New York EXPLAINED
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1860–1898

War, Machine & Bridge

War came home in the deadliest riot in American history, a political machine ran the city for its own profit, and a bridge redrew the skyline. The age that raised the Statue of Liberty also perfected the tenement, and the cartoon that brought down a boss.

An 1883 engraving looking from the Brooklyn Bridge’s stone tower across the span toward Manhattan, showing the roadway and the raised central walkway.
The New York and Brooklyn Bridge, engraving from an 1883 souvenir volume. British Library, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  1. 1863

    July 13–16, 1863

    The Colored Orphan Asylum Burns

    During the Civil War draft riots, the deadliest urban riot in U.S. history, a mob sacked and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum on Fifth Avenue.

    About four hundred entered the house and immediately proceeded to pitch out beds, chairs, tables, and every species of furniture... when all was taken, the house was then set on fire. While the rioters were clamoring at the front door, the Matron and Superintendent were quietly conducting the children out the back yard.

    Report of the Committee of Merchants for the Relief of Colored People, 1863

    Every one of the 233 children got out the back and survived. The riots, set off by a draft the rich could buy their way out of, turned into days of racist murder.

    Source: Library of Congress Read the full story
  2. 1871

    October 1871

    As Long As I Count the Votes

    Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly helped topple William "Boss" Tweed and the Tammany Hall ring that looted tens of millions from the city.

    As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?

    Caption Thomas Nast put in Boss Tweed’s mouth, Harper’s Weekly, October 7, 1871

    Tweed never actually said it. The taunt came from a reform lawyer, and Nast put it in the boss’s mouth. The most famous Tweed quote is a cartoonist’s invention.

    Source: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Read the full story
  3. 1871

    1871

    Them Damned Pictures

    Tweed’s reported complaint explains why Nast’s pictures were more dangerous to a machine built on immigrant votes than any editorial.

    I don’t care a straw for your newspaper articles; my constituents don’t know how to read, but they can’t help seeing them damned pictures.

    Boss Tweed, as reported by Charles F. Wingate in the North American Review (1875)

    This one is secondhand too, reported four years later. Treat it as "reportedly said." But it is the truest thing the era teaches about pictures and power.

    Source: Wikiquote (Wingate, 1875)
  4. 1883

    May 24, 1883

    A Monument to a Woman

    When chief engineer Washington Roebling was crippled by caisson disease, his wife Emily ran the Brooklyn Bridge’s construction for over a decade and saw it finished.

    It is thus an everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of woman, and of her capacity for that higher education from which she has been too long debarred. The name of Mrs. Emily Warren Roebling will thus be inseparably associated with all that is wonderful in the constructive world of art.

    Abram S. Hewitt, opening-day oration for the Brooklyn Bridge, May 24, 1883

    The bridge took fourteen years and roughly 27 lives, starting with its designer, John Roebling. Emily Roebling was the first person to cross it.

    Source: Gotham Oratory Archive Read the full story
  5. 1883

    November 1883

    Give Me Your Tired

    Lazarus recast the statue as the "Mother of Exiles," welcoming immigrants arriving in New York Harbor.

    Give me your tired, your poor,

    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

    Emma Lazarus, "The New Colossus," written 1883 to raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal

    The poem wasn’t on the statue when it opened in 1886. It was nearly forgotten, then mounted on a bronze plaque inside the pedestal in 1903, sixteen years after Lazarus died.

    Source: Academy of American Poets Read the full story
  6. 1890

    1890

    How the Other Half Lives

    Riis’s photo-illustrated exposé of Lower East Side tenements shocked middle-class readers and helped launch housing reform.

    Long ago it was said that "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives." That was true then. It did not know because it did not care.

    Jacob A. Riis, "How the Other Half Lives," 1890

    Riis’s flash photography put the tenement on the page for the first time. His sympathy was real; his views on the immigrants he photographed were, by our standards, not.

    Source: Project Gutenberg
  7. 1898

    January 1, 1898

    Greater New York Is Born

    At midnight, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island merged into one five-borough city, second in the world only to London.

    At midnight the flag of Greater New York was unfurled over City Hall, the second city of the world came into existence, steam whistles sounded, and the bands played.

    The New York Times, "The New City Ushered In," January 1, 1898

    Brooklyn was its own great city, the fourth-largest in the country, and voted for consolidation by a sliver. Some Brooklynites have called it "the Great Mistake" ever since.

    Source: The New York Times Archive Read the full story

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