Praise for The Epic of New York City
“A magnificent, modern chronicle. . . a fat compendium. . . . Every page boasts something of interest.”
—Richard Shepherd, The New York Times
“The best one-volume history of the metropolis ever published.”
—Pete Hamill
“Lively, swiftly moving, richly informative.”
—Louis Auchincloss
“A remarkable book . . . there is not one dull page in it.”
—Wiliam Hickey, Cleveland Plain Dealer
A Diary of the Century: Tales from America’s Greatest Diarist
“Enlivened by boundless curiosity, a wry sense of humor. . . a falcon-sharp eye for detail. . . . [and] raw power.”
—John Elson, TIME
“If there were a Guinness record for heart, Ellis would win that, too. This is a diary of the century, all right. But more movingly, it is the life of a man.”
—Bill Roorbach, Newsday
“It is Ellis’s unfailing humanity and honesty that make A Diary of the Century an important and irresistible document. . . . Akin to Copland’s glorious ‘Fanfare for the Common Man’”
—Thomas Kunkel, Washington Post
A Nation in Torment: The Great American Depression
“An encyclopedic beauty [and] a terribly valuable chronicle. . . . Like Barbara Tuchman . . . fascinating. “
—Studs Terkel, Chicago Sun-Times
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EDWARD ROBB ELLIS was born in Kewanee, Illinois, in 1911. At fourteen he knew he wanted to become a journalist and an author. At sixteen he began keeping the diary that became the basis of his 1995 book, A Diary of the Century: Tales from America’s Greatest Diarist. The Chicago Tribune called Ellis’s diary “a jewel of Americana.”
As a newspaperman, he worked at the New Orleans Item, covering Huey Long, Louis Armstrong, the city’s hungry workers, and the French Quarter. In the 1930s he joined the Oklahoma City Times, writing about the Great Depression, the dust bowl, and Eleanor Roosevelt. As World War II began he was at the Peoria Journal-Transcript before moving to Chicago, where he became a feature writer for United Press. During the war Ellis edited a navy newspaper on Okinawa. In 1946 the Chicago Newspaper Guild named him the city’s best feature writer.
In 1947 Ellis joined the New York World-Telegram, where he worked for the next fifteen years, winning wide attention for his feature stories about world leaders, Nobel laureates, theatrical stars, and New York characters. After retiring from reporting in 1962, Ellis embarked on a career as a full-time author, publishing The Epic of New York City in 1966, which the New York Times called “a magnificent modern chronicle.” A Nation in Torment, Ellis’s narrative history of the Depression, received the Friends of American Writers Literary Award in 1970. Echoes of Distant Thunder, on the United States during World War I, was published in 1975. Ellis was also an associate editor of The Encyclopedia of New York City.
Mr. Ellis, whose books are cited in the bibliographies of such notable authors as Robert Caro and David McCullough, lived in New York City from 1947 until his death on Labor Day, 1998. He spent his days tending his 15,000-volume library and faithfully recording his life and times in the pages of his epic diary, which he deeded to the special collection of the Bobst Library at New York University.
THE EPIC OF
New York City
Edward Robb Ellis
DRAWINGS BY JEANYEE WONG
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
New York
To the Memory of My Beloved Wife
RUTH KRAUS ELLIS
Published by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
Copyright © 1966 by Edward Robb Ellis
Copyright © renewed 2001 by Sandra Ellis
First published by Carroll & Graf in 2005
Published by arrangement with the author’s estate, Peter Skinner literary executor
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address the Perseus Books Group, 387 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016–8810.
Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 255-1514, or e-mail [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN: 978-0-7867-1436-0
BOOKS BY EDWARD ROBB ELLIS
A DIARY OF THE CENTURY
Tales from America’s Greatest Diarist (1995)
ECHOES OF DISTANT THUNDER
Life in the United States, 1914–1918 (1975)
A NATION IN TORMENT
The Great American Depression, 1929–1939 (1970)
THE EPIC OF NEW YORK CITY
A Narrative History (1966)
THE TRAITOR WITHIN
Our Suicide Problem (with George N. Allen, 1961)
World history is city history.
