About the Book

New York, New York, so good they named it twice – find out why in this exciting new book that gets to the core of the Big Apple.

Christopher Winn digs beneath the gleaming towers and mean streets of New York and discovers its secrets and hidden treasures. Learn about the extraordinary people who built New York into one of the world’s great cities in just 400 years.

New York is one of the most photographed and talked about cities in the world but Winn unearths much that is unexpected and unremembered in this fast moving, every changing metropolis where history is made on a daily basis.

About the Author

Christopher Winn has been a freelance writer and trivia collector for over twenty years. He has worked with Terry Wogan and Jonathan Ross, and sets quiz questions for television as well as for the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph. He is the author of the bestselling I Never Knew That About England. Books in the same series cover Ireland, Scotland, Wales, London, Yorkshire and the Lake District and he has written further books on the English, Scottish, Irish, the River Thames and Royal Britain. He is married to artist Mai Osawa, who illustrates all the books in the series.

www.i-never-knew-that.com

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Published in 2013 by Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing

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Text © Christopher Winn 2013
Illustrations © Mai Osawa 2013

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Commissioning editor: Carey Smith
Project editor: Roxanne Mackey
Production: Lucy Harrison
Series designed by Peter Ward

ISBN 9780091945244

For Joe and Jeanne
New Yorkers through and through

Preface

New York belongs to the world.

New York is known and recognised and talked about everywhere in the world, and is the most photographed and most filmed city anywhere in the world. The Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square are the world’s most visited tourist destinations.

New York is also the shop window of America, vibrant, living, glorious proof that determined peoples from every land and every culture, every religion and every background, can join together and achieve spectacular things. In New York you will find Rome and London, Paris and Tokyo, Madrid and Dublin and Shanghai. You will find the world’s biggest cathedral, biggest synagogue and biggest financial markets, the world’s best theatres and museums and its most iconic skyscrapers.

But there is more to New York than just tall buildings and the most expensive shopping street on earth. New York has its small and hidden places, too, beautiful parks and quiet green spaces, homely villages, chapels, smart squares and fine, unpretentious architecture. And a fascinating history as a trading post, fortress, bustling port and America’s first capital.

New York is compressed history. What took London 2,000 years to build, New York achieved in 400 years. New York sprang up on boundless spirit and on dreams. And lots of hard work.

New York has survived fire, pestilence, riots, terrorist attacks, hurricanes, blizzards and floods and each time has bounced back stronger, prouder, more dynamic and more indefatigable.

New York can inspire you or destroy you. It can make you feel alive, or exhaust you and infuriate you. It will never bore you.

Think of I Never Knew That About New York as an entertaining friend, one who loves New York and can tell you some of its stories and its secrets, and you will discover that New York is quite simply, as Robert De Niro says, ‘the most exciting city in the world’.

Introduction

The focus of I Never Knew That About New York is New York Harbor and Manhattan Island, where New York began and which for 270 odd years was exclusively known as New York.

In 1898 five neighbouring cities, or boroughs, consolidated to form the City of Greater New York. They were New York (Manhattan), Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. They all have their own unique history and their own vibrant character and each deserves its own book. To try and tell the story of all five boroughs in one book would be to do none of them justice.

In I Never Knew That About New York we walk along Broadway, New York’s oldest road, its ‘Main Street’, from south to north, in the footsteps of the city’s northward development, and as we go we tour the neighbourhoods that sprang up along the way.

Although each chapter is arranged as a walk it is not necessary to follow the whole walk or indeed to walk at all – each chapter stands alone as an interesting read about this most fascinating city and its history.

If you do decide to follow the walks you will find that each walk starts and finishes at a subway station, and always remains within easy reach of a subway station, so that you may leave or resume the walk at any point.

Finally, to distinguish city from state, the latter is referred to throughout the book as ‘The State of New York’ or ‘New York State’.

