History of New York City (1898–1945)

The history of New York City (1898–1945) began with the formation of the consolidated city of the five boroughs in 1898. New transportation links, most notably the New York City Subway, first opened 1904, helped bind the new city together. Increased European immigration brought social upheaval. Later, in the 1920s, the city saw the influx of African Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South, and the Harlem Renaissance. The Roaring Twenties were years of glamour and wealth, highlighted by a construction boom with skyscrapers dueling in the skyline. New York's financial sector came to dominate the national, and indeed the world economy.

The city suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the election and repeated reelection of reformer Fiorello La Guardia, who ended the long dominance of Tammany Hall. La Guardia's success in getting new deal relief funds helped convert the city to a stronghold of the New Deal Coalition. The city recovered economically during World War II. After 1945, the city gradually lost its industrial base and shifted to service industries.

Progressive Era: 1890s-1920s

The Woolworth Building, built in 1913

The modern city of New York—the five boroughs—was created in 1898, with the consolidation of the cities of New York (then Manhattan and the Bronx) and Brooklyn with the then largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island.

Horses were used for transportation in 1900, as they had been throughout the history of the city. There were 200,000 of them in the city, producing nearly 2,500 short tons (2,300 t) of manure daily. It accumulated in the streets and was swept to the sides like snow. The smell was quite noticeable. Introduction of motor vehicles was a profound relief.

The municipal consolidation would also precipitate greater physical connections between the boroughs. The building of the New York City Subway, originally as the separate Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) and Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation (BMT) systems (with the Independent Subway System, the IND, to be incorporated in 1925), as well as the opening of the first IRT line in 1905, marked the beginning of what became a force for further population spread and development. The Williamsburg Bridge 1903 and the Manhattan Bridge 1909 further connected Manhattan to the rapidly expanding bedroom community in Brooklyn. The world-famous Grand Central Terminal opened as the world's largest train station on February 1, 1913, replacing an earlier terminal on the site. It was preceded by Pennsylvania Station, several blocks to the west.

Crime rates increased as the city grew. Newspapers made household names of sensational criminals, such as Harry Thaw, Peter Hains and Josephine Terranova. These years also saw the peak of European immigration and the shifting of that immigration from Western Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe. On June 15, 1904, over 1,000 people, mostly German immigrants, were killed when the steamship General Slocum caught fire and burned in the East River, marking the beginning of the end of the community in Little Germany, in what is now the East Village. The German community was replaced by growing numbers of poorer immigrants on the Lower East Side. Concern over disease led to measures to promote public health, such as the Asser Levy Public Baths. The Progressive Era, which occurred around this time, was notable for its attention to environmental issues, especially as they related to public health, pure milk and clean water. Concern over disease led to measures to promote public health, such as the Asser Levy Public Baths.

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village took the lives of 145 mostly Italian and Jewish female garment workers, which would eventually lead to great advancements in the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations. Reaction to the disaster spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, and took place in the context of broader union movements coordinated by the American Federation of Labor.

The port was the main point of embarkation for U.S. troops traveling to Europe during World War I. There was fear of German sabotage, especially in the aftermath of the Black Tom explosion in 1916.

Politics

The politics of the consolidated city from 1898 to 1945 revolved around conflicts between the political machines, and the reformers. In quiet times but machines have the advantage and usually when control of city and borough affairs, and played a major role in the state Legislature in Albany. In times of crisis however, especially in the Great Depression, the reformers took control of key offices, especially the mayor's office. There was no citywide machine. Instead Democratic machines florist in each of the boroughs, with Tammany Hall in Manhattan the most prominent. They typically had strong local organizations, known as "political clubs," as well as one prominent leader often called the boss. Republican organizations were much weaker, but they played key roles in forming reform coalitions. Seth Low, the president of Colombia University, was elected the reform mayor in 1901. He lost to the Democratic candidate from Tammany in 1903 who attacked Low's enforcement of the liquor laws. The Democrats, under the leadership of Al Smith and Robert F. Wagner embraced reform in the 1910s and 1920s, especially to the benefit of their core constituency, the working class. Smith became governor in the 1920s, but lost the presidential election in 1928 even though he did very well in Catholic strongholds. Wagner served in the United States Senate, 1927 to 1949, where he was a leader of the New Deal Coalition paying special emphasis on supporting the labor movement.

