New York City

===Post-revolutionary period and early 19th century===
{{Main|History of New York City (1784–1854)}}
[[File:Washington's_Inauguration.jpg|thumb|A portrait of the [[first inauguration of George Washington]] in 1789]]
In January 1785, the assembly of the [[Congress of the Confederation]] made New York City the national capital, shortly after the war.<ref>[https://declaration.fas.harvard.edu/blog/january-superintending-1 "January Highlight: Superintending Independence, Part 1"], [[Harvard University]] Declaration Resources Project, January 4, 2017. Accessed December 29, 2023. "From January 11, 1785 through 1789, the Congress of the Confederation met in New York City, at City Hall (which later became Federal Hall) and at Fraunces Tavern."</ref> New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the [[Articles of Confederation]] and the first capital under the [[Constitution of the United States]].<ref name="Post-Revolutionary War"/> As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted several events of national scope in 1789; the first President of the United States, [[George Washington]], was inaugurated; the first [[United States Congress]] and the [[Supreme Court of the United States]] each assembled for the first time; and the [[United States Bill of Rights]] was drafted, all at [[Federal Hall]] on present-day [[Wall Street]].<ref name="Post-Revolutionary War">{{cite magazine |title = The People's Vote: President George Washington's First Inaugural Speech (1789) |url = https://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/document_page11.htm |magazine = [[U.S. News & World Report]] |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080925045133/http://www.usnews.com/usnews/documents/docpages/document_page11.htm |archive-date = September 25, 2008 |access-date = September 1, 2008 |url-status = dead }}</ref>

In 1790, for the first time, New York City surpassed [[Philadelphia]] as the nation's largest city. At the end of 1790, the national capital was [[Residence Act|moved to Philadelphia]].<ref name="residence act">{{cite web |title = Residence Act |url = https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Residence.html |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170222110855/https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Residence.html |archive-date = February 22, 2017 |access-date = April 23, 2017 |work = Web Guides: Primary Documents in American History |publisher = [[Library of Congress]] }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |first = Robert |last = Fortenbaugh |url = https://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_item/Nine_Capitals_of_the_United_States.htm |access-date = October 30, 2021 |title = The Nine Capitals of the United States |year = 1948 |pages = 9 |publisher = [[United States Senate]] }}</ref>

During the 19th century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43&nbsp;million.<ref>{{Cite book |last = Smil |first = Vaclav |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=52yuDwAAQBAJ |title = Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities |publisher = [[The MIT Press]] |year = 2019 |isbn = 978-0-262-04283-3 |page = 336 |author-link = Vaclav Smil }}</ref> Under New York State's [[gradual emancipation (United States)|gradual emancipation]] act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in [[indentured servitude]] until their mid-to-late twenties.<ref>"An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Negro Slavery in New York" ([[Laws of New York|L. 1799, Ch. 62]])</ref><ref>{{cite web |last = Harper |first = Douglas |year = 2003 |title = Emancipation in New York |url = http://www.slavenorth.com/nyemancip.htm |work = Slave North |access-date = February 6, 2013 }}</ref> Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential [[Founding Fathers of the United States|United States founders]] as [[Alexander Hamilton]] and [[John Jay]], the [[New York Manumission Society]] worked for abolition and established the [[African Free School]] to educate Black children.<ref name="Divided">{{cite web |url = http://www.nydivided.org/VirtualExhibit/ |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20120414223102/http://www.nydivided.org/VirtualExhibit/ |title = New York Divided: Slavery and the Civil War Online Exhibit |publisher = New-York Historical Society (physical exhibit) |date = September 3, 2007 |access-date = May 10, 2012 |archive-date = April 14, 2012 |url-status = dead }}</ref> It was not until 1827 that [[History of slavery in New York (state)|slavery was completely abolished in the state]].<ref>[https://www.nyhistory.org/community/slavery-end-new-york-state When Did Slavery End in New York State?], [[New-York Historical Society]]. Accessed January 16, 2024. "In 1799, New York passed a Gradual Emancipation act that freed slave children born after July 4, 1799, but indentured them until they were young adults. In 1817 a new law passed that would free slaves born before 1799 but not until 1827."</ref> Free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination and interracial abolitionist activism continued. New York City's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 (10,886 of whom were Black and of which 518 were enslaved) to 312,710 by 1840 (16,358 of whom were Black).<ref name=Census1790to1990/>
[[File:Hippolyte_Sebron_-_Rue_De_New-York_En_1840.jpg|alt=A painting of a snowy city street with horse-drawn sleds and a 19th-century fire truck under blue sky|thumb|[[Broadway (Manhattan)|Broadway]], which follows the Native American [[Wecquaesgeek]] Trail through Manhattan, in 1840<ref>{{cite news |last = Shorto |first = Russell |date = February 9, 2004 |title = The Streets Where History Lives |newspaper = [[The New York Times]] |url = https://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/09/opinion/the-streets-where-history-lives.html |access-date = June 19, 2013 }}</ref>]]