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New York Timeline

 

1524		Giovanni da Verrazano becomes the first European to enter New York Harbor
1609		Henry Hudson becomes the first European to sail up the Hudson River
1613		Captain Adriaen Block and the crew of the Tyger construct the first European dwellings on Manhattan Island

 

		NEW AMSTERDAM
1624		Birth of New York. Thirty Walloon and Flemish families arrive on the Nieu Nederland and establish the first European settlement of New York on Governors Island. Captain Cornelius Mey becomes the first Director of the colony of New Netherland
1625		Dutch under Willem Verhulst establish the first permanent European settlement on Manhattan Island and work begins on Fort Amsterdam
1626		Peter Minuit, 3rd Director of New Netherland, purchases Manhattan Island from the Lenape Indians for trinkets worth $24
1633		First church erected on Pearl Street
1647		Peter Stuyvesant becomes Director-General of New Netherland
1653		New Amsterdam becomes the first legally chartered city in America. Wall is built to protect New Amsterdam against attack from the north
1655		Peach War

 

		COLONIAL NEW YORK
1664		New Amsterdam is handed over to the British and renamed New York
1693		New York’s first printing press set up on Pearl Street by William Bradford
1698		First Trinity church dedicated
1700		First Federal Hall built on Wall Street
1720		First shipyard opened on East River
1725		New York’s first newspaper, the New York Gazette, is printed by William Bradford
1732		New York’s first theatre opens on Nassau Street
1733		Bowling Green opens as New York’s first park
1735		John Peter Zenger’s trial establishes freedom of the press
1754		King’s College (later Columbia University) founded
1765		Sons of Liberty formed. Protests in New York against the Stamp Act
1766		Stamp Act repealed. George III statue erected in Bowling Green. St Paul’s Chapel completed
1776		Statue of George III toppled. Battle of Harlem Heights. Washington retreats from New York, which becomes British headquarters during Revolution
1783		U.S. wins independence with Treaty of Paris. November 25, Evacuation Day, Washington re-enters New York and the British leave for the last time. December 4, Washington bids farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern

 

		NEW YORK
1784		Alexander Hamilton founds Bank of New York
1785		New York named U.S. capital. New York’s first Catholic church, St Peter’s, opens on Barclay and Church Streets
1789		March 4, First U.S. Congress meets at Federal Hall. April 30, George Washington inaugurated as first U.S. President at Federal Hall. September 25, Bill of Rights adopted at Federal Hall
1790		Capital moves to Philadelphia. Fort George (Fort Amsterdam) demolished
1792		New York Stock Exchange formed

 

		19TH CENTURY NEW YORK
1801		Alexander Hamilton founds New-York Evening Post
1804		Aaron Burr kills Alexander Hamilton in duel
1807		Robert Fulton launches first steamboat on Hudson River
1811		Commissioners Grid Plan for Manhattan commenced. Castle Clinton constructed and forts built on Harbor Islands in preparation for war with Britain. City Hall opens
1812		War of 1812
1815		New York’s first cathedral, Old St Patrick’s Cathedral, opens on Mulberry
1822		Yellow fever outbreak. Many flee to Greenwich Village
1823		New York becomes largest city in U.S.
1824		New York’s first tenement opens on Mott Street
1825		Erie Canal opens
1827		Slavery abolished in New York
1834		Henry Brevoort builds house on Fifth Avenue at Ninth Street
1835		Great Fire of New York
1837		Samuel Morse sends first telegraph signal
1842		Croton Aqueduct opens. New York Philharmonic play their first concert at the Apollo Rooms on Broadway
1845		New York Knickerbockers chartered as first baseball team
1846		Present Trinity church dedicated. America’s first department store, A.T. Stewart’s Marble Palace, opens on Broadway
1847		New York’s oldest bar, the Bridge Café, opens on Water Street
1849		Astor Place riots
1851		New York Times launched. Brevoort Hotel, first hotel on Fifth Avenue, opens at Eighth Street
1853		New York hosts World’s Fair
1857		Haughwout Building, first commercial building in the world to feature passenger elevators, opens on Broadway
1859		Central Park opened to the public. John Jacob Astor III builds house on Fifth Avenue at No. 350
1860		Lincoln gives his famous speech at Cooper Union
1863		New York Draft Riots, largest civil insurrection in American history, against corrupt draft system for Civil War
1866		First Broadway musical premièred at Niblo’s Garden
1868		First elevated railroad opens on Greenwich Street
1870		Standard Oil founded by J.D. Rockefeller. Equitable Building, first office block in the world to feature passenger elevators, opens on Broadway
1871		Grand Central Depot opens. Tammany Hall’s ‘Boss’ Tweed imprisoned
1872		Bloomingdale’s opens
1879		St Patrick’s Cathedral completed
1880		First street-lighting on Broadway. Dakota Building begins construction on Upper West Side. Metropolitan Museum of Art (the Met) opens on Fifth Avenue
1882		W.K. Vanderbilt builds grand mansion at 660 Fifth Avenue
1883		Brooklyn Bridge completed
1886		Statue of Liberty unveiled
1889		New York’s first ‘skyscraper’ the Tower Building completed at 50 Broadway
1892		Ellis Island immigration centre opens. Cathedral of St John the Divine begun
1894		World’s first cinema, Holland Brothers Kinetoscope Parlor, opens at 1155 Broadway
1895		First moving picture to be shown on a screen in front of a paying audience shown at 153 Broadway. Olympia theatre opens on Longacre Square (later Times Square)
1897		World’s largest hotel, the Waldorf-Astoria, opens. America’s first pizza parlour, Lombardi’s, opens in Little Italy
1898		Five boroughs merge to form Greater New York, the world’s second largest city

