History of New York City (1898–1945)

The economy of New York City prospered after 1896, with a few short dips, until the decade-long Great Depression, which began with a Wall Street stock market crash in late 1929.New York boasted the nation's strongest financial system, a large upscale market for luxury goods, and a flourishing high culture based on many philanthropists, museums, galleries, universities, artists, writers, and publications.The city also expanded its port facilities, improved its traffic system, built hundreds of new elementary and high schools, and engaged in large-scale public health programs.In the quiet times, the machines had a solid core of supporters and usually exercised control of city and borough affairs; they also played a major role in the state legislature in Albany.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.[14] The Irish remained in control of Tammany, and the leadership had many opportunities for what Alderman George Washington Plunkett called "honest graft" such as an inside track to lucrative construction contracts without any stealing or committing illegal acts.[15][16] Tammany was back in 1904 with a prestigious reformer, George B. McClellan Jr., the son of the famous Civil War general and an experienced politician in his own right.[20] European immigration increased rapidly during the early 20th century and suddenly stopped in 1914 due to World War I and the Emergency Quota Act allowing new residents to assimilate in American life.[24] In 1850 about a third of the 50,000 American Jews lived in New York; they spoke German (not Yiddish), were active in Reform congregations, and took major leadership roles in the city's banking, financial, merchandising, and clothing industries.The city's other ethnic groups, most notably the Italians, typically placed a much higher value on home ownership, which required boys and girls to start earning money by age 14 or so.[34] Columbia University developed an international reputation as a major research center in a wide range of the arts, sciences, humanities, and medical fields.[42] Starting in 1895, William Randolph Hearst, a mining heir from San Francisco, challenged Joseph Pulitzer, from St. Louis, Missouri, for dominance on the newsstands.During the rush hour, he made a series of bad mistakes, lost control on a downhill slope, and was racing at high speed when he crashed at a sharp curve outside of Prospect Park station.[50][51][52] 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.[54] 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.It was led by men such as the Reverend Charles H. Parkhurst, the leading Presbyterian pastor and president of the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime;[62] reform mayor William L. Strong, and his police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt.He defeated a corrupt Democratic machine, presided during the Depression and world war, made the city the model for New Deal welfare and public works programs, and championed immigrants and ethnic minorities.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.Much larger numbers arrived during the era of World War I as the Great Migration brought in blacks to fill more jobs at a time when immigration was suspended.[71] Sustained civil rights activism took place in the 1930s and 1940s, often led by Baptists minister Adam Clayton Powell Jr., who was elected to the United States Congress in 1942.[72] Unemployment was a major problem in the Depression years, but New Deal relief agencies such as the Civilian Conservation Corps and Works Progress Administration provided considerable employment on an equal basis.For many years, especially in the 1920s, Harlem was home to a flourishing of social thought and culture that took place among numerous Black artists, musicians, novelists, poets, and playwrights.[74] The Jazz Age featured celebrities, among the most notable in the city were Madame Polly Adler; jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald; dancer Martha Graham; speakeasy host Texas Guinan; publisher Henry Luce of Time magazine; writer Dorothy Parker and the pundits at the Algonquin Hotel; editor Harold Ross at The New Yorker magazine; and such nationally famous sports heroes as Babe Ruth and Bill Tilden.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.The New York Stock Exchange was the national focus of wealth making and speculation until its shares suddenly collapsed late in 1929, setting off the worldwide Great Depression.It grew rapidly in its first two decades and took credit for abolishing sewing work in the tenements, establishing a six-day, 54-hour week, writing union contracts that gave preference to ILGWU members applying for a job, and setting up arbitration machinery.Under the leadership of David Dubinsky, the ILGWU became a major supporter of Roosevelt's New Deal, and it grew rapidly in membership in the late 1930s and during World War II.The strike resumed March 4 after workers rejected the War Board labor ruling and ended on April 20, 1919; After new terms had been offered by both public and private port employers.A small percentage were rejected because of obvious disease; the steamship companies had to pay their fare back, so they screened for sick passengers ahead of time in Europe.Generally referred to as "the boss", he ran the political machine like a business executive, paying particular attention to choosing top lieutenants, and providing services to grateful voters.
Mulberry Street , on the Lower East Side , circa 1900
The Woolworth Building , built in 1913
Huron Club, formerly a neighborhood Democratic club
Pennsylvania Station , opened in 1910
The Sunday magazine of the New York World appealed to immigrants with this April 29, 1906 cover page celebrating their arrival at Ellis Island. [ 21 ]
1932 school, Turtle Bay
Low Library at Columbia University, ca. 1900
The 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
Al Smith, leader of the Democrats in the 1910s and 1920s
Louis Armstrong
A workman helps raise the Empire State Building 25 floors higher than the Chrysler Building (at right), as seen in 1931.
Stock Market Crash
Robert Moses with a model of his proposed Battery Bridge, never built
Aircraft engine at Naval Training School in the Bronx
Lower Manhattan in 1931. The American International Building , which would become lower Manhattan's tallest building in 1932, is only partially completed.
Lower Manhattan, as seen from a ferry, December 1941
Poster about air service, in 1937
NASA image of the Port of New York and New Jersey
The Grand Concourse and 161st Street at the beginning of the 20th century.
