The Dutch city of New Amsterdam, which became New York by the English
conquest in 1664, was of slow growth. It had hardly more than twenty
thousand inhabitants at the time of the Revolution, being less than
either Boston or Philadelphia, and a map made in 1767 shows that the
town scarcely extended beyond Wall Street. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century there were sixty thousand people, and its rapid
growth began through large immigration after the War of 1812, and was
stimulated by the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825, which gave it
greatly increased foreign trade. By the new Charter of "Greater New
York" coming into operation in 1897, the city was made, next to
London, the largest in the world, being expanded beyond Manhattan
Island, so as to include all the outlying cities. It now consists of
five boroughs, Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Richmond,
having an area of three hundred and twenty square miles, and a
population exceeding three and one-half millions. If Jersey City and
the other New Jersey settlements on the west side of the Hudson were
added, the population would be four millions. This great city is about
thirty-five miles long from north to south, and nineteen miles wide.
The long and narrow island of Manhattan stretches thirteen miles,
while it is not much over two miles broad in the widest part, and
sometimes narrows to a few hundred yards, particularly in the northern
portion. The Harlem River and the winding strait of Spuyten Duyvel
separate northern Manhattan from the mainland. The island is very
rocky, excepting the southern part, which is alluvial, and at the
upper end the cliffs rise precipitously from the Hudson over two
hundred and thirty feet into Washington Heights, and the surface
descends sharply on the eastern side to the Harlem flats. It does not
take the visitor long to recognize, however, that the capacious
harbor, the converging rivers and numerous adjacent arms of the sea
combine all the requisites of a great port, and they could not have
been better planned if human hands had fashioned them. There is a vast
wharf-frontage, for over fifty miles of shore-line are available for
shipping, thus accommodating an almost limitless commerce. This has
made the metropolis and continues its wonderful growth.
At the lower end of Manhattan is the Battery Park, of about twenty
acres, with the elevated railways coming over it from both sides of
the city, and joining at the lower point of the island in a terminal
station at the South Ferry. Here were located the old forts for the
city defense, but the park superseded them after the War of 1812, and
in the earlier years of the nineteenth century this was the
fashionable resort for an airing. The old circular fort, Castle
Garden, now the Aquarium, was formerly a popular place of amusement,
and here, under the auspices of the great manager, Barnum, Jenny Lind
made her first appearance in America in 1850. The Park contains a
statue of John Ericsson. The lower point of the island is Whitehall
Slip, and here is the Government Barge Office, an appanage of the
Custom House. To the northward of the Battery is the Bowling Green,
the space between them having been the site of the original Dutch
palisade fort which guarded New Amsterdam. A row of fine residences
was built here, which afterwards became the favorite locality for
steamship offices, and the new Custom House is now being constructed
on their site. This Bowling Green, a triangular space of about a
half-acre, was in the early days surrounded by the homes of the
proudest Knickerbockers. For seven years during the Revolution, and
until the evacuation, November 25, 1783, this was the British
headquarters. Here lived Cornwallis, Howe and Clinton, Benedict Arnold
occupied No. 5 Broadway, and Washington's headquarters was in No. 1,
on the west side, now occupied by the towering Washington Building,
rising nearly three hundred feet to the top of the cupola. To the
eastward is the spacious Produce Exchange, in Italian Renaissance,
with its huge square tower, part of the ground on which it stands
having been the site of the house where Robert Fulton lived and died.
Talleyrand also once lived on Bowling Green. In the centre is the
statue of Abraham de Peyster, an original Knickerbocker, erected in
1895. There was a leaden statue of King George III. here at the
opening of the Revolution, but it was pulled down when the Declaration
of Independence was promulgated in 1776, carried to Litchfield,
Connecticut, and melted into bullets for the Continental soldiers, so
that it was facetiously said at the time that "King George's troops
will probably have his melted Majesty fired at them."