Gotham Review Sheet
Gotham
Review Sheet
I Beginnings, 1500 – 1776
Glaciers, Natives and first Settlers
1.Wisconsin Glacier; Lenape; Sapokanikan; Manahatta ;Giovanni de Verrazano, 1524; Henry Hudson, 1609
2. Dutch West India Company chartered 1621; New Amsterdam founded, 1625; Peter Minuit “purchases” Manhattan from natives for 60 guilders; Slave trade begins 1626, Patroons, 1629
3. Willem Kieft – war on Indians 1643-45; Bowling Green; David Petersen Devires; Adriean Vander Donck; “Half Freedom” granted; – 11 African families receive grants of land -1644
4. Peter Stuyvesant – Director general – 1647-1664; First Rosh Hashanah, 1654
II The English colonial period and The War for Independence
5. English Conquest of New Netherland, 1664, Trinity Church, 1694, Great Slave Plot, 1741
6. New York Tea party, 1774, Battle of Brooklyn Heights, 1776, Battle of Saratoga, 1777, Washington inaugurated at Federal Hall, 1789, Aaron Burr, Richmond Hill, Federal Architecture
III Post War Era – 1783 – 1815
7. John Jacob Aster; Cornelius Vanderbilt; Alexander Hamilton; Robert Fulton and the Clermont, 1807; Dewitt Clinton; Erie Canal, 1817-1825; Commissioners’ Grid Plan 1811; Black Ball line 1817
8. Washington Irving; Knickerbockers
IV Antebellum New York, 1815 – 1860 (Order and Disorder)
9. Population growth – 65,000 in 1800 to 800,000 in 1865; Transportation revolution; Market revolution; Consumer Revolution; The Industrial Revolution and the transformation of workplace; James Gorden Bennett, the New York Herald, 1836, and the rise of the :Penny Press” ; P.T.Barnum and the revolution of cultural values and entertainment; , Horace Greeley, the New York Tribune and the political press
10. Emancipation of Slaves in New York, 1827, All Saints Free Church, Freedom’s Journal
11. Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass, 1855 ; Irish Potato Famine, 1846; Kleindeutchland; Five Points; Plague – Yellow Fever and Cholera; The Great Fire of 1835; the Race Riots of 1834; The Croton Reservoir system – 1842
12. John Hughes, Archbishop of New York; Charles Loring Brace and gthe Children’s Aid Society; Fernando Wood, Tammany Hall, William Marcy “Boss” Tweed Thomas Nast and the rise and fall of Tammany Hall; Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux and the construction of Central Park, 1858 – 1873,
13. The Crystal Palace; A.T. Stewart’s Department Store, 1846; Nativism; The New York City Draft Riots, 1863
The Gilded Age (Sunshine and Shadow)
13. The New Immigration, 1886 – 1924 (13.5 million people enter through New York – 2.5 million Jews, Italians, Eastern Europeans; Lower East Side – reaches 1,000 people per acre)
14. Tenements ; Muckrakers.; Ellis Island,; Emma Lazarus
15. Elevated Railroad ; Electric lights; Electric Motor 1893; first central station, 1882; John Augustus, Washington, and Emily Roebling and the construction of The Brooklyn Bridge – 1883; Actualities, 1896; The Consolidation of New York, 1898
16. Henry George; J.P. Morgan; Jacob Riis; Andrew Carnegie; Thomas Edison; William M. Tweed;.Al Smith
Essay Questions: All students will answer the first question at home. It is to be handed in on the day if the examination prior to beginning the test. Of the remaining six questions, four will appear on the test from which you will choose two to answer as part of the examination. Obviously, this means you cannot prepare to do only two questions. You should prepare to answer any of the following questions.
Each answer should be approximately 2-3 pages with 1.5 spaces between each line, using an ariel font, size 11.
Essays:
To be done at Home
What does it mean to be a New Yorker? Are you a New Yorker? What have you leaned about the history of the city that puts your experience and your sense of identity in meaningful context and perspective? What are the favorite topics, individuals or events you have studied this term?
Three of the following questions will be on the Final Examination. You will write about one of your choice.
1) Who were the most influential New Yorkers you have studied? Choose four New Yorkers and put their lives and achievements and legacy in context. Place them in time and in the historical circumstances of their lives. Do these individuals each say something different about the New York experience? Do they share any similarities?
2) There is an old adage that dates from the Middle Ages – “City air makes a free man.” Discuss this concept with respect to the history of New York City. What has “freedom” meant here? Has freedom for some meant servitude, exploitation for others? Has freedom been more dream than reality? Is New York the laboratory for historically valid and important extensions of the idea of freedom? Have New Yorkers given up aspects of existence by pursuing a certain kind of freedom here? Have New Yorkers been in the forefront of the historic struggle for freedom?
3) Transportation has been a continuing factor in the evolution of New York since the Half Moon sailed up what would be named the Hudson River in 1609. Discuss five different episodes in the history of transportation that have transformed the history of this city.
4) New York City history is the history of immigration. Have immigrant groups been welcomed with open arms to New York? How have various groups struggled and risen through the “social geography” of the city? Consider the unique roles of Native Americans and African Americans in the context of the changing city.
5) All history turns on certain events that alter its direction and shape its character and destiny. Discuss four such turning points in the history of New York City.
6) The so-called “Gilded Age,” the last three decades of the 19th century have been described as an age of extremes – a sunshine world and a world in the shadows. Discuss four events, individuals or social, political developments that characterize either the sunshine or the shadow world of New York during this period. t
7) Who are the most influential New Yorkers you have studied? Choose four New Yorkers and put their lives and achievements and legacy in context. Place them in time and in the historical circumstances of their lives. Do these individuals each say something different about the New York experience? Do they share any similarities?