At the beginning of the Beaux-Arts era, New York City’s population was reaching the critical mass needed to sustain such a “style.” As the United States was internally shifting from a rural, farming country into an urban one, immigration from Europe was drastically increasing cities’ populations. Nowhere did this shift and influx occur more than in New York City. The city’s population went from 123,000 in 1820, to 1,080,330 in 1860, to over two million in 1890. And finally, when the other four boroughs joined Manhattan in 1898, its population surpassed three million (David Garrard Lowe, Beaux Arts New York, pg. 14-15). The Ecole des Beaux-Arts was located in Paris, one of the world’s premier cities, and it heavily stressed urban environments: Ancient Rome and Renaissance Paris were in no way rural. Beaux Arts emphasized grand, imposing structures only appropriate for a large city, and New York was becoming the perfect such city.