical limitations of Manhattan Island and particularly the circumstance that the business area of the city is small and that the movement of passengers is almost entirely in one direction at any one time, have hindered the development of a simple and adequate system of local communications. Between Manhattan and Long Island there were in 1910 four bridges, three of them completed in the decade immediately before 1910, three of them to Brooklyn (q.v.) and one to Long Island City; the New York and Brooklyn Bridge (1872–1883), with a Manhattan terminus at Park Row, and the Williamsburg Bridge (1897–1903) from Clinton and Delancey Streets, Manhattan, to South 5th and 6th Streets, Brooklyn, are suspension bridges; for a technical description of them see Bridges, vol. iv. pp. 537-538. The Manhattan Bridge (1901–1909) is a wire cable suspension bridge situated between the two just mentioned; its Manhattan terminal is at Canal Street and the Bowery, and its Brooklyn terminal is at Nassau Street. It is the largest of all suspension bridges with a total roadway length of 6855 ft. (Manhattan approach 2067 ft.; Brooklyn approach 1868 ft.; two land spans of 725 ft.; river span 1470 ft.) and a width of 122·5 ft. It has a double deck, the lower for two surface car tracks and a wagon way, and the upper for footways and four elevated railway tracks. The Queensboro Bridge (1901–1909) is a cantilever from Second Avenue, between 59th and 60th Streets, Manhattan, to Long Island City, with sustaining towers on Blackwell’s Island. Its total length, including a plaza in Queens 1152 ft. long, is 8601 ft. (Manhattan approach 1052 ft.; Queens approach 2672·5 ft.; west channel span 1182 ft.; island span 630 ft.; east channel span 984 ft.) and its width is 89·5 ft. over all, the roadway being 53 ft. and the two sidewalks each 16 ft. All of these bridges are crossed by electric cars, and on the bridges to Brooklyn there run surface cars and elevated trains. In 1909 an average of 4249 trolley cars and 3988 elevated cars crossed the Brooklyn Bridge every week day; for the Williamsburg Bridge the corresponding averages were 4473 trolley cars and 918 elevated train cars. The Harlem river is crossed by about a dozen bridges, including High Bridge, which carries the city aqueduct. The ferries to Brooklyn are less important than in the days when there was only one bridge and no subway connexion between Manhattan and Brooklyn; the opening of the Pennsylvania-Long Island railway tube in 1910 in the same way made the ferry from 34th Street, Manhattan, to Long Island City comparatively unimportant; and the Pennsylvania and the Hudson river subways have to some degree taken the place of ferryboats on the North river for passenger traffic between Manhattan and railways in New Jersey. Between Manhattan and the various islands (to North Brother Island from E. 16th; to Ward’s Island from E. 116th; to Randall’s Island from E. 125th and E. 120th) of the river and bay including Staten Island the only means of transportation is still by. ferryboats; the ferry line to Staten Island is owned and operated by the municipality. In Manhattan the first advance made on the horse car—which was still used to some extent in 1910, especially on streets along the water front—was the elevated railway; on great iron trestles of varying heights the first of these railways was built in 1867–1872 on New Church Street, West Broadway and Ninth Avenue, from the Battery to 59th Street; in 1878 a line was built on Sixth Avenue, branching off on 53rd Street to Ninth Avenue, and on 110th Street to Eighth Avenue and running on Eighth Avenue to the Harlem river (155th Street), a distance of 103/4 m.; soon afterwards the Second and Third Avenue lines were built from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Harlem river, and the line now extends to Fordham (190th Street), a distance of 13 m. In 1902 the motive power of these elevated trains was changed from steam to electricity. In 1886 a cable car line was opened, the cars being operated by a clutch (or “grip”) seizing a moving endless cable in a slot beneath the road bed; but in 1898 the “underground trolley” system began to be substituted. Outside Manhattan the overhead trolley is prevalent. In 1900–1904 another era in “rapid transit” in New York was begun: in the latter year was opened the Broadway subway with electric trains from the City Hall, along Broadway (above 42nd Street) to Kingsbridge (230th Street) and by a branch line, turning to the E. from 104th street and running, above 110th Street, on Lenox Avenue to the Harlem river and then through the Bronx to West Farms (180th Street) at the S.E. entrance to Bronx Park. In 1901–1906 the subway was continued to South Ferry and was carried under the East river to the junction of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn. The construction company received a fifty years’ franchise for the operation of this subway. In 1908–1909 two more underground lines were opened connecting Manhattan with Hoboken (the terminus of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western) and Jersey City (the terminus of the Erie, the Pennsylvania and the Central of New Jersey railways) by tubes under the North river; one of these extends up Sixth Avenue to 33rd Street, near the new terminal of the Pennsylvania railway, from which by 1910 tubes had been carried immediately E. and under the East river to Long Island and immediately W. to the New Jersey side. The municipality in 1910 contracted for the construction in Manhattan of lines on Broadway and Lexington Avenue and on Canal Street across town and for the continuation in Brooklyn of the subway to Coney Island and Fort Hamilton.
The opening of the Erie Canal made the city the gateway for communication by water from the Atlantic Ocean to the interior of the continent, and when the great railway lines were built westward it became the chief railway terminal on the Atlantic coast. Water communication up the Hudson river and through the canal is still of great importance. The New York Central & Hudson river and West Shore railways follow closely this water route to Buffalo. The Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the Pennsylvania and the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railways reach Buffalo by routes across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and western New York. The New York, New Haven & Hartford railway affords communication with New England; and the Pennsylvania and the Baltimore & Ohio railways, with the middle western and south-eastern parts of the country. The Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Long Island railway (belonging to the Pennsylvania) are more local. The New York Central & Hudson river and the New York, New Haven & Hartford railways have a terminal in the borough of Manhattan, and the Pennsylvania has a terminal there also, since 1910, with tunnels to Long Island and New ​ Jersey; but the other railways have their terminals on the New Jersey bank of the Hudson and are reached either by ferries or by subways under the river. The New York Central tracks are sunken from the Grand Central Station for about 50 blocks and then run on a trestle (like the “elevated” railways) for the rest of their course in Manhattan. Ten steamboat lines afford communication with the cities and towns on the Hudson. The Old Dominion, the Clyde and the Savannah are among the more important coastwise lines connecting the city with ports on the South Atlantic coast. The Metropolitan line connects it with Boston, and the Portland line with Portland; and there are several lines to ports on Long Island Sound. Among great trans-Atlantic lines which serve the city are the Cunard and the White Star lines to English, French and Mediterranean ports; the North German Lloyd, and the Hamburg-American lines to English, French and German ports; the Compagnie Générale Transatlantique to French ports; and the Holland-American line to the Dutch port of Rotterdam; the docks of some of these lines are on the New Jersey side of the North river, in Hoboken. There are also lines to the West Indies, Central and South America.
