At the beginning of the nineteenth century, New York City was an undistinguished town, competing with Philadelphia and Boston to be America's dominant port city. Just two generations later, it had built itself into the country's powerhouse center of trade and finance, rivaled only by London as financial capital of the world. In Capital City, Thomas Kessner tells the story of this remarkable transformation. With the advantages of its famous harbor and the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York became the chief commercial center for the growing nation. As the shipping industry prospered, capital accumulated, and a growing banking center emerged, New York went on to finance the Union cause during the Civil War, open the West to development, and consolidate the national railroad system. The city's energy and opportunity attracted ambitious men from all over the country whose names became synonymous with big business: Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan. New York's banks set the interest rates for the nation, its stock exchange fixed the price of securities, its investors transformed American business from family-owned enterprises into modern corporations, and its growing political clout catapulted public figures, such as Samuel Tilden and Teddy Roosevelt, onto the national stage. Combining political and urban history with a colorful cast of characters, Capital City chronicles how Gotham's Gilded Age reshaped the metropolis and the nation as it molded our present-day economy.
The early 1900s U.S. saw considerable seasonal variations in the balance of trade, primarily caused by the annual agricultural cycle. This examination of the New York money market demonstrates that the frequent fluctuations in monetary conditions were caused by variations in the trade flows rather than capital movements by banks.
Creating the modern city - Planning for New York City - Real estate values, zoning, density, intervention - Building the vertical city - Empire State Building - Going from home to work - Subways, transit politics - Sweatshop migration - Identity - Little Italy's decline - Jewish neighbourhoods - Cities of light - Street lighting.
Strangers in the West is the never before told story about the Syrian/Lebanese immigrants who, beginning in 1880, settled on the lower west side of Manhattan. Coming from what was then known as "Greater Syria," these immigrants gathered near the Battery where they disembarked after their long journey from the Middle East. Settling in tenements recently abandoned by Irish immigrants, these recent arrivals to the New World founded an Arabic-speaking enclave just south of the future site of the World Trade Center. They opened Syrian restaurants, half a dozen Arabic-language newspapers, oriental merchandise and food shops, and four Syrian churches. They capitalized on the orientalist craze sweeping the United States by opening Turkish smoking parlors, presenting belly dancers on vaudeville stages, and performing across the country in native costume. Peddlers and merchants, midwives and doctors, priests and journalists, belly dancers and impresarios--all were part of the small community in its first 20 years. This is their story.
Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Nonfiction A New York Times Editors' Choice Selection The untold story of Hamilton’s—and Burr’s—personal physician, whose dream to build America’s first botanical garden inspired the young Republic. On a clear morning in July 1804, Alexander Hamilton stepped onto a boat at the edge of the Hudson River. He was bound for a New Jersey dueling ground to settle his bitter dispute with Aaron Burr. Hamilton took just two men with him: his “second” for the duel, and Dr. David Hosack. As historian Victoria Johnson reveals in her groundbreaking biography, Hosack was one of the few points the duelists did agree on. Summoned that morning because of his role as the beloved Hamilton family doctor, he was also a close friend of Burr. A brilliant surgeon and a world-class botanist, Hosack—who until now has been lost in the fog of history—was a pioneering thinker who shaped a young nation. Born in New York City, he was educated in Europe and returned to America inspired by his newfound knowledge. He assembled a plant collection so spectacular and diverse that it amazes botanists today, conducted some of the first pharmaceutical research in the United States, and introduced new surgeries to America. His tireless work championing public health and science earned him national fame and praise from the likes of Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander von Humboldt, and the Marquis de Lafayette. One goal drove Hosack above all others: to build the Republic’s first botanical garden. Despite innumerable obstacles and near-constant resistance, Hosack triumphed when, by 1810, his Elgin Botanic Garden at last crowned twenty acres of Manhattan farmland. “Where others saw real estate and power, Hosack saw the landscape as a pharmacopoeia able to bring medicine into the modern age” (Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta). Today what remains of America’s first botanical garden lies in the heart of midtown, buried beneath Rockefeller Center. Whether collecting specimens along the banks of the Hudson River, lecturing before a class of rapt medical students, or breaking the fever of a young Philip Hamilton, David Hosack was an American visionary who has been too long forgotten. Alongside other towering figures of the post-Revolutionary generation, he took the reins of a nation. In unearthing the dramatic story of his life, Johnson offers a lush depiction of the man who gave a new voice to the powers and perils of nature.
