HIST 3480: The History of NYC

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION HIST 3480: The History of NYC

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Central Park • In 1853, the state legislature allows the city to acquire 700 acres of land in the center of Manhattan for this park. • In 1857, the Central Park Commission holds a design competition. The • “Greensward Plan” of Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824-1895) win the competition • Construction of Central Park was authorized in 1857, but it came to a stop during the war. • First part of the part opens to the public in the winter of 1859-1860 for ice skating. • Park is initially only popular with elites because working classes still prefer Jones Wood on the East River from 66th to 75th Street. • In 1870, a zoo is opened in the park and becomes a very popular attraction. • Park is officially completed in 1873. • Roughly 1,600 poor residents were removed to make way for the project, including those in as Seneca Village.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Contemporary Lithograph of Central Park under construction; Below: The Greensward Plan CENTRAL PARK

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Developing Upper Manhattan • Development of the Upper East and West Sides a strong economic engine in the late 1860s and early 1870s. • East Side developing more rapidly than the West Side: Tweed men had bought more land on the East Side, the Harlem Rail Road on Fourth Avenue has been in existence since the 1830s, horse cars traveled Second Avenue up to 122nd Street. The flatter topography was also easier to grade and build streets. • East Side Development Plan: Brownstones and tenements along the avenues were to be housing for the working classes; side street row houses for the middle class; and Fifth Avenue mansion for the wealthy. Industrial nuisances like slaughterhouses and gas houses were pushed to the East River waterfront.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION William Magear Tweed (1823-1878) • Tweed’s father was a Scottish-Irish chair-maker. Tweed was born on Cherry Street; became a “fire laddie.” • In 1848, Tweed helps to create the “Americus Engine” No. 6, which become prominent. He gained a reputation as an effective brawler and ax man. • Joined the family business in 1852 after trying a few other possibilities, but then is elected to Congress that year, but serves an undistinguished term.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION William Magear Tweed (1823-1878) • In 1858, he is appointed by the mayor to the expanded New York County Board of Supervisors, which gave access to contracting procedures and thus his first opportunity at large scale government graft; vendors had to pay Tweed and other Supervisors a 15 percent kickback to do business with the city. • Tweed opens a law firm on Duane Street in 1861, although he was not trained as a lawyer. • Becomes “Grand Sachem” of Tammany in 1863 and begins to be referred to as “Boss;” he has himself appointed deputy street commissioner. • Used his illicit gains to buy a printing company and stationery supplier; these both received big city contracts. Tweed also arranges for his friends to be elected to office, creating the “Tweed Ring”: George G. Barnard was elected Recorder of New York City; Peter B. Sweeny was elected New York County District Attorney; and Richard B. Connolly was elected City Comptroller. • Tweed invest his ill-gotten gains in Manhattan real estate, and soon becomes one of the biggest landholders in the entire city. • Tweed is also elected to the New York State Senate and remains in office from 1866 to 1873.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Developing Upper Manhattan • As head of the Dept. of Public Works, Tweed has the work done well, if expensively, in bringing services to the Upper East Side. He hires quality professionals to install sewers, Croton water pipes, and gas pipelines; but pads their costs. • Gas, Croton water, and indoor toilets were becoming necessities for middle-class housing. • The year 1873 marked a road-building spree: transverses completed at 57th, 79th, and 86th streets. • Tweed encouraged development by having the city give land to new or existing institutions like museums, hospitals, and schools on the Upper East Side: the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1871), Mount Sinai Hospital (1872), the Normal College (later Hunter, 1873). • Construction sent land prices skyrocketing, with much of the land having been bought by Tweed and his cronies.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Developing Upper Manhattan • Funding for construction came partly from newly apportioned property taxes which were a part of the 1870 “Tweed Charter,” but mostly from the sale of municipal bonds, which still were still seen as a safe bet by Wall Street. • In 1867, NYC had $30 million in debt due to the Croton system, Central Park, and expenses related to the Civil War draft. • In 1871, NYC had $90 million, with two-thirds of that number spent between 1869 and 1871. • City bankers liked the bonds since they paid 7 percent interest and generated high commission fees; the market for city bonds exploded, helping to fund Tweed’s excesses.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Transportation • Commuting from uptown to downtown was not easy in the 1870s; one had to rely on slow, horse-drawn omnibuses. The Fourth Avenue railroad was hated by neighbors since it spewed so much smoke and residue on residences. • Tweed wanted to build a railway elevated 40 feet off the ground on top of a masonry viaduct that would cost millions a mile to build, and receives a state charter for the New York Railway Company in 1871, and with its tax exempt status, Tweed gets wealthy backers for it including A.T. Stewart, August Belmont, and J.J. Astor. • Tweed did not tolerate competition, and made it difficult for the pneumatic subway created by Alfred Ely Beach, editor of the Scientific American, in Jan. 1870. A popular attraction, it had a fancy waiting room and blew passengers in a well appointed car one block, between Murray to Warren streets. • Tweed’s pressure and fears of adjacent property owners led to the pneumatic subway’s demise.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Alfred Beach’s first NYC subway in 1870 Transportation