—OSWALD SPENGLER
Those who do not remember the past
are condemned to relive it.
—GEORGE SANTAYANA
Preface
THIS is a narrative history of New York City.
Some readers may complain about its length. I could remind them that a six-volume New York history runs to more than 4,700 pages, and another four-volume work contains more than 2,500 pages. While I worked on this book, my most painful problem was deciding what to omit. In selecting my data, I kept asking myself three questions: Is it true? Is it significant? Is it interesting?
Other readers may lament that I left out such and such a person, place, event, or institution. For every omission they might cite, I could adduce many they forgot. Instead of trying to include every date and happening, thus producing a chronicle or encyclopedia, I chose to focus on particular episodes and people.
Above all, I have tried to tell a story. In narrative form, this book attempts to trace the evolution of New York City and reveal its organic relationship to the rest of the United States and all the world. Scores of smaller books describe special areas or events in the city’s history. I wanted to show the big picture.
The Epic of New York City is as accurate as I could make it. Nonetheless, I agree with Tai T’ung, who produced a history of Chinese writing in the thirteenth century and said, “Were I to await perfection, my book would never be finished.”
Many kind people helped me. I owe especial gratitude to my literary agent, Lurton Blassingame; my editor, William Poole; and my friend, Tom McCormack. I give thanks to my neighbor, Joseph Nathan Kane, author of many excellent reference books. I fondly remember the help I got from my favorite book dealers, Stephen Seskin, David Mendoza, and Edward A. Gradijan.
Listed alphabetically, here are the names of others who aided me: Joseph Alvarez, Walter Arm, Mrs. MacKeen Bacon, David Balch, Sheldon J. Binn, Mrs. Kathryn Ellis Burton, Mrs. Archibald Campbell, Edward Corsi, Anne Cronin, Steven David, Frank Doyle, Emerson Dye, Dr. Sol Goldschmidt, John Hastings, Dr. Lionel Heiden, Herbert Kamm, Mrs. Ruth Kimball, Yvette Klein, John La Corte, William Longgood, Victor Mangual, Paul Manning, Loring McMillen, L. Porter Moore, William J. Numeroff, Dorothy L. Oman-sky, Gardner Osborn, Selma Seskin Pezaro, Karl Pretshold, Mrs. Lauretta Ravenna, Werner Renberg, William E. Robinson, Henry Senber, Lou Shainmark, Maggie Thomas, Edward Tatum Wallace, Jack Waugh, Gertrude Weiner, Lucy Wind, Cecilia Winkler, Hall Wright, and William Zeckendorf.
&nb
sp; I owe most of all to my wife, Ruth Kraus Ellis, who did not live to see this book in print. She shared my enthusiasm, sustained me in moments of depression, cared for my creature comforts to conserve my energy, and was the most efficient and willing assistant any writer could have. For all these reasons, plus the fact that she was born on Manhattan, I call this the book of Ruth.
