Original subtitles

If you imagine an ordinary moment at an intersection in New York City...

...and there's a pause which is a street light,

and some people are stopped and others are in motion...

...some cars stopped and others are in motion.

If you would to put that into film terms... in a

freeze frame and hold everything for a second...

...you'd realize that there's a universe there of totally disparate intentions...

...everybody going back his or her business in the silence of their own minds...

...with everybody else, and the street, and the time of day, and the architecture,

and the quality of the light, and the nature of the weather, as kind of background,

or field for the individual consciousness,

and the drama in is making of itself at that moment.

And you think about that... That's what happens in the city.

And that somehow the city could embrace and accept

and accommodate all that disparate intention...

...at one in the same time, not only in that corner, but in thousands of corners.

On September 2nd 1609, an English explorer hired by the Dutch

to find a faster route to the riches of the Orient.

Steered his 80 ton ship off the surging currents of the North Atlantic

and into an immense Sheltered Bay.

Sailing to the mouth of the mile-wide river that flowed into it from the north,

he pushed a hundred miles upstream, hoping it led to China.

It didn't. But though he had failed to find the Northwest Passage,

Henry Hudson had stumbled upon something even better,

one of the biggest and best natural harbors in the world.

A safe haven. One fellow explorer said:

"We're in a thousand ships, may ride in safety"

Of all the early explorers, Hudson was the first

to sense the immense potential of the remote and lonely Harbor.

Yet even he could never have foreseen the

tremendous human forces it would one day unleash.

Nor that the great city that would rise there,

would be dedicated to a crucial experiment.

One that would grow ever more urgent with each passing year.

The exhilarating often harrowing experiment, to see whether all the peoples of the world

could live together in a single place.

New York City was founded by the Dutch and Dutch

didn't give a damn about anything except making money

and the more money you made the closer you were to God

and they would build some churches to thank him

for... for his generously setting things up for them.

Unlike Boston or Philadelphia or many other places in the United States,

New York was not founded by visionarys anxious to create a new place

to practice their own version of religious freedom.

The Dutch came to New York City and established a trading post there,

to make a buck or to make a Guilder.

And that acquisitiveness tighten materialism, that search for the success

has dominated New York and characterized New York,

ever since the white person first set foot on this land.

And even today there's an energy in New York there's a bustle in New York.

That bustle has been there for more than 350 years.

Because of its shape, the narrowness, the way the neighborhoods are all pushed together,

you're constantly being forced to, whether you want to or not,

watch other people with wildly radical styles.

That's what a New Yorker in some way commits to

that constant life of transition, the constant possibility of change.

You can come here and reinvent yourself, or can be born here and reinvent yourself.

And you can change yourself,

and if you can change yourself, presumably in the process you are also changing

the whole structure of the world that you operate in,

in order to make you a new fictive reality come alive.

It was always the place of greatest opportunity. It was not the West.

The West was the place of greatest opportunity,

if you were going to be a rancher... it helped, but say you weren't.

You have people from all over the world,

you have more languages spoken in New York City than any city in the world.

You have every national group racial group religious group represented here.

And what they're competing to do is really create a better life for themselves.

New York is continuously throwing up new ideas and new people.

This turns out to be the setting in which political democracy

becomes possible as in no other.

It is exactly that money crazy driving commercial culture,

that make political democracy seem perfectly sensible perfectly normal

and indeed brought it into existence.

Such that a popular democracy was established for

the first time and many of the people governed.

One of the reasons that this place is endlessly in flux and it's endlessly recompose

is because it is in fact a capitalist city it is a place where capitalism has...

...has been allowed to work itself out with the

least kind of impediments, for good and pre ill.

The good is that it produces incredible of dazzling things,

but the downside of it is that you get what you pay for.

When most Americans think of think of history they don't think

of New York they think of Williamsburg or Philadelphia or Boston.

And yet New York is really the most historic

of American cities and really in a number of ways.

It's first of all older than all those other places started in 1624 by the Dutch,

but it's also unused in other ways. More has happened in New York than in

Boston or Philadelphia or certainly Colonial Williamsburg.

I mean the litany of important events that took place on the tiny island of Manhattan

would be far beyond really any other similarly sized plot in the United States.

And thirdly people don't realize it is that New York as old as a big city,

and by the end of the 19th century, New York was the fastest growing city in the world.

So, New York encountered historically many problems which we associate

with cities long before places like Athens or Istanbul or Bejing...

...or half a hundred other places that technically are older than New York.

New York is unlike any other place in the United States. We've tested everything first.

We've tested immigration. We've tested unionization. We've tested industrialization.

All the great experiments of American society have probably occurred here first.

The rapid urban expansion.

This experiment in multiracial multicultural society came here first.

When New York was founded at the dawn of the modern age,

London and Paris were already 1,500 years old. Rome and Beijing 2000.

Jerusalim 4,000.

And, yet somehow in the centuries to come the tiny colony on the edge of the world

would rise to become the greatest city on earth.

The undisputed cultural and economic capital of the world.

And the supreme laboratory of modern life.

The old saw that whatever happens in New York

happens in the rest of the country 10 years later.

It has certainly been true for the life of our country.

If American society is going to succeed

is going to have to find a way to do what New York has always done,

which is to take incredibly disparate human elements put them together

and find a way for them to tolerate each other.

So, the fate of New York is extremely important to the fate of the country.

New York is the finest harbor in the Atlantic Ocean. You start there.

And just as harbor, but it's so much more

it's an entrance into North America.

New York cannot be understood aside from his geography indeed no city could.

But New York more so than almost any city in the world,

because here you have what's really a natural location for a great city.

It's probably one of the three greatest harbors in the world.

And then what's key is at the very heart of New York is an island Manhattan.

So, the Indians who were not in most places in United States

in the early 17th century were on the island of Manhattan,

because it was a natural location for a great city.

As soon as they saw the sales of Hudson ship,

the local inhabitants who call themselves the Lenape, rode out to meet them,

trying to keep pace with the strange looking vessel, as it made its way across the bay.

Eight and twenty canoes full of men women and children one of Hudson's officers reported

seeming very glad of our coming.

Fifteen years later in the spring of 1624

the first boatload of colonists arrived to establish a permanent presence in the harbor.

Spurred on by Hudson's glowing reports of a fur trading paradise

and eager to be out there arch-rivals, the English,

to the spoils of the North American continent.

It was a business proposition from the very start from one end to the other.

The new colony was owned and operated by a giant corporation

called the Dutch West India Company.

The Atlantic wing of a vast trading empire, that stretched around the world.

The Dutch East India Company, from which

the Dutch West India Company we would call today kind of a subsidiary corporation,

was one of the most successful commercial enterprises in the history of the world.

For 200 years that returned average annual profit in excess of ten percent.

So, when we talk about the Dutch East India Company

we're not talking about some cutesy little company,

we're talking about a company that was more successful and more powerful

than IBM in our own time.

And they anchored their North American operations on the place they call New Amsterdam.

Most of the first Dutch colonists were not in fact Dutch,

but french-speaking Belgian Huguenots.

A hundred and ten men women and children in all, in 30 different families

Castoffs hoping to make a go of it in the new world.

They quickly settled on the slender island at the head of the bay,

which they called "mannahatta",

after an old Indian word, thought by some to mean "Island of Hills",

and by others place of general inebriation.

At the southernmost tip they cleared land and built simple bark cabins,

a crude Counting house, and a stone and earth fort.

Then widen the old Indian trail, that ran north from the makeshift village,

and named it "Herestrut" or "breed away". It would become Broadway.

Other settlements soon sprang up around the harbor

including the village of Brooklyn named for a town back in Holland,

and up along the East River a sprawling plantation,

owned by a Danish farmer, named Jonas Brung.

It was soon known simply as the Bronx.

