FREE ESSAY ON AMERICAN CITY - NEW YORK

AMERICAN CITY - NEW YORK

Cities usually go through a certain time line of development and expansions. The city of
New York is an example of one of these cities. New York started out as a tiny Dutch city
and grew to what it has become today: One of the most crowded and modernized cities of
the world. It has gone through stages of growth, just like a person goes through stages
of life and growth. The stages of growth for this city are The Trading Town, The Emerging
City, The Birth of Metropolis, and The Contemporary Metropolis. 
The Trading Town was the first period of time for New York. It took place within the
first 200 years that the city was founded, until 1820. As said above, New York started as
a small Dutch village full of gabled houses. Eventually, the village grew into an
established city of Federal Buildings. Of course, it still had a long way to go before it
could truly be called a city.
The next period of time took place from 1820-1870. The Emerging City expanded this city a
little wider. This period was definitely richer. It began to expand north, growing up
Manhattan. The people of the city celebrated being America's economic capitol. The older
city was abandoned to the commerce. Another event took 
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place in the southern part of New York during this time period; lower Manhattan was hit
with it's first wave of European immigrants. 
The Birth of Metropolis was probably the most important and expensive time period. It
took place from 1870 to 1910. The tenement reform finally succeeds. Reformers made the
Tenement Housing Act of 1901. There was the construction of the Dumbbell Tenements,
tenements that were in the shape off a dumbbell. The middle class were permitted to live
in mansions and apartments with light and heat; on the other hand, the poor were forced
to live in the old, dark city in these dumbbell tenements. There was also the development
of the French Flats and the introduction to the Cast Iron Age (1850-1880). As seen in the
Empire Plaza Museum, there are pictures of how people in New York lived at this time. In
one picture, a rag picker is shown digging through the garbage. Rag picking was a typical
profession of the poor; they made less than a dollar a day. 
The last period of the construction of New York was the Contemporary Metropolis, which
took place from 1910 until present day. Most people during this period migrated from the
city area to the suburbs. Their moving was caused by the over crowding of people looking
for work and immigrants. There are still the same problems faced by the New York
population today.
A densely populated city like New York can't grow into the city it has become overnight.
As shown by these eras it has taken over a decade to grow into one of the most populated
and busy cities throughout time. It started out as a small town and grew 
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to be an amazing site for both visitors and residents. There is never a dull moment and
has taken an insane amount of time for New York to become the city that never sleeps