New York

the largest city on the western continent. In size and commercial importance it is the second city of the world. It is situated on Manhattan Island and adjacent islands and shores at the mouth of the Hudson River. The original city was founded by the Dutch in 1614 and was known as New Amsterdam. It was situated on the lower end of Manhattan. A few events in the history of the city may be mentioned:

1664. The city passed into the hands of the English, and was called New York. 1741. An alleged negro plot to burn the city caused a panic resembling the Salem witchcraft delusion. A score of negroes were hung or burnt at the stake.

1776. The British occupied the city from September 15, 1776, to Evacuation Day, November 25, 1783. Business stagnated. Ships lay rotting in the harbor.

1789. Washington was inaugurated president. New York remained the capital of the nation until 1790.

1825. The opening of the Erie Canal made New York the gateway for Western commerce.

1863. The draft riot broke out. Enraged by an arrangement whereby the wealthy were enabled to escape draft by the payment of $300 into the treasury, the dregs of the populace rose in riot and began killing negroes, the alleged cause of the war. Ere the police and military could quell the disturbance $2,000,000 worth of property had been burned and 1,200 rioters slain.

1871. The downfall of the Tweed Ring. See Tweed and TAMMANY.

The territory of the city has expanded steadily. In 1873 the limits were carried eastward to the mainland, taking in a section of Westchester County. Similar measures followed rapidly. In 1898 the city of Brooklyn and other territory was added, forming Greater New York. The consolidated city embraces 327 square miles and has a population estimated in 1909 at 4,451,000. The official census of 1900 returned 3,437,202 inhabitants. The population, like that of London, is gathered from all parts of the earth. Only one person out of five may be described as an American. The Germans, 786,453 strong, slightly exceed the Irish. There are more Germans in New York than in Hamburg; more Irish thrice over than in Dublin; more Russians than in Nijni-Novgorod; more Italians than in Florence; more English than in two old Yorks; as many Austrians, Poles, Hungarians, and Bohemians as in the half of Budapest; Scots enough for a new Greenock; Scandinavians enough for a ward of Christiana; half as many Canadians as in Quebec; and more Jews than ever made a living at any one time in Jerusalem.

The city is divided into five boroughs, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens, and Richmond. Certain local affairs are managed for each borough by a local board and local appointments are made by its president. The city at large is governed by a mayor, a comptroller of finance, and a board of aldermen, all elected by popular vote. The mayor has large powers. His salary is $15,000 a year. He holds office for two years.

New York is so large and has such varied interests that a description of the city would require too much space. A lot of miscellaneous information may be of interest. The annual public expenditure is $117,000,000. It requires 600 tons of paper to print the ballots for a city election. There are 2,534 miles of streets, swept, lighted, and sprinkled at a cost of over $8,000,000 a year. There are 1,557 miles of sewers. Garbage and ashes are removed by the city free of charge when placed in cans provided for the purpose. This service costs the city $2,500,000 a year. The city owns nearly 2,000 miles of water mains, and supplies consumers 300,000,000 gallons daily. There are 82 police stations and about 10,000 policeman. There are over 4,000 paid firemen. The street car lines, operated chiefly by electricity, occupy over 1,200 miles of streets.

The American Grocer estimates the expenditures for different articles of food as follows:

The key to the geography of New York City is Broadway, leading from the southern point of Manhattan Island northward into the country, as a matter of fact, to Albany. The lower part of the island is a confused medley of streets, rivaling the congested portions of London. Washington Irving, in his humorous account of New Amsterdam, states that the city fathers neglected the laying out of streets so long that the cows undertook the matter and that buildings were accordingly erected facing the chief cowpaths. The upper part of the island is laid out with regularity. North-and-south thoroughfares are called avenues; east-and-west, streets. Wall Street is noted in the financial world. Broadway, Sixth avenue, and the Bowery are retail streets. Fifth avenue, Madison, Riverside, and West End are residence streets.

In addition to surface cars elevated car lines afford rapid transit. A subway or underground railway of four tracks extends from the city hall, near the business center, northward, dividing like the letter "Y" to the northeast and northwest respectively. Enormous passenger ferries leave the wharves for Jersey, Long Island, and eastern shores every few minutes. Brooklyn Suspension Bridge and other bridges afford an elevated outlet in that direction. Tunnels are under way also beneath the waters of the Hudson, the North, and the East rivers. A double tunnel for a double-track underground electric line passing under the Hudson from Hoboken to New York City, was opened for traffic in 1909. It cost $70,000,000. The trip requires ten minutes. Some idea of the facilities requisite to convey people to and from the center of business may be had from the statement that a million fares are taken daily. None the less, the night population of the lower part of the island is still crowded.

