New York History 19th Century

GROWING PAINS 1800-1865

ORIGINS
COLONIAL
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
GROWING PAINS
BIRTH OF METROPOLIS
JAZZ AGE
MODERN TIME
NOW

1807 Fulton launches his steamboat. Washington Irving is publishing.

By the turn of 19th century, New York becomes the largest city in the nation, its population reaching 100,000.
The first functioning steamboat, designed by Robert Fulton, starts out from South Street Sea Port and goes all the way to Albany, covering 150 miles distance at the record speed of 5 miles an hour! She was described as “a monster, moving on the waters, defying wind and tide, and breathing flames and smoke."
Robert Fulton, an artist turned inventor, did not invent the steam engine, but he was the first to put it to practical use. Fulton's partner was Chancellor Livingston, one of the founding fathers; Fulton's first steamboat was called Clermont, after Livingston's estate.
What started as a breathtaking experiment turned into passenger steamboats transport service running on regular schedule up and down North River.
In 1807 Washington Irving starts publishing satirical essays poking fun at New Yorkers. There was an old English legend about King John who wanted to build a castle in the village of Gotham. In 13th Century England, any road the king travelled on had to be made a public highway, and the people of Gotham did not want a public highway through their village. They decided to pretend to be mad, to scare the king away. Coined by Washington Irving, Gotham, a city of mad people, became New York City's nickname.
Washington Irving was quite surprised of how little New Yorkers knew about their history. He wrote satirical 'History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty'. He pretended it was written by the antiquarian Diedrich Knickerbocker. Since then native New Yorkers are referred to as Knickerbockers.

1811 City grid is laid

In the beginning of 19th century most of New York's population resided below present Civic Center area; Greenwich Village was still a bucolic rural place.
In anticipation of city's growth, the Commissioners created a grid plan which up to now defines Manhattan’s topography. Described by the commission as a blend “beauty, order and convenience,” the grid was adopted in 1811 to facilitate the sale and development of land north of 14th Street to Washington Heights.
According to the plan, the city is laid out in a series of equal blocks set 200 feet apart, 2,000 blocks altogether. 12 Avenues ran from South to North, streets - from East to West. Street numbers increase towards North, Avenue numbers increase towards West.
There are 20 street blocks per mile or 5 Avenue blocks per mile.
5th Avenue divides Manhattan into East Side and West Side.

1812 The War of 1812. City Hall is built

 The War of 1812:

At the outset of the 19th century, Great Britain was locked in a long and bitter conflict with Napoleon Bonaparte’s France. In an attempt to cut off supplies from reaching the enemy, both sides attempted to block the United States from trading with the other.
The Royal Navy also outraged Americans by its practice of impressment, or kidnapping seamen from U.S. merchant vessels and forcing them to serve on behalf of the British.
In the War of 1812, the United States took on the greatest naval power in the world, Great Britain. The United States suffered many costly defeats at the hands of British, Canadian and Native American troops over the course of the War of 1812, including the capture and burning of the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., in August 1814.
Nonetheless, American troops were able to repulse British invasions in New York, Baltimore and New Orleans. Many celebrated the War of 1812 as a “second war of independence,” beginning an era of partisan agreement and national pride.

City Hall:

New York City Hall, seat of the government of New York City, is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions. This is where the office of the Mayor of New York City and the chambers of the New York City Council are located.
The building's front facade was clad in white marble, while the back was left with the old boring sandstone. That was done in order to cut construction costs, since, as it was believed back then, the city would never grow so big that the back of the building would be visible.

1822 Yellow fever epidemic.

By 1820s, New York had become the largest city in the nation and the first city in the U.S. to surpass 100,000 people in population. That, along with the poor water supply, caused constant outbreaks of yellow fever.
1822 marked the last such outbreak in lower Manhattan.
In June 1822 a case of yellow fever broke out on Lumber Street, near the Battery. As the situation began rapidly deteriorating, the city declared anything below City Hall an infested district and put up a barricade along Chambers Street. Lower Manhattan became deserted as people fled northward to anywhere the air was considered more wholesome.
One of the favorite destinations was a village located to the North of New York called Greenwich.
By the time the epidemic ended in the fall of 1822, 388 New Yorkers had died.
When things returned to normal, a lot of people decided to stay in Greenwich Village and settle. The causes of Yellow Fever remained a mystery well into the next century.

