The Epic of New York City (2 page)

New York, New York, January 1,1966

 

Contents

1   Manhattan Is Discovered

2   First Settlers Arrive

3   Peter Stuyvesant Takes Command

4   The English Name It New York

5   The Leisler Rebellion

6   Pirates Infest New York

7   Of Queesting and Fribbles

8   The Peter Zenger Trial

9   The City Goes Mad

10   Duel for Empire

11   The Stamp Act Rebellion

12   Revolutionary War

13   The Doctors' Riot

14   The Capital of the Nation

15   The Hamilton-Burr Duel

16   John Jacob Astor Fools the President

17   Sawing Off Manhattan Island

18   The Gangs of New York

19   Down With Foreigners!

20   The Astor Place Riot

21   Slavery and Abolitionism

22   The Police Riot

23   Abraham Lincoln Arrives

24   The Draft Riots

25   Confederates Try to Burn Down New York

26   The Tweed Scandals

27   Thomas Edison Lights the City

28   Building Brooklyn Bridge

29   Metropolitan Opera House Opens

30   Creation of the Statue of Liberty

31   The Blizzard of 1888

32   New York's First Skyscraper

33   Ellis Island Opens

34   The Reverend Parkhurst Samples Vice

35   Hearst Wages War

36   Creation of Greater New York

37   Opening of the Twentieth Century

38   The
General Slocum
Disaster

39   Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson

40   The Triangle Fire

41   The League of Nations Opens on Broadway

42   Wall Street Is Bombed

43   The Wall Street Crash

44   The Great Depression

45   The Jimmy Walker Scandals

46   Fiorello LaGuardia Becomes Mayor

47   Nazis Plan to Bomb New York

48   William O'Dwyer Sweats

49   Robert F. Wagner's Administration

50   “This City Is the Center of the Universe”

Selected Bibliography

Index

Chapter 1

W
HITE
men saw Manhattan for the first time in April, 1524. There were fifty of them, and they crossed the Atlantic in a ship commanded by Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer working for the king of France. He murmured to his mate, the mate barked an order, and the sailors turned to with a will. Chains rattled as the anchor sloshed through the wind-dimpled water and gurgled down, down, down. Now their 100-ton vessel, the
Dauphine,
came to rest just south of the present Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the Lower Bay of what is now New York City.

She lay silent after the creaking and rasping of her long voyage. Crew members looked up from their chores and gazed toward the
shore. A breeze flicking his beard, Verrazano stood straddle-legged on deck to peer eagerly across the diced waters of the bay. Lovely was the land, and sweet its smell. In springtime, New York's air sparkles like champagne, and Verrazano's nostrils tingled. Upon his mind he etched each detail.

It was, he thought, “a pleasant place.” On both sides of his ship there rose “steep little hills.” Those off starboard were Brooklyn Heights; those off the port bow lay in New Jersey. Dead ahead and to the north the explorer saw “a most beautiful stream,” now called the Upper Bay. Spooning into it was the Hudson River, which he described as “an exceeding great stream of water.” To the right of the Hudson lay the forested hill-humped island of Manhattan.

Gliding into view came thirty canoes filled with dusky feather-clad natives, who stroked with muscular rhythm from one shore to another, staring at the strange ship. Verrazano ordered one of his boats lowered, climbed in, and told his oarsmen to row toward the mile-wide Narrows connecting the Lower and Upper Bays like the neck of a gigantic hourglass. Some Indians, the explorer later wrote, “came toward us very cheerfully, making a great show of admiration, showing us where we might come to land most safely with our boat.” He had proceeded only about half a mile when the wind freshened, the water coarsened, and a storm slashed in from the Atlantic.

Afraid that the
Dauphine
might be swiveled on her anchor line and scragged on the shore, Verrazano yelled to his men to turn around the rowboat and pull back to the mother ship. The Indians shouted their disappointment in a strange tongue as he climbed a bucking ladder onto the deck of the
Dauphine.
Then, weighing anchor, Verrazano tacked out into the tumbling open sea, “greatly regretting to leave this region which seemed so commodious and delightful.”

