During your visit to New York, you will frequently have the opportunity to discover the city’s history. There are many tourist sites that recount major events and anecdotes that have shaped the identity of the largest city in the United States. These episodes can be grouped into three main categories: birth, development and current events.
The birth of New York
The information available on the United States and New York is recent. Unlike Asia, Europe, Africa or even South America, the available evidence only goes back to the 16th century. It was the Italian navigator Giovanni Da Verrazano who discovered the large bay in 1524. He called it New Angouleme.
However, no Europeans took an interest in the area until Henry Hudson entered New York Bay in 1609. He ventured inland up the famous river that now bears his name.
In 1624, the Dutch settled and founded New Amsterdam (now Manhattan Island), a place where the Lenape (or Manhatte) Indians lived. Four decades later, the English took over the land and renamed the place New York. From then on, the flow of European migrants continued to grow. The country was organised into colonies and on 4 July 1776, the new state declared its independence. However, New York remained in English hands until 1783.
The development of New York
New York became an urban centre and a very commercial port. On 17 May 1792, several traders met in front of Wall Street and created the Wall Street Stock Exchange, where the commission rate for securities sold was set.
The layout of the city was transformed; the current urban plan of Manhattan, with its 12 wide avenues and 155 streets, was defined in 1811 by John Randel. The number of migrants continued to grow and by 1820, New York was the largest and most populous American city (127,000 inhabitants). Fifty years later, there were 10 times that number. In the meantime, in 1835 and 1840, two terrible fires destroyed a large part of the city.
To facilitate transport, the first aerial underground was inaugurated in 1868. Emblematic buildings of the city were built: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1870), the Metropolitan Opera (1883), the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum. Not to mention the famous Brooklyn Bridge.
In 1886, the Statue of Liberty was built in the city’s bay. It is also during this period that the projects of the great parks of New York appear. In 1873, they gave birth to Central Park, among others.
The Civil War soon broke out. It would divide the North and South of the United States deeply and for a long time. President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated at the end of the war, was laid to rest at City Hall on 24 and 25 April 1865.
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the city’s development went into overdrive. In 1882, Thomas Edison set up the first public electricity network in Lower Manhattan. Seven years later, the first telephone rang thanks to Graham Bell.
In 1892, the population was estimated at 3 million people. The city had to reinvent itself and the Bayard Condict Building, the first skyscraper, was built. New York was redesigned and the five boroughs that we find today were created: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island.
New York in the 20th century and today
The beginning of the 20th century was marked by the stock market crash of 1929. This event demonstrated the power of the American economy over the rest of the world, as the crisis spread across the globe. The government’s decision to invest massively in public works would give the country a boost. The Second World War broke out, and when it ended, the United Nations Charter was adopted. The United Nations moved to Manhattan in 1951.
Social tensions soon arose in a country that was developing unevenly and had still not resolved its racial segregation problems. The growth of the city, like that of the country, was bloody and sweaty.
William McKinley, Anton Cermak, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, President JF Kennedy, his brother Robert, Sean Flynn, Harvey Milk, John Lennon… On September 11, 2001, before the eyes of a stunned world, the images of the unstoppable collapse of New York’s two tallest towers marked the birth of a new phase in the history of the city, and therefore of our planet.