In 1626 just two years after the colony was founded,

a ship carrying the first 11 African slaves arrived from Angola.

They were quickly put to work, building the fort, and clearing land for white farmers.

That same year the Director General Peter Minuit

called together the leaders of all the local tribes, and made them a fateful offer.

They have bought the island Manhattan from the wild men,

the company accountant later reported for the value of 60 guilders.

The Dutch had in fact paid much more than the $24 of legend, but still less than $6,000

for all 14.000 acres of Manhattan real estate.

The Indians who had lived on the island since the end of the Ice Age

thought the arrangement temporary.

What's at the beginning of the city is at the end of the city it's a real estate deal.

And if there's ever a kind of motive that runs

through the history of the city, it's that.

It's the real estate deal at the beginning of the very existence of the city.

New York was founded for no other reason than to make a buck.

The Puritans came to New England to in order to

worship God as they saw fit. The Catholics came to Maryland,

the Quakers to Pennsylvania, the Dutch came to Manhattan to get beaver skins.

And so devoted were they to making a profit

that they didn't get around to even building a church for seventeen years.

And ever since however big the city has gotten

somewhere deep in it's soul it's always New

Amsterdam, where modern capitalism was invented.

But there were problems from the start. Though

thick bales of beaver, utter, muskrat and mink

were soon being shipped back to Holland four times a year. The remote and lonely colony

4,000 miles from the mother country struggled to take hold.

People in Holland are in fact not terribly interested in coming here.

The promoters sent back these tracts about the glories of this place.

But you know the fact of the matter was that from a Dutch perspective

if you were in Amsterdam... and you wanted to make your fortune out in the colonies

you went to the Spice Islands... You went to

Brazil. You got into the African slave trade.

Beavers was a distinctly second-rate operations for second-ranked merchants.

In the winter of 1643 the colony's troubles deepened,

when an incompetent director named Villain Keef tried to tax the local Indians.

Then launched a brutal year-long war against them, when they resisted.

In February a platoon of Dutch soldiers fell on to

unsuspecting Linate villages along the East River.

Butchered 80 men women and children in their sleep.

Then marched back to fort Amsterdam, with their heads on planks.

Before the year was out, hundreds of Native Americans and dozens of Dutch settlers

had died in what was called the "year of the blood".

Less than two decades after being founded, the fledgling colony had begun to fall apart.

Its population dwindling, drunkenness on the rise and morale at an all-time low.

The most interesting thing about the Dutch period in New York to me

is how much had set the pattern for behavior in New York.

I forget what the exact ratio is but there was an absurd ratio of citizens to taverns.

It was virtually that every 20 guys had their own tavern.

And it remains a ratio that's probably pretty close to the way

the city is has remained throughout its history.

It's like Dodge City, I mean every other building is a bar,

it's a mud hole, and sinkhole. The fort is falling

down, pigs are rooting in the in the foundations.

We need to shake this place up... and what they do

is they like a global corporation that they were,

you can sort of think of the West India Company is sort of like Exxon with guns,

I mean its own naval fleet. They transferred a branch manager from Coração

up to New York and said "we want you to whip this place into shape" and he did.

In the spring of 1647 New Amsterdam got a new director-general.

A 37 year old ex-soldier and ministers son, who had lost his right leg to a cannonball,

during a naval battle in the West Indies. Iron-willed, short-tempered and puritanical,

Peter Stuyvesant had strict orders to clean the place up and make it pay.

"I shall govern you as a father his children",

he told the stubborn and unruly citizens of New Amsterdam.

And it was soon apparent he meant every word he said.

Within weeks of his arrival he had banned drinking

on Sundays, outlawed knife fighting in public,

and imposed stiff fines for missing church.

Speeding on Broadway and fornicating with the Indians.

It was the beginning of a long and stormy relationship

between the director general and his colonists,

but though they bitterly resented Stuyvesant's high-handed style of rule,

New Amsterdam began to take hold.

In an incredibly short space of time, he has slaves

layout the road up to Harlem, get swole build,

has streets build, has the port fix that builds himself an extremely nice house,

takes a large chunk of the slave population for himself.

But in fact makes this place into a functioning operation.

The population increases, he establishes a base an economic base

which is slaving. This is gonna be a slave entrepot

and they're gonna run slaves into here and then down to the Caribbean.

By 1653, in less than five years

Staynloson had managed to transform the disorderly backwater

into a bustling town with its own piers canals windmills and schools.

300 row houses, a population of three thousand,

and a two thousand three hundred forty foot wall,

stretching all the way from the East River to the Hudson

built to keep out hostile Indians and the English

So many things about New York that we think of as being

unusual or distinctive in the 20th century

really have their origins hundreds of years in the past

one thinks of congestion every American every person in the world really knows about

New York and it's unusual vertical shape the crowded streets

but again this goes back to the 17th century really when the little Dutch village

was crowded down in lower Manhattan all the houses were flush up against each other

or their heterogeneity of the population already in the 1640s

there were 18 different languages being spoken on the streets

though it offended Stuyvesant keen sense of order

to ease the chronic labor shortage he reluctantly

agreed to let in almost anyone willing to work

census takers soon reported hearing a chorus of languages on the streets of New Amsterdam

including French English German Spanish polish and Portuguese

by 1650 for the Dutch had become a minority in their own column E

and Stuyvesant himself feared that New Amsterdam would soon become too diverse to rule

if nothing is done to stop it I fear this colony will soon become a Babel of confusion

we have here Papists Mennonites and Lutheran's among the Dutch

also many Puritans or independence and many atheists

who concealed themselves under the name of Christians

it would create a still greater confusion if the

obstinate and immovable Jews came to settle here

but they soon did

in 165423 Sephardic Jews sailed into the harbor

seeking refuge from the Spanish Inquisition in Brazil

Stuyvesant immediately petitioned the Board of Directors of the Dutch West India Company

to have him turned away insisting he said that none of

the Jewish nation be permitted to infest New Netherland

to his astonishment the petition was overturned

chiding him for his bigotry the directors reminded Stuyvesant

that he was running a business calmly not a religious establishment

and that for the sake of that business no one should be turned away

the consciences of men ought to be free and unshackled so long as they continue

moderate peaceable inoffensive and not hostile to government

such have been the Maxim's of toleration by which this city has been governed

and the result has been that the oppressed and persecuted from every country

I found among us an asylum from distress

follow in the same steps and you shall be blessed

on September 12th 1650 for the first Rosh Hashanah service in North America

was held in private in New Amsterdam

it was the beginning of Congregation she arith Israel

the oldest existing Jewish congregation in the new world

It was also the beginning of the separation of church and state in America

in the centuries to come the city's greatest challenges and greatest strengths

would always come from its astonishing diversity

New York did not remain Dutch long there's several reasons

one is it really was not the financial success that the Dutch had hoped for

secondly in more important the British were established

things themselves both down in Virginia and moving north

in Massachusetts especially around Boston and coming south through Connecticut

and what the British noticed was there was this troublesome Dutch trading post

in the middle of the British North American Empire

Stuyvesant's tragedy is that no sooner does he get this place all spiffed up

and ready for action then the English sail in and take the place

on August 27th 1664 for four heavily armed the English warships sailed into the harbor

Peter Stuyvesant climbed painfully to the top of fort Amsterdam and made ready for battle