EDWARD ROBB ELLIS
New York, New York, January 1,1966
Contents
1 Manhattan Is Discovered
2 First Settlers Arrive
3 Peter Stuyvesant Takes Command
4 The English Name It New York
5 The Leisler Rebellion
6 Pirates Infest New York
7 Of Queesting and Fribbles
8 The Peter Zenger Trial
9 The City Goes Mad
10 Duel for Empire
11 The Stamp Act Rebellion
12 Revolutionary War
13 The Doctors’ Riot
14 The Capital of the Nation
15 The Hamilton-Burr Duel
16 John Jacob Astor Fools the President
17 Sawing Off Manhattan Island
18 The Gangs of New York
19 Down With Foreigners!
20 The Astor Place Riot
21 Slavery and Abolitionism
22 The Police Riot
23 Abraham Lincoln Arrives
24 The Draft Riots
25 Confederates Try to Burn Down New York
26 The Tweed Scandals
27 Thomas Edison Lights the City
28 Building Brooklyn Bridge
29 Metropolitan Opera House Opens
30 Creation of the Statue of Liberty
31 The Blizzard of 1888
32 New York’s First Skyscraper
33 Ellis Island Opens
34 The Reverend Parkhurst Samples Vice
35 Hearst Wages War
36 Creation of Greater New York
37 Opening of the Twentieth Century
38 The General Slocum Disaster
39 Colonel House and Woodrow Wilson
40 The Triangle Fire
41 The League of Nations Opens on Broadway
42 Wall Street Is Bombed
43 The Wall Street Crash
44 The Great Depression
45 The Jimmy Walker Scandals
46 Fiorello LaGuardia Becomes Mayor
47 Nazis Plan to Bomb New York
48 William O’Dwyer Sweats
49 Robert F. Wagner’s Administration
50 “This City Is the Center of the Universe”
Selected Bibliography
Index
Chapter 1
MANHATTAN IS DISCOVERED
WHITE men saw Manhattan for the first time in April, 1524. There were fifty of them, and they crossed the Atlantic in a ship commanded by Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian explorer working for the king of France. He murmured to his mate, the mate barked an order, and the sailors turned to with a will. Chains rattled as the anchor sloshed through the wind-dimpled water and gurgled down, down, down. Now their 100-ton vessel, the Dauphine, came to rest just south of the present Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the Lower Bay of what is now New York City.
She lay silent after the creaking and rasping of her long voyage. Crew members looked up from their chores and gazed toward the shore. A breeze flicking his beard, Verrazano stood straddle-legged on deck to peer eagerly across the diced waters of the bay. Lovely was the land, and sweet its smell. In springtime, New York’s air sparkles like champagne, and Verrazano’s nostrils tingled. Upon his mind he etched each detail.
It was, he thought, “a pleasant place.” On both sides of his ship there rose “steep little hills.” Those off starboard were Brooklyn Heights; those off the port bow lay in New Jersey. Dead ahead and to the north the explorer saw “a most beautiful stream,” now called the Upper Bay. Spooning into it was the Hudson River, which he described as “an exceeding great stream of water.” To the right of the Hudson lay the forested hill-humped island of Manhattan.
Gliding into view came thirty canoes filled with dusky feather-clad natives, who stroked with muscular rhythm from one shore to another, staring at the strange ship. Verrazano ordered one of his boats lowered, climbed in, and told his oarsmen to row toward the mile-wide Narrows connecting the Lower and Upper Bays like the neck of a gigantic hourglass. Some Indians, the explorer later wrote, “came toward us very cheerfully, making a great show of admiration, showing us where we might come to land most safely with our boat.” He had proceeded only about half a mile when the wind freshened, the water coarsened, and a storm slashed in from the Atlantic.
Afraid that the Dauphine might be swiveled on her anchor line and scragged on the shore, Verrazano yelled to his men to turn around the rowboat and pull back to the mother ship. The Indians shouted their disappointment in a strange tongue as he climbed a bucking ladder onto the deck of the Dauphine. Then, weighing anchor, Verrazano tacked out into the tumbling open sea, “greatly regretting to leave this region which seemed so commodious and delightful.”
This Italian adventurer never set foot in New York. However, he and his crew were the first Europeans to see the spot where the world’s most dynamic city was to grow. Verrazano might have waited for a calm day to sail up into the Hudson, but he had no sister ship to help him if he got into trouble. Besides, he decided this river was not the Northwest Passage, not the all-water route around the northern coast of North America to the eastern (Pacific) ocean. This search, begun toward the close of the fifteenth century, was to continue for 400 years.