 

		20TH Century New York
1900		Construction of New York’s first subway begins
1902		Flatiron opens on Broadway. The world’s largest store, Macy’s, opens on Broadway
1903		Lyceum Theater, oldest Broadway theatre still in use, opens
1904		New York Times moves to Longacre Square which is renamed Times Square. General Slocum disaster
1907		Plaza Hotel opens
1908		First time ball drop in Times Square
1910		Pennsylvania Station opens
1911		Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. New York Public Library opens
1913		Woolworth Building opens on Broadway
1916		New York adopts Zoning Regulations requiring setbacks in tall buildings
1925		New Yorker magazine launched
1927		Holland Tunnel opens. America’s first cappucino served in Greenwich Village. The Jazz Singer, the first ‘talkie’, premieres at the Warners’ Theater on Broadway
1928		The first talking cartoon, Disney’s Steamboat Willie, premières at the Colony Theater on Broadway
1929		Stock Market Crash
1930		Chrysler Building completed as tallest building in the world
1931		Empire State Building opens as tallest building in the world
1939		Rockefeller Center completed. New York hosts World Fair
1946		United Nations Headquarters opens
1959		Lincoln Centre construction begins. Guggenheim Museum opens
1963		Pennsylvania Station demolished
1964		Verrazano Narrows Bridge opens. The Beatles play Shea Stadium
1967		Singer Building becomes tallest building ever to be demolished. Hair opens at Public Theater
1969		Stonewall riots
1973		World Trade Center completed
2001		Terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
2012		Hurricane Sandy hits New York
2013		One World Trade Center (Freedom Tower) completed to a height of 1,776 ft (541 m)

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CHAPTER 1

NEW YORK HARBOR

New York skyline from Staten Island Ferry

NEW YORK exists because of its harbour – although it is not officially called a harbour but rather Upper New York Bay. Five miles (8 km) long from Staten Island in the south to the southern tip of Manhattan in the north and four miles (6.4 km) wide from Brooklyn in the east to New Jersey in the west, the Upper Bay forms one of the largest natural harbours in the world.

Without doubt, the best way to approach New York is by boat. This is how the first explorers came and how, over the last four centuries, millions of immigrants came too. Even today, visitors choose to arrive in passenger ships and cruise liners, while sightseers and commuters continually criss-cross the bay in every kind of maritime craft.

Skyline

Your first view of modern New York from the water is unforgettable. From the rough, windswept waves of the Atlantic Ocean you pass through a narrow channel between two islands into the calmer waters of the Upper Bay. Then on past the welcoming embrace of the Statue of Liberty, the ornate green domes of the Ellis Island immigration centre, and finally the grim brown walls of Castle Williams on Governors Island.

And there it is – New York, the most spectacular urban landscape in the world, a forest of shining glass and steel, copper and gold, spires and turrets, tower upon tower stacked one upon another, reaching for the sky, marching in ragged rows down to the sea. Some of the towers appear to be dipping their toes into the water, while others gaze out brazenly across the bay, proclaiming their power and importance. It seems impossible that the flimsy, low-lying island of Manhattan doesn’t topple over or sink under its own weight.

Verrazano

The First European to see New York Harbor

It was a very much less frenetic scene that greeted the Italian navigator GIOVANNI DA VERRAZANO nearly five hundred years ago, when he anchored his ship, La Dauphine, in the narrow channel at the entrance to the bay, just off what is now Staten Island, on 17 April 1524. ‘A very agreeable site located between two hills between which flowed to the sea a very great river’ is how Verrazano described it.

He had been hired by the French to find a quick way through the American continent to the lucrative trade routes of the East, and it was in pursuit of this goal that Verrazano took a tentative small boat through the narrow channel and into the bay. Finding himself on ‘a most pleasant lake’, the Italian concluded that this was not the short cut he was looking for, and when ‘a contrary flaw of wind blew up’ he quickly returned to his ship and weighed anchor to continue the search along the coast.