Commerce.—The lack of railway lines direct to wharfs and piers in Manhattan is one of the commercial disadvantages of the city. The value of the imports received at the port of New York, which comprises New York Harbor and the Hudson river, increased from $518,796,561 in 1899 to $891,614,678 (or 60·4% of those of the entire country) in 1909; the value of the exports from $476,609,251 in 1899 to $627,782,767 (or 36·3% of those of the entire country) in 1909. The importations of works of art, furs, laces, diamonds, sugar, coffee, spices, cocoa, india-rubber, cigar wrappers, tin, cheese, hemp, hides of cattle and gloves of kid or other leather at New York are especially large as compared with the other ports of the country; and so are the exportations of chemicals and medicines, copper, machinery, illuminating oil and hardware.
The city is the principal centre of the New World for the wholesale grocery and dry-goods businesses. Here are the country’s most important “exchanges,” including the Stock Exchange (1792), the Produce Exchange (the New York Commercial Association in 1862–1868), the Cotton Exchange (1871) and the Consolidated Stock Exchange (1885); and here are the richest and most powerful banks and trust companies in the New World and the great New York Clearing House. The Chamber of Commerce of the city was first organized and was chartered in 1768, and was reorganized in 1784.
Manufactures.—Many of the manufacturing industries, notably the manufacture of clothing, are favoured by the abundance of immigrant labour. Others, such as the refining of sugar and molasses, derive an advantage from their position with respect to imported raw materials. Still others, e.g. the refining of petroleum, derive an advantage from their position with respect to the exportation of the finished products. The growth of manufactures was promoted by the rapid growth in commerce after the opening of the Erie Canal (1825) and by a great stream of immigration, and New York became the foremost manufacturing city in the United States about the middle of the 19th century. The value of its manufactured products increased from $1,084,850,236 in 1890 to $1,371,358,468 in 1900, and the total value of factory products from $1,172,870,261 in 1900 to $1,526,523,006 in 1905 (an increase of 30·2%). Clothing ranked first in value in 1905, and its value ($305,523,795) was greater than the total value of all factory products in any other city in the United States except Chicago and Philadelphia. Printing and publishing, with products valued at $116,877,594, ranked second. In 1905 the highest degree of localization of any industry in the country was in lapidary work, of which 96·5% of the entire output of the country was produced in New York City, more than 60% of the total for the city being produced in Brooklyn. The boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx produced in that year goods valued at $1,043,251,923, or a little more than two-thirds of that for the entire city; and in this part of the city is made more than 95% of the clothing manufactured in all the city. The Borough of Brooklyn produced nearly three-fourths of the remainder.
Water Supply.—The water supply of the colonial city was derived from wells and from the many fresh-water streams and ponds which have now almost without exception been filled in. A system, drawing water from Collect Pond, was installed in 1774–1776 by Christopher Colles (1738–1821), but this never was in actual operation. In 1799 the Manhattan Company was incorporated ostensibly to supply the city with water, but under an omnibus clause in its charter it devoted itself to the banking business. In 1829 the city built a reservoir on 13th Street. In 1830 De Witt Clinton suggested the Croton river as a source of supply. Between 1837 and 1893 were constructed the first Croton Aqueduct, the Bronx river Conduit and the New Croton Aqueduct (see Aqueduct), with maximum discharges respectively of 95,000,000 gals., 28,000,000 gals. and 302,000,000 gals. a day. In 1905 a new Water Supply Commission was created and immediately afterwards work was begun on a new aqueduct to bring water from the Catskills; a great reservoir (the Ashokan) was built more than 85 m. N. of New York, W. of Kingston (on the W. side of the Hudson); thence an aqueduct was constructed which crossed under the Hudson river between Storm King and Bear Mountain to the Kensico storage reservoir at White Plains, to a filtration plant near Scarsdale and to the Hill View distributing reservoir in Yonkers, and from this reservoir to the five boroughs of Greater New York (Queens and Richmond boroughs both being supplied from Brooklyn) by tunnels, the supply for Staten Island only being pumped through pipes. One of the largest of the new reservoirs within the city limits is the Jerome Park. The water supply for the typical New York City “sky-scraper” cannot be forced to the higher storeys of these buildings by the pumps of the municipal service, and such buildings must have each its own installation of engines for this purpose. In 1908 a high pressure water supply system was installed for fire-protection of a part of the city below 23rd Street; induction motors driving multi-stage centrifugal pumps give sufficient power to force the water to a fire in the top of the highest buildings. (See Fires and Fire Extinction.)
