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

Mulberry Street, on the Lower East Side, circa 1900.

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.

Transportation

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's opening in 1903 and the Manhattan Bridge's in 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; Pennsylvania Station was torn down in 1963.

Journalism

By the turn of the 20th century, the city had 15 to 20 daily newspapers, each reaching a specialized niche. Thus the Wall Street Journal provided detailed coverage of business affairs. The New York Times had shrunk to almost nothing by the 1890s. However, after its purchase by Adolph Ochs (of Knoxville Tennessee) in 1896 it reached an upscale audience with unbiased and detailed news. There were numerous ethnic papers. Most newspapers were sold on a daily basis, as opposed to subscriptions. Starting in 1895, William Randolph Hearst, a mining heir from San Francico, challenged Joseph Pulitzer (from St. Louis, Missouri) for dominance on the newsstands. Both Hearst's Journal and Pulitzer's World favored the Democrats and both sought to maximize their sales through yellow journalism with exclusives based on sensationalism, sports, sex and scandal, and features such as comic strips, puzzles, recipes, and advice columns. At the time of the Spanish-American war in 1898, both papers reached the million a day circulation level. Hearst became a leader of the left wing of the Democratic Party, and was nearly elected mayor in 1905 and governor in 1906. He had bitter battles with Al Smith over control of the Democratic Party, losing out in 1925. He then moved his base to California. After enthusiastically supporting Franklin Roosevelt for president in 1932, he broke with Roosevelt, moved far to the right, and became a bitter enemy of the New Deal, using his national magazines and New York Journal to blast away at FDR.

Immigrant life

The years 1895-1914 saw the peak of European immigration; the new arrivals were mostly Italians and Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe. There were smaller but steady stream from Ireland, Britain and Germany. The residents of Little Germany, in what is now the East Village dispersed to more affluent neighborhoods and were replaced by growing numbers of poorer immigrants on the Lower East Side.

Disasters

The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

On June 15, 1904, over 1,000 people, mostly 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 .

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.

On the night of April 14-15, 1912, the ocean liner RMS Titanic was en route in the North Atlantic to New York when it struck an iceberg and sank, killing 1,500 of the 2,200 people. On April 18 the rescue ship RMS Carpathia arrived and was met by some 40,000 onlookers. Immediate relief in the form of clothing and transportation to shelters was provided by the Women's Relief Committee, the Travelers Aid Society of New York, and the Council of Jewish Women, among other organizations. Two Titanic memorials stand in New York. On April 13, 1913, the 60 feet (18 m) Titanic Memorial Lighthouse was constructed on the roof of the Seamen's Church Institute. Straus Park commemorates Isidor Straus and his wife Ida, who both died in the disaster.

Public health and sanitation

Cleanliness was a heavily promoted virtue, supported by the middle class and led by the public health community of physicians and experts. Street cleaning became a major item of the city budget, and produced the sort of jobs that the machines wanted to distribute to their working class clientele. 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, so urbanites welcomed motor vehicles as a profound relief.

The city took the lead internationally to combat diphtheria, an often fatal disease that struck thousands of children annually. Researchers applied laboratory-based advances in bacteriology and immunology to the treatment and prevention of this disease, thereby eradicating it as a major threat.

World War I

In World War I, the city played a major role in publicizing and financing the war, As well as producing uniforms and warships. There was fear of German sabotage, especially in the aftermath of the Black Tom explosion in 1916. The port was the main point of embarkation for U.S. troops traveling to Europe during World War I. The congestion at the port led experts to realize the need for a port authority to supervise the extremely complex system of bridges, highways, subways, and port facilities in the New York-New Jersey area. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Was created in 1921, under the supervision of the governors of The two states. By issuing its own bonds, it was financially independent of either state; the bonds were paid off from tolls and fees, and not from taxes. It became one of the major agencies of the metropolitan area for large-scale projects, especially when Robert Moses was director.

The Bronx

In particular, the Bronx's history after 1898 falls into several distinct periods. The first is a boom period during 1898–1929, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression years saw a surge of unemployment, especially among the working class, and a slowing of growth. The mid-to-late century were hard times, as the Bronx declined in the 1950s through the '70s from a predominantly moderate-income to a predominantly lower-income area with high rates of violent crime and poverty. The Bronx has experienced an economic and developmental resurgence starting in the late 1980s that continues into today.

Politics in the borough 1922-53 was under the tight control of the Democratic organization, but for many years by Edward J. Flynn. Everyone called him "the boss." He ran the machine like a business executive, paying particular attention to choosing top lieutenants, and providing services to grateful voters. In sharp contrast to the leaders of Tammany, he cooperated very smoothly with Franklin Roosevelt both as governor and as president.