Verrazano never did find his fast route to the Orient, and four years later he was eaten by cannibals on Guadeloupe, but he did find immortality as THE FIRST EUROPEAN KNOWN TO HAVE SET EYES UPON NEW YORK HARBOR, while his name lives on in the bridge that today spans the narrow channel at the harbour entrance where he anchored his ship.

Verrazano Narrows Bridge

Longest in the World

The VERRAZANO NARROWS BRIDGE opened on 21 November 1964 and links two of Greater New York’s five boroughs, Brooklyn and Staten Island. It has a central span of 4,260 ft (1,298 m) and when it was built was THE LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE IN THE WORLD, until overtaken by the Humber Bridge in England in 1981. It is now the eighth longest suspension bridge in the world and still THE LONGEST SUSPENSION BRIDGE IN AMERICA.

Since every vessel that enters New York Harbor has to pass underneath it, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge has an impressive height clearance of 228 ft (69 m) at high water. Even this is only just sufficient for one regular visitor, the QUEEN MARY 2, flagship of the Cunard Line and THE LARGEST OCEAN LINER EVER BUILT. When she passes under the bridge there is sometimes only 10 feet (3 m) to spare – despite the fact that her funnel was made flatter than usual just so that she could make it into New York Harbor – her passage under the bridge can provide some heart-stopping moments for both spectators and passengers.

The Verrazano Narrows Bridge starred in a famous scene from the 1977 film Saturday Night Fever where the film’s lead character Tony Manero (John Travolta) and his buddies show off by clambering along the edge of the bridge among the suspension cables. The scene builds to a tragic climax when one of the boys, Bobby C, played by Barry Miller, falls off the bridge to his death.

The Verrazano Narrows Bridge is also the starting point for the annual NEW YORK CITY MARATHON, held on the first Sunday in November.

The name Verrazano applies only to the bridge and not to the channel that flows underneath it, which is simply called The Narrows.

Hudson

An Englishman in New York

In early September 1609, the English navigator HENRY HUDSON entered the upper bay in his little ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon) and proceeded to explore along Verrazano’s ‘very great river’. Like Verrazano, Hudson was seeking a short route through America to the Orient, only in his case he was working for the Dutch rather than the French. Hudson had been told of this great river in a letter from his friend John Smith, the man rescued by the Indian princess Pocahontas, and leader of the Jamestown colony in Virginia. Smith had heard talk from the Indians of a river north of Virginia that led from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, and Hudson decided to survey it for himself.

They sailed up the river for about 100 miles (160 km), almost to where Albany now stands, at which point the water grew too shallow for the Half Moon. Hudson realised that while this was a noble river it was not a way through to the East and so he turned around and headed back to the coast. Hudson’s crew-mate, Robert Ivet, writes in his journal that on 2 October the Half Moon anchored just above the mouth of the river, between high cliffs (now called the New Jersey Palisades) and the island ‘that is called Mannahata’ – thus making THE VERY FIRST WRITTEN RECORD OF MANHATTAN.

While they may not have found the fabled North-West Passage, Hudson and his crew had nonetheless discovered an outstanding natural harbour, described by Robert Ivet as ‘a very good Harbour for all winds’, and a new territory full of such promise that Hudson was moved to declare, ‘Never have I beheld such a rich and pleasant land.’

When word got back to the Netherlands of Hudson’s discoveries, Dutch merchants by the score were inspired to come and explore this bountiful new land for themselves. The treasure that attracted them above all else was beaver fur, and beavers were to be found in abundance along the Hudson. Their pelts were much sought after by the fashionable Dutch middle classes, who used the fur to trim their hats and coats, and BEAVER PELTS became NEW YORK’SVERY FIRST MAJOR EXPORT. So important was the beaver to the founding of New York that a beaver appears on the city seal, and since 1975 the beaver has been the official New York State Mammal.

The great river up which Hudson sailed soon became known as Hudson’s River and then simply the Hudson River. The early Dutch settlers referred to the stretch of the Hudson bordering Manhattan as the North River, a name by which it is sometimes still known, but in 1909, during the tercentenary celebrations of Hudson’s arrival, it became accepted to refer to the whole river as the Hudson.