Administration.—By the close of the Dutch period the city had become practically self-governing. But in the permanent form of English government that was established by the Dongan charter, granted in 1686 when the English crown was attacking the privileges of municipalities in the mother country, the mayor and sheriff were appointed by the governor and council; the recorder, town clerk and clerk of the market were appointed either by the king or by the governor; and although the aldermen and assistants were elected by the people no ordinances of the common council could remain in force more than three months unless they were confirmed by the governor and council. The Montgomerie charter of 1730 was mainly an enlargement of the Dongan charter. From 1777 to 1821 the mayor was chosen by the state council of appointment, consisting of the governor and four senators; from 1821 to 1834 he was elected by the common council; since 1834 he has been elected by the people. In 1730 the common council was divided into two chambers: the board of aldermen and the board of assistants; and the mayor and recorder were excluded from membership. In 1853 a board of sixty councilmen, in which was vested the sole right to originate acts appropriating money, was substituted for the board of assistants. The latter was restored in 1868, but was abolished in 1873 when the board of estimate and apportionment was created. Until 1849 the common council was an executive as well as a legislative body, and for many years the government was administered chiefly by its committees and by the heads of departments which it created and appointed; and the mayor’s veto could be overcome by a bare majority vote of the members elected to each chamber. In 1849 the choice of the heads of departments was given to the people, and in 1853 a two-thirds vote of the members elected to each chamber was required to pass an act over the mayor’s veto. In 1857 the state legislature began the appointment of boards and commissions for the performance of various functions, and from this state interference and the popular election of the heads of departments resulted a divided responsibility in the city government. The present state constitution (1894) affords some protection against state interference, and under the Consolidation Act of 1882 and under the present charter of “Greater New York,” granted in 1897 and revised in 1901, responsibility centres in the mayor.
The mayor is elected for a term of four years. With the exception of that of finance he appoints the heads of all departments: law, water supply, gas and electricity, fire, street cleaning, bridges, docks and ferries, parks, public charities, tenement house, health, correction, police, education, taxes and assessments. Even in the department of finance he appoints the chamberlain and two commissioners of accounts, who examine the receipts and disbursements in the office of the comptroller and chamberlain and may examine the affairs of such other offices or departments as the mayor may direct. All officers appointed by the mayor may be removed by him, except certain judicial officers and the members of the board of education. ​ The aqueduct commissioners, the trustees of the College of the City of New York, and the trustees of Bellevue and allied hospitals, however, are removable only for cause and after a hearing. The mayor’s veto of a franchise passed by the board of aldermen is final; his veto of an ordinance or resolution of the board which involves the expenditure of money, the creation of a debt or the laying of an assessment can be overcome only by a three-fourths vote; and his veto of any other measure of the board can be overcome only by a two-thirds vote. Special city legislation passed by the state legislature is referred to the mayor for his acceptance; if he does not accept it, it may be repassed by both branches of the legislature but must then be marked, when referred to the governor, “passed without the acceptance of the city.”
The department of finance is administered under the direction of the comptroller, who, like the mayor, is elected for a term of four years. He prescribes the manner in which the accounts in the other departments shall be kept and rendered, and all such accounts are subject to his inspection. His warrant, drawn on the chamberlain and countersigned by the mayor, is required in making a payment on behalf of the city. He settles claims in favour of or against the city. No real estate can be purchased or leased by the city without his consent. No contract, the expense for the execution of which is not in part covered by assessments on the property benefited, is valid without his signature. Legislation affecting the city’s finances is determined mainly by the board of estimate and apportionment consisting of the mayor, comptroller, president of the board of aldermen, with three votes each; the presidents of the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, with two votes each; and the presidents of the boroughs of Queens, the Bronx and Richmond, with one vote each. Every October this board prepares the budget for the ensuing year. It is required to submit the same to the aldermen for approval, but the aldermen are not permitted to increase an appropriation, to insert any new appropriation or to reduce that for the payment of state taxes, that for the payment of the interest on the city debt or any of those the amounts of which are fixed by law; and in case they reduce others their action is subject to the mayor’s veto which they can overcome only by a three-fourths vote.
The city’s budget grew from $90,778,972 in 1900 to $156,545,148 in 1909; the assessed value of its taxable property, real and personal, from $3,654,122,193 in 1900 to $7,250,500,559 ($5,423,312,599 for Manhattan and the Bronx) in 1909, when the real estate was valued at $6,807,179,704. The net funded debt in December 1909 was $653,270,379, the gross bonded debt being $946,005,728; the floating debt was $60,367,290, and the sinking fund was $232,368,060. Among the large items of the 1909 budget were: $27,470,737 for education; $47,225,078 for redemption and interest of the city debt; $20,235,115 for miscellaneous city and county expenses; $14,160,202 for police; $8,428,596 for borough governments; $8,039,565 for fire protection; $7,418,299 for street cleaning; $6,511,143 for water supply and public lighting; $4,760,651 for charitable institutions; $3,319,065 for parks; $2,512,606 for public charities; and $2,484,859 for health. The state constitution of 1894 fixed the debt limit of all municipalities at 10% of the assessed valuation of their real estate. An amendment of 1899 (in effect 1900) excepted from the debt limit of New York City the previous debt of the counties now wholly included in the city; another amendment adopted in 1905 excepted from this limit debts incurred by the City of New York after the 1st of January 1904 to provide for the supply of water; and an amendment, adopted in 1909, excepted from the debt limit bonds issued after December 31st 1909 for such public improvements owned or to be owned by the city as yield a revenue in excess of what is required to meet the interest and principal of such bonds; also indebtedness incurred prior to January 1st 1910 for rapid transit or dock properties in proportion to the extent to which the revenue meets the interest and the instalments to be paid for the redemption of the bonds, such increase of the debt limit to be used, however, only for rapid transit or dock improvements. The same amendment (1909) also authorizes the city to issue, during any one year, in excess of its former debt limit, bonds to be redeemed out of the tax levy for the ensuing year to the extent of one-tenth of 1% of the assessed value of the real estate of the city subject to taxation.
The board of aldermen, whose power is less than formerly, is composed of a president, elected on the city ticket for a term of four years; the five borough presidents, each elected by his borough for a term of four years; and 73 aldermen, elected by districts for a term of two years. Each head of an administrative department is entitled to a seat in the board but no vote; he is required to attend the board’s meeting whenever it requests him to do so and must answer questions relating to his department. The board is required to meet once each month except in August and September. Each administrative department has a single head with the exception of the department of parks, the department of health and the department of education; and each head of a department has full power of appointing and removing subordinates except that a person holding a position in the classified civil service subject to competitive examination can be removed only for cause. The head of the department of parks is a board of three park commissioners: one for the boroughs of Manhattan and Richmond, one for the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens and one for the Borough of the Bronx; one of the three is designated by the mayor as president of the board. The head of the department of health is also a board of three members; the commissioner of health, who is president of the board, the police commissioner and the health officer of the port. The department of education is described in the paragraph on education. Railway, gas and electric companies doing business within the city are subject to the extensive control of a public service commission of five members who are appointed by the governor of the state (see New York).