1825 The Erie Canal opens.

In the beginning of the 19th century New York is the largest city in the nation; after Erie Canal is constructed it becomes a major economic center.
The Erie Canal was the longest canal in the world built in the shortest time. It connected Hudson River (through Mohawk River) to the Great Lakes, making New York City "the mouth of the continent". After Erie Canal was constructed New York experienced its first economic boom.
Because of the Erie Canal, New York City finds itself in position to control half of nation's imports and at least 1/3 of its exports.
By 1850 ,the city's population reached 1/2 million, quadrupling the population from 1820s.
Most of the new immigrants in the first half of the 19th century arrived from Germany and Ireland.

1848 John Jacob Astor dies.

John Jacob Astor died the richest man in the nation, having amassed a fortune of $20 million.Astor arrived from Germany at the end of 18th century and started out as a humble fur trader. In 1807, the US government lead by Thomas Jefferson implemented the Embargo Act according to which American ports were closed to foreign trade. No ships could go either in or out. Astor found a way around the embargo and made a small fortune trading with China; he was also lending money to the government at huge rates. He went on to invest in real estate which made him enormously wealthy. Being nicknamed the "landlord of New York", he owned most of the property where new immigrants settled.

Admittedly his only regret was that as much real estate as he had owned, he didn't buy even more!

1849 Astor Place Riots.

The mid-19th century featured two major acts of civil disobedience. One of them took place at the Astor Place Opera House. The bloody riot appeared to have been sparked by the theater performance.
The rivalry between the British Shakespearean actor Macready and his American counterpart Forrest had started years earlier. Macready had toured America, and Forrest essentially followed him, performing the same roles in different theaters and each man was revered by a contingent of energetic supporters.
The venue for Macready’s performance, the Astor Opera House, had been designated as a theater for the upper class. The controversy between the two actors became symbolic of a divide in American society between the upper class New Yorkers, who identified with the British gentleman Macready, and the lower class New Yorkers, who supported the American Forrest.
When the rioting crowd was throwing stones at members of the Seventh Regiment and receiving bullets in return, there was more happening below the surface than just a disagreement over who best could perform the role of Macbeth.On the day of the riot, preparations were made on both sides. The opera house where Macready was to perform was fortified, its windows barricaded. Scores of policemen were stationed inside, and the audience was screened when entering the building.As Macready took the stage inside, trouble began in the street. A crowd of about 20,000 attacked the opera house, and police retaliated with clubs.
The riot was the worst theater riot in history. When it was all over, 30 people were left dead and 150 wounded.

1850 Boss Tweed elected alderman. Mid-19th century New York.

By the mid-19th century, New York becomes the second largest port in the world after London.
By the mid-18 hundreds there were 10,000 Jews in New York, but very little anti-Semitism, as the community stuck to themselves.
Manhattan was solidly built up to 34th Street. Broadway was paved up to Chambers Street.
"Boss" Tweed

William Marcy "Boss" Tweed was leader of New York City's corrupt Tammany Hall political organization during the 1860s and early 1870s. Tweed became a powerful figure in Tammany Hall--New York City's Democratic political machine--in the late 1850s. By the mid-1860s, he had risen to the top position in the organization and formed the "Tweed Ring," which openly bought votes, encouraged judicial corruption, extracted millions from city contracts, and dominated New York City politics.

1853 World fair.

In 1853 New York hosted the first World Fair event in America. It was called the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. To house the exhibition, Crystal Palace was built in what is now Bryant Park.
The Crystal Palace opened in 1853 and was packed with all the marvels that science, art and industry from around the world could offer. Thousands poured through the wide doors to view sculpture, paintings machinery and inventions from all points of Europe and America New York and the young country, not yet a century old, had held its own with the European capitals.
At the New York Crystal Palace, Elisha Otis demonstrated his newly invented elevator. He amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt. After the World's Fair, Otis received continuous orders for elevators, doubling each year.
Steinway demonstrated his piano in 1855 at the New York Crystal Palace just two years after the company's foundation.
Sadly, the New York Crystal Palace itself was destroyed by fire in 1858. The fire began in a lumber room on the side adjacent to 42nd Street. Within fifteen minutes its dome fell and in twenty-five minutes the entire structure had burned to the ground. No lives were lost but the loss of property amounted to more than $350,000. This included the building, valued at $125,000, and exhibits and valuable statuary remaining from the World's Fair.

