The time came when the city of New York grew beyond the limits of the Island of Manhattan, though the island had seemed such a boundless tract of land, that it had been thought laughable for the City Plan to provide for streets over its entire length. The city grew larger and larger. It stretched up to the Harlem River, leaped over it and went branching out into the country beyond. Great libraries were built; hospitals for the sick; prisons for the wrong-doer, markets, churches, public inst.i.tutions of every kind. Buildings grew taller and taller until they came to be twenty and twenty-five stories high. Even then there were so many people that there were not houses enough to hold them all. So they swarmed over into the already large city of Brooklyn, on Long Island. And the ferry-boats being no longer able to carry the vast crowds in comfort, a great suspension bridge was built over the East River from New York to Brooklyn. At last the city of New York and the city of Brooklyn had so much in common, that they, with some of their suburbs, were united into one great city in the year 1898.
Then the Island of Manhattan became simply the Borough of Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of Greater New York.
So the story of the Island of Manhattan is ended.
TABLE of EVENTS
Year
1609. Hudson discovers the island of Manhattan
1613. Ship Tiger burned
1614. United New Netherland Company organized
1614. Fort Manhattan built
1621. West India Company organized
1626. Peter Minuit Governor Fort Amsterdam built
1629. Charter adopted under which the Manors were established
1633. Van Twillier Governor
1636. Annetje Jans" Farm laid out
1638. William Kieft appointed Governor
1641. First Cattle Fair held on Bowling Green
1642. Stadt Huys built Church built in the Fort
1643. Beginning of the Indian wars
1644. Fence erected, which was later replaced by a wall, and still later by Wall Street
1646. Peter Stuyvesant appointed Governor
1647. Kieft and Dominie Bogardus drowned in the wreck of the Princess while returning to Holland
1652. City of New Amsterdam incorporated
1653. New Amsterdam made a walled city by the building of a wall across the island
1655. Stuyvesant subdues the Swedes on the Delaware Indian war breaks out again
1664. English capture New Amsterdam and it becomes New York Richard Nicolls Governor
1667. Francis Lovelace appointed Governor
1670. Lovelace establishes the first Exchange
1673. First mail route established The Dutch retake New York
1674. English again in possession of New York Sir Edmund Andros Governor Captain Manning disgraced for surrendering New York to the Dutch
1678. Bolting Act created
1681. Andros recalled
1682. Thomas Dongan Governor
1686. Dongan Charter granted to the city
1688. New York and New England united, and Sir Edmund Andros Governor
1689. William III. becomes King of England Jacob Leisler a.s.sumes t.i.tle of Lieutenant-Governor and takes charge of New York
1691. Henry Sloughter Governor Leisler and Milborne executed Governor Sloughter dies
1692. Benjamin Fletcher Governor
1693. Bradford establishes first printing press in the colony
1696. Trinity Church built Bolting Act repealed Lord Bellomont appointed Governor Captain Kidd sails to search for pirates
1697. Streets first lighted at night
1699. City wall demolished and Wall Street laid out City Hall built in Wall Street
1700. First library opened
1701. Captain Kidd executed in England Lord Bellomont dies
1702. Lord Cornbury Governor
1705. Queen"s Farm granted to Trinity Church by Queen Anne
1708. Lord Lovelace Governor
1710. Robert Hunter Governor
1711. Public slave market established