New york city

NEW YORK CITY: THE CROSSROAD OF WORLD

TRADEJean Lowry

50587

Episode 3: Sunshine and Shadows

Central Park was created by Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, according to Olmsted the park was “of great importance as the first real park made in this century-a democratic development of the highest significance”

The terrace, Calvert Vaux’s masterpiece, was one of the first structures built in the park. Construction began in 1859, just months after the Lake was excavated and filled in December 1858

General construction slowed during the Civil War, but the terrace, the architectural heart of the new park, remained a high priority

The sandstone terrace with benches built into the walls is the site of the Angel of the Waters, one of the world’s most famous fountains

The fountain celebrates the 1842 opening of the Croton Aqueduct, which brought fresh water from Westchester County into New York City


The Brooklyn Bridge was initially designed by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling

After amputation of his crushed toes he developed a tetanus infection which left him incapacitated and soon resulted in his death, not long after he had placed his 32-year-old son Washington Roebling in charge of the project

The Brooklyn Bridge was completed thirteen years later and was opened for use on May 24, 1883

In 1871 “Boss” William M. Tweed was known as being a corrupt politician

“He became the “Grand Sachem” of Tammany Hall and had control over the political patronage in New York

Tweed was convicted of stealing an estimate of $200 million from taxpayers through political corruption

The panic of 1873 was started by the Northern Pacific railroad line went bankrupt and then the New York stock exchanged closed for 10 days


Thomas Edison was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world

His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York

In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family

Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park

The Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, designed by Frederic Bartholdi was a gift to the United States from the people of France

A robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata(a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence

Episode 5: Cosmopolis IN 1919 streets of New York were filled

with parades due to soldiers coming home

Women had won the right to vote New York was becoming the skyscraper

capital of the world The first Red Scare began following the

Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917 and the intensely patriotic years of World War I as anarchist and left-wing political violence and social agitation aggravated national social and political tension

IN 1920 a horse drawn carriage pulled up to the House of Morgan and blew up, killing 40 people

Limestone gouges that were made in the building can still be seen today

F. Scott Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories

Works were the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age

He was regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century

Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s

Episode 5: Cosmopolis The Jazz Age was a movement that took

place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged

The birth of jazz music is often accredited to African Americans

1920s youth used the influence of jazz to rebel against the traditional culture of previous generations

With the beginning of large-scale radio broadcasts in 1922, Americans were able to experience different styles of music without physically visiting a jazz club

Al Smith was an American statesman who was elected the 42nd Governor of New York three times

In 1928 he was the Democratic U.S presidential candidate

Smith was unpopular among certain segments, including Southern Baptists and German Lutherans who believed the catholic Church would dictate his policies

Smith lost in a landslide against Herbert Hoover

Episode 5: Cosmopolis John Jakob Raskob had supported

Democratic presidential candidate Al Smith in the 1928 election

Raskob left GM after the board supported Sloan, sold his GM stock, and used the proceeds to build the Empire State Building

Raskob made Smith president of the Empire State Co., operators of the building, based on a promise to do business together the night Smith lost the presidential election

During the Great Depression, Raskob's business interests were focused on the Empire State Building, which was in competition with the Chrysler Building to become the world's tallest building at the time

The wall Street Crash of 1929 was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States

The crash signaled the beginning of the 12-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries

A Merger that put New York on Top

New York had two advantages: the location of its port and its growing capital markets

The key to the city’s success was its leaders’ ability to envision the future path of the national economy and develop strategies to use New York’s advantages to ensure it was in a position to dominate that economy

The building of the Erie Canal and the “Triangle Trade” allowed New York to control exports and commercial interests

The ability to capture economic gains from commercial developments that began in other regions is a remarkable quality of New York

New York ends up controlling its rivals, an indicator of this is that all three New York’s great Philanthropic foundations: the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corp. were a created with money from fortunes made outside New York

The Great Transatlantic Migrations

Between 1870 and 1914, tens of millions of Europeans and others crossed and recrossed international borders and sailed the North and South Atlantic

The cumulative picture of movement is one of a swarming or churning of people back and forth across the Atlantic highway, fed by growing railroad networks on either side of it

The total number of migrants will never be known precisely

The United States received more than the rest of the New World, and probably the entire world, combined

Contagious diseases swept away 10 percent, and occasionally 25 percent, of the passengers during a crossing

In the 1850s mortality fell sharply, thanks to voluntary and government-imposed health and sanitary regulations and faster ships, which began to combine steam power and sails


After 1880 migration to the United States started changing not only according to national origins, as more South and East Europeans arrived, but more importantly it changed according to purpose: from settlement on farmland to wage labor in industry, construction, or mining

Land-seeking migration, implying permanent resettlement, may well have been exceptional in the long history of transatlantic movements, even though it occurred in all four New World receiving societies

Second, migration to the United States came from more places than did migration to Argentina, Brazil, or Canada

The United States differed from the other New World receivers its possession throughout the period of a large area of cheap, accessible land governed by-land laws that encouraged smallholding


By 1890, many smallholders in the United States were complaining bitterly about their mortgages, cash shortages, and freight charges

Wages in factories, on railroads, in construction, or in mines surpassed European levels while the cost of living was the same or lower

European migrants, and soon their offspring as well, appeared in every part of the United States where land or labor was available

Europeans kept to the North and the West , and they also kept southern black people from migrating north

In 1914 the World War put a temporary stop to transatlantic migration, and although it resumed for a few years after the Armistice, the 1920s restriction laws and the 1930s Great Depression ended it permanently

Sources Immigrants and Cities PDF Documentary on New York Episodes 3 & 5 The Merger that put New York on Top article "Al Smith." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Smith>. "F. Scott Fitzgerald." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._Scott_Fitzgerald>. "Thomas Edison." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison>. "Central Park." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_park>. "Brooklyn Bridge." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyn_bridge>. "Statue of Liberty." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_liberty>. "Jazz Age." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_age>. "John J. Raskob." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 29 July 2011.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Jakob_Raskob>.

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