1854 Academy of Music opens.

The Academy of Music was a New York City opera house, located at East 14th Street and Irving Place in Manhattan. The 4,000-seat hall opened in 1854. A New York Times review declared it to be an acoustical "triumph", but "In every other aspect ... a decided failure," complaining about the architecture, interior design and the closeness of the seating. The old moneyed families like Belmonts, Beekmans, Stuyvesants, etc. led by none other than Mrs. Astor herself enjoyed their opera in the Academy of Music. The Academy's opera season became the center of social life for New York's elite, with the oldest and most prominent families owning seats in the theater's boxes.
Part of the enjoyment for the elites was the ability to deny entrance to the ‘nouveau riches’. This group of 'new moneyed' newcomers included Vanderbilt, J. P. Morgan, and Gould. Famously William Henry Vanderbilt, one of the richest men in the world, offered $30,000 for an opera box for the 1880-81 season, and was refused! Nouveau riches, with Alva Vanderbilt at the helm of the operation, promptly decided to build a new opera house, the Metropolitan, which opened with a great fan-fare on Broadway and 39th Street and became an instant success.
The Academy of Music couldn't compete with the Metropolitan and ceased presenting opera in 1886, turning instead to vaudeville. It was finally demolished in 1926.

1858 St Patrick's Cathedral started.
Macy’s opens.
First Chinese immigrants settle in NY.

The mid-19th century was the high point of German immigration, numbering 1/2 million people and making the German community second only to the Irish.
As the city’s Catholic population swelled to 200,000, Archbishop Hughes decided to build a new grandiose Catholic cathedral way uptown in the wilderness - 50th Street. The magnificent St Patrick's was designed by James Renwick, Jr. in the Gothic Revival style and took 20 years to build.
William Macy opened his first modest dry-goods store at 6th Ave and 13th Street. Macy's eventually moved to its current location at 34th and Broadway and became one of the largest stores in the world.

1859 Cooper Union opens.

Peter Cooper, self-made millionaire and self-taught inventor, opens a college where world-class education in art, architecture and engineering is offered free of charge.
According to Cooper’s central idea, one should be able to receive education regardless of social status, wealth, gender or color, Peter Cooper made his school free for the working classes.
The school was open for women as well as men, and there was no color bar at Cooper Union.
Cooper demanded only a willingness to learn and a commitment to excellence.
Peter Cooper wanted his school to play a role in the political and cultural life of the country. In the basement of the Foundation Building he established the largest secular meeting room in New York City. It seated 900, and soon after it was opened, and it made history. Abraham Lincoln, yet unannounced candidate for president of the United States, and a virtual unknown in New York, was invited to speak there by the Young Men's Republican Union.

In the Cooper Union’s meeting room Lincoln gave a speech which propelled him to presidency and defined the country the way it is now.

1860 Central Park is created.

Central Park, the green wonder of New York, was the first designed urban park in the United States.
The New York grid of 1811 didn’t provide for any open park space. By the middle of 19th Century, the population of New York was increasing with dizzying speed, and the need for a city park became apparent.
A competition for the best design for Central Park was won by a team, made up of a British architect, Calvert Vaux and a park designer, Frederick Law Olmsted. Their entry, entered anonymously under the name Greensward, was the last of 34 designs to reach the judges and it was awarded first place.
Olmsted envisioned the park as idyllic, naturalistic place for all the people, poor and reach, not depending on their social status.
The most influential innovations in the Central Park design were the "separate circulation" systems for pedestrians, horseback riders, and pleasure vehicles. The "crosstown" commercial traffic was entirely concealed in sunken roadways, screened with densely planted shrub belts so as to maintain a rustic ambiance.
The Greensward plan called for some 36 bridges, all designed by Vaux, neither two are alike.
Central Park is 2.5 miles long and 0.5 mile wide, it could fit the Principality of Monaco almost twice!

1861 Civil War starts.

In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ("the Confederacy"); the other 25 states supported the federal government ("the Union").
After four years of warfare, mostly within the Southern states, the North won, the Confederacy surrendered and slavery was outlawed everywhere in the nation.

1863 Draft Riots.

During the Civil War Lincoln needed to draft 300,000 men from NYC. His draft policy made it possible to get out of the commitment by paying $300, which meant that the wealthy could buy their way out of draft and only the poor had to go to the front.
This caused one of the worst acts of civil disobedience, known as the Draft riots of 1863, which lasted for 3 days and claimed the lives of over 100 people.

1865 Civil War ends, Lincoln assassinated.

As the Civil war ends on April 9, New York City bursts out in celebrations.
However, just a few days later, it plunges into mourning. On April 11, 1865 President Lincoln, while attending a theater performance in Washington DC, is assassinated by well-known actor and a Confederate spy John Wilkes Booth. President Lincoln's funeral cortege arrives to New York on the way to the president’s final resting place in Illinois in April 24, and about half a million mourners gather to mourn and show their sorrow.

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