In New York county, which comprises the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, there is no county court, but in its place are a city court and a court of general sessions. The city court is a civil court, having jurisdiction over cases in which the amount involved does not exceed $2000, and is composed of seven justices elected for a term of ten years. The court of general session is a criminal court, having jurisdiction of all crimes including murder, and is composed of the city judge, the recorder and three justices of the sessions, each elected for a term of fourteen years. New York county elects a surrogate for a term of fourteen years, and Kings has two county judges; but in Queens and Richmond the county and surrogate courts are the same as in other counties of the state. In each of twenty-eight districts into which the city is divided a municipal-court justice is elected for a term of ten years and sessions of the municipal court, which has jurisdiction of civil cases in which the amount involved does not exceed $500, are held. For the administration of criminal justice by magistrates (justices of the peace) the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx constitute the first division and the other three boroughs constitute the second division. In each division there is a board of magistrates appointed by the mayor for a term of ten years, and the magistrates hold the several courts of their division in rotation according to such rules as they themselves establish. There is also in each division a court of special sessions consisting of six justices appointed by the mayor for a term of ten years; it has jurisdiction in all misdemeanour cases except libel and must be held by three justices. In the first division both the magistrates and the justices of the court of special sessions are required to hold a separate court for hearing charges against children under sixteen years of age.
Each borough has a president with extensive power, and the city is divided into twenty-five local improvement districts, each having a board composed of the president of the borough and the alderman representing the district. The president appoints and removes at pleasure a commissioner of public works, who, subject to his control, directs his administration relating to streets, sewers, public buildings and supplies. The borough president prepares all contracts relating to his borough. In Queens and Richmond he directs the cleaning of the streets. In Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx he is directed by the charter to appoint a superintendent of buildings, who, subject to him and with the aid of inspectors, enforces the ordinances of the aldermen relating to the construction, alteration and removal of buildings; in Queens and Richmond the borough president may appoint such an officer only when authorized to do so by the board of aldermen upon the recommendation of the board of estimate and apportionment. A borough president is chairman of each of the local improvement boards.
History.—The discovery of New York Bay and the Hudson river by Verrazano in 1524 was followed only by occasional visits of trading or exploring vessels until the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609. Beginning with 1610, Dutch merchants despatched several vessels to engage in the fur trade with the Indians, and in 1614 a ship commander, Adriaen Block, having lost his vessel, built the “Onrust” or “Restless” on the shore of Upper New York Bay. About the same time a few huts were built at the south end of Manhattan Island. When New Netherland had been erected (1623) into a province of the West India Company (see New York), that body chose the south end of Manhattan Island for a trans-Atlantic shipping station and for the seat of government. In 1626 Peter Minuit, the director-general of the province, bought the entire island from the Indians for goods valued at 60 guilders (about $24) and at what was then its southern extremity began the erection of Fort Amsterdam; and at the close of the year the settlement, New Amsterdam, comprised thirty bark-covered dwellings. For several years it was maintained wholly in the interest of the Company, and to none of the inhabitants, all of whom were its agents or employees, were given any political rights, title to land or right to European trade on his own account. The company divided a large portion of the island into six farms of its own, and when by its Charter of Privileges and Exemption ​ (1629) it attempted to encourage agriculture in other parts of the province (see New York State) it reserved to itself the whole island. In 1633 New Amsterdam received a grant of “staple right” by which it could compel any vessel passing the port either to offer its cargo for sale or pay a duty; in 1638 the Company extended to all friendly European countries the privilege of trading with the province, and about this time it opened town lots for sale. The town rapidly assumed the cosmopolitan character for which it has ever since been noted, there being, according to a contemporary report, eighteen languages spoken by its 400 or 500 inhabitants in 1643. In 1641, to gain the necessary support to fight the Indians, Kieft had to yield to the demand for a popular voice in the government, and permitted the heads of families to choose a board of Twelve Men to confer with him. In 1643 he permitted the choice of a board of Eight Men, and when he refused its demands it was largely instrumental in effecting his recall. Under his successor, Peter Stuyvesant, a board of Nine Men was chosen, and this body, objecting to the customs duties which he imposed, sent three of its number with a petition to the States-General with the result that in 1653 New Amsterdam was made a city with a government administered by a schout, two burgomasters and five schepens.
Chiefly with a view to protection from roving traders the great burgher-right and the small burgher-right were established in 1657; the great burgher-right being conferred on all who had been magistrates as well as on those then in office, on clergymen, on militia officers and on the male descendants of all such persons; and the small burgher-right being conferred on all native-born citizens, on the husbands of native-born women and on all who had been residents of the city for a year and six weeks. Other persons approved by the magistrates were allowed to buy the great burgher-right for 50 guilders ($20) or the small burgher-right for 20 guilders ($8). Only burghers and employees of the West India Company could engage in commerce, work at a trade or practise a profession, and only great burghers could hold the more important offices. Originally Stuyvesant appointed the city officers, but in 1658 he permitted them to nominate their own successors. Besides engaging in the fur trade, the city was now exporting considerable timber and food-stuffs; in the coast trade it was beginning to reap the advantages of its situation on the coast route through Long Island Sound; and its trade with the Dutch West Indies was of some importance. But the city and the Company were always at odds. The duties exacted by the Company were a heavy burden and yet the Company did not keep the fort in good repair. Stuyvesant’s arbitrary rule primarily in the interests of the Company was another grievance, and when in August 1664 there appeared in the harbour an English fleet sent by the duke of York for the conquest of the province, the city was in a defenceless condition. Richard Nicolls, the representative of the duke, easily won over the burgomasters and other prominent citizens; Stuyvesant, practically deserted, was driven to a formal surrender on the 8th of September; and New Amsterdam became New York.