Captain Block

One of the first Dutch merchants to follow Hudson was CAPTAIN ADRIAEN BLOCK, who made a profitable voyage to Manhattan in 1610, returning home to the Netherlands with a rich cargo of beaver pelts. In 1613 he made another trip and moored his ship the Tyger in the Upper Bay off Lower Manhattan. The Tyger was accidentally gutted by fire and Block and his crew were forced to spend the winter on Manhattan – the four makeshift huts they constructed for shelter on the southern tip of the island were the VERY FIRST EUROPEAN DWELLINGS ON MANHATTAN.

New Netherland

In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was founded to promote and administer Dutch trading activities in the Americas, and the company arranged to send a group of settlers, consisting mainly of Walloons and Flemish, to establish a permanent trading base in New Netherland. In the summer of 1624 the 30 or so families arrived on two ships and settled on the flat wooded island off the southern tip of Manhattan that controlled access to the Hudson and East rivers, now called Governors Island, but then known by the native Indians as Pagganck. CORNELIUS MEY, the captain of the lead ship, the Nieuw Nederland (New Netherland), became THE FIRST DIRECTOR OF THE COLONY OF NEW NETHERLAND.

Governors Island

Birthplace of New York

GOVERNORS ISLAND covers 172 acres (70 ha) and lies half a mile (800 m) off the southern tip of Manhattan in the north-east corner of New York Harbor.

The colony established by the Dutch on Governors Island in 1624 was THE FIRST PERMANENT EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT IN WHAT WOULD BECOME NEW YORK, and the island is officially recognised as the BIRTHPLACE OF NEW YORK. In 1625, under a new director, WILLEM VERHULST, the settlers moved on to Manhattan Island and founded New Amsterdam.

When the British took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York, Pagganck, which was by now called Nut Island, was set aside for the ‘benefit and accommodation of His Majesty’s Governors’ and became known as the Governor’s Island, although it was not officially named as such until 1784.

The oldest surviving building on the island, and one of the few 18th-century houses remaining in New York, is the Georgian-style GOVERNOR’S HOUSE, erected in 1708 for LORD CORNBURY and called ‘The Smiling Garden of the Sovereigns of the Province’.

Through the Ages

In 1710 thousands of refugees fleeing from the devastation wrought by the French in the Palatinate region of what is now Germany arrived in New York and were held in quarantine for a few days on Governors Island. Among them was a 13-year-old boy who would go on to play a major role in the history of New York. His name was JOHN PETER ZENGER (see here).

Troops were first stationed on Governors Island in 1755, British regiments consisting of American colonists, Swiss and Germans soldiers expert in forest warfare, and British volunteers, all recruited for service in the American colonies. They became known as ROYAL AMERICANS and established THE FIRST INFANTRY SCHOOL IN AMERICA on the island.

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Two Forts

After the Revolution, Governors Island became the property of New York State, who handed it over to the federal government in 1800 for military use. The island’s defences were strengthened with the building of FORT JAY, a star-shaped fort completed in 1808 on high ground in the middle of the island and named after the 2nd Governor of New York, John Jay. Later came CASTLE WILLIAMS, a semi-circular red sandstone fort completed in 1811 in anticipation of the 1812 war with Britain. In the end, however, no shot was fired in anger from anywhere on Governors Island.

Morse and More

In October 1842 SAMUEL MORSE laid out a telegraph wire along the bottom of the sea between Governors Island and the Battery on Manhattan to find out if he could transmit signals along the wire underwater. He succeeded in transmitting three signals before a vessel that had been anchored between the islands lifted its anchor and brought the wire up with it – no one on board knew what it was and so they cut it.

In the 1890s material from the excavations of the Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel under the East River and the Lexington Avenue subway was used as landfill to enlarge Governors Island by 103 acres (42 ha), to its present size of 172 acres (70 ha).

Flying High

On 29 September 1909, WILBUR WRIGHT took off from the parade ground on Governors Island in AMERICA’SFIRST MILITARY PLANE, THE FLYER, and twice circled the Statue of Liberty at a height of 150 ft (46 m) before returning. As well as being THE FIRST EVER FLIGHT IN A MILITARY PLANE, this was THE FIRST FLIGHT EVER OVER WATER IN AMERICA, and as a safety precaution a red canoe was strapped to the underside of Wright’s plane. On 4 October Wright made a 20-mile (32 km) round flight from Governors Island up the Hudson River to Grant’s Tomb and back as part of the celebrations marking 300 years since Henry Hudson’s first navigation of the river.