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Transportation • Commuting from uptown to downtown was not easy in the 1870s; one had to rely on slow, horse-drawn omnibuses. The Fourth Avenue railroad was hated by neighbors since it spewed so much smoke and residue on residences. • Tweed wanted to build a railway elevated 40 feet off the ground on top of a masonry viaduct that would cost millions a mile to build, and receives a state charter for the New York Railway Company in 1871, and with its tax exempt status, Tweed gets wealthy backers for it including A.T. Stewart, August Belmont, and J.J. Astor. • Tweed did not tolerate competition, and made it difficult for the pneumatic subway created by Alfred Ely Beach, editor of the Scientific American, in Jan. 1870. A popular attraction, it had a fancy waiting room and blew passengers in a well appointed car one block, between Murray to Warren streets. • Tweed’s pressure and fears of adjacent property owners led to the pneumatic subway’s demise. • Charles T. Harvey’s Elevated Railway Company eventually won out after a failed attempt to use a cable system, it received permission to use a steam engine in early 1871, and it was successful.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Charles T. Harvey’s Elevated Railroad in 1871 Transportation

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Booming Brooklyn and the Bridge • Brooklyn was taking off economically in the early 1870s: Havemeyer’s and Elder’s sugar refineries, Appleton’s printing and bookmaking plant, the Navy Yard, Williamsburg breweries, the Bushwick Chemical Works, Charles Pratt’s oil refinery on Newtown Creek. • Residential Expansion: Brooklyn Heights and Cobble Hill expanded down into what is now Carroll Gardens; the construction of Prospect Park in the 1860s gave developer Edwin C. Litchfield hope that the land he bought that is now Park Slope would become pricey, but he did in 1884 before they did. • Kensington and Brownsville developers were even less successful in getting homeowners to settle.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Booming Brooklyn and the Bridge • Brooklyn Machine: Boss Tweed’s counterpart in Brooklyn was Hugh McLaughlin, and his chief colleague was William C. Kingsley, Brooklyn’s most prosperous contractor. • With the failure to quickly develop the city’s interior, the two turned to addressing the transportation problem with regard to Manhattan. The ferry was inefficient, and the freezing of the harbor in the winter of 1866-67 shut the city down. • A bridge at the East river’s narrowest point seemed the most obvious solution, although it would still require the world’s longest suspension bridge. • Only German-born engineer John Augustus Roebling (1806-1869) had the knowledge to take something this on, having built the International Suspension Bridge over Niagara Falls that opened in 1855.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” by Walt Whitman (1855) – excerpt: Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide! Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg’d waves! Gorgeous clouds of the sun-set! drench with your splendor me, or the men and women generations after me; Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers! Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta!—stand up, beautiful hills of Brooklyn! Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers! Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution! Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house, or street, or public assembly! Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my nighest name! Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress! Play the old role, the role that is great or small, according as one makes it!

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Booming Brooklyn and the Bridge WASHINGTON AUGUSTUS ROEBLING (1837-1926) Father John Roebling (1806-1869) created the initialdesign for the Brooklyn Bridge, but dies as a result of after his foot being crushed by a ferry in 1869.Washington takes over his father’s role; he himself isgravely hurt when a fire breaks out in one of theunderwater caissons in 1870; Roebling directed the effort to extinguish the fire, but it left him with an incapacitating case of “the bends,” making it necessary for him to lead the work from his house in Brooklyn Heights as of 1872.The 1,595-foot span was finally completed in 1883,after thirteen years of work, having cost 26 lives and $15 million.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Booming Brooklyn and the Bridge

