The year 1614 saw the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on the southern tip of Manhattan wh

In the pre-colonial era the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by various bands of Algonquian aa journey travel route tribes of Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island, the western portion of Long Island including the area that would become Brooklyn and Queens, Manhattan and the lower Hudson Valley including The Bronx.
The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer aa journey travel route in the service of the French crown, who sailed his ship La Dauphine aa journey travel route into Upper New York Harbor, where he spent one night aboard ship and sailed out the next day. He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême). In January a year later, Esteban Gomez, a Portuguese of African descent sailing for Emperor aa journey travel route Charles V of Spain, entered aa journey travel route New York Harbor and charted the mouth of the Hudson river which he named Rio de San Antonio. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration.
In 1609 English explorer Henry Hudson re-discovered the region when he sailed his ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon) into New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for his employer the Dutch East India Company. He proceeded to sail up what he named the North River, also called the Mauritis River, to the site of the present-day New York State capital of Albany in the belief that it may be a passage. When the river narrowed and was no longer salty he realized it wasn t a sea passage and sailed back downriver. He made a ten-day exploration of the area and claimed the region for his employer. In 1614 the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay would be claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland (New Netherland).
The year 1614 saw the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on the southern tip of Manhattan which would be called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam) in 1625. Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small band of the Lenape, in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders(about $1000 in 2006); a disproved aa journey travel route legend says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.
In 1664 Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of the colony of New Netherland, surrendered New Amsterdam to the English without bloodshed. The English promptly renamed the fledgling city New York after the English aa journey travel route Duke of York and Albany. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of Run (then a much more valuable asset) in exchange for the English controlling New Amsterdam (New York) in North America. Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans aa journey travel route and some epidemics brought on by the arrival of the Europeans caused sizable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670. By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200. In 1702, the city lost 10% of its population to yellow fever. New York underwent no fewer than seven important aa journey travel route yellow fever epidemics from 1702 to 1800.
New York grew in importance as a trading port while under British rule. The city hosted aa journey travel route the influential John Peter Zenger trial in 1735, helping to establish the freedom aa journey travel route of the press in North America. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain as King s College in Lower Manhattan. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765 as the Sons of Liberty organized in the city, skirmishing aa journey travel route over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.
aa journey travel route The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 entirely within the modern day borough of Brooklyn. aa journey travel route After the battle, in which the Americans were routed, leaving subsequent smaller engagements following in its wake, the city became the British military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees, until the war ended in 1783. The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration which destroyed aa journey travel route about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.
The assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York the national capital in 1785, shortly after the war. 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 aa journey travel route States. 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 Wall Street. By 1790, New York had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.
In the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration and development. A visionary development proposal, the Commissioners Plan of 1811, expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets aa journey travel route of the North American interior. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. 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 aa journey travel route Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Slaves aa journey travel route had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became a center aa journey travel route of interracial abolitionist activism in the North. New York s black population was over 16,000 in 1840. The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, and by 1860, one in four New Yorkers—over 200,000—had been born in Ireland.
In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County aa journey travel route of New York (which then included aa journey travel route parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens. The opening of the subway in 1904 helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. However, this development did not come without a price. In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board.
In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city s worst industrial disaster until the 9/11 World Trade Center disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.
New York s nonwhite population was 36,620 in 1890. In the 1920s, New York City was a prime destination for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American aa journey travel route South. By 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance flourished during the era of Prohibition, coincident with a larger economic boom that saw the skyline develop with the construction of competing skyscrapers.
New York became the most populous urbanized area in the world in early 1920s, overtaking London, and the metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.
Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern aa journey travel route Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America s place as the world s dominant economic power. The United Nations aa journey travel route Headquarters (completed in 1950) emphasized New York s political influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York s displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.
In the 1960s, New York City began to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates, which extended into the 1970s. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city s economic health in the 1980s, New York s crime rate continued a steep uphill climb through the decade and into the beginning of the 1990s. By the 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to increased police presence and gentrification, and many American transplants and waves of new immigrants arrived from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon aa journey travel route Alley, emerged in the city s economy, and New York s population reached all-time highs in the 2000 Census and then again in the 2010 Census.
aa journey travel route The city suffered the worst of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. A new complex, aa journey travel route which includes One World Trade Center, a 9/11 memorial and museum, and three other office towers, are being built on the site and are scheduled for completion by 2014.