The following year aviator Glenn Curtiss landed on Governors Island after flying down the Hudson from Albany, winning a $10,000 prize from Joseph Pulitzer, publisher of the New York World.

Wright and Curtiss are the first two names found on the Governors Island EARLY BIRD AVIATION MONUMENT unveiled in 1954 to celebrate the achievements of the first aviators. The bronze propeller on the monument was cast from one of the wooden propellers on Wright’s Flyer.

Ironically, the Aviation Monument can be found just outside the vast LIGGETT HALL BARRACKS, which was built by the U.S. Army in 1929 supposedly to thwart an attempt by the City of New York to build a municipal airport on Governors Island. Liggett Hall, which almost covers the island from east to west, was at the time THE LONGEST BUILDING IN THE WORLD and THE FIRST BUILDING IN THE WORLD LARGE ENOUGH TO HOUSE AN ENTIRE REGIMENT.

Early Bird Aviation Monument

Coast Guard

In 1966 Governors Island, by then THE OLDEST CONTINUOUSLY OPERATED MILITARY POST IN THE UNITED STATES, was handed over by the army to the U.S. Coast Guard, at which point it became THE LARGEST COAST GUARD STATION IN THE WORLD.

In 1988 President Reagan travelled to Governors Island for a summit on disarmament with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. This was held in the ADMIRAL’S HOUSE, constructed in 1843 as home for the island’s commanding officer.

The U.S. Coast Guard left Governors Island in 1997, and today the island is open to the public from May to September and hosts a variety of concerts and cultural events. Access to the island is by ferry from the historic Battery Maritime Building on Lower Manhattan (see here).

Statue of Liberty

The STATUE OF LIBERTY was the first glimpse of America seen by the millions of immigrants who arrived in New York from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries saw. They wrote home with stories of this breathtakingly beautiful lady floating above the harbour who, with her gaze fixed towards the sea, her right arm raised in greeting and her torch a guiding beacon, was there to welcome them into New York and to a new life. And so her fame grew until she became emblematic of New York, a potent symbol of liberty and democracy and a new world.

Even today the sight of the Statue of Liberty can bring a lump to the throat and lift the most jaundiced of souls, whether glimpsed from a boat in the bay or from the top of a New York skyscraper.

The idea for the statue originated at a dinner party in France in 1865 when the French statesman EDOUARD DE LABOULAYE, now known as the ‘Father of the Statue of Liberty’, proposed the creation of a monument to celebrate the friendship between France and America. Also at the dinner party was a young French sculptor called AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI, who followed up on Laboulaye’s suggestion by adapting an idea he had been working on for a vast statue, based on the Colossus of Rhodes, to mark the entrance to the new Suez Canal. Bartholdi travelled to New York and settled on Bedloe’s Island, the smallest of the three ‘oyster’ islands in the Upper Bay, as the site for the statue. Here, it would be visible to every vessel that entered the harbour.

The Statue of Liberty was constructed in Paris over nine years. In 1876 the torch, the first portion of the statue to be finished, was sent over from Paris to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and then moved to Madison Square in New York to try and drum up enthusiasm for the project. In 1885 the completed statue was packed into 214 crates and sent across from Paris in the French ship Isère, to await completion of the pedestal.

The Pedestal

It had been decided that while France would construct and pay for the statue, America would build and pay for the pedestal. Raising the funds for the pedestal proved difficult at first until Joseph Pulitzer promised to put the name of every contributor, however small, in his newspaper, the New York World.

The pedestal was designed by RICHARD MORRIS HUNT, founder of the American Institute of Architects, and for added strength the base was set within the walls of Fort Wood, a star-shaped fort built on Bedloe’s Island by the army in 1811. The pedestal’s foundations required 24,000 tons of concrete, THE LARGEST MASS OF CONCRETE EVER POURED AT THAT TIME.

Dedication

Once the pedestal was complete, it took just four months to erect the Statue of Liberty, which was dedicated on 28 October 1886 by President Grover Cleveland. For the finale, Bartholdi perched on top of the torch and pulled a cord to release the large French flag that had been covering the front of the statue, revealing the statue’s face to New Yorkers for the first time and unleashing fireworks, wild celebrations, marching bands and the world’s first ticker-tape parade.

Ellis Island

America’s Golden Door

ELLIS ISLAND is named after SAMUEL ELLIS, a Welsh New Yorker who acquired the island in 1785. Ceded to the federal government in 1808, it was fortified as a harbour defence and remained a military station until 1890, when the Federal Government assumed control of immigration from the State of New York. On 1 January 1892 Ellis Island opened as AMERICA’SFIRST FEDERAL IMMIGRATION STATION.