I had rather be carried to my grave than surrender he said

but before a shot could be fired

he was handed a petition that had been signed by 93

of the town's leading merchants including his own son

his citizens only partly dutch

looked at the guns of the British fleet knew that they

had a small little town which was made out of wood

and closely built up and that the British guns would have quickly

reduced the city to a smoking ruin and they

implored Stuyvesant to turn over the city which

he did and with drums beating and flags flying he marched out of his fort

Pete grumble but he had to surrender because the citizens of the town said

we won't lift a finger to fight the English

why would we care who ran this colony or who taxed us

we'd be perfectly happy to have the English you haven't done much of a job

in the years to come Peter Stuyvesant the man who first brought order to the city

and thus assured its future would retire to a sprawling fruit farm north of town

on open land that would one day become Greenwich Village

the english governor who replaced him graciously offered free passage back to holland

to any Dutch citizens unwilling to accept English rule

no one took him up on it

two days after the English takeover on August 29th 1664

New Amsterdam was officially renamed New York in

honor of the Duke of York the brother of King Charles

to whom the colony had been promised as a birthday present

the day after that everyone went back to work as if nothing much had happened after all

one of the continuities between Dutch and English rule in colonial New York

is this aggressive policy the Native American population

clearly the destruction of the Iroquois population in

the Canarsie population in Manhattan and Long Island

is a byproduct of British expansion in those areas

Daniel Denton who in the 1660s writes one of the

first English language histories of the region

were sort of general descriptions of the region says something rather interesting

everywhere that the English have gone

the invisible hand of God has prepared a space for

them by destroying and removing the native population

my response to that is that men acted far more often than God

and it was the British who prepared that space they

destroyed the native population aggressively through war

they encouraged ores between Native American tribes and nations

and the spread of disease just really reduced a

huge portion of this lower new York population

in the end it would be the fate of New York's original inhabitants to be remembered

when they were remembered at all as place names

in what had become the most completely man-made environment on earth

the Dutch in English had set in motion a process of change that would never stop

until the entire human and natural landscape of

Manhattan Island had been completely replaced

for the next hundred and nineteen years England would rule New York

what for the Dutch had been a second-rate outpost

of empire was for the English the missing link

in a chain of royal colonies stretching the length of the Atlantic seaboard

slowly but surely the new English governors brought the colony into the imperial system

reorganizing the lands around the harbor and

naming them after members of the royal family

the flat lands around Brooklyn were named Kings County

in honor of King Charles and the region to the

north Queens in honor of his wife Katherine

Staten Island was named Richmond after the Duke of Richmond the Kings bastard son

though they did everything they could to ease the transition

the English found it no easier than the Dutch to keep order in the unruly colony

in 1689 a local merchant named Jacob leisler

led an armed uprising against the government

it was soon put down and leisler himself tried for treason and sentenced to be hanged

disemboweled while still alive drawn and quartered and then beheaded

a few years later trouble erupted again when

a new monarch Queen Anne placed her own cousin

an imperious Viscount named Lord Cornbury in charge of the volatile colony

petitioning the Queen for his dismissal corn Berry's enemies did everything they could

to ruin his reputation accusing him of embezzling public funds

persecuting Presbyterians and it was later said

of having a special liking for women's clothing

the story that's told is that he wanted to look

as much like his cousin Queen Anne for whom he was ruling the colony as possible

and to do this he dressed up in women's clothes and to

quote some early sources flounced around the battery

in fact there's a portrait of him at the New York Historical Society

dressed in a kind of a wast wait blue number that's very nice indeed

and you walk behind you think what an ugly woman

and then you go back and you realize that no it's in fact Lord Cornbury

but for all the problems membership in the British Empire brought enormous rewards

as England soon surpassed Holland as the greatest maritime empire on earth

and connected the colony to a network of trade that stretched around the globe

the more trade routes are developed the more this becomes a nexus point of flow

of between England and the Caribbean and the continent the more people who are

local domestic producers who up till then have produced for a local market only

begin to say whoa there's serious possibilities here this was a trading post

this was a place that was about shipping food down to the West Indies

bringing sugar and slaves back from the West Indies

but you can't run a mercantile operation without an manufacturing component

so in fact you need Cooper's who need barrel makers and have ships new shipyards

ships you need sales you need sail makers need rope Baker's so rope walks

are sort of festooned all over New York City

year after year the number of ships sailing out of New York Harbor surged upwards

from 35 a year at the end of Dutch rule to more than 700 a century later

exporting timber and grain to Britain carrying manufactured goods from England to Africa

and importing rum molasses and slaves from Africa and the West Indies

in 1699 the old Dutch wall was pulled down to make way for

new houses and a new Lane paved over it called Wall Street

by 1740 New York had become the third largest port in the

British Empire second only to Philadelphia and London itself

it was home now to an uneasy assortment of old Dutch families and English merchants

privateers and colonial administrators Protestants and Catholics

free blacks slave owners and slaves

well we'd like to think that by the 18th century New York City

was really a model of tolerance and everybody could get along

in fact there's evidence that there was a lot of resentments the Dutch versus the English

other groups coming in the Jews were here but they weren't really fully accepted

blacks of course and African Americans were much the most discriminated against

so it was not a wonderful love fest going on in New York in the 1740s

and in fact there were a lot of fears

in the winter of 1741 the royal colony exploded over

an issue that had troubled it from the very start

well of course I think that what sets the african-american experience apart

from the other immigrants as we did not come through Ellis Island

we did not come escaping anything

who brought here against our will to work and work we did

in fact we've built the wall for which Wall Street is named

not only literally but figuratively in terms of

it was the trade and African flesh that provided

the fundamental capital on which Wall Street the financial

wall is built so yes a high spirits are different

slavery is the key word it's key not only in the fact that blacks are used

as a Public Works infrastructure workforce I mean they

build roads they build forts they build walls and the like

but more to the point the city is raised all in depth at that point

is about the connection to the Caribbean enslaved south and then later on

to the mainland slave South on the one hand we've got this kind of business oriented

you know cosmopolitan city on the other hand there is a profound cleavage

and it's based on the exploitation of slave labor

some white New Yorkers thought the practice barbaric

slaveholding depraved the mind one quicker minister

said with as great certainty as cold congeals water

but year by year as New York expanded the demand for slaves grew

by 1741 in six New Yorkers were owned by other

New Yorkers 2,000 men women and children in all

each morning african-americans could be seen strolling

to the slave market at the foot of Wall Street

where they waited to be rented out for use as day laborers

exchanging news with free blacks and looking for every chance they could to break free

there had been a variety of slave rebellions in the colonies

and I think that New Yorkers were very much aware of these slave rebellions

as the number of slaves increase they were also

very afraid that New Yorkers were were at risk

they noticed slaves gathering together they had put prohibitions on slaves

meeting on street corners but they knew that slaves were interested in gaining

their freedom in any way that they could and they were very fearful of open revolt

memories of a bloody slave uprising years before

were still vivid in the minds of white New Yorkers

when in the winter of 1741 a series of mysterious

fires began breaking out all over the city

burning the King's chapel the army barracks and

the homes and businesses of prominent New Yorkers

suspicion quickly fell on the city's black population

the recorder taking notice of the several fires which have lately happened in this city

must necessarily conclude that they were occasioned

by some villanous Confederacy the blatant enemies amongst us

vandal horse Mandan

in March as the authorities searched frantically for the guilty parties

an indentured servant named Mary Burton prompted

by the prospect of a hundred dollar reward

came forward to testify against her employer

an Irish Catholic tavern keeper named John Hewson

whose establishment was a favorite meeting place for slaves and free blacks

she told wild tales of a Negro plot to burn the city and overthrow the government

levelling one charge after another against Hewson his

wife and a growing list of alleged black conspirators

one gets the feeling that Mary Burton forgot what the truth was

her stories kept getting more and more elaborate

as she implicated more and more individuals in the in the subversion

and she was absolutely convincing because the officials the New York City officials

wanted to be convinced that this was a wider conspiracy

there were levels of conspiracy that probably actually

were invented by the people investigating the conspiracy

so for instance the belief that Catholics and particularly Irish Catholics

were responsible for creating this discontent among the slaves

was probably an invention of Protestants looking to protect their self-esteem as masters