Politics

Al Smith, leader of the Democrats in 1910s and 1920s

The politics of the consolidated city from 1898 to 1945 revolved around conflicts between the political machines and the reformers. In quiet times the machines had the advantage and usually exercised control of city and borough affairs; they also 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, notably the mayor's office. The reformers were never unified; they operated through a complex network of independent civic reform groups, each focused its lobbying efforts on its own particular reform agenda. The membership included civic minded, well-educated middle-class men and women, usually with expert skills in a profession or business, who deeply distrusted the corruption of the machines. Consolidation in 1898 multiplied the power of these reform groups, so long as they could agree on a common agenda, Such as consolidation itself.

There was no citywide machine. Instead Democratic machines flourished 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." Charles Murphy was the highly effective but quiet boss of Tammany Hall from 1902–1924. Republican local organizations were much weaker, but they played key roles in forming reform coalitions. Most of the time they looked to Albany and Washington for their sphere of influence. 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 to 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 a "Fusion" ticket headed by 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.

Finance

Lower Manhattan, as seen from a ferry, December 1941

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

New York became the financial center of the United States before the Civil War, specializing in railroad securities. By 1900 it grown even more dominant, and was starting to approach London as a world financial center. There were thousands of successful bankers and financiers; a central figure was J.P. Morgan, who set up national financing programs for the steel, agricultural implements, shipping and other industries. John D. Rockefeller, of Standard Oil, expanded from a dominant position in oil to other industries as well as banking. Andrew Carnegie dominated steel until he sold out to Morgan in 1901. Rockefeller and Carnegie after 1900 largely devoted their interest to philanthropy, as to a certain extent did Morgan. With the creation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York became a powerful player under its dynamic president Benjamin Strong. By 1917, New York was funding the world war efforts of Britain, France and other Allies. By the 1920s New York had surpassed London as a world banking center. The New York Stock Exchange was the national focus of wealth making and speculation until its shares suddenly collapsed late in 1929, setting of the worldwide Great Depression.

1920s to 1945

Jazz Age

A workman helps raise the Empire State Building 25 floors higher than the Chrysler Building (at right), as seen in 1931.

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. Officials blamed anarchist and communist elements, fueling the ongoing Palmer raids but the culprits were never caught.

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.

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

Robert Moses with a model of his proposed Battery Bridge, which was never built

The Great Depression, which was to affect the rest of the world, began with the Stock Market Crash of 1929. 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. When New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt was elected president, the Hooverville shacks named after his predecessor dotted city parks. The city became a showcase for new deal spending, Especially through the Public Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration. There were massive building projects regarding highways bridges public housing, new schools, and expansion of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Republican planner Robert Moses was in competition with Mayor LaGuardia. Moses took charge of building many bridges, parks, public housing units and parkways With federal money. Moses was the 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.

World War II

Aircraft engine at Naval Training School in the Bronx

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 the shadow of the war underway in Europe dampenedthe proceedings.

The economy of New York City was boosted by the war effort, but not to the extent of cities with heavy industries such as Pittsburgh, Chicago, Los Angeles or Detroit. The clothing industry produced uniforms, and machine shops focused on war materials. The Brooklyn Navy Yard again increased its production of warships. The large printing industry was scarcely affected. The port facilities again played their role in shipping supplies and soldiers to Europe. The Port of New York handled 25% of the nation's exports. By the war's end, the Navy Yard was the world's largest shipyard with 75,000 workers. When peace arrived in 1945, New York was now clearly pre-eminent in the world, as the only major world city unscathed by the war.

Further reading

Recent sources

• 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
• Chernow, Ron. The house of Morgan: an American banking dynasty and the rise of modern finance (2001)
• Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.(2007)
• Christin, Pierre, and Olivier Balez. Robert Moses: The Master Builder of New York City (2014)
• Federal Writers' Project (1939). New York City Guide. American Guide Series. New York: Random House. + Index
• Geisst, Charles R. Wall Street:A History (2nd ed. 2012). comprehensive history
• Goldstein, Richard. Helluva Town: The Story of New York City During World War II (2010) Online review
• Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City, (1995) 1350 pages; articles by experts
• Jackson, Kenneth and Sam Roberts, eds. The Almanac of New York City (2008)
• Jackson, Kenneth T. and Hillary Ballon, eds. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (W. W. Norton, 2007)
• Jeffers, H. Paul. (2002). The Napoleon of New York: Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. New York: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-471-02465-1. online edition.
• Kessner, Thomas. Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York (1989) the most detailed standard scholarly biography
• Lankevich, George J. New York City: A Short History (NYU Press, 2002)
• Lubove, Roy. The progressives and the slums: Tenement house reform in New York City, 1890-1917 (1963).
• Nevins, Allan, and John Allen Krout, eds. The Greater City: New York, 1898-1948 (Columbia University Press, 1948); essays by scholars on the changes and continuities in the city
• Slayton, Robert A. Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith, (2001), 480pp, the standard scholarly biography; excerpt and text search
• Ward, David, and Olivier Zunz, eds. Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940 (1992), 14 essays by scholars on planning and neighborhoods
• Williams, Mason B. City of Ambition: FDR, La Guardia, and the Making of Modern New York (2013)

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)