First and Last

The FIRST IMMIGRANT REGISTERED THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND, on 1 January 1892, was an Irish girl from County Cork called ANNIE MOORE, who celebrated her 15th birthday on that very day. As the first immigrant, she was presented with a $10 gold coin by COLONEL WEBER, THE FIRST COMMISSIONER FOR IMMIGRATION. Annie went to stay with her parents on Monroe Street on the Lower East Side, eventually married and had 11 children, and lived in New York for the rest of her life.

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The original immigration centre on Ellis Island was made of wood and burned down in 1897. The present building, designed in French Renaissance style, opened in 1900, but with up to half a million immigrants passing through every year it soon proved inadequate, so the island was enlarged with landfill and a further complex of buildings added.

Over 12 million immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island, America’s Golden Door, before it closed in 1954. It was THE GREATEST WAVE OF MIGRATION IN HISTORY and it is estimated that NEARLY HALF OF ALL THE AMERICANS ALIVE TODAY HAVE AN ANCESTOR WHO ARRIVED THROUGH ELLIS ISLAND.

The vast majority of immigrants were processed in less than eight hours and only two per cent of all those who came to Ellis Island seeking to enter America were sent home.

The last immigrant to pass through Ellis Island, in 1954, was a merchant seaman from Norway named ARNE PETERSSEN.

Tourist Trap

Today Ellis Island serves as an immigration museum and is run by the National Parks Service along with the Statue of Liberty.

One of the delights of visiting Ellis Island is that you are allowed to poke around on your own, although an audio guide is available if you want one. Highlights include:

• The Great Hall, through which every immigrant passed, now cavernous and empty but once thronged with anxious men, women and children, seated in rows, and filled with dreams of a new life.
• A beautiful bronze statue of Annie Moore, holding her hat against the sea breeze, sculpted by Jeanne Rynhart.
  

• Two columns, hidden away in a dark corridor on the second floor, covered in graffiti scrawled by people waiting to be processed. One of the more legible messages on the columns was carved by a Cecchini Guiseppe, who writes in Italian that he arrived at the Battery on 18 May, Saturday, 1901.
• The AMERICAN IMMIGRANT WALL OF HONOUR, inscribed with the names of over 700,000 immigrants who came through the facility, THE LONGEST WALL OF NAMES IN THE WORLD.

Staten Island Ferry

The Best Free Ride in the World

The STATEN ISLAND FERRY carries some 20 million passengers the five miles (8 km) between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan every year and is THE SECOND BUSIEST FERRY SERVICE IN AMERICA, after Washington State Ferries. While the Staten Island Ferry is run by the City of New York mainly for commuters it is also one of New York’s most popular tourist attractions, providing an exhilarating ride with unrivalled views of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. The ferry has been free since 1997.

The FIRST ORGANISED STATEN ISLAND FERRY SERVICE, direct ancestor of the present municipal ferry, was begun in about 1810 by a 16-year-old Staten Island boy called CORNELIUS VANDERBILT.

THE FIRST MOTORISED STATEN ISLAND FERRY, a steamboat called NAUTILUS, was introduced in 1817 by the Richmond Turnpike Company, set up by DANIEL TOMPKINS, 4th Governor of New York and Vice President to James Monroe, who wanted to bring in people to Tompkinsville, a village he was developing on Staten Island. In 1838 Cornelius Vanderbilt bought control of Richmond, and later sold it to the Staten Island Railway, run by his brother Jacob. The ferry company then passed through a number of hands until it was taken over by the City of New York in 1901.

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NEW YORK HARBOR

In 1525, one year after Verrazano had sighted the bay, a Portuguese explorer called ESTEVAN GOMEZ, travelling under the Spanish flag, sailed into the Upper Bay while charting America’s eastern seaboard, and named the great river he discovered there the Rio de San Antonio. In 1529, thanks to the charts Gomez made and took back home, a Portuguese cartographer called Diego Ribiero was able to produce the FIRST ACCURATE MAP OF AMERICA’S EASTERN SEABOARD. On it, the area around New York is shown as TIERRA DE ESTEVAN GOMEZ. Spain did not press home its claim to the new territory because Gomez informed them that there was no gold to be found there.