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Queens Development • Never had a core nucleus around which to develop, so multiple centers emerge as discrete local initiatives. • William Steinway created a “company town” in Astoria since the demand for his upright pianos had outstripped the capacity of his 52nd Street factory in Manhattan. • He started buying farms and estates in northwestern Queens County in 1870. • Corona and Woodside Village also get developed at his time.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The Rialto • By the 1870s, the area around Union Square had developed into the city’s theater district and was called “The Rialto” after Venice’s commercial district. • Before the Civil War, most theaters had been located along the Bowery and Broadway below Fourteenth Street. • The change to the “Rialto” marked a transition from local stock companies to the “combination” system, marked by one-time plays featuring touring stars, made possible by the new railroad network. • Since these productions were not self-contained stock companies, more support businesses sprung up around the area: theatrical and musical publishers, costume companies, etc.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The Orange Riots • On July 12, 1870 a parade was held in Manhattan by Irish Protestants celebrating the victory at the Battle of the Boyne of William III, the King of England and Prince of Orange, over James II back in 1690. • The parade route went by the Irish neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen on the West Side, allowing for taunting and baiting on both sides. • Violence broke out, and despite police intervening quickly, eight people died in the fighting. • The Loyal Order of Orange applied for police permission to march the next year, but it was denied with the support of Boss Tweed.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The Orange Riots • The elite Protestant business community protested this decision vehemently, and under pressure, Tammany reverses its decision. • On July 12, 1871, 1,500 policemen and 5,000 National Guardsmen lined the parade route. • Paving stones, bricks, bottles, and shoes rained down upon the parade almost immediately, prompting the militiamen to return firs with their muskets. They fixed their bayonets to move forward and continued to fire into crowd. • Roughly 60 civilians—mostly Irish—were killed, and 150 wounded, and about 100 people were arrested. • The event led to increased scrutiny of Tammany’s governance, ultimately leading to Tweed’s downfall.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The militia opening fire on the crowd on July 12, 1872, at the corner of Eighth Avenue and Twenty-fifth Street The Orange Riots

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The Fall of the Ring • Thomas Nast begins his campaign against the Ring’s plundering ways in 1870. “I don’t care what people write, for my people can’t read, but they have eyes and can see as well as other folks,” says Tweed about the cartoons. • In 1871: The Ring makes a mistake by making an enemy out of New York Sheriff Jimmy O’Brien, who wanted a $250,000 payment that was denied. For revenge, O’Brien turned over hard evidence to the editor of the New York Times, George Jones. • The Ring tried to pay off Nast and failed, and then did the same to Jones, and Jones refused, starting to publish the evidence in July 1871. • Evidence was clear that the ring had stolen at least $6 million, but later historians put the figure as ranging from $30 to $200 million.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Nast Self-Portrait Thomas Nast (1840-1902) The Fall of the Ring

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION “That’s What’s the Matter,” Harper’s Weekly, January 1, 1870 The Fall of the Ring

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION “Two Great Questions” published in Harper’s Weekly, August 9, 1871. In July 1871, the New York Times ran a series uncovering massive corruption in municipal government and the Tammany Democratic machine run by Boss Tweed. Cartoonist Thomas Nast, who previously targeted Tweed, intensified his campaign and played a vital role in the fall of the “Tweed Ring.” The top cartoon asked, “Who is Ingersoll’s Co.?” James Ingersoll’s name was used for a fake company to which many fraudulent city bills were paid; Ingersoll was convicted of forgery in late 1872 and spent two and half years in jail. From left-to-right, the bottom cartoon shows Tweed, Peter Sweeny (head of the Public Parks Department), City Comptroller Richard Connolly, and Mayor Abraham Oakey Hall in the glasses. The Fall of the Ring

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION Cartoon published in Harper's Weekly, October 21, 1871 The Fall of the Ring

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION “He Tries To Steal Away,” Harper’s Weekly, July 17, 1875 – Commentary on how Tweed could basically come and go as he pleased while in jail. Tweed actually made a break on December 5, 1875, while taking one his sojourns, and fled to Cuba and then to Spain. Spanish authorities arrested Tweed, identifying him using a Nast cartoon, and extradited him back to the U.S. The Fall of the Ring

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION “The American River Ganges,” Harper’s Weekly, September 30, 1871 Nast as Nativist