In June 1665 Nicolls reorganized the government, vesting it in a mayor, aldermen and sheriff, to be appointed by the governor of the province for a term of one year; and extended the city’s limits to include the whole of Manhattan Island. In 1666 he granted to New Harlem, founded in 1658, a charter which gave to it the status of a town within the city. Nicolls’ successor, Governor Francis Lovelace, established a post-route from New York to Boston in 1673. On the 30th of July 1673 the city was surprised and captured by a Dutch fleet under Cornelis Evertsen and Jacob Binckes. The captors renamed the city New Amsterdam and in January 1674 Anthony Colve, the newly appointed governor of the province, re-established the Dutch city government, but under the treaty of Westminster the English again took possession in November. In 1678 Governor Edmund Andros gave the city practically a monopoly within the province of commerce “over seas” and ordered that flour should be inspected nowhere else; two years later he required that all flour for export should be bolted and packed within the city. The duties established by order of the duke of York were still a grievance, and when, in 1681, Governor Andros had sailed for England without renewing the ordinance imposing them, the merchants refused payment and demanded that they should thereafter be imposed by a representative assembly. The duke yielded and the first New York Assembly, called by Governor Thomas Dongan, met in the city on the 17th of October 1683. Less than three years later, on the 20th of April 1686, Dongan gave the city its first real charter, which is a historic instrument in the city government; it was superseded only to a very small extent as late as 1830 (when there was a revision of the charter) and on it as a basis the later charters have been framed.
New York City with its numerous artisans, small traders, sailors and common labourers, such as usually compose the party of discontent, was the centre of the Leisler uprising (see New York State) incited by the English Revolution of 1688, and it was here that Leisler in the spring of 1690 called the first intercolonial assembly to plan an expedition against Canada. During Leisler’s rule, too, the freeholders of the city were for the first time permitted to elect their own mayor, a privilege not subsequently granted until 1834. Before the close of the 17th century New York had become a favourite haunt of pirates; leading merchants assisted pirates as well as privateersmen in fitting out their vessels and shared in their plunder or at least welcomed them with their rich cargoes, and public officials, including one or more governors, were also implicated. The home government finally appointed Richard Coote, earl of Bellomont (1636–1701), governor with explicit instructions to suppress the evil. Before he received his commission he and Robert Livingston sent out William Kidd (d. 1701) with a frigate to capture the pirates. Kidd himself turned pirate, but was arrested in Boston in July 1699, was sent to England for trial and was hanged in May 1701. Bellomont met determined opposition among New York officers and merchants; but by the close of his brief administration (1698–1701) he had caught a number of the pirates and broken up the corrupt system by which they had been protected. The importation of negro slaves was begun in 1725 or 1726 and was somewhat encouraged by the States-General. Becoming prized as household servants they so increased in number in the city that during the first half of the 18th century they were not greatly outnumbered by the whites; the whites early began to fear a slave insurrection, and ordinances were passed forbidding negroes to gather on the Sabbath in groups of more than four, or to carry guns, swords or clubs; but one night in April 1712 some slaves met in an orchard near Maiden Lane, set fire to a building and killed nine men besides wounding several others who came to put out the fire. Soldiers then captured all the insurgents except six, who committed suicide, and after trial twenty-one were executed. When early in 1741 nine fires broke out within a few weeks and a negro was seen running from the last, the belief became general that the negroes had formed a plot to burn the town. A reward of £100 was offered for information exposing the plot, and the testimony of an indentured servant-girl, Mary Burton, that her master, mistress, a few other whites and a number of negroes were implicated in such a plot threw the city into a panic. Other confessions were extorted by threats, and on such worthless testimony four whites were executed, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake, twenty were hanged and seventy-one were transported. The frenzy was checked when Mary Burton began to accuse persons of consequence and above suspicion. The New York Gazette, the first newspaper of New York, established by William Bradford in 1725, was a semi-official organ. For criticizing the government in the New York Weekly Journal, which he established in 1733, John Peter Zenger was charged with libel in 1734, and by securing his acquittal in the following year the popular party established the freedom of the press (see New York). At the beginning of the Stamp-Act controversy John Holt’s New York Gazette and Weekly Post-Boy, the successor of Bradford’s Gazette, was the medium through which the popular leaders stirred the ​ people to resistance. The Stamp-Act Congress, called at the suggestion of Massachusetts, sat in the city from the 7th to the 28th of October 1765, and on the 31st of October the New York merchants started the non-importation movement which spread to the other colonies. Lieut.-Governor Cadwallader Colden prepared for the enforcement of the Act by strengthening Fort George (a later name for Fort Amsterdam) and increasing its garrison. The ship with the stamps arrived in the evening of the 23rd of October and on the following night threatening notices were posted on the doors of every public office and at the corners of streets. When the day (1st of November) came for the Act to go into effect Governor Colden had retired within the fort. Major James, the commander of the garrison, had threatened to enforce the Act; but the Sons of Liberty gathered a mob, broke into the governor’s coach-house, burned his coach and burned him in effigy, destroyed the furniture and other property of Major James and threatened to storm the fort. On the 5th, the governor delivered the stamps to the mayor and aldermen. No serious attempt was subsequently made to enforce the Act, and its repeal (18th of March 1766) was celebrated on the city common with noisy demonstrations and the erection of a liberty pole. The Assembly also made appropriations for the erection of statues of the king and William Pitt. The Sons of Liberty opposed the passage by the Assembly of appropriations for the maintenance of the soldiers, and the latter retaliated by repeatedly cutting down liberty poles erected by the Sons of Liberty. Finally in a skirmish on the 18th of January 1770 the soldiers killed one man and severely wounded several others, and this bloodshed is memorable as the first in the struggle which culminated in the independence of the colonies. The tea shipped to New York for testing the right of parliament to tax the colonies did not arrive until four months after that shipped to Boston had been thrown overboard, but when it did arrive (April 1774) the chests in one vessel were destroyed in the same manner as were those in Boston and the other vessel was forced to carry its cargo back to London. The Port Act for punishing Boston stirred the New York merchants as well as the Sons of Liberty (chiefly mechanics and artisans), and when the latter again threatened violence the merchants resolved to guide the movement, and called a mass meeting and named a committee of correspondence of fifty-one members. This committee, on the 23rd of May 1774, proposed a Continental Congress chiefly with a view to obtaining an effective regulation of non-importation from England; it also named the New York delegates to that body.