The FIRST MAN OF EITHER AFRICAN OR EUROPEAN DESCENT TO LIVE INDEPENDENTLY ON MANHATTAN ISLAND was a half-Portuguese, half-African trader called JAN RODRIGUES, who was put ashore at a temporary Dutch trading post on Lower Manhattan in 1613 by Dutch sea captain Thijs Volckenz Mossel to act as a translator and intermediary with the Native Americans. Rodrigues married a Native American, set up his own trading post as MANHATTAN’S FIRST RESIDENT MERCHANT, and eventually settled in New Amsterdam.

In 1776 New York Harbor became the scene of THE WORLD’S FIRST SUBMARINE ATTACK. The submarine, dubbed the TURTLE, was invented by Yale student DAVID BUSHNELL and was designed to destroy British warships anchored in the bay. The idea was that the Turtle would be towed into the vicinity of the target and lowered into the water. It would then submerge by admitting water into the hull, approach the target, drill into the hull of the enemy vessel and attach a mine. And so, early on the morning of 7 September 1776, the Turtle, piloted by army volunteer Sergeant Ezra Lee, embarked on its first mission, an attempt to place a mine on the hull of HMS Eagle, which was anchored in the harbour. Unfortunately for Sergeant Lee, the Turtle‘s drill failed to bore a hole in the Eagle‘s hull, the mine floated away free and the submarine was spotted as it bobbed to the surface a few yards from the ship. Lee managed to scramble out and swim away, however, and an hour later the abandoned mine exploded, giving the British fleet a terrible fright and forcing them to move their ships further out into the harbour. The Turtle was recovered but her transport ship was eventually sunk near the New Jersey Palisades with the Turtle on board, and so the world’s first attack submarine was lost at the bottom of the Hudson River.

The BUTTERMILK CHANNEL, which separates Governors Island from Brooklyn, was once so shallow that at low tide farmers from Brooklyn could walk their cattle across to feed on the island. The channel has long since been dredged for use as a shipping lane.

Governors Island once boasted one of the SHORTEST RAILWAYS IN THE WORLD, thought to have been about 1½ miles (2.4 km) in length. It ran between the island’s docks and military warehouses and was scrapped in 1931 leaving no traces remaining.

More Italians entered New York through Ellis Island than any other nationality.

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CHAPTER 2

NEW AMSTERDAM & COLONIAL NEW YORK

Stadt Huys – New York’s first City Hall

Very little remains of New Amsterdam, which was founded in 1625, or of Colonial New York as it became in 1664, except for some street names and the old street layout. The modern skyline of Lower Manhattan gives no hint of the alleyways and cobbled thoroughfares that still follow the original plan of the early settlement or of the scintillating history that lurks in the shadows of the skyscrapers. A meander through this part of the city provides a fascinating experience that is quite different from that of any other neighbourhood in New York.

The Battery

Since the dawn of New York in the 17th century the south shoreline of Manhattan Island has been known as THE BATTERY, as this is where the gun batteries of Fort Amsterdam stood in defence of the small Dutch trading post of NEW AMSTERDAM. The Battery was the single point of entry to New York for the early Dutch settlers, for the first English inhabitants, and for millions of immigrants who came to settle in New York over the next 300 years.

Today, the Battery still bustles with maritime activity, with commuters arriving from Staten Island and New Jersey and tourists coming and going from the harbour islands and pleasure trips around the bay.

Peter Minuit Plaza

Passengers arriving on the Staten Island ferry disembark through the sleek WHITEHALL TERMINAL, opened in 2005, on to the most southerly point of Manhattan, an area now called PETER MINUIT PLAZA.

Here there are bus, taxi and subway connections to the rest of Manhattan, while within the plaza, set amongst trees and tulip beds, is the NEW AMSTERDAM PLEIN AND PAVILION, opened in 2011 and donated by the Kingdom of the Netherlands to celebrate the founding on this spot of New Amsterdam. The Pavilion is designed to resemble the opening petals of a tulip and the sails of a windmill.

Peter Minuit’s surname translates as ‘midnight’ and at midnight every night a dazzling light show illuminates the New Amsterdam Pavilion in honour of the director who secured Manhattan Island for the Dutch (see here).

Netherlands Memorial

A short walk up State Street to the north-east corner of Battery Park beside the Custom House brings you to the NETHERLANDS MEMORIAL, a flagstaff pedestal sculpted out of pink granite showing Peter Minuit, in his high collar and buckled shoes, handing over a string of beads to a native dressed in a loin cloth and wearing an Indian headdress.

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