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • Between 1865 and 1873, roughly 200,000 migrants on average landed at Castle Garden in New York each year. • The number plummeted to just 67,000 in 1877 due to the continued economic depression following the Panic of 1873. • In the late 1870s and early 1880s, the system run by the New York State Board of the Commissioners of Emigration is overwhelmed and dogged by lack of funds and general mismanagement. • Federal authorities take responsibility for immigration regulation with the 1882 Immigration Act and they subcontract the state commissioners to keep Castle Garden operating. • Castle Garden was shut down after a federal investigation in early 1890 and immigrants were processed at the Barge Office of the U.S. Customs Service on the Battery. • The Ellis Island Station opens in 1892, but the main wooden building burns down in 1897. The current structure opens in 1890.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • The “new” immigrants start to come in significant numbers around 1880s, and continue through the 1920s; it is distinguished from the “Old” Immigration that was mostly Irish and German. But the “old” immigrants continued to be a sizeable part of the overall flow. • German migration continues to be strong through the 1880s, with 1,445,181 coming through in the 1880s, and about 55,000 of these stayed in New York City; this figured doubled in the 1890s, making New York the third biggest German-speaking city in the world after Berlin and Vienna. Many German newspapers and even German-language classes in schools continued in the city until WWI. Kleindeutschland became smaller as the more prosperous fled to the Upper East Side: Yorkville.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • Irish immigration was rekindled by an agricultural depression in the 1870s. There were 260,450 Irish-born in the city in 1860, and 275,156 in 1890. By the mid-1880s, nearly 40 percent of all New Yorkers were of Irish extraction. • Hell’s Kitchen, between 9th and 12th Aves. and 34th and 57th Sts. was solidly working-class Irish, as was the area surrounding the Brooklyn Navy Yard. • Roughly 80,000 African Americans came from the South between 1870 and 1890, with a 100,000 more in the 1890s. In addition, there were about 3,500 West Indian-born blacks in the city in 1900. • Blacks settled mostly in the neighborhoods of the Tenderloin and San Juan Hill (these were mixed-race areas).

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • Eastern European Jews: Did not come in large numbers until after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, pogroms drive many Russian Jews out. • Many came from the Pale of Settlement shtetls—market towns that stretched from Lithuania down through the Ukraine to the Black Sea, and practiced an orthodox Judaism that was very unlike the Reform Judaism of the older German-Jewish immigrants, who viewed the poorer Yiddish-speaking newcomers with disdain and even disgust. The Lower East Side quickly transforms into the largest Jewish settlement in the world by the 1890s. • The Eastern European Jews formed landmanshaftn, cooperative societies founded by people from one particular shtetltown, that would provide a variety of social services and insurance for its members, newly arrived and already established.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • Eastern European Jews: Did not come in large numbers until after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, pogroms drive many Russian Jews out. • Many came from the Pale of Settlement shtetls—market towns that stretched from Lithuania down through the Ukraine to the Black Sea, and practiced an orthodox Judaism that was very unlike the Reform Judaism of the older German-Jewish immigrants, who viewed the poorer Yiddish-speaking newcomers with disdain and even disgust. The Lower East Side quickly transforms into the largest Jewish settlement in the world by the 1890s. • The Eastern European Jews formed landmanshaftn, cooperative societies founded by people from one particular shtetltown, that would provide a variety of social services and insurance for its members, newly arrived and already established. • Many of the new immigrants made their way into the garment industry, in which many small-time entrepreneurs were setting up “sweat shops” in the Lower East Side.

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION A Lower East Side street, ca. 1899 The “New” Immigrants

THE TWEED ERA AND NEW IMMIGRATION The “New” Immigrants • Italians from the “mezzogiorno” (meaning southern Italy) were a major component of the “new” immigration. • Most were bachelors, deeply Catholic, and from rural areas ruled by aristocrats going back to the feudal era. • Their sense of identity was very locally oriented and tight-knit; they transposed this to their New World lives. • Italian unification in 1861 proved disastrous economically for many southern Italians, as the new capitalist economy swept aside many traditional ways of making a living. • From 1881 to 1890, the average was 30,000 Italians. • Italian immigration was largely organized by the padroni, who acted as brokers in a system that resembled indentured servitude in many respects.

HIST 3480: The History of NYC