When these white men discovered the site of New York City that year of 1524, Jerusalem was more than 3,000 years old, Athens was at least 2,500 years old, Rome’s history went back more than 2,270 years, Paris had existed about 1,550 years, London could count more than 1,460 birthdays, and Berlin was a village 217 years old.
Verrazano piloted the Dauphine out into the scudding waters of the Atlantic and then went below to jot down his impressions of this new land. It was “not without some riches,” he wrote, “all the hills showing mineral matter in them.” No gold or silver of any consequence ever was found at New York City, but the place later yielded precious and semiprecious stones, such as opals, garnets, and amethysts. In fact, 99 species and 170 varieties were discovered in Manhattan, a record perhaps never exceeded on the site of any other great American city.
Verrazano named the Upper Bay the Gulf of Santa Margherita for the sister of Francis I, king of France, his employer. He called the Hudson River the Vendome in honor of the Duke of Vendome, a French prince. To the metropolitan area of New York he gave the name Angouleme, the title held by Francis when he was heir presumptive to the French throne. On July 8, 1524, Verrazano sat safely at dockside in Dieppe, France, expanding his diary into a long and historic letter to his royal employer.
The first chapter in the history of New York City is really a chapter in the history of Europe. All America, for that matter, became a bloody arena, in which Europeans fought out their ancient rivalries. With Verrazano’s appearance in the bay of New York the four chief contestants to claims on America had entered the historic picture. In 1497 John Cabot had discovered North America for the English, although they were slow to press their claim. The next year Christopher Columbus had discovered South America for the Spanish during his third voyage. In 1500 the Portuguese had explored the coast of the New World. The French had been so busy waging religious wars and trying to conquer Italy that they had made a late start in this western thrust.
Earlier, during the Crusades (1095-1291), Europeans first became interested in overseas expansion. As warriors and priests penetrated the fringe of the Orient, they found civilizations whose wealth and luxury far surpassed their own rude standards of living. Europeans were delighted by Oriental perfumes and dyes, rugs and silks, glass and porcelain, pearls and cotton. They doted on the exotic spices, which gave a better taste to their own monotonous diet. All these strange and wonderful w
ares whetted their appetite for trade. Land routes developed through central Asia to the east. Sea routes opened through the Isthmus of Suez, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf. Arab merchants and Italian capitalists fattened on this commerce.
Down through the years Ottoman Turks had swept out of Asia Minor to subdue vast reaches of territory, conquer Constantinople, and overrun the trade routes. As a result, these sea paths became less attractive to other nations. Then Portuguese ships sailed east and found a saltwater route to India around the tip of Africa. Columbus sailed west and later died still believing he had reached the Orient. The Portuguese and Spanish followed up their explorations with colonization, the Portuguese establishing posts in Brazil, while the Spanish founded colonies in Florida and Mexico. Now, as a result of Verrazano’s voyage, the French claimed part of the Western Hemisphere, as did the English, the Spaniards, and the Portuguese.
In 1493, to avert a quarrel over land claims, Pope Alexander VI drew an imaginary north-south line through the western part of the Atlantic Ocean and the eastern part of South America. Thus, he divided the New World, giving the Spanish all land west of this line and the Portuguese all land to the east. But the king of Portugal protested, so Spain agreed to push the line of demarcation a little farther west, thus granting Portugal what today is Brazil. This high-handed division of the New World ignored the aspirations of other European nations. To date Holland had not claimed any portion of this new continent, but now she cast covetous eyes westward. England, Holland, and France looked on in envy as the wealth of the Indies poured into the coffers of Spain.
Francis I, king of France, was at war with Charles I, king of Spain. Francis scorned the Pope’s line of demarcation and cared nothing about the later agreement between the Spanish and Portuguese kings. He said to Charles, “Your majesty and the king of Portugal have divided the world between you, offering no part of it to me. Show me, I pray you, the will of our father Adam so that I may see if he has really made you his universal heir.”
The Epic of New York City Page 1