and looking to reinforce their racial ideas that Africans were incapable

of plotting against them on their own

some blacks had almost certainly been involved

but as the hysteria in Manhattan reached fever pitch

colonial judges ordered a massive roundup of black New Yorkers

and with almost no evidence put them on trial for their lives

in the weeks to come the reign of terror visited on blacks

and on anyone suspected of conspiring with them

would be worse than the Salem witch trials half a century before

the real story of 1741 isn't that not what the

slaves did but in fact what was done to the slaves

the level of ferocity with which the insurrection was repressed

and then the punishments that were meted out despite

the fact these were valuable pieces of property

people were burned a mistake people were roasted over a slow fire for eight hours

that the torment may be dragged out medieval tortures which in fact

had been utterly banned for conventional and white purposes

we're in fact resurrected to strike terror into the hearts of the population

before it was over 16 blacks and for whites had been hanged in New York

13 slaves had been burned at the stake and 70 more deported

it would take nearly a century more for black New Yorkers to win their freedom

but it would not be long before English rule was

challenged again not by African Americans this time

but by the city's Restless merchants middle class and an alliance of artisans and sailors

when that happened the proud royal colony would begin a long journey out of Empire

out of the past and into the future

trade was big but war was bigger in certain periods

in 1756 William Smith writes in his diary war is

declared in England Universal joy among the merchants

and why because in fact New York City is the central base of operations

by the British against their classic enemy the French in North America and the Caribbean

what does this mean this means that in 1758 there

are 25,000 British troops and 14,000 Marines

in North America overwhelmingly based in New York City

this means all these people need food they need clothing and uniforms

they need ship repairs they need sex and R & R so the merchants are happy

the whores are happy the in keepers are happy there is money pouring into the economy

Benjamin... Benjamin Franklin with great Envy writes in 58

God these merchants are cleaning up

so this is in fact a moment of maximum satisfaction with the Empire

by the biggest the most powerful merchants in New York City

because the benefits of being on the right side

of the British Navy have never been more apparent

the trouble is with both wars is peace from the

perspective of the war is good for business school

and in 1763 the British fleet sails away the defense contracts Peter out

and the city in fact falls into a depression 1763 is hard times

all that money that was pouring in is not pouring in

worse the British now say okay you owe us

and we are now in a whole new universe taxes and extraction of resources

at the moment of maximum weakness in the economy

this is the background within which there is going

to be the beginning of the road to revolution

if the interest of the mother country and her colonies cannot be made to coincide

then the connection between them ought to cease

New York Gazette 1765

it began in the spring of 1765 when England passed the Stamp Act

attacks on 43 kinds of business transactions

from legal contracts to liquor licenses it threatened

the very lifeblood of New York's vibrant merchant culture

there wasn't a person in America who wasn't mad at the stand back

as the detect lawyers and attack sailors

who would have to pay attacks every time they bought playing cards

it attacked brides-to-be who would have to pay when their marriage license was taken out

it attacked newspaper owners so there's no question that New York City would have been

a bizarre place indeed if there weren't as much hostility to the Stamp Act here

as there were were in Boston or in Philadelphia or for that matter in the countryside

On November 1st 1765 the day the act was to take effect

an angry mob gathered on New York Commons then marched down to the bowling-green

where they hanged and burnt an effigy of the royal governor then said his character fire

the Stamp Act was quickly repealed and grateful New Yorkers

soon erected a huge bronze statue of King George the third

To affirm their loyalty to the British crown

but their gratitude did not last long as one intolerable act followed another

until the stage had been set for complete separation from the mother country

people have always come to cities to take on a new identity since the Middle Ages

breathing the city that makes you free they said in Middle Ages

that's never been more true about a place like New York

people come here from all over the world not just from the interior of the United States

from all over the world to make themselves up

if you want to be who you are you stay where you are

if you want to be somebody else if you want to be part of something

a new you come to New York that's been true I think through the life of the city

in June 1773 an illegitimate sixteen year old boy from the West Indian island of Nevis

landed in the divided company

like a seed blown by happy chance onto perfect ground

one man later said the young Alexander Hamilton arrived in New York

on the eve of an extraordinary transformation

in the years to come he would do everything in his power

to hurry the city on toward its ultimate destiny

he is after all a bastard from the West Indies he is the quintessential upstart

he's not born in America he's got no long history he's a New Yorker

very much in New Yorker and his belief that anybody who had intelligence and ability

had a right to rise is certainly very much the New York immigrant story

Hamilton threw himself almost immediately into the whirlwind of debate sweeping through the company

in 1774 while still a sophomore at King's College

he published an incendiary pamphlet urging New Yorkers to defy the English Parliament

and lay claim to their natural rights as free men

it was soon mesmerizing crowds on the New York Commons with his fiery political oratory

I think the image of Alexander Hamilton at the age of 17

being able to incite entire mobs of New Yorkers to rebel against the British crown

to me there is something so typically New York about that

I mean here you have this guy who comes to probably the only place he could have come to in the United States

and really made a name for himself and immediately through his own brilliance

but also because the city is so accepting

becomes this important political figure while he's still a teenager

Hamilton wanted that war badly no matter what the issues were because very early on he said

it is in war that a man makes his reputation and it is in moments of flux and change

that a man can rise so unlike some of the established leaders political leaders of New York

he's certainly someone who wants to see the revolution come on no matter what

to the shock of most loyal New Yorkers Hamilton's wish came true sooner than even he could have imagined

on Sunday April 23rd 1775

a frantic messenger came galloping into town down the Post Road from Boston

blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord

the American Revolution had started

in New York jubilant Patriots immediately seized control of the Customs House and City Hall

Alexander Hamilton threw himself into the revolutionary fervor

eventually rising to become one of George Washington's closest aides but a cloud

of gloom soon fell over the island city as even the most ardent of Patriots could see

that Manhattan would be all but defenseless before the guns of the British Navy

within days a massive evacuation of New York had begun

in the next nine months 80 percent of the city's population fled Manhattan

April 29th 1775

the past week has been one of commotion and confusion parent panic seized many of the people

who prepared to move into the country

August 28 moving out of the city continues and some of the streets

look plague-stricken so many houses are closed

what Americans really don't realize is the pivotal role that New York had in the American Revolution

certainly the British realized it from the very beginning

and they looked at the map and they saw that New York is almost

equidistant between the two most important colonies in the new world of Massachusetts

and Virginia and indeed the British strategy was take New York City

have another force come down the Hudson River split the colonies from the get-go

and hopefully bring this rebellion to a quick and happy conclusion

from the point of view or the British Parliament

in the spring of 1776 General George Washington the newly appointed commander-in-chief of the Continental Army

rushed his untrained troops to Manhattan certain that the British would strike there first

should they get New York and command of the Hudson

they can stop the intercourse between northern and southern colonies

upon which depends the safety of America George Washington

I feel for my New York friends or I expect that your city will be laid to ashes

the American mercury

I was upstairs inspired as I peeped out the bay

something resembling a wood of pine trees trimmed

I could not believe my eyes

I thought all London was afloat

private Daniel mcurtin

on the morning of June 29th 1776 New Yorkers awoke to an unforgettable sight

during the night more than a hundred British warships had sailed into New York Harbor

in the weeks to come nearly 500 English vessels

carrying more than 32,000 British and Hessian soldiers and 10,000 sailors

would drop anchor in the lower Bay

it was the largest land sea expeditionary force mounted by Great Britain

until the Normandy invasion during World War two

it took six weeks for the giant force to disembark and take up positions on Staten Island

you can imagine the farmer on Staten Island

waking up one morning and seeing a harbor full of warships

sailing in to realize that oops perhaps England is too mighty

to have risen up in rebellion against her

across the harbor New York City braced for war

on July 9th 1776 the Declaration of Independence was read aloud for the first time in Manhattan on the city Commons

afterwards a cheering throng of soldiers and civilians

marched down to the bowling-green and pulled the statue of King George from its pedestal

the two tons of british-led were melted down and turned into 42,00088 American bullets