History of New York CityLenape and New NetherlandNew AmsterdamBritish and RevolutionFederal and early AmericanTammany and ConsolidationCivil WarPost–World War IIModern and post-9/11New York CityManhattanBrooklynQueensTransportationMulberry StreetLower East SideboroughsNew York City SubwayAfrican AmericansSoutheastGreat MigrationHarlem RenaissanceRoaring Twentiesfinancial sectoreconomy of New York Citydecade-long Great DepressionWall Streetstock market crashWorld War IIpolitical machinesFiorello La GuardiaNew Deal CoalitionWoolworth Buildingthe BronxStaten Islandearly skyscrapersstate legislature in AlbanyTammany HallCharles Murphy"Big Tim" Sullivanthe BoweryRobert F. WagnerAl SmithProgressive EraCharles Francis MurphySeth LowColumbia Universityfusion ticketProhibitionistsGeorge B. McClellan Jr.William Jay GaynorJohn Purroy MitchelWoodrow WilsonAllies in the World WarJohn Francis HylanWilliam Randolph HearstPennsylvania Stationfirst IRT lineInterborough Rapid Transit CompanyBrooklyn-Manhattan Transit CorporationIndependent Subway Systempopulation spreadWilliamsburg BridgeManhattan Bridgebedroom communityGrand Central Terminaltrain stationEmergency Quota ActYiddishGermanyLittle GermanyEast VillageJews in New York CityJudaism in New YorkReformpogromsJacob JosephCatholic schoolNew York UniversityFordham UniversityIts football teamWagner CollegeYeshiva UniversitySt. John's UniversityPratt InstituteJuilliard SchoolParsons School of DesignBrooklyn Polytechnic InstituteThe New Schooluniversity-preparatory schoolsIvy LeagueSeven Sisters collegesfinishing schoolswon a strike nine years before.Joseph PulitzerNew York WorldWall Street JournalNew York TimesAdolph OchsKnoxville, TennesseeSan FranciscoSt. Louis, Missouriyellow journalismsensationalismTriangle Shirtwaist Factory fireGeneral SlocumEast RiverGreenwich VillageInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' UnionAmerican Federation of LaborRMS TitanicRMS CarpathiaTravelers Aid Society of New YorkCouncil of Jewish WomenTitanic Memorial LighthouseLower ManhattanSeamen's Church InstituteStraus ParkUpper West SideIsidor StrausMalbone Street Wreckrapid transitBrooklyn Rapid Transit Company1918 flu pandemicProspect ParkWall Street bombingHouse of MorganPalmer raidsfor transportationdiphtheriaSpanish fluRichard CanfieldReggie VanderbiltJohn Bet-a-Million GatesBelmont ParkCharles H. ParkhurstWilliam L. Strong1928 United States presidential electionUnited States Senate1924 presidential electionCalvin CoolidgeJimmy WalkerFusionFranklin D. RooseveltNew DealRobert Mosesmerit systemworld warImmigration Act of 1924HarlemMarcus GarveyAdam Clayton Powell Jr.Civilian Conservation CorpsWorks Progress AdministrationLangston HughesJames Weldon JohnsonClaude McKayZora Neale HurstonLouis ArmstrongPolly AdlerElla FitzgeraldMartha GrahamTexas GuinanHenry LuceDorothy ParkerAlgonquin HotelHarold RossBabe RuthBill TildenspeakeasyProhibitionTin Pan AlleyJerome KernShow Boattheater district42nd StreetEmpire State BuildingChrysler Buildingdaring and impressive architectureArt Decoconstruction of the Rockefeller CenterGreat DepressionStock Market Crash of 1929HoovervillePublic Works AdministrationBrooklyn Navy Yardmodernismmassive subway expansions proposed in 1929 and 1939last large expansionInterborough Rapid TransitBrooklyn–Manhattan Transitexperienced a citywide truckers strikeLa Guardia1938 New England hurricanebrain drain1939 New York World's FairGeorge Washington's inaugurationFederal Halltechnological optimismUnited States home front during World War IILower New York BayReinhard HardegenDuquesne Spy RingOperation PastoriusSperry CorporationbombsightsPort of New YorkAmerican International BuildingJ.P. MorganJohn D. RockefellerStandard OilAndrew CarnegieFederal Reserve SystemFederal Reserve Bank of New YorkBenjamin StrongNew York Stock ExchangeInternational Ladies Garment Workers UniontenementsFurriers unionDavid DubinskyAmalgamated Clothing Workers of AmericaSidney HillmanCongress of Industrial OrganizationsAmerican Labor PartyLiberal Party of New YorkAlex RosePort of New York and New JerseyWorld War Iport authority1919 New York City Harbor StrikeMarine Workers UnionWar BoardPort of New York AuthorityNew York metropolitan areaAustin TobinEllis IslandBlack Tom explosionGrand Concourse161st Streetin the 1950s through the '70sEdward J. FlynnAmerican urban historyTimeline of New York City1917 New York City mayoral election1921 New York City mayoral election1925 New York City mayoral election1929 New York City mayoral election1933 New York City mayoral election1937 New York City mayoral election1941 New York City mayoral election1945 New York City mayoral electionJoel SilbeySteven C. SwettWilliam D. MiddletonUnited States Bureau of Labor StatisticsBurrows, Edwin G.Wallace, MikeOxford University PressRic BurnsGabaccia, Donna R.Jackson, Kenneth T.The Encyclopedia of New York CityYale University PressWayback MachineSwett, Steven C.Federal Writers' ProjectAmerican Guide SeriesThe Iconography of Manhattan IslandUniversal CyclopaediaD. Appleton & CompanyRussell Sage FoundationEdward HungerfordCollier's EncyclopediaHistory of New York City (1855–1897)History of New York City (1946–1977)