Category: NYC Brief History

America’s native people were living where New York City is now for more than 11,000 years before the Europeans arrived; they spoke a language called Munsee, which was in common use in the area all the way down to Delaware, and were known to themselves as the ‘Lenape’, or ‘People’ of the region. The Munsee […]

The first European to see what is now New York City was Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine who, in 1524, was hired by the French to explore the coast of North America. The English explorer Henry Hudson became the first European to document the topography of the area and its peoples in 1609. Hudson had […]

New York was a thriving seaport with 33,000 people by the time George Washington was made the United State’s first president on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in 1789. New York was abandoned after the freshly established US Congress formed the District of Columbia in 1790. The founding fathers’ took a strong […]

During the mid 1800s there was growing animosity between the city’s poorer and richer residents and different racial groups, sometimes exploding into violence. The richer folk were able to avoid being drafted into the Civil War by paying a fee of $300, much to the angst of the less fortunate, which culminated in the ‘draft […]

After World War II New York emerged as one of the few leading world cities completely unharmed, making it the ideal place to host the newly formed United Nations; it was still a major port and was also the capital of the world’s blossoming television industry. Unfortunately though, the wealthy middle-classes began to abandon the […]

Mayor Giuliani and a nationwide economic boom were responsible for the rise of New York City and have transformed it into the splendid place of culture and excitement that we all know today. Giuliani cracked down on so called ‘quality of life offences’ such as urinating in public and sleeping rough on the streets; the […]