George Washington who was still learning about being a general

in the summer of 1776 had a real challenge in front of him

he knew the importance of New York City strategically he knew the British wanted to take it

his problem though is in order to defend Manhattan the can a Bluffs of Brooklyn overlooked it

if the British took the bluffs then their guns

and everything would be looking down on his city so he needed to defend Brooklyn

the danger of defending Brooklyn is that Brooklyn is separated really from the mainland of the United States

and you're taking on the foremost maritime power on earth

so George Washington took a gamble

moved his main forces to the Brooklyn side of the East River

and the upper bay and they're confronted the British Army

on August 26th 1776 the battle for New York began

when 20,000 British soldiers were ferried from Staten Island

and began moving towards Washington's much smaller force

dug in south of Brooklyn Heights

for the Americans it was a disaster from the start

in just two days Washington lost almost 2,000 men a quarter of his army

on the rain-soaked night of August 29th 1776 with his shattered forces pinned

against the East River the American commander gambled everything on an extraordinary military maneuver

commandeering every skiff and fishing boat he could lay

his hands on Washington tried to ferry his exhausted men across the East River to Manhattan

in total darkness without a sound in less than seven hours whose

It was dark and was foggy when they evacuated 1012 thousand of our troops Washington's army across the East River

Washington's army was saved that night

imagine ten twelve thousand soldiers

making their way down to the river's edge in the dark to be rowed across in

the fog on those big flat bottom boats knowing that they could be caught at any moment

knowing they were in retreat and knowing that the British Army was so close on their heels

and doing it all with perfect discipline and surviving to fight another day

and I changed the course of history that night right there on the East River

certain he could no longer defend the city

Washington retreated up the length of Manhattan fighting bloody rearguard actions along a country lane

that would one day be Upper Broadway.

from his field headquarters in Upper Manhattan he could just see the British flag

flying over the city he could not save

in November with the British Army in hot pursuit Washington abandoned Manhattan completely

but essentially the goal was protect the army don't protect a place

very nearly as the Vietnamese fought the United States in the Vietnam War

you're fighting a little country fighting the leading military power in the world

the most important thing to do is keep the war going on sooner or later this great power

will tire of the effort and leave and that's in fact what the British did

and I think that lesson was learned in New York in 1776

for seven long years the Revolutionary War raged

New York was no longer a city but a British garrison a largest military base on earth

home to a handful of Patriots and more than 10,000 British troops and officers

spurred on by British offers of emancipation thousands of slaves from around the country

poured into New York to free themselves in the war for American freedom

blacks had to join the other side

though the streets of Manhattan never saw fighting again

the destruction New Yorkers had for so long feared came anyway

on September 21st 1776

four days after the British occupation began a fire broke out near Whitehall Street

with the fire brigade gone off to war

the blaze moved north unchecked and golfing building after building

including the proud spire of Trinity Church the tallest structure in town

a hundred and forty foot high wooden steeple one man said soon resembled a vast pyramid of fire

before it was over five hundred buildings had been destroyed

and the entire western half of New York City lay in ruin

the British took over loyalists from everywhere flooded into New York City

New York was in essence a British stronghold throughout the entire war

it played in that sense no role in the American Revolution the city couldn't claim to have been

critical except insofar as as long as the British held it

this was a major headache for Washington

and at the very last minutey ou know how important New York City was

because when the French finally agreed to use their fleet to help Washington out

Washington rubbed his hands together and said let's get New York

little by little the tide of battle turned in 1778 the French entered the war on the American side

and Dutch businessman loaned 5 million guilders to help the Patriot cause

finally the English capitulated completely

on November 25th 1783

George Washington led his army triumphantly back into New York City

the British surrendered to the Americans inside the old fort at the foot of Manhattan

where Peter Stuyvesant had surrendered the Dutch colony to the British

a hundred and nineteen years before

the Union Jack was lowered the Stars and Stripes were raised

crowds cheered and cannon booed

New York was an American city at last

though no one yet knew precisely what that would mean

when New York's exiled citizens returned after seven years of war

they were shocked by what they found

the city lay in ruins thousands of families loyal to the English cause

had fled forever and the Hulk's of abandoned half ruined mansions were visible everywhere

no other American city had experienced anything like it

the American Revolution had profound influence on the city of New York

first of all a city burned one reason we don't think of New York is so historic

is because so little survives from the 17th or 18th century

and in a way that's the kickoff point for the rise of New York City to be in a way

the great metropolis of the world

that was there and the end of the American Revolution it was small it was depopulated

much of its leadership had left very little was going on

and somehow in the next half century or less

this small trading post becomes the most important city in the Western Hemisphere

to an astonishing degree the key to New York City's rise

and withered the rise of America itself to urban greatness

would lie in the hands of one man the brilliant combative immigrant from the West Indies

Alexander Hamilton

no one in his own era disputed his genius

there were people who didn't like him there were people who wished him dead and one who killed him

but no one disputed his genius and the brightest of them understood

exactly that this was a man to be feared

not because of his personal power but because of the vision that he had for the development of the country

within days of the British surrender Hamilton had joined the flood of New Yorkers returning to the city

bringing with him his wife and infant son

they settled in a house at 57 Wall Street just down the street from his arch enemy

and political rival Aaron Burr

within a matter of months he had opened his own law firm

helped set up a society for the emancipation of slaves

then organized the city's first bank the

The Bank of New York which opened for business a few blocks away

In 1785 new neighbors arrived

the brand-new Continental Congress unable to decide on a permanent home

set up temporary headquarters in New York City on Wall Street right next door to the Hamiltons

In the years to come Hamilton would do everything in his power

to keep the capital in Manhattan convinced the future

of America lay not in the countryside but in the city

he made what is essentially the ultimate urban argument

that city air breathes free it was his argument that people are freer

there's a greater exchange of ideas there's more opportunity for men

to acquire wealth in a commercial urban universe

most people don't realize New York was really the first capital of the United States

indeed if the United States were like every other major country in the world it would have been the capital

New York was a very logical place for national capital it was easy to get to

it was relatively centrally located

historians should never play the game of what if but still it's

hard not to wonder what New York City would have

been like had it become the political capital

as well as the commercial financial and creative capital of the country

at noon on April 30th 1789 George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States

in New York City from the balcony of the old city hall

which New Yorkers had optimistically renamed federal hall

the new president quickly brought in Thomas Jefferson to be Secretary of State

though The Virginian loathed New York which he called a sewer filled with all the depravities of human nature

