The area now known as New York City had been occupied by Native Americans for more than 11,000 years before Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine hired by the French to explore the northeastern coast, arrived in 1524. He is believed to be the first European to visit New York Bay. The area lay unmolested until English explorer Henry Hudson stumbled on it on a mission to find the Northwest Passage in 1609. Hudson was impressed by what he saw. 'It is as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon,' reported Hudson, who claimed the place for his employer, the Dutch East India Company.
By 1625, the Dutch settlers had established a fur trade with the natives and were augmented by a group that established a post they eventually called New Amsterdam, the seat of a much larger colony called New Netherland. While advertisements in Europe attempted to lure settlers to New Amsterdam with promises of a temperate climate and bountiful land, the harsh winters claimed many lives. Historians generally agree that Peter Minuit, the director of the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island from local tribes for goods worth 60 guilders at a meeting, somewhere near the southern tip of Manhattan. But the goods were worth a bit more than the US$24 commonly recorded - probably closer to US$600, still a bargain.
After some toing and froing between Britain and the Netherlands, New Amsterdam became the British colony of New York in the 1670s. Though colonists began cultivating farms in New Jersey and on Long Island, the port town remained geographically tiny - the area that today runs from Wall St south to the tip of Manhattan. Anti-British zeal caught on in New York as early as the 1730s. Thirty years later, New York's Commons - where City Hall stands today - was the center of many anti-British protests. Despite the intensity of New Yorkers' sentiments, King George III's troops controlled New York for most of the war and took their time going home, finally withdrawing in 1783, a full two years after the fighting stopped.
By the time George Washington was sworn in as president of the new republic on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall St in 1789, New York was a bustling seaport of 33,000 people, but it lagged behind Philadelphia as a cultural capital. The new Congress abandoned the city for the District of Columbia the following year, driven in part by an intense dislike of the city by the founding fathers - Thomas Jefferson later said that he regarded New York to be a 'cloacina (sewer) of all the depravities of human nature.'
New York boomed in the early 19th century. Its population swelled from about 65,000 in 1800 to 250,000 two decades later. During the Civil War, the city provided many volunteers for the Union cause. It was also home to many of the best-known polemicists for slave emancipation - including newspaper editor and writer Horace Greeley. But as the war dragged on, many of the city's poorest citizens turned against the effort, especially after mandatory conscription was introduced. In the summer of 1863, Irish immigrants launched the 'draft riots,' in large part because of a provision that allowed wealthy men to pay $300 in order to avoid fighting. Within days the rioters turned their anger on black citizens, who they considered the real reason for the war and their main competition for work. More than 11 men were lynched in the streets and a black orphans' home was burned to the ground.
The remainder of the century in New York was a boom time for the city's population, which grew thanks to European immigration, and for businessmen, who took advantage of lax oversight of industry and stock trading during the so-called 'Gilded Age.' Plenty of public officials lined their pockets, none as aggressively as William Magear 'Boss' Tweed, notorious head of the city's Tammany Hall Democratic organization. Tweed used public works projects to steal millions of dollars from the public treasury before being toppled from power. These men built grand mansions along 'millionaires row' on lower Fifth Ave and entertained at hotels that stunned European visitors with their fine furniture and huge ballrooms. Along Broadway from City Hall to Union Square, multi-story buildings - the first 'skyscrapers' - were built to house corporate headquarters and newspaper offices.
As New York City's population more than doubled from 500,000 in 1850 to over 1.1 million in 1880, a tenement culture developed. The poorest New Yorkers invariably worked in dangerous factories and lived in squalid apartment blocks. The burgeoning of New York's population beyond the city's official borders led to the consolidation movement, as the city and its neighboring districts struggled to service the growing numbers. Residents of the independent districts of Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx and financially strapped Brooklyn voted to become 'boroughs' of New York City in 1898.
This new metropolis absorbed a second huge wave of European immigrants who arrived at New York's Ellis Island, and its population exploded once again, from just over three million in 1900 to seven million in 1930. During this period, horse-drawn trolleys disappeared from the city's streets as a major network of underground subways and elevated trains ('Els') made the city's outer reaches easily accessible.