After 1928, however, scandal engulfed City Hall. Flamboyant Mayor Jimmy Walker Resigned and fled to Europe after state investigations showed he had taken bribes. Coupled with the harshness of the Great Depression, this gave an opening to the reformers. They won in 1933 with Fiorello La Guardia. He was a liberal Republican Congressman with strong Italian and Jewish connections who appealed across party lines. LaGuardia dominated city politics as mayor, 1934 to 1945. He supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal; in turn Roosevelt heavily funded the city and cut off patronage for La Guardia's enemies. La Guardia revitalized New York and restored public faith in City Hall. He unified the transit system, directed the building of low-cost public housing, public playgrounds, and parks, constructed airports, reorganized the police force, defeated the still-powerful Tammany Hall machine, and reestablished employment on merit in place of patronage jobs. La Guardia was a domineering leader who verged on authoritarianism but whose reform politics were carefully tailored to address the sentiments of his diverse constituency. He defeated a corrupt Democratic machine, presided during a depression and a world war, made the city the model for New Deal welfare and public works programs, and championed immigrants and ethnic minorities. He succeeded with the support of a sympathetic president who was equally hostile to Tammany Hall. He secured his place in history as a tough-minded reform mayor who helped clean out corruption, bring in gifted experts, and fix upon the city a broad sense of responsibility for its own citizens. His administration engaged new groups that had been kept out of the political system, gave New York its modern infrastructure, and raised expectations of new levels of urban possibility.

Jazz Age

Lower Manhattan in 1931. Note that the American International Building, which would become lower Manhattan's tallest building in 1932, is only partially completed.

The aftermath of the Wall Street Bombing on September 16, 1920.

Immigrant families continued establishing themselves, and more started moving into the neighborhoods outside Manhattan; in a sign of municipal maturation, the 1920 census showed Brooklyn for the first time overtaking Manhattan as the most populous borough. But the great period of European immigration which had only just passed its peak was halted abruptly by the Immigration Act of 1924 which severely limited further immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe. This period instead saw a major domestic movement to the city, as the Great Migration of African Americans from the South resulted in a flowering of African American culture in the Harlem Renaissance.

Fun-loving Tammany mayor Jimmy Walker for most of his term presided over a period of prosperity for the city, with the proliferation of the speakeasy during Prohibition.

On September 16, 1920, radicals in the city perpetrated the Wall Street bombing, a terrorist attack outside the headquarters of the House of Morgan, killing dozens of people and injuring hundreds. The bombing, timed for the busy lunch hour, was unusual for targeting larger numbers of ordinary people. It was the most deadly act of politically motivated terror on American soil until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, and took place in the context of the 1919 discovery of two series of deadly mail-bombs. Officials blamed anarchist and communist elements, fueling the ongoing Palmer raids. Shortly before the bomb went off, a warning note was placed in a mailbox at the corner of Cedar Street and Broadway. The warning read: "Remember we will not tolerate any longer. Free the political prisoners or it will be sure death for all of you. American Anarchists Fighters." After twenty years investigating the matter the FBI rendered the file inactive in 1940 without ever finding the perpetrators.

Tin Pan Alley developed toward Broadway, and the first modern musical, Jerome Kern's Show Boat opened in 1927 as the theater district moved north of 42nd Street.

In 1931, a workman helps raise the Empire State Building 25 floors higher than the Chrysler Building (seen to the right), completed just one year before.

New York City became known for its daring and impressive architecture, most notably the skyscrapers which transformed the skyline, with the race to the sky culminating in the dueling spires of the Art Deco icon the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building of the late 1920s, which were not topped off until a period when their soaring heights seemed rather overoptimistic. The city grew outward, too, replacing most of the farmland of eastern Brooklyn and eastern Bronx, and much of Queens, with residential development.

In the 1924 presidential election, New York City voted for Calvin Coolidge, the last time it ever was won by a Republican presidential candidate.

Great Depression and WWII

Lower Manhattan, as seen from a ferry, December 1941

Students study first aid to support the war effort, 1942

The Great Depression, which was to affect the rest of the world, began with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. The Depression was both a time of unemployment and poverty, and a period of increased government involvement in the economy. With the economic decline, criticism of Mayor Walker grew, from Cardinal Patrick Joseph Hayes and then from New York Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who broke with Walker and Tammany. Mayor Walker came under increasing pressure in the midst of FDR's 1932 Presidential campaign, and resigned to relocate to Europe fleeing potential criminal charges.When FDR was elected, the Hooverville shacks named after his predecessor dotted city parks, but the city would benefit from the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration, which among other things financed much public art locally. The recently completed Empire State Building would be known as the "Empty State Building" for many years because it could not attract sufficient tenants in the bleak business climate.

