The Story of Manhattan Part 13

The time came when the city of New York grew beyond the limits of the Island of Manhattan, though the island had seemed such a boundless tract of land, that it had been thought laughable for the City Plan to provide for streets over its entire length. The city grew larger and larger. It stretched up to the Harlem River, leaped over it and went branching out into the country beyond. Great libraries were built; hospitals for the sick; prisons for the wrong-doer, markets, churches, public inst.i.tutions of every kind. Buildings grew taller and taller until they came to be twenty and twenty-five stories high. Even then there were so many people that there were not houses enough to hold them all. So they swarmed over into the already large city of Brooklyn, on Long Island. And the ferry-boats being no longer able to carry the vast crowds in comfort, a great suspension bridge was built over the East River from New York to Brooklyn. At last the city of New York and the city of Brooklyn had so much in common, that they, with some of their suburbs, were united into one great city in the year 1898.

Then the Island of Manhattan became simply the Borough of Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of Greater New York.

So the story of the Island of Manhattan is ended.

TABLE of EVENTS

Year

1609. Hudson discovers the island of Manhattan

1613. s.h.i.+p Tiger burned

1614. United New Netherland Company organized

1614. Fort Manhattan built

1621. West India Company organized

1626. Peter Minuit Governor Fort Amsterdam built

1629. Charter adopted under which the Manors were established

1633. Van Twillier Governor

1636. Annetje Jans' Farm laid out

1638. William Kieft appointed Governor

1641. First Cattle Fair held on Bowling Green

1642. Stadt Huys built Church built in the Fort

1643. Beginning of the Indian wars

1644. Fence erected, which was later replaced by a wall, and still later by Wall Street

1646. Peter Stuyvesant appointed Governor

1647. Kieft and Dominie Bogardus drowned in the wreck of the Princess while returning to Holland

1652. City of New Amsterdam incorporated

1653. New Amsterdam made a walled city by the building of a wall across the island

1655. Stuyvesant subdues the Swedes on the Delaware Indian war breaks out again

1664. English capture New Amsterdam and it becomes New York Richard Nicolls Governor

1667. Francis Lovelace appointed Governor

1670. Lovelace establishes the first Exchange

1673. First mail route established The Dutch retake New York

1674. English again in possession of New York Sir Edmund Andros Governor Captain Manning disgraced for surrendering New York to the Dutch

1678. Bolting Act created

1681. Andros recalled

1682. Thomas Dongan Governor

1686. Dongan Charter granted to the city

1688. New York and New England united, and Sir Edmund Andros Governor

1689. William III. becomes King of England Jacob Leisler a.s.sumes t.i.tle of Lieutenant-Governor and takes charge of New York

1691. Henry Sloughter Governor Leisler and Milborne executed Governor Sloughter dies

1692. Benjamin Fletcher Governor

1693. Bradford establishes first printing press in the colony

1696. Trinity Church built Bolting Act repealed Lord Bellomont appointed Governor Captain Kidd sails to search for pirates

1697. Streets first lighted at night

1699. City wall demolished and Wall Street laid out City Hall built in Wall Street

1700. First library opened

1701. Captain Kidd executed in England Lord Bellomont dies

1702. Lord Cornbury Governor

1705. Queen's Farm granted to Trinity Church by Queen Anne

1708. Lord Lovelace Governor

1710. Robert Hunter Governor

1711. Public slave market established