This is the fourth volume in architect and historian Robert A. M. Stern's monumental series of documentary studies of New York City architecture and urbanism. The three previous books in the series, New York 1900, New York 1930, and New York 1960, have comprehensively covered the architects and urban planners who defined New York over the course of the twentieth century. In this volume, Stern turns back to 1880 -- the end of the Civil War, the beginning of European modernism -- to trace the earlier history of the city. This dynamic era saw the technological advances and acts of civic and private will that formed the identity of New York City as we know it today. The installation of water, telephone, and electricity infrastructures as well as the advent of electric lighting, the elevator, and mass transit allowed the city to grow both out and up. The office building and apartment house types were envisioned and defined, changing the ways that New Yorkers worked and lived. Such massive public projects as the Brooklyn Bridge and Central Park became realities, along with such private efforts as Grand Central Station. Like the other three volumes, New York 1880 is an in-depth presentation of the buildings and plans that transformed New York from a harbor town into a world-class metropolis. A broad range of primary sources -- critics and writers, architects, planners, city officials -- brings the time period to life and allows the city to tell its own complex story. The book is generously illustrated with over 1,200 archival photographs, which show the city as it was, and as some parts of it still are.
Winner of the 2007 Excellence in Historic Preservation Award presented by the Preservation League of New York State Winner of the 2007 Building Typology Award presented by the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America New York's Army National Guard armories are among the most imposing monuments to the role of the citizen soldier in American military history. In New York's Historic Armories, Nancy L. Todd draws on archival research as well as historic and contemporary photographs and drawings to trace the evolution of the armory as a specific building type in American architectural and military history. The result of a ten-year collaboration between the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and the New York State Division of Military and Naval Affairs, this illustrated history presents information on all known armories in the state as well as the units associated with them, and will serve as a valuable reference for readers interested in general, military, and architectural history. Built to house local units of the state's volunteer militia, armories served as arms storage facilities, clubhouses for the militiamen, and civic monuments symbolizing New York's determination to preserve domestic law and order through military might. Approximately 120 armories were built in New York State from the late eighteenth century to the middle of the twentieth, and most date from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when the National Guard was America's primary domestic peacekeeper during the post–Civil War era of labor-capital unrest. Together, New York's armories chronicle the history of the volunteer militia, from its emergence during the early Republican Era, through its heyday during the Gilded Age as the backbone of the American military system, to its early twentieth-century role as the nation's primary armed reserve force.
What did New York look like four centuries ago? An extraordinary reconstruction of a wild island from the forests of Times Square to the wetlands downtown. Named a Best Book of the Year by Library Journal, New York Magazine, and San Francisco Chronicle On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson first set foot on the land that would become Manhattan. Today, it’s difficult to imagine what he saw, but for more than a decade, landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson has been working to do just that. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City is the astounding result of those efforts, reconstructing in words and images the wild island that millions now call home. By geographically matching an eighteenth-century map with one of the modern city, examining volumes of historic documents, and collecting and analyzing scientific data, Sanderson re-creates topography, flora, and fauna from a time when actual wolves prowled far beyond Wall Street and the degree of biological diversity rivaled that of our most famous national parks. His lively text guides you through this abundant landscape—while breathtaking illustrations transport you back in time. Mannahatta is a groundbreaking work that provides not only a window into the past, but also inspiration for the future. “[A] wise and beautiful book, sure to enthrall anyone interested in NYC history.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A cartographical detective tale . . . The fact-intense charts, maps and tables offered in abundance here are fascinating.” —The New York Times “[An] exuberantly written and beautifully illustrated exploration of pre-European Gotham.” —San Francisco Chronicle “You don’t have to be a New Yorker to be enthralled.” —Library Journal