Alexander Hamilton just 33 was named the nation's first secretary of the Treasury

and though the appointment came through on a Saturday he went right to work

from his new office in the Treasury Department on Broadway

a few steps from newly rebuilt Trinity Church

Hamilton began mapping out the blueprint for a new kind of nation

one based not on plantations and slave labor but on Commerce manufacturing and immigrant toil

to a startling degree he was mapping out the future of New York

look at what he understood in a country that was 90% agrarian

here's a man who understood that the future of the country was in manufacturing

here's a man who understood what banking could do to develop the economy of the country

how you could use tax money from the many put it in the hands of the few

and produce as a result a manufacturing revolution the beginnings of industrialization

in a country that was what two decades old

southern planters immediately rose up in opposition to Hamilton's program

the mobs of great cities Jefferson warned

ad just so much to the support of pure government as sores due to the strength of the human body

certain the nation's future lay not in the city but in the countryside

Jefferson insisted the capital be moved out of New York to a rural setting

just across the Potomac from his native Virginia

it was the beginning of a fateful split in American life one that would pit South against North

country against city and lead ultimately to civil war

Jefferson had this vision of the country being an agrarian country full of yeoman the farmers

there was a vision that never existed even in his time

certainly not as he would have liked to have seen it

but he loved that vision and he hated

all things commercial Hamilton loved commerce he understood money banking and

money and flow of power through the economy

unlike Jefferson who never understood money at all

and which may account for why he was born one of the richest people in the colonies

and died deeply deeply in debt

already this split between a commercial manufacturing society

and an agrarian staple crop based society between dynamic capital

and capital that was invested in property and slaves and not as manipulable

these splits were already evolving

given Hamilton's programs for the new nation

in the spring of 1790 the debate over the capital came to a fateful climax

over another volatile issue crucial to the success of Hamilton's economic programs

there was at that time

a major issue dividing the the new nation

and that is the debt incurred during the Revolutionary War

by the respective colonies at that time

some had not incurred much others such as Virginia had paid theirs off

New York had the most

well New York should have had the most is where the most important fighting took place

Hamilton had one idea for the new nation which is take up all that debt

and have the federal government site will pay for it

you incurred this debt honorably

you aftermath we have a national government

the national government will pay that debt for you don't you worry

but once again southerners were adamantly opposed to Hamilton's vision

reluctant to pay off northern debts and fearful of increasing northern power

with Congress hopelessly deadlocked it was now an open question one congressman warned

whether this government is to exist for the ages or be dispersed among contending women's

on the evening of June 20th 1790 with the government hovering on the brink of bankruptcy

Hamilton went to Jefferson's house on Maiden Lane hoping to find some way out of the crisis

he said to Jefferson on that fateful meeting

we have to assume a Revolutionary War debt

Jefferson made a fateful offer he said

all right we'll do it if you move the capital of this new nation

from its natural site in Manhattan to a swamp on the banks of the Potomac

which turns malarial in April such that any congressman who stays around till May will never get back

and what could have all to do he accepted him

he was smart enough to know that wherever the government was located

if it was pursuing the kind of aggressive developmental

programs that he wanted it to pursue

that he was going to win in the long run

it was more important what the government did than where the government did it was a Hamilton's view

and ever since one of the defining characteristics of the United States

has been that the political capital was in one place

and the cultural economic intellectual capital was in another place because that never left New York

some New Yorkers were devastated by the loss of the cavity

but Hamilton himself was philosophical

almost immediately he had the Treasury Department issue eighty million dollars in government bonds

to pay off the huge new debt the federal government had assumed

and money was soon flooding into New York as the trade in government bonds soared

on May 17th 1792 two dozen stockbrokers gathered under a Buttonwood tree on Wall Street

to figure out how to handle the enormous volume of business Hamilton had generated

it was the beginning of the New York Stock Exchange

I think one of the real turning points in the history of New York is that it doesn't become the federal capital

if it had ever become the federal capital it would have been an entirely different city

it would have been a kind of London very concerned with its past

it would have had military monuments it doesn't have that

it just remained a place to do commerce to come here

people came all the time to make money

if it had become the capital of course the city would have been much more out looking it would have had to

encompass the entire country whereas being freed of being a political capital

it was able to look after only its own interests and to pursue those interests with with great vigor

I really have this sense that New Yorkers said well if you don't

want us to be your capital that's fine we'll just go it alone

we don't really need the rest of you we will simply

make all of you a suburb and we will become the commercial Emporium of the New World

it was the beginning of the greatest run any city has ever had almost single-handedly

Alexander Hamilton had kicked into life the most powerful economic engine on earth

along the way he had helped invent the future not only for himself but for the city and country

that had allowed him to rise

I think he believed that meritocracy which is the way in which Americans join

capitalism and democracy it is the way in which that can be great wealth but

there can be no barriers to anyone of talent hard work determination and ability achieving them

I think that that combines the two he was no friend to real democracy

he was not at all interested in the masses of people having political voices

but I think he was very much interested in creating a dynamic society in which anyone

of ability could rise that's really American democracy in action

in 1799 Hamilton's efforts to end slavery in New York State

finally bore partial fruit when the gradual emancipation Act was passed

one year later Hamilton left government and retired to a handsome estate in Upper Manhattan and watched his city grew

by 1804 New York's population had more than doubled in less than a decade climbing to 80,000

that year for the first time in its history New York surpassed Philadelphia

though Hamilton himself would not be around to savor the triumph

he was challenged to a duel by Aaron Burr whose political career in New York Hamilton had almost single-handedly destroyed

now they couldn't duel in New York because Hamilton had been

instrumental in getting a law passed forbidding dueling in New York

his own son had been killed in a duel so they adjourned to Weehawken New Jersey

and do battle in the early morning in 1804

of course when they got there for whatever reason it is true Hamilton shot

went into the air and Burst shot went into Hamilton and he died what must have

been a quite painful lingering death

over night and was astoundingly mourned

a man who in many ways had never been a popular Idol and had made bitter bitter

enemies it was recognized that the

country had lost an extraordinary figure

on July 13th 1804 after one of the largest funeral processions in the city's history

Alexander Hamilton was buried with full military honors in the graveyard of Trinity Church

just across Broadway from Wall Street in the heart of the city whose future he had done so much to secure

he was just 47 years old New York was on its way

in the century to come the world that would rise up around Hamilton's final resting place

would be a stunning monument to the magnitude of his achievement

first thing about a commercial culture is that it will be continuously changing

it will embody what Schumpeter called the creative

destruction of capitalist this place is about endless recomposition

there is very little compunction about tearing things down and putting up something new in their place

again there's plus sides to this Marx in fact said this is one of its Bloods

the hail capitalism because again it was ruthless it was perfectly willing to demolish all

constraints on production and profitability which means that it's open to innovation is open to possibility

it's not tethered by the past and this is an extremely American notion

and in this perhaps New York is at its most American

in a way it can be seen as a metaphor for our whole way of life that we are forever changing it improving it

revising it because it is never finished that's the idea

Manhattan for all that may be overwhelming about it is a marvelous expression

of the aspiration and the creative vitality of our country it's magnificent

creative phenomenon and if you could have one of those time-lapse films

of it going up and down and rising and falling it you would sense that in there

is the expression of its own life

almost 200 years had elapsed since Europeans first set eyes on the vast and tranquil harbour

in which they dreamed a thousand ships might one day ride in safety

now at last the vision of the old Dutch explorers was about to become a reality

galvanized by the energies unleashed in New York entrepreneurs and inventors from around the country converged on the island city

in 1807 a transplanted Pennsylvanian named Robert Fulton launched the world's first practical steamboat off the west side of Manhattan

it looked like a backwoods sauna one man said mounted on a scow and set on fire

but it freed ships forever from the tyranny of the wind

three years later a 16 year old boy from Staten Island

purchased a secondhand sailboat with $100 borrowed from his mother and started a ferry service to Manhattan

mockingly called the Commodore by his rivals

Cornelius Vanderbilt had begun to build the greatest shipping Empire on earth

in 1817 a company called the blackball line came up with a startlingly simple idea

that would revolutionize shipping around the world regularly scheduled departures

prior to that time you actually sail when you got a crew together

or when the hull filled up or when it suited you it when the weather was nice

the leaders of the blackball line said we will sail at 10 a. m.

