In 1898 the island of Manhattan, the previously independent
city of Brooklyn, and what are now the Bronx, Queens, and Staten
Island were consolidated into Greater New York. As a result, the
city was transformed from a nineteenth-century seaport of
countinghouses and cobblestone streets into a twentieth-century
metropolis of skyscrapers and subways. The city's economy, long
tied to its port and to manufacturing, acquired new strengths in
finance, banking, business management, communications, and
entertainment. Its population, fed by immigrants from abroad and migrants from the nation's
heartland, more than doubled -- from 2.5 million in 1890 to 5.6 million in 1920.With the opening of the first subway lines in 1904 and construction under way on Pennsylvania Station, commercial and residential boundaries were dramatically altered. The business district gravitated uptown toward the exclusive residential enclaves around Central Park; department stores moved from the Ladies' Mile on Sixth Avenue between Fourteenth and Twenty-third Streets to a newly created retail district some twenty blocks north. The construction of bridges and subway lines gave the city a modern infrastructure that fostered the movement of people and goods around all five boroughs, turning the metropolis that sprawled around New York Harbor into one functioning unit.
The Ashcan artists understood the human implications of this changing geography. Rather than conventional panoramic views of the city's parks, skyscrapers, or monuments, they examined New York at street level, finding moments of truth in scenes of dockworkers highlighted against the New York skyline, in the near collision of a motorized trolley and a horse-drawn cart, and in the tiny figures engulfed by the gigantic pit that would become the city's main railroad terminal.
Vivo video (:26)
The Statue of Liberty becomes a striking silhouette in this early
film footage shot by Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1898.
This, and other movies, is available by searching the Library of
Congress archives.