During the greater part of the War of Independence the city was occupied by the British. Its capture was a part of the British plan to get control of the Hudson and separate New England from the southern colonies. Early in 1776 the Americans began to throw up fortifications at several points on both banks of the East river in the hope of closing the east water front to the enemy. Other fortifications were erected on Governor’s Island and at some points along the west water front to the upper end of Manhattan Island, where an attempt was made to close the passage of the Hudson by building Fort Washington on the New York bank and Fort Lee on the New Jersey bank and connecting them with a line of sunken ships fastened together with chains. To the north of the city proper, also, defences were constructed along the line of the present Grand Street, and to prepare for a retreat from the north end of the island a redoubt, which the British later called Fort George, was built on the prominence overlooking Kingsbridge from the south, and Fort Independence, in what is now Bronx Borough, was built to command the approach from the mainland. After the battle of Long Island, fought within the present limits of Brooklyn Borough, Washington, on the night of the 29th of August 1776, crossed to Manhattan Island. As the city was no longer tenable, some of the generals proposed burning it, but Congress would not give its consent and Washington, although withdrawing the greater part of his army behind fortifications on Harlem (now Washington) Heights, continued to occupy it with about 5000 men under General Israel Putnam until the British general, Sir William Howe, began to show signs of attack. Troops also remained behind the batteries along the east water front, and it was on this occasion that Nathan Hale went on his fatal errand to ascertain Howe’s intentions, was discovered within the British lines and was hanged as a spy. On the 15th of September several British ships which had some days before passed the American batteries, as far as Montressor’s (now Randall’s) Island, entered Kipp’s Bay, at the foot of the present 34th Street, routed the militia posted behind the low breastworks there, and after landing narrowly missed cutting off the rear of Putnam’s retreating army. One portion of Howe’s army took possession of the city and another marched toward Harlem Heights along the east side of what is now Central Park while Putnam’s men were marching in nearly parallel columns on the west side of the park. On the 16th, in the battle of Harlem Heights (on what is now Morningside Heights), about 1800 Americans drove a somewhat smaller number of British troops from the field. In October Howe sailed up the East river, and Washington, to avoid being outflanked, retreated to the mainland, leaving only a garrison at Fort Washington. Howe landed at Pell’s Point (now within Pelham Bay Park), and on the 28th, a few miles north of the present city limits, was fought the battle of White Plains. Howe then turned westward and southward and on the 16th of November captured Fort Washington. What is now Bronx Borough was within the “Neutral Grounds” which suffered greatly from the foraging parties of both armies. Six days after the British entered the city proper about one-fourth of it was destroyed by fire, and the desolation was extended by another large fire on the 3rd of August 1778. The British crowded their prisoners (who suffered terrible hardships) into several of the churches, the City Hall, the new gaol (later the Hall of Records), King’s College, the Livingston sugar house, and a number of ships moored in the harbour. The city was a refuge for Loyalists, but even they were treated with contempt by the British. The homes of Loyalists and Whigs alike were plundered, and when the British finally evacuated (25th of November 1783) they had robbed the city of its wealth and had destroyed its business.
For the first three or four years after the return of peace recovery in some directions was very slow; but only a few months after the British had gone an American merchantman sailed from the port bound for China and opened trade with that country. Trade was speedily resumed with European ports, and by 1788 it was not uncommon to see 100 or more vessels in the port either loading or unloading. On the question of enlarging the powers of the Federal government in 1787–1788, the city strongly supported Alexander Hamilton and John Jay against a determined opposition in other parts of the state, and the ratification of the Federal constitution in the state convention at Poughkeepsie was a triumph for New York City. The city was the Federal capital in 1789–1790 and under its strong Federalist influence the new government of the nation was organized. During the colonial era New York was always the seat of the provincial government and for twenty years it was at times the seat of the state government, but in 1797 Albany was made the permanent capital. In 1807 the success of steam navigation was assured by the trial trip of Robert Fulton’s “Clermont” from New York to Albany and return; but the city did not benefit immediately from this invention. On the contrary, the Embargo Act (1807–1809) threatened its commerce with ruin. It revived under the Non-Intercourse Act, but suffered again from the second war with Great Britain. In the first and second years of this war some merchants reaped profits from privateering against the enemy, but in December 1813 the British stopped privateering by a closer blockade of the harbour and in 1814 they threatened to attack the city. In preparing to resist, the city erected or assisted in erecting elaborate fortifications, and Robert Fulton was busy in New York building a steam frigate with cannon-proof sides and heavy guns, but the war closed without a test of the fortifications and before the frigate was ready for action.
In 1817 the Erie Canal was begun and the first line of trans-Atlantic packet-ships was established. The canal, opened in ​ 1825, insured the commercial supremacy of New York among American cities. The years immediately following the close of the second war with Great Britain also mark the beginning of a rapid increase in the number of European immigrants, and this stream of immigration, rising to a flood in the fourth decade and continuing high throughout the century, has been a dominant force in determining the city’s social and political conditions. Although the city was a stronghold of the Federalists at the time the National government was organized, the Democrats, owing to the dexterous management of Aaron Burr, were victorious in the elections of 1800 and 1801, and the city has continued to be normally Democratic owing largely to the activities of the Tammany Society or Tammany Hall (q.v.). This organization, founded in 1789, early espoused the cause of the unfranchised inhabitants, attended to the wants of the immigrants in various ways, led the movement for universal manhood suffrage and the election of city officers, and, after the office of mayor became elective (1834) and the last property qualifications for city voters were removed (1842), continued strong by reason of the support of the great mass of foreign-born citizens. Fraud and corruption were resorted to by Tammany, and offices were used for the good of the organization rather than for the good of the city. Socially, the immigrants deluged the city with vice, crime, misery and pauperism. The unsanitary conditions had already caused epidemics of yellow fever in 1795, 1798, 1822 and 1823, and the city was visited in 1832, 1834 and 1849 with epidemics of cholera in which several thousand lives were lost. These scourges together with a fire in 1835, which destroyed the East Side below Wall Street, hastened the construction of works for getting a supply of water from the Croton river. The immigrants represented various nationalities and religious sects, and from 1830 to 1871 the city was frequently disturbed by riots arising usually from national or religious antipathy. During the first mayoralty election (1834) there was rioting; and there were an abolitionist riot in the same year, a flour riot during the financial panic of 1837, and labour riots from time to time which were suppressed by the police. In 1857 the state legislature established a state or “metropolitan” police for the better protection of the city. The mayor, Fernando Wood, contending that the act was unconstitutional, resisted with the old municipal police, and another serious riot had begun when the Seventh Regiment of state troops compelled obedience; later, too, the court of appeals decided against the mayor.
