NEW YORK CITY AND ITS

New York City after 1820, went through a period of extremely rapid economic and population growth. The geography of the city was not suitable to sustain such a large and rapid population growth despite its economical success. People, mostly immigrants, were shoved into areas of the city where they could afford housing resulting in extreme overcrowding and high social tensions between the different ethnic groups. The success of the city was not limited to only immigrants; Commuters suffered as well. The 1811 grid system of the city could not sustain the mass of people who used the mostly narrow roads to get around the city resulting in congested roads, extreme traffic and even chaos at times. Something had to be done to relieve the stress on the city due to its success. The first "subway" was created in 1888 called the "El", short for Elevated Train, which was owned by J.P Morgan. It was unsuccessful because of the lack of technology to create a method of mass transit suitable for the city. However, the "el" was the main method of transportation from the financial district in lower Manhattan to upper Manhattan. J.P Morgan and Russell Sage, Co-owners of the "El" opposed the creation of a subway system that would encompass the city because it would easily put the ragged "El" out of business. However, they lost their fight and the IRT (Interborough Rapid Transit) owners began building the first true subway of the city.

Building of the First IRT line on 15th street and Union Square, 1902

It was the creation of the first IRT line in 1904 that the city went through a dramatic change. The first IRT line spanned from the Financial district of NYC, spreading up through Manhattan into the Bronx. A few years later in 1908, it was expanded into Brooklyn Heights. These subways allowed for rapid urbanization in areas of the city that never have been urbanized before. The people who moved to the areas that were served by the IRT were not just random people but people of the same background and ethnicity as each other. It allowed immigrants, who lived in the Five Points section of the city to move out and find homes elsewhere in the city that they couldnÕt before because of a lack of transportation to scan the city for other places to live in. Mass transit also provided a means of getting to work from their new homes everyday. The trains in effect decentralized the city and helped spread the rapidly growing population of Manhattan into other areas in the city as well as "unite" the different ethnic groups in places within the five boroughs. It is mass transit that allowed segregation by class, race and ethnicity and function within the city, most notably Brooklyn and Manhattan, having profound effects on the parts of the city that people relocated to.

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