In 1933, Republican reformer Fiorello La Guardia was elected mayor. La Guardia, sometimes considered New York's greatest mayor, was of both Italian and Jewish descent and acted as an exuberant populist with a multi-ethnic sensibility. La Guardia's term also saw the rise of the long-careered planner Robert Moses, bridges, parks and parkways coordinator, and great proponent of automobile-centered modernism, whose legacy of massive construction projects is controversial today. The last large expansion of the subway system and municipal ownership of the previously privately owned subway companies gave the system its final shape.

Aircraft engine at Naval Training School in the Bronx

In 1938, the political designation "ward" was abolished. New York City had used this designation for the smallest political units since 1686, when Governor Thomas Dongan divided the city, then entirely in Manhattan, into six wards. In 1791, wards were given numerical designations. The First Ward was the tip of Manhattan, and the wards going north were given consecutive numbers with new ones added as the city expanded. Older wards were also subdivided as their populations swelled. Brooklyn was also composed of wards since it became a city in 1837. It originally had nine, and by the time of the 1898 consolidation it had 32.

New York, long a great American city with many immigrants, became a culturally international city with the brain drain of intellectual, musical and artistic European refugees that started in the late 1930s. The 1939 New York World's Fair, marking the 150th anniversary of George Washington's inauguration in Federal Hall, was a high point of technological optimism, meant to mark the end of the Depression. After the start of World War II, though, the theme was changed from "Building the World of Tomorrow" to "For Peace and Freedom", and a shadow affected the proceedings.

The economy of New York City was affected by the military conflict; shipping was hurt by the U-boats, many windows were blacked out for fear of German bombing that never materialized due to failure of the Amerika Bomber project, and the Brooklyn Navy Yard again increased its production of warships. For the duration of the war, the Port of New York handled 25% of the nation's trade. Much of this passed through the Brooklyn Army Terminal and the Brooklyn Navy Yard. By the war's end, the Navy Yard was the world's largest shipyard with 75,000 workers. At the end of the war, the city was pre-eminent in the world, the only major world city unscathed by the war.

Further reading

• Federal Writers' Project (1939). New York City Guide. American Guide Series. New York: Random House. + Index
• Caro, Robert. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. (1973) excerpt and text search
• Jackson, Kenneth and Sam Roberts, eds. The Almanac of New York City (2008)
• Kessner, Thomas. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York (1989) the most detailed standard scholarly biography
• Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (1995) 1350 pages; articles by experts
• Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Oxford University Press, 1998, 1416 pages, ISBN 0-19-514049-4; the standard scholarly history
• Slayton, Robert A. Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith, (2001), 480pp, the standard scholarly biography; excerpt and text search

Older sources

• Appleton's Dictionary of New York. NY: D. Appleton and Co. 1898.
• Charles Kendall Adams, ed. (1900). "New York". Universal Cyclopaedia. Vol. 8. New York: D. Appleton & Company. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Tourist's Hand-Book of New York, New York: Historical Press, 1905
• Ernest Ingersoll (1906). Rand, McNally & Co.'s Handy Guide to New York City (20th ed.). Chicago: Rand, McNally. OCLC 29277709.
• "New York", United States (4th ed.), Leipzig: K. Baedeker, 1909, OCLC 02338437 {{citation}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• James Bronson Reynolds, ed. (1911), Civic Bibliography for Greater New York, New York: Russell Sage Foundation
• Edward Hungerford (1913). "America's New York". The Personality of American Cities. New York: McBride, Nast & Company. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)
• Arthur Fremont Rider, ed. (1916), Rider's New York City and Vicinity, New York: H. Holt and Company + Index
• "New York City". Encyclopedia Americana. Vol. 20. NY. 1919. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• "New York". Collier's Encyclopedia. Vol. 6. New York: P.F. Collier & Son. 1921. {{cite book}}: External link in |chapterurl= (help); Unknown parameter |chapterurl= ignored (|chapter-url= suggested) (help)