and this initiated a revolution in trading because then merchants could count on

delivery in a certain time could make obligations and this attracted business to New York

and then it began to feed on itself so that New York a rapidly became not just another

port competing with Baltimore and Boston in Philadelphia

but the port a port far larger than all the rest of them combined

as ships from around the world streamed in and out of the harbour the city began to explode northward

with astonishing speed one by one the old Dutch farms

and English estates north of town were carved up into smaller and smaller Lots

and sold to builders and speculators

by 1807 a 44 year old German born fur trader named John Jacob Astor had begun buying up every piece of undeveloped land he could lay his hands on

what was happening was that Manhattan real estate was becoming among the most expensive in the world indeed the first great fortunately

in the United States was made by John Jacob Astor not so much on the fur trade for which he's famous

but because he began to buy Manhattan real estate early part of the 19th century

he discerns the most obvious fact of Manhattan's

development which is that it's moving north and if you get up there first

and you buy up the land you are in a position to depending on your moral perspective

profit from garner or extort the folks who come to come later

insatiable arrogant and notoriously crude Astor shocked New York society

with his appalling table manners drawing

pictures on the windowpane with a wet tobacco chaw and wiping his hands on the table dinner

but at least in his face no one said a word as gambling on the future of New York

made John Jacob Astor the wealthiest men in America

and just before he died in 1848 he said that if he had life to live it over again

knowing then what he knew now he would buy every square foot of the island of Manhattan

only one thing seemed to be missing now as New York soared into the future

and its citizens compared their brash young City to the great capitals of Europe and Asia

the glory of an ancient past

in 1809 as the hunger for history grew stronger a curious volume went on sale in the city's bookstores

called a history of New York from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch dynasty

presented as the work of an elderly Dutchman named Dietrich Knickerbocker

its author was in fact a 26 year old native-born New Yorker named Washington Irving

not a history at all but a whimsical blend of fact and fiction

it offered New Yorkers a mock heroic past reimagining the unruly Dutch colony

as an enchanted fairyland the Dutch themselves would scarcely have recognized

I think it is true that earthing gives it a mythical history

which any place has to have unlike European cities that it was going to try

to imitate it didn't have thousands of years so it had to create its history

and and its present and its future and it had to do it at the same time

imitated European models but insisting that it was going to be distinctive

Irving's fictional history quickly became the city's first bestseller

and Irving himself the first man in America to earn his living solely by his pen

popularizing historical figures like Peter Stuyvesant and fictional ones like Rip Van Winkle

and giving the city its first nickname gotham

father Knickerbocker himself became the unofficial symbol of New York City

and soon even the oldest families were calling themselves knickerbockers

proudly tracing their lineage back to a man who never existed

one thing about New York is that New York has always made its own myth

Washington Irving created the myth of the Knickerbocker families he already could probably sensed

with the arrivals of the Astra's and the Vanderbilts that the old families

that went back to the Dutch colonial era were waning in their influence so he created a myth for them

and created Diedrich Knickerbocker and he created these stories

if it had done nothing more New York City would have remained forever after the greatest port on the Atlantic seaboard

but a larger destiny lay in store and to achieve it

two immense obstacles would have to be overcome

one was the geography of Manhattan Island whose rugged natural landscape was a hindrance to orderly growth

the other was the geography of the American continent to whose vast interior riches

the city's merchants still had no easy access

the man who would attempt to solve both problems and in so doing stake a claim

to being the greatest New Yorker of all time was a six foot three inch patrician politician

so brilliant and commanding that friends and enemies alike called him Magnus Apollo

in ten terms as mayor of the city and three as governor of the state

DeWitt Clinton would do more to shape the future of New York than anyone else in its history

to do that he would first have to bring order out of chaos

then reach westward and transform geography itself DeWitt Clinton is arguably the most important person

who ever lived in New York and I understand that this is an environment and included

Peter Stuyvesant and Robert Moses and Franklin D Roosevelt

and Fiorello LaGuardia but the DeWitt Clinton was there at the critical moment

in New York City's history when it was not clear that it would be the dominant city that later became

DeWitt Clinton had a vision of New York that was not to be the official

capital of the United States and he understood its basis to be the economy

and culture and it was to those two things that he devoted himself with extraordinary focus

an admirer of Alexander Hamilton and heir to

Hamilton's glorious commercial vision of New York Clinton would finish laying the foundation of the modern city

in 1807 to help bring order to the chaos

of the city's rapid northward growth he oversaw the creation of a special commission

to come up with what he hoped would be a final and conclusive plan for the development of Manhattan Island

there lay before the city fathers a vast island another 10 miles of it roughly

running north-south how would they organize it

commissioners organized in a very American Way very Jeffersonian way on a grid

in 1811 the commissioners unveiled their plan on a giant map more than eight feet

long they had projected an astonishing vision of the future that would shake the destiny of Manhattan for centuries to come

the grid is the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization

the landed divides unoccupied

the population it describes conjectural

the buildings it locates phantoms Rem Koolhaas

at a time when New York City was still huddled at the southern tip of Manhattan

Clinton's commissioners proposed leveling the entire natural geography of the island

and replacing it with a single massive grid 12 avenues wide

and a hundred and fifty-five Street's long covering 11,000 acres with more than 2,000 blocks

there had been grid plans before but never on this scale

at a time when the city held fewer than a hundred thousand people the plan envisioned a giant metropolis of more than a million

if realized it would transform Manhattan into the most populous city on earth

it was an extraordinary thing to impose geometry on an island

it was an enchanting Island it was all covered with oak and hemlock and fir

and there were lots of ponds and streams and springs and it was all up and down hill

and instead of allowing for the ups and downs saving the books and streams

and everything this gridiron is really cruel a bit are torturous method I was was lay down over the whole island

in the pre grid days we respected nature partly

because we couldn't do much about it so roads go around Hills they circumvent ponds no more

now Hills were to be leveled and thrown into ponds land was to be filled in

this was to become one of the most man-made artificial spaces in the history of the planet

inscribed within the grid was an extraordinary vision of what New Yorkers wanted their city to be

one Imperial there's a sense of expansion northward the numbers run up

two Democratic because the streets are going to be numbered they're not going to be named

three efficient it makes it easy for

immigrants people who don't speak English to navigate their way around to their workplace and to selling places

for a sense of routinized

and regularizing the real estate market because everything is grated up in advance

so that you can buy and sell plots easily with great convenience

perhaps the most extraordinary is the conviction that you are going to totally triumph over nature

and the notion that you can in fact shape reshape reformulate things

again right near the bone of the New York idea

with its thousands of blocks each more or less identical to every other the grid envisioned a remarkably uniform and democratic City

and with its hundreds of streets leading down to the rivers a relentlessly commercial one

the almost complete absence of park space and the commissioners plan

would haunt the city for decades to come

and you know the grid is often attacked people say that it's capitalist speculation or that it's an unlovely form you know

they say that it's it's monotonous its totalitarian

I don't think anybody who's ever been in the New York grid if he's honest with himself experiences it

as totalitarian too much is happening it's too interesting

so this is a kind of intellectual idea a judgment that has overlaid onto it after the fact

so what you have in the grid is a powerful under

order in a city where there is so much anarchy

and you can stand on any cross street and you can see the river on either side

and also the breeze comes through and you get the Sun rising on one side and the Sun setting on the other side

it's also quite nice the big long straight avenues of run north-south

which John Paul Sartre admired they love these big straight avenues

in which you could see the light always and they seemed somehow

in a way a representation of American limitlessness Geographic limitlessness

it's hard to imagine unless you really set your mind to it that was ever anything else

it's almost as if Manhattan had been a city since antiquity

that somehow the Indian tribes that lived here had put down pavement

that great plan indicated to people who had no intention of stopping there go right up to the top

of the island to the Harlem a room and gone from there

it was part of an optimism that was real and it was an optimism that was self-fulfilling

you lay out a street plan like that and the next thing you know someone bought a corner lot

and the transportation followed it it wasn't long before you had horse-drawn trolleys

the commissioners plan of 1811 was one of the most farsighted urban visions ever conceived

and yet its audacity was nothing

compared to that of another proposal to wit Clinton put forward that same year

not an 8-foot map but a 363 mile long ditch and if completed

would transform forever New York's relation to the entire American continent

when you think of the United States in 1800s it's really a country that is huddled along