Wood was still mayor at the outbreak of the Civil War, and in January 1861 he proposed to the Common Council that Manhattan Island, Long Island and Staten Island should secede and constitute a free city, to be named Tri-Insula. The Council approved. But when, in April, the city had been aroused by the bombardment of Fort Sumter the majority of the Democrats joined with the Republicans in discarding the proposal and in support of the Union. The native-born and loyal citizens joined the Union army in such large numbers that the city was left with inadequate protection from such of its inhabitants as had often constituted the mob. In this state of affairs the drafting of men for the army was begun in July 1863 in conformity with an act of Congress which exempted from its operation all who should make a money payment of $300. The New York proletariat and unscrupulous politicians complained that the measure was peculiarly oppressive to the poor, and the rioting with which it was resisted was protracted and bloody. The rioting began the 13th of July and continued for nearly five days. More than fifty buildings were burned. The mob was especially furious against negroes, a number of whom were hanged or beaten to death. The police fought bravely but were unequal to the emergency, and order was restored only after several regiments had returned to the city and had killed at least 500 of the rioters. In 1871 Irish Catholics threatened to prevent the Orangemen from parading the streets on the anniversary of the Battle of Boyne (12th of July). The superintendent of police also issued an order on the preceding day prohibiting the parade. Public opinion, however, was so strong in favour of the Orangemen that the order was revoked, and five regiments of militia were called out to protect the parade before it started; at the first assault the mob was scattered by a volley which killed 51 persons. The militia suffered a loss of three killed and several wounded.
The character of the population did not improve speedily, for while immigrants were coming in great numbers a large portion of the saving middle class was removing to the suburbs; and although Tammany Hall was discredited during the Civil War, it gained control of the state as well as the city government soon after the war. William M. Tweed, its ruler, organized the “Tweed Ring” which was plundering the city on a gigantic scale, when in 1871 its operations were exposed by the New York Times. The thefts of the “Ring” amounted to many millions of dollars, those in the erection of the county court house alone to $8,000,000. Several of the malefactors were sent to prison and Tweed himself died there. Tammany, however, was victorious again in the second election (1874) after Tweed’s fall, and in 1884, when rival companies were seeking to obtain a franchise for working a street railway on Broadway, this privilege, so valuable that the city could have sold it for millions of dollars, was given away by the aldermen; and it was afterwards proved that a number of them had shared a cash bribe of $500,000. Some of them were subsequently punished, but Tammany’s power was not seriously impaired. In 1874 the city’s corporate limits were extended to include about 13,000 acres across the Harlem river; in 1895 there was a further extension in the same county to the southern borders of Yonkers and Mt. Vernon; and in 1898 all of Kings county, all of Richmond county (Staten Island) and a portion of Queens county were consolidated with it. As Tammany’s stronghold was in Manhattan, the annexation of these districts diminished the difficulty of holding Tammany in check, or of defeating it at the polls whenever the anti-Tammany forces united as a consequence of a notoriously corrupt administration. In 1894 an investigation of the state Senate brought to light some of the facts respecting an elaborate system of blackmail which had grown up under the joint protection of Tammany Hall and the city government. Under this system large sums were paid for appointments to office and promotions, and money was collected regularly from the keepers of gambling houses, houses of ill-fame and other disorderly resorts, and from liquor sellers for permission to violate certain details of the excise laws, such as midnight and Sunday closing. There followed a great outcry against Tammany and it was driven from power for three years. During the reform administration, Colonel George Edward Waring (1833–1898), as head of the street cleaning department, quite revolutionized New York as respects cleanliness. The police service and the school system were also much improved. Tammany was successful in the election of 1897 when the opposition was divided. It again abused its power and was defeated in 1901. In 1903 and 1905 the Tammany ticket was elected, but the mayor, George Brinton McClellan, administered the government, especially during his second term (1906–1910), independently of Tammany Hall. With the exception of the mayor the Tammany ticket was defeated in 1909, and the mayor, William Jay Gaynor (b. 1851), was little in sympathy with Tammany Hall, having been nominated apparently for the purpose of insuring the election of loyal Tammany men on the county ticket.
Bibliography.—Special works have been mentioned in the body of the article. Among general descriptive works are Moses King’s Handbook of New York (Boston, 1895), Rand McNally & Company’s Handy Guide to New York City (Chicago, 21st ed., 1907), Appleton’s Dictionary of New York (New York, 1905); and of a more aesthetic quality, John C. van Dyke’s The New New York (ib., 1909), with illustrations by Joseph Pennell. E. S. Martin edited (ib., 1909) The Wayfarer in New York, a book of selections. F. B. Kelley’s Historical Guide to the City of New York (ib., 1909), compiled under the auspices of the City History Club, is the best summary of old landmarks, places of historical interest, &c. For administration see The Charter of the City of New York with Amendments (New York, 1907); F. C. Seckerson, Manual of Civics: A Text-Book of Municipal Government for the City of New York (New York, 1908); and G. A. Ingalls, An Outline of Municipal Government in the City of New York (Albany, 1904). For history see Mrs Schuyler van Rensselaer, History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols., ​New York, 1909); J. H. Innes, New Amsterdam and its People (New York, 1902); Martha J. Lamb, History of the City of New York (2 vols., New York, 1877); Memorial History of the City of New York (4 vols., New York, 1892), edited by J. G. Wilson; Theodore Roosevelt, New York (New York, 1895) in the “Historic Towns” series; R. R. Wilson, New York: Old and New; Its Story, Streets and Landmarks (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1902; new ed., 1909); D. T. Valentine, History of the City of New York (New York, 1853); and Historic New York, edited by Maud W. Goodwin et al. (2 vols., New York, 1899).