This Italian adventurer never set foot in New York. However, he and his crew were the first Europeans to see the spot where the world's most dynamic city was to grow. Verrazano might have waited for a calm day to sail up into the Hudson, but he had no sister ship to help him if he got into trouble. Besides, he decided this river was not the Northwest Passage, not the all-water route around the northern coast of North America to the eastern (Pacific) ocean. This search, begun toward the close of the fifteenth century, was to continue for 400 years.

When these white men discovered the site of New York City that year of 1524, Jerusalem was more than 3,000 years old, Athens was at least 2,500 years old, Rome's history went back more than 2,270 years, Paris had existed about 1,550 years, London could count more than 1,460 birthdays, and Berlin was a village 217 years old.

Verrazano piloted the
Dauphine
out into the scudding waters of the Atlantic and then went below to jot down his impressions of this new land. It was “not without some riches,” he wrote, “all the hills showing mineral matter in them.” No gold or silver of any consequence ever was found at New York City, but the place later yielded precious and semiprecious stones, such as opals, garnets, and amethysts. In fact, 99 species and 170 varieties were discovered in Manhattan, a record perhaps never exceeded on the site of any other great American city.

Verrazano named the Upper Bay the Gulf of Santa Margherita for the sister of Francis I, king of France, his employer. He called the Hudson River the Vendome in honor of the Duke of Vendome, a French prince. To the metropolitan area of New York he gave the name Angouleme, the title held by Francis when he was heir presumptive to the French throne. On July 8, 1524, Verrazano sat safely at dockside in Dieppe, France, expanding his diary into a long and historic letter to his royal employer.

The first chapter in the history of New York City is really a chapter in the history of Europe. All America, for that matter, became a bloody arena, in which Europeans fought out their ancient rivalries. With Verrazano's appearance in the bay of New York the four chief contestants to claims on America had entered the historic picture. In 1497 John Cabot had discovered North America for the English, although they were slow to press their claim. The next year Christopher Columbus had discovered South America for the Spanish during his third voyage. In 1500 the Portuguese had explored the coast of the New World. The French had been so busy waging religious wars and trying to conquer Italy that they had made a late start in this western thrust.

Earlier, during the Crusades (1095-1291), Europeans first became interested in overseas expansion. As warriors and priests penetrated the fringe of the Orient, they found civilizations whose wealth and luxury far surpassed their own rude standards of living. Europeans were delighted by Oriental perfumes and dyes, rugs and silks, glass and porcelain, pearls and cotton. They doted on the exotic spices,
which gave a better taste to their own monotonous diet. All these strange and wonderful wares whetted their appetite for trade. Land routes developed through central Asia to the east. Sea routes opened through the Isthmus of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Arab merchants and Italian capitalists fattened on this commerce.

Down through the years Ottoman Turks had swept out of Asia Minor to subdue vast reaches of territory, conquer Constantinople, and overrun the trade routes. As a result, these sea paths became less attractive to other nations. Then Portuguese ships sailed
east
and found a saltwater route to India around the tip of Africa. Columbus sailed
west
and later died still believing he had reached the Orient. The Portuguese and Spanish followed up their explorations with colonization, the Portuguese establishing posts in Brazil, while the Spanish founded colonies in Florida and Mexico. Now, as a result of Verrazano's voyage, the French claimed part of the Western Hemisphere, as did the English, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese.

In 1493, to avert a quarrel over land claims, Pope Alexander VI drew an imaginary north-south line through the western part of the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of South America. Thus, he divided the New World, giving the Spanish all land west of this line and the Portuguese all land to the east. But the king of Portugal protested, so Spain agreed to push the line of demarcation a little farther west, thus granting Portugal what today is Brazil. This high-handed division of the New World ignored the aspirations of other European nations. To date Holland had not claimed any portion of this new continent, but now she cast covetous eyes westward. England, Holland, and France looked on in envy as the wealth of the Indies poured into the coffers of Spain.

Francis I, king of France, was at war with Charles I, king of Spain. Francis scorned the Pope's line of demarcation and cared nothing about the later agreement between the Spanish and Portuguese kings. He said to Charles, “Your majesty and the king of Portugal have divided the world between you, offering no part of it to me. Show me, I pray you, the will of our father Adam so that I may see if he has really made you his universal heir.”