Also in the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and [[International trade|international trading center]], as well as by European immigration, respectively.<ref>{{cite book |last = Rosenwaike |first = Ira |url = https://archive.org/details/populationhistor00irar |title = Population History of New York City |date = 1972 |publisher = [[Syracuse University Press]] |isbn = 978-0-8156-2155-3 |page = [https://archive.org/details/populationhistor00irar/page/55 55] |url-access = registration }}</ref> The city adopted the [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811]], which expanded the city [[Grid plan#Early United States|street grid]] to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the [[Erie Canal]] through [[central New York]] connected the [[Atlantic Ocean|Atlantic]] port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the [[Great Lakes]].<ref>{{cite book |last = Bridges |first = William |title = Map of the City Of New York And Island Of Manhattan With Explanatory Remarks And References |year = 1811 }}; Lankevich (1998), pp. 67–68.</ref> Local politics became dominated by [[Tammany Hall]], a [[political machine]] supported by [[Irish diaspora|Irish]] and [[German diaspora|German immigrants]].<ref>{{cite book |last = Mushkat |first = Jerome |url = https://archive.org/details/fernandowoodpoli0000mush |title = Fernando Wood: A Political Biography |publisher = [[Kent State University Press]] |year = 1990 |isbn = 978-0-87338-413-1 |page = [https://archive.org/details/fernandowoodpoli0000mush/page/36 36] |url-access = registration }}</ref>

Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including [[William Cullen Bryant]], [[Washington Irving]], [[Herman Melville]], [[Rufus Wilmot Griswold]], [[John Keese]], [[Nathaniel Parker Willis]], and [[Edgar Allan Poe]]. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of [[Central Park]], which in 1857 became the first [[Landscape design|landscaped park]] in an American city.<ref>Waxman, Sarah. [https://www.ny.com/articles/centralpark.html "History of Central Park, New York"], NY.com. Accessed January 16, 2024. "New York's Central Park is the first urban landscaped park in the United States."</ref>

The [[Great Famine (Ireland)|Great Irish Famine]] brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing upward of one-quarter of the city's population.<ref>{{cite web |title = Cholera in Nineteenth Century New York |url = http://www.virtualny.cuny.edu/cholera/1866/cholera_1866_set.html |website = Virtual New York |publisher = [[City University of New York]] |access-date = October 31, 2021 }}</ref> There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.<ref name="Harris">{{cite book |first = Leslie M. |last = Harris |author-link = Leslie M. Harris |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=TZx6A_M0yjQC |title = In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 |date = 2003 |publisher = [[University of Chicago Press]] |isbn = 9780226317755 |at = Excerpted from pages 279–288 |section = The New York City Draft Riots |section-url = http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |author1=M.G. Leonard |title=H. Doc. 29-54 - Paupers and criminals. Memorial of the Corporation of the City of New York, relative to the exportation from abroad of paupers and criminals. January 25, 1847. Read, and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary |url=https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/SERIALSET-00499_00_00-043-0054-0000 |website=GovInfo.gov |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |access-date=22 June 2023 |pages=8–9 |date=20 January 1847 |quote='Leaving their homes,' [immigrants] say, 'with the brightest prospects,' alluring representations presented to them of the blessed state of American life, a few scanty coins in their pockets, though feeling in the enjoyment of rugged health, and surrounded by their young and innocent offspring, little did they imagine the trials to which they would be exposed; but at length they discover to their sorrow, and very natural discontent, that the foul steerage of some ocean-tossed ship is to form the filthy receptacle of persons, crowded too with hordes of human beings, with scarcely space enough to contain the half of them—certainly not more that the ''quarter'' of them ''comfortably''; and thus huddled together ''en masse'', they become the "''emigrant passengers''" destined to this country.}}</ref>