East Coast's movement to the interior of the North American continent has blocked

what we no longer think it's a substantial mountain change the Appalachians Alleghenies

but from the perspective of 1800 they were impressive indeed

there were no blasted highways through there there were no railroads through there

there were no rivers that took you easily through there you had to walk up those mountains

and walk down them and then up another one and down so they were a formidable barrier

and what we had to do both in New York and in the nation is to figure out a way to get inside the continent

for years New York merchants had been dreaming of the immense wealth locked in the continents interior

in 1811 DeWitt Clinton came up with a way of getting at it

if nature had provided them no River to the west New Yorkers would simply have to build one

when one looks at a map of the United States and one looks

at the Mississippi River one cannot fit assume that the greatest city

in the new world seemed to be where New Orleans is that here's one of the greatest river systems in the world

but it didn't happen that way and it didn't happen that way because New Yorkers took

the geographical advantage they had and got access to that agricultural

hinterland that seemed to belong to New Orleans

the only gap in the chain of mountains running from New Hampshire to Georgia

is providentially located in New York State and Governor DeWitt Clinton had enough sense

to see that this was a very valuable asset and to build the Erie Canal

over the collective dead bodies of most of the politicians from New York City

who did not say that connecting the Middle West to the Hudson and New York City would turn into a cash cow

the scope of the project was nothing less than mind boggler an artificial

waterway unlike anything undertaken since the days of the ancient Egyptians

at a time when the longest canal in

America ran just 27 miles and most less than to Clinton's canal would have to

run more than 350 miles across the rugged wilderness of upstate new York

Thomas Jefferson himself rejected the scheme outright calling it little short of madness

so did the New York State Legislature and President James Madison

who warned that it's 5 million dollar cost would bankrupt the federal government

but DeWitt Clinton would not be deterred the great Erie Canal and he declared

would make New York one of the most splendid commercial cities on the face of the earth

appealing directly to the public he lobbied tirelessly for what his detractors called

Clinton's big ditch holding mass rallies in New York City

and circulating a petition eventually signed by more than a hundred thousand New Yorkers

Clinton himself devised an ingenious scheme to pay for it all

using public funds to attract private investors and showing once and for all

how great public works could be built in a democracy

how did Clinton build Lera canal by promising bankers he would make money

if they lent him the funds to do so and no ideology about it Jefferson wouldn't dream

of having the national government involving itself an affair ofthis kind

for doctrinal reasons the Jeffersonians were against internal improvements

Hamilton was all for them and boy did they make money

in 1817 state of New York encouraged by a government DeWitt Clinton issued

what at the time was a staggering indebtedness

or issuance of bonds to build this waterway across upstate New York

connecting essentially the Hudson River at Albany with the Great Lakes of Buffalo

that ditch that 363 mile ditch only couple dozen people I

was the most important public works project in American history

until the interstate highway program was passed in 1956

the canal was dug with Irishman Beals and Monongahela whiskey in about seven years

a massive feet across the canal now still there

now clean because like Erie is clean and you go on about every 15 miles you come

to a town where something extraordinary in manufacturing commercial history began

it was one of the few public works projects in New York that didn't have a cost overrun

who was finished on schedule in fact had paid for itself by being partially open

before it was fully completed

on October 26th 1825 three full years ahead of schedule the mammoth undertaking was complete

the great Erie Canal one observer said has defied nature

and used it like a toy with 83 locks and 18 aqueducts

including an 800-foot water bridge over the Genesee River it was the greatest engineering feat of its day

it had also worked nothing less than an economic miracle

it had once cost more to ship a ton of goods 30 miles inland than all the way to England

and taken more than three weeks to move a tonne of wheat from Buffalo to New York

now it took just seven days and the cost had been cut from a hundred dollars to less than six

at the opening celebrations DeWitt Clinton the undisputed hero of the day

for decay gov water drawn from Lake Erie into New York Harbor

the symbolism was lost on no one all America now met in New York

the mountains have been leveled the valleys have been filled

whether the Gulf's have been formed over them which will unite the waters of the Hudson and the waters of the Atlantic

with the waters of the remote West and constitute a river

the reverend fh coming

it just what things alive in America as they had never done before

and that canal brought the Seabourn Atlantic trade right up into the central

of American Great Plains it was way west that only we had and

this Harbor was the fulcrum between the great continent and the European world on the other side

it made New York the only American city that connected Europe

on one side with the heartland of the continent on the other and that has been New York strength ever since

it still is the major port of entry and transfer point

for people flying from Europe to the rest of the country you see New York and then you see America

this waterway did so much to pull the nation together now the goods from this whole vast region are flowing by canal boats

through the Erie Canal and then down the Hudson River to New York City

so the New York City is becoming a kind of National City pulling the country together

so there isn't one focus the national capital maybe in Washington

but real economic capital is by common consent in New York

the Erie Canal made New York the Empire State and New York City the first real Center in America

DeWitt Clinton had first imagined the great metropolis New York might become

then reshape the geography of an entire continent to make it inevitable

the day the canal opened he uttered a fateful prediction

New York will in cost of time become the granary of the world the Emporium of Commerce

the seat of manufactures the focus of great moneyed operations and the concentrating point of vast capitals

before a century a whole island of Manhattan

covered with habitations and replenished with a dense population will constitute one vast city

Hamilton would have been delighted beyond belief and of course would have taken full credit

for it being part of his vision he would have been delighted not only to see

his own state and his own city take this position of preeminence but to see

that this claim he had always made way back when America was a struggling country

that many people thought would not survive a decade

that it was going to rise to be one of the great powers in the world of Nations

New Yorkers have always been anxious to control the future to look toward the future

to try to take an opportunity and realize it and make it real

I draw the Erie Canal that don't have to be built a packet service that don't have to be invented

Jews don't have to be tolerated or welcomed but if this

will somehow make the city more competitive in a sense made people wealthier

and what I think was the genius of New York was was the ability

to somehow pull all these disparate people together in the common pursuit of making money

to look beyond surface or theological or ethnic or racial

differences to say that's less important that we remain pure

what's more important is that we succeed

everything was now in place with the Erie Canal New York finished

assembling the components it would need to propel itself into the future

in the years to come the most powerful economic engine on earth would begin to turn with astonishing speed

calling into existence as it did the most powerfully transformative culture in human history

the capitalist culture of immense wealth and continuous change

and heartbreaking extremes so creative that in the end

it would even seek to transcend the profound contradictions at its core

but that would take more than a century

in the years following the completion of the Erie Canal New York would surge into the future

its citizens confident they had left the chaos of nature behind

in many ways they had and yet in the turbulent decades to come

as tens of thousands then hundreds of thousands of newcomers streamed into the growing port

New Yorkers would confront a different kind of chaos

the chaos of man and that would prove even more difficult to take

between 1825 and 1860 New York City would grow as no city had ever grown before

in a whirlwind of change as wave after wave of immigrants arrived

and layer upon layer of physical growth was laid down with astonishing speed

even New Yorkers have bitchu ated to change would soon feel uncannily like Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle

who will woke after a night's sleep to discover that twenty years had passed

and that everything around him had utterly changed

Irving himself would awake one morning to find the city he had once known gone forever

August 29th 1847 my dear Sarah

New York as you knew it was a mayor corner of the present huge city and that corner is all

changed pull the pieces bent down

and rebuilt or but our little native nest in

William Street which still retains some of its old features though those are

daily altering I can hardly realize that

within my term of life this great crowded metropolis so full of life

bustle noise show and splendor was a quite middle city from some 50 of

60,000 inhabitants

it is really now one of the most rocketing cities in the world Washington Irving