* ↑ The more important of these small islands are: Blackwell’s (about 120 acres) in the East river, Ward’s N. of Blackwell’s, and Randall’s N. of Ward’s, separated from it by Little Hell Gate, and in the mouth of the Harlem river; in the Upper Bay, Governor’s Island (originally 65 acres; enlarged by the addition of 101 acres to the southwest), a U.S. military reservation, about 1000 yds. S. of the Battery, the southernmost point of Manhattan Island; Bedloe’s Island (sometimes called Liberty Island from the Bartholdi statue on it of “Liberty Enlightening the World”), with an area of 131/2 acres, lying 2 m. S.W. of the Battery; and Ellis Island, 11/2 m. W.S.W. of the Battery, occupied by the Federal government as a landing-place for immigrants. In the Lower Bay, and a part of the Borough of Richmond, are the artificial islands, Swinburne (1866–1870; 8 m. S. of the Battery) and Hoffman (1868–1873; 7 m. S. of the Battery), constructed for quarantine stations.
* ↑ Manhattan and Bronx boroughs compose New York county; the counties of Queens and Richmond are coterminous respectively with the boroughs of those names; Brooklyn Borough is coextensive with Kings county.
* ↑ The narrowness of the channel makes the tidal scour more effective, and it was little filled in even when sewage and garbage was dumped in the Bay itself. The river carries little silt and leaves most of it well above the harbour. The natural excellence of the harbour may be inferred from the following figures: in 1895–1903 the Federal expenses for important harbour improvements, principally dredging, were $1,035,300 for New York, $2,710,000 (exclusive of $1,185,000 for the Delaware Breakwater) for Philadelphia, $1,501,169 for Boston, $1,404,845 for New Orleans, and $470,000 for Baltimore.
* ↑ See Wm. H. Hobbs, Configuration of the Rock Floor of Greater New York (Washington, 1905), Bulletin 270 of the U.S. Geological Survey, with an excellent summary of the earlier literature. The study of the underlying rock of Manhattan Island and its vicinity has been stimulated by the great engineering and building enterprises in the city limits.
* ↑ See a paper, “Old Wells and Water-Courses on the Island of Manhattan,” by George Everett Hill and George E. Waring, Jr., in Historic New York: the First Series of the Half Moon Papers (New York, 1899).
* ↑ In the Borough of the Bronx the system of numbered avenues no longer holds, but the cross streets are numbered consecutively, W. 262nd Street being immediately S. of the Yonkers line and E. 242nd and 243rd immediately S. of the Mt. Vernon boundary.
* ↑ See F. T. Hill, Story of a Street (New York, 1908).
* ↑ See Jacob A. Riis, “City Farms and Harvest Dances,” in the Century Magazine for September 1909.
* ↑ On the mechanical equipment of the New York “skyscraper” see R. P. Bolton, “High Office Buildings of New York,” vol. 143 of Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (1901). See also Frank W. Skinner, “The Foundation of Lofty Buildings,” in the Century Magazine for March 1909.
* ↑ See A History of the Singer Building Construction (New York, 1908), edited by O. F. Semsch. The building’s steel columns are carried on pneumatic caisson piers which reach bed rock 90 ft. below the street-level.
* ↑ See T. Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage (3 vols., New York, 1903).
* ↑ See Charles Hemstreet, Literary New York, Its Landmarks and Associations (New York, 1903).
* ↑ See A. Emerson Palmer, The New York Public School (New York, 1905).
* ↑ The chancellors have been: in 1831–1839 James H. Mathews (d. 1870); in 1839–1850, Theodore Frelinghuysen (d. 1862); in 1852–1870, Isaac Ferris (1798–1873); in 1870–1880, Howard Crosby; in 1881–1891, John Hall; and in 1891–1910, Henry Mitchell MacCracken (b. 1840). Dr Ferris was a minister of the (Dutch) Reformed Church and the three chancellors since his time have been Presbyterian clergymen; but the University is not sectarian.
* ↑ C. C. Moore (1779–1863), son of Benjamin Moore (1748–1816), who was Protestant Episcopal bishop of New York and president of Columbia College in 1801–1811, was professor of Biblical learning in the Seminary in 1821–1850, compiled a Hebrew and English Lexicon (1809) and wrote some poetry including the popular juvenile verses beginning “Twas the night before Christmas.”
* ↑ See C. S. Smith, Working with the People (New York, 1904), and the Annual Reports of the Managing Director of the People’s Institute.
* ↑ See A. B. Keep, History of the New York Society Library (New York, 1909).
* ↑ See H. R. Hurd (ed.) New York Charities Directory (19th ed., 1910), published annually by the Charity Organization Society; and W. H. Tolman and Charles Hemstreet, The Better New York (1904), published by the American Institute of Social Service.
* ↑ The immigrants from Russian Poland, from Austria Hungary, from Russia and Rumania are largely Jews, and it is estimated that one-fourth of the inhabitants of Manhattan are Jews.
* ↑ Between 1840 and 1858 the tonnage cleared at New York nearly quadrupled, the increase being from 408,768 to 1,460,998; at the close of the period of the predominance of the canal as a freight carrier, in the decade 1850–1860, New York City had, thanks to the Erie Canal and the canals of Ohio, a monopoly of the trade of the upper Mississippi basin.
* ↑ The census of 1905 was confined to establishments under the factory system; the total for all manufactured products in 1900 (the figure given in the 1900 census) is greater than the value of factory products only (the figure given for 1900 in the 1905 census, so that figures for 1900 and 1905 may be comparable).
* ↑ See Edward Wegmann, The Water Supply of the City of New York (New York, 1896).
* ↑ See A. D. Flinn, “The World’s Greatest Aqueduct” in the Century Magazine for September 1909.