As the immigrant population collected political strength, demands for change became overwhelming, and during the Depression, a crusader named Fiorello La Guardia (who previously worked as an interpreter at Ellis Island) was elected mayor. In three terms in office, the popular 'Little Flower' fought municipal corruption and expanded the social service network. He even read the Sunday comics to the city's children on the radio during a newspaper strike. Meanwhile civic planner Robert Moses used a series of appointed (ie unelected) positions to remake the city's landscape through public works projects, highways and big events like the World's Fairs of 1939 and 1964. Unfortunately, his projects (which include the Triborough Bridge, Lincoln Center, several highways and massive housing projects) often destroyed entire neighborhoods and routed huge numbers of residents.
New York emerged from WWII proud and ready for business. As one of the few world-class cities untouched by war, New York seemed the place to be. But prosperity wasn't limited to the city. In the 1950s, highways made access to the suburbs easy and hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers took advantage of them to move away permanently. It wasn't just an understandable desire for upward mobility that drew them away: many white residents left neighborhoods they felt had 'gone bad,' which was a barely polite way of saying that blacks and Puerto Ricans had taken their rightful place there too. The most prominent Democrat of the time, Robert Wagner, served three terms without significantly dealing with the economic and demographic changes in the city.
While the politicos dithered and played to various entrenched constituencies, the city began to slide. TV production, manufacturing jobs and even the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team moved to the West Coast, along with the Dodgers' cross-town rivals the New York Giants. Like most of the US, New York looked to the West for cultural direction, and eventually corporations began abandoning the city as innovation in communications technology made it possible to do business anywhere.
Time and again, public works projects were either badly executed (the highways that destroyed entire neighborhoods) or started and then abandoned altogether (a subway line under Second Ave). Local officials fought to keep the subway fare cheap - first a nickel, then a dime and finally 15ó well into the 1960s - which had the effect of keeping money out of the system for desperately needed improvements and expansion. The city's economic slide led to the threat of bankruptcy in the 1970s, which was staved off only by massive infusions of federal cash.
During the anything-goes Reagan years, the city regained much of its swagger as billions were made on Wall St. Ed Koch, the colorful and opinionated three-term mayor, seemed to embody the New Yorker's ability to charm and irritate at the same time. But in 1989, Koch was defeated in a Democratic primary election by David Dinkins, who became the city's first African American mayor. Dinkins, a career Democratic-machine politician, was rightly criticized for merely presiding over a city government in need of reform, though his moves to put more police on the streets helped curb crime. He was narrowly defeated for a second term in 1993 by moderate Republican Rudolph Giuliani. Thanks to the big drop in crime and the weakness of his Democratic-machine opponents, Giuliani triumphed in the 1997 mayoral election. For the first time in decades, the city contemplated huge (and necessary) projects to augment its infrastructure, such as a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River. Meanwhile, Times Square underwent at transformation from a crime- and drug-ridden redlight district in the 1960s and 1970s to a Disneyfied tourist attraction in the late 1990s.
Served by three major airports, two train terminals and a massive bus depot, New York City is the most important transportation hub in the northeastern USA. John F Kennedy Airport (JFK), 15 miles (24km) from Midtown Manhattan in southeastern Queens, is where most international flights land. Recently voted the third-worst airport facility in the world by business travelers, JFK is best avoided. La Guardia Airport in northern Queens is 8 miles (13km) from Manhattan and services mostly domestic flights. If you're arriving or departing in the middle of the day, La Guardia is a more convenient choice than JFK. Newark Airport is in New Jersey, directly 10 miles (16km) west of Manhattan. Flights to and from Newark airport are sometimes a bit cheaper because of the erroneous perception that the airport is less accessible than JFK or La Guardia. In fact, Newark has a large and spanking-new international arrivals terminal, and its four terminals are now linked by a monorail system.
