The Great Mistake -- Brooklyn History
Currier & Ives print of Brooklyn. Image via Wikipedia

Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4 of this story.

Some like to think of the creation of Greater New York City as a battle of good and evil: “good” Brooklyn, the City of Churches and Homes, versus “evil” Manhattan, the City of graft, corruption and power run amok, and, as we all know, evil won. Well, like in all things, it’s never that simple.

The real story is that there was enough power and corruption to go around, and the inevitability of the whole thing was probably in place from the day the Dutch started settling on both sides of the river.

It started with the waterfronts and rivers, and Manhattan always had the advantage. From the very beginning, it grabbed control of the bays, the East River, the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. When ferries began crossing back and forth to Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey, the Bronx and Queens, they were all under a Manhattan-centric schedule and control.

Water traffic was the lifeline of the city of New York, with goods and services coming and going, and people commuting to the financial and business center of Lower Manhattan. With everything and everyone coming to Manhattan, it was inevitable that a greater city would center in Manhattan.

Brooklyn, of course, was growing up to be a major city, itself, but its fortunes have always been tied to Manhattan. By the 1850’s, the state had combined Manhattan and Brooklyn’s police, fire and health boards into a joint metropolitan board, still separate in jurisdictions, headquarters, and officials, but sharing resources, information, and operating practices.

By the 1870’s, talk of a Greater New York City began in earnest, and in 1874, Manhattan annexed part of the Bronx, and began the process that would create the Bronx as a part of New York City, separating it from Westchester County. They annexed even more territory in 1895, setting up the borough as we know it today. Brooklyn, in the meantime, began to annex all of its towns into one united city.

As mentioned last time, the big push to annexation was in the hands of Manhattan city planner and visionary, Andrew Green, who began to press in earnest for a consolidated city in 1888. Green, who had his fingers in some of Manhattan’s best endeavors, including Central Park and the NY Public Library, wanted to consolidate the city so that it could run more efficiently and grow into a world class power.

He especially wanted to consolidate New York’s greatest treasure, its harbors, under one municipal jurisdiction, free of a petty fractured bureaucracy that was hindering the growth of the city. He wanted to develop transportation lines, bridges and new port facilities, but the fractured power of different municipal governments, along with their graft, petty politics and jealousies was helping to keep progress away from New York.

Of course, while Green’s initial efforts may have been mostly egalitarian and noble, it didn’t take the ignoble and venal long to see the wisdom of the plan, and the corrupt politicians and business interests in both cities soon jumped on board with both feet.

Tammany Hall ran Manhattan. One of the most powerful political machines to ever run a city ran Manhattan from 1854 to 1932. It was a Democratic machine, most famously led by “Boss” Tweed from 1858 to 1872. After his arrest and subsequent death, power passed from leader to leader, but whether the mayor of the city was a Democrat, or an occasional Republican, the real power of the machine ran New York.

It was notoriously corrupt, using New York’s rising immigrant population, especially the Irish, to further its goals. Very few people in power in NYC stayed that way without playing by Tammany’s rules, which included bribes, payoffs, extortion and, if necessary, more personal means of persuasion.

Tammany is a story by itself, with some very interesting characters, but in regards to our story, they were one of the powers behind annexation, and one of the main reasons why Brooklyn did not want to play ball.

The Republican Party, which had run Brooklyn for as long as Tammany ran Manhattan, was very powerful, as well. Many of them were personally against consolidation, and the loss of their own power. They rallied many to their cause by painting Manhattan as the city of Democratic graft and corruption, but there was certainly dissention in their ranks, as many (Republican) businessmen could see the advantage and opportunities offered by joining New York City.

Personal interests won out over political loyalty, and by 1895, Manhattan and Brooklyn Republicans had organized around Republican Boss Thomas Platt, who came out for consolidation, mostly as a way to somehow wrest control of the city out of the hands of Tammany Hall and the Democrats. Politically speaking, that would be a fight, with victories and defeats, for the next forty years.

And then there was Chicago. The Windy City loomed large over the talk of consolidation, because Chicago was on the rise. In 1893, the privilege of being host city, arguably to the most important World’s Exposition to ever take place in America, was given to Chicago, over New York. New York was not happy.

When that Exposition turned out to be a huge success, not to mention herald a huge change in America’s architecture, technology, and society in general, Chicago was the most mentioned city in the country. It was also growing, annexing its former suburbs, and growing in population and importance.

Chicago, with its railroads, and Great Lakes traffic, was the premiere city of the Midwest, as much a hub for business and industry as New York, and was more and more, a destination for new immigrants from Europe, making their population rise, as well as their potential workforce.

Chicago was a threat to New York’s dominance as premiere city in the United States. If ever there was a reason, outside of money and power, which the average person had no say in, for a consolidated New York, one need only look west. It was time to step up.

Andrew Green drew up the lines for consolidation, choosing what are now the five boroughs because of one thing: they brought together all of the major port facilities in the metropolitan area. Brooklyn and Manhattan are obvious, and the Bronx was basically a part of Manhattan, for the most part.

Long Island City was its own independent city, as well, and its shoreline was important to the plan, as was the rest of Queens’ Jamaica Bay and the waterfront and bays of Staten Island. It was all about access to the waterfronts and ports. Ironically, Staten Island, which wanted to secede in the 1990’s, voted overwhelmingly to become part of Greater New York, at the time.

In 1894, a non-binding referendum was passed, with a majority voting for consolidation, even in Brooklyn, where it passed by only 300 votes. This had two opposing results.

The pro-consolidation forces considered the vote a victory, and thought consolidation was now a done deal. They were wrong. The anti-consolidation opposition kicked into high gear, ratcheting up the anti-consolidation sentiment to the point that by 1895, they were able to block any further legislation.

Andrew Green was road blocked. It would take Republican Thomas Platt to wrest the movement away from the idealist Green. He got down and dirty, and called in his political favors and muscle, and the measure was pushed through the legislature in 1896. The charter was passed in 1897, and on January 1, 1898, Greater New York City was born.

So what really happened, and what did that mean for Brooklyn and the other boroughs? What would we be like if it had not happened, what did we win and lose? Who profited and who lost, in a major and minor way? The final chapter on Thursday.

The “Great Mistake”, part 1
The “Great Mistake”, part 2


What's Your Take? Leave a Comment

  1. Ironically most of the commercial port activity today is on the NJ side of the Hudson, a stretch of waterfront that was out of Green’s reach.
    He did manage to annex Staten Island, which is really and truly a part of NJ but not the part where the containerized shipping terminals would be located.

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