page_title: City Hall Park
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: City Hall Park / History / 19th century
context_page_description: City Hall Park is a public park surrounding New York City Hall in the Civic Center of Manhattan. It was the town commons of the nascent city of New York.
context_section_description: In 1802, since the original City Hall of New York City was aging and could not accommodate the growing municipal government, New York City's administration decided to hold a competition for the best new City Hall design. Aaron Burr promised Philadelphia’s Benjamin Henry Latrobe that he would win. When he lost, Latrobe bitterly denounced the winners, “bricklayer” John McComb  Jr. and French exile Joseph-François Mangin, and their “vile invention". In fact, McComb and Mangin were each accomplished architects, and their design, largely by Mangin, was superior to Latrobe’s, but City Hall was their only collaboration, and it was brief. McComb alone was chosen to oversee construction, and Mangin's career never recovered. Decades later, a McComb descendant erased Mangin's name from the original drawings, and Mangin was officially recognized as the principal designer of City Hall in 2003. The building was completed in 1812; it was designed in a Federal style with French influence. Some critics complained that the New City Hall was too far north of the heart of the city, but others liked the remote location and beautiful landscape of the building.
  By the late 1810s, New York’s cultural identity was growing, and in 1818, The Rotunda was built as New York City’s first art museum.
  Slavery was abolished in New York on July 4, 1827, Emancipation Day, prompting a two-day celebration in the park and a parade.
  In 1830, the old debtor prison, New Gaol, was transformed into the city’s hall of records. When the building was torn down in 1903, it was New York’s oldest municipal building.
  New York City’s lavish architecture and growing economy attracted tourists, and in 1836, the first New York City luxury hotel was built. Isaiah Rogers, with a reputation for building America’s first luxury hotel, designed the six-story Park Hotel, which was commonly known as the Astor House.
  In 1842, the Croton Fountain was placed in the center of City Hall Park to celebrate the Croton Aqueduct, New York City’s first dependable supply of pure water. The aqueduct drew water from the Croton Dam more than 40 miles (64 km) north of the city and was considered one of the great engineering feats of the 19th century.
  Starting in 1861, the Tweed Courthouse was built in the northern portion of the park. The courthouse was widely seen as a symbol of corruption because it was built using funds provided by the corrupt William M. "Boss" Tweed, whose Tammany Hall political machine controlled the city and state governments at the time. It was completed in 1881, twenty years after construction started.
caption: Hall of Records, 1893
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