The city has in all 7,000 acres of parks. Breathing places on Manhattan Island are the Battery, City Hall grounds, Union, Madison, Washington, Bryant, and other squares, and Central Park, one of the world's noteworthy city parks. Various squares and public places are adorned with statues, in bronze and marble, of President Arthur, Beethoven, Columbus, Peter Cooper, Ericsson, Farragut, Franklin, Garibaldi, Greeley, Nathan Hale, Halleck, Hamilton, Hancock, Heine, Irving, Lafayette, Lincoln, Morse, Seward, Schiller, Scott, Shakespeare, Thorwaldsen, Washington, Webster, and many others.

A mere list of public buildings occupies much space. Castle Garden, where emigrants used to land, is now an aquarium. A new custom house erected at the site of old Fort Amsterdam at an expense of $10,000,000, is considered by New Yorkers the most imposing and convenient structure ever built for the purpose. The Chamber of Commerce building cost $1,000,000. The New York Stock Exchange is a handsome building. It ranks next to that of London in the volume of bonds and securities handled under its roof. Cooper Union, the Postoffice, Trinity Church, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Opera House, the Cathedral of St. John, and the various university buildings require mention. Madison Square Garden is the largest hall in America. In a city where the homes of millionaires line entire streets single residences cannot be named. The hotels of the city are built on a scale of magnificence.

Of late a tendency has been developed to erect lofty office buildings in the heart of the business section. Seen from a distance the skyscrapers, as they are appropriately called, loom up above the general profile of the city like elevators above the prairie villages in the grain-growing sections of the country. The Flatiron Building, so called from the shape of the land on which it stands, is a leading example. It stands at the corner of Broadway and Twenty-third Street. The foundations are carried down seventy feet. The superstructure rises twenty-one stories above the sidewalk. The walls consist of a framework of steel beams which not only carry the floors, but the terra cotta and stone work as well. The framework of such a building is raised first and the brick work built into it and supported by it like tiling. The Singer Building is the tallest office building in the world. It is 47 stories high. A twenty-inch gilded ball on the top of the flagstaff is 723 feet above the sidewalk.

New York is the great American publishing center. Nearly 800 periodicals, including 40 dailies, 200 weeklies, 275 monthlies, and 25 quarterlies are published here. Over one-third of the books published in the United States are issued by New York houses. The city has a fine library system. The Astor, the Lenox, and the Tilden bequests have been consolidated under one management, with a property of $4,500,000, and three-fourths of a million bound volumes. A monumental library building is under way on the site of the old reservoir. Columbia University, the New York Historical Society, the Mercantile Library, and other institutions have as many more. Andrew Carnegie has given the city $3,000,000 with which to build and equip fifty branch libraries.

New York City invests $25,000,000 a year in education, a sum unequaled in the history of cities. This expenditure is for current expenses outside of buildings and sites. There are 500 free public schools, a cordon of free high schools, and of training schools for teachers. Over 10,000 college students are enrolled in the various institutions of higher rank within the city limits.

There are over 300 public and private homes, asylums, and places of refuge for the relief of orphans, the sick, the insane, the aged, the erring, and the intemperate. There are over 700 churches, exclusive of those in Brooklyn.

New York is the financial center of North America. There are over 400 banks that receive deposits and make loans to customers. There are about fifty savings banks, as many trust companies and 130 building and loan associations. Over $300,000,000 of bonds and securities are owned by these banks. The insurance companies, of which there are thirty-six fire and five life, control a vast aggregate of capital. The annual sales of stocks and bonds at the Stock Exchange is not less than $56,000,000,000, a sum entirely past ordinary understanding. The checks exchanged at the New York Clearing House for a recent year (1907) reached the great total of $87,182,168,381.

The total tonnage of seagoing vessels arriving and departing from New York is slightly less than that for London. In 1906 there were about 2,000 landings of trans-atlantic steamers, bringing a total of 1,159,551 passengers. It is claimed that if light coasting trade be counted, New York harbor does more business than any other port in the world. Both the export trade and the import exceeds half a billion a year. There are over nine miles of docks. The facilities for shipping and receiving freight are simply marvelous. On the land side 1,000 passenger trains arrive daily and freight trains almost beyond computation.

In addition to its commercial and financial leadership, New York is one of the great manufacturing cities of the world. There are nearly 4,000 establishments paying wages to half a million employes. A thousand more or less distinct lines of manufactures are represented, embracing articles of food, clothing, machinery, tools, chemicals, oils, paints, building materials, soap, matches, starch, jewelry, books, periodicals, lithographs, cordage, liquors, rubber and leather goods, sugar, tobacco, and other articles too numerous for mention.

New York was founded originally as a fur-trading station. A fort, a few huts, a trader's store, a wharf, now and then a ship, a few Indians and their canoes, were all 300 years ago. The city now has one rival, London.

See New York State; Astor; Broadway; Cooper; Central Park; Ferry; Grant; Hall of Fame; Irving; Manhattan; Obelisk; Trinity Church; Wall Street; Tweed; Tammany; Skyscraper; Real Estate.

Miscellaneous Statistics.