All suburban and long-haul buses leave and depart from the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 41st St and Eighth Ave in midtown Manhattan. Bus lines available there include Greyhound, which links New York with major cities across the country; Peter Pan Trailways, which runs buses to the nearest major cities; Short Line, offering numerous departures to towns in northern New Jersey and upstate New York; and New Jersey Transit buses, with direct service to Atlantic City and the entire Garden State.
Pennsylvania Station, on 33rd St between Seventh and Eighth Aves, is the departure point for all Amtrak trains, including the frequent daily Metroliner service to Princeton, NJ, Philadelphia, PA, and Washington, DC. The Long Island Rail Road serves several hundred thousand commuters each day from a newly renovated platform area to points in Brooklyn, Queens and the suburbs of Long Island, including the resort areas. New Jersey Transit operates trains from Penn Station to the suburbs and the Jersey Shore. One commuter company departs from Grand Central Station, at Park Ave and 42nd St: the Metro North Railroad, which serves the northern suburbs and Connecticut.
It's a nightmare to have a car in Manhattan, but getting there is easy. Approaches from the east include the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95); the Long Island Expressway, which enters Manhattan through the Queens Midtown Tunnel (often choked by traffic); and the Grand Central Parkway (right off the Triborough Bridge), which cuts through Queens on its way from Long Island. From New Jersey, I-95 crosses the George Washington Bridge; I-95 also continues south as the New Jersey Turnpike, entering Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel (at midtown) and the Holland Tunnel (near Soho). Via I-95, it's 195 miles (315km) south from Boston, 105 miles (170km) north from Philadelphia, and 235 miles (380km) north from Washington, DC.
Buses run every 30 minutes between the city and JFK International Airport; the trip takes at least an hour. You can also take a subway to the Howard Beach-JFK station then transfer to a bus, a journey of about 75 minutes. Buses run every 30 minutes between the city and La Guardia; a water shuttle also runs along the East River, or you can catch the subway to Roosevelt Ave-Jackson Heights and transfer to a bus, but it will take you well over an hour. To get from Newark Airport, you can get a private or public bus from the city. Taxis from all three airports into the city are expensive.
New York has more than enough public transport options: driving your own car is tantamount to insanity in a city where traffic is horrendous, parking costs astronomical and petty thievery commonplace. New York car rentals are also notoriously expensive - you'll have to budget at least $95 a day (plus tax and insurance) for a medium-sized car - and petrol in the city costs far more than elsewhere in the US. If you really must rent a car, you'll need a license and a major credit card. The major agencies are in all three airports.
New York is infamous for its allegedly incomprehensible, dangerous subway. Although it's noisy, confusing and sometimes hot as hell, the subway is really not that difficult and is statistically safer than walking the streets in daylight. It's the fastest, most reliable way around town and most of Manhattan's sights are on its lines. Subway tokens, which let you ride the system as far as you want, are a bargain, or you can get a Metrocard. Both are acceptable currency on New York's blue-and-white city buses. New Jersey's Port Authority Trans-Hudson trains are a separate-fare system running from Manhattan to Newark and northern New Jersey.
City buses run 24 hours a day. Bus maps are available at subway and train stations, and well-marked bus stops have 'Guide-a-Ride' maps showing the stops and nearby landmarks. Between 10pm and 5am you can ask to be let off anywhere along your route, even if it's not a designated stop. Ferries run up the Hudson River Valley, from Midtown to Yankee Stadium and from Hoboken to the World Financial Center.
New York taxi drivers must be the most maligned group of workers in the world. Sure, they'll try to make a few extra bucks, but let's face it, they're bound to have a better idea where they're going than you do. Tip around 10% to 15% with a minimum tip of 50c. If you think you're being ripped off, either let the driver know or get a receipt and note the license number - the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission wields some serious clout, and cabbies are justifiably nervous of being reported to them.
Facts at a Glance
History
When to Go
Orientation
Attractions
Off the Beaten Track
Activities
Events
Getting There & Away
Getting Around
Recommended Reading
Lonely Planet Guides
Travelers' Reports
On-line Info
