The History That New York City Takes for Granted

New York City has an image problem. The nightly news typically has a Big Apple spot about unprovoked street violence, subway attacks, drive-by shootings, shoplifting gangs and homeless encampments. But all of this gives a false impression. Gotham is, per capita, almost the safest of American cities. But most citizens of the United States do not know it.

The upcoming 400th anniversary of New York City, in 2025, offers a great opportunity to change the prevailing narrative. A world-class party could attract more tourists to the world’s greatest city. And there are dozens of ways to do this. My favorite would be a giant 400th-themed balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Four-hundredth birthdays are no ordinary occasions, and this is not an ordinary time. Hundreds of museums, historical societies, businesses, churches and professional associations are eager to do their part. And Gotham has thousands of citizens who care deeply about the past and who would eagerly embrace the opportunity to show their love for the city.

But instead of planning for a great commemoration, we may be confronting a lost opportunity. In his state of the city speech in January, Mayor Eric Adams said his administration would start planning for what he called this “major milestone in history.” But we’ve heard almost nothing publicly since then, and 2025 is only eight months away. This should be a major priority.

(A city official involved in the process said committees had been formed to coordinate planning among all city agencies and outside groups, including civic and historical organizations, and to invest money in events.)

When I co-chaired Columbia University’s 250th anniversary 20 years ago, committees had been meeting for 10 years before the event. Other major cities, from Venice to Moscow to Sydney, have regarded anniversaries as an occasion to party on an international scale. Does anyone really think that Boston will allow its founding in 1630 to pass unobserved in 2030? Or that Philadelphia will take a pass on its establishment by William Penn in 1682?

New York has never sufficiently communicated its historical record over its many centuries. While the city is regarded as an extraordinary place to view tall buildings, experience crowded streets and thrill to world-class museums and performing arts venues, American history as an experience has been better captured by Boston; Philadelphia; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga.; New Orleans; Newport, R.I.; and half a hundred other places.

In fact, no other “city” in the United States is as old and as historic. The Second Mesa in Arizona has had a few hundred residents on its exposed site for more than 800 years, but it has never been a promising place to put a larger settlement. St. Augustine dates from 1565, but it was insignificant even in Florida until the 20th century. Jamestown, founded in 1607 in Virginia, and Plymouth Plantation, begun in 1620 in Massachusetts, may be places we learned in school, but both disappeared and survive simply as small tourist attractions.

For more than two centuries, the Hudson River settlement has been the dominant American metropolis. Along the way, it became the planet’s busiest harbor, its manufacturing hub, its media center, business heart and financial capital. It remains the greatest city in the world; it is fitting that the United Nations has its permanent headquarters here.

Of course, its history has had a dark side, too.

In the 18th century, New York was a slave center second only to Charleston. Wall Street financed the slave economy in the United States after New York State abolished human bondage in 1827. The Draft Riot of 1863 remains the worst civil disturbance in American history. Slum housing, in the mid-1800s, was as bad as anything, anywhere. The world depression of the 1930s began on Wall Street. And, unbeknown to most residents, New York played a central role in the American Revolution. It was the site of the largest battle — a crushing defeat for the Continental Army — the focus of both British and American strategy, the site of the tragic prison ships and the headquarters of the British Army and Navy.

And, let’s not forget, the 400th anniversary celebrates the colonized New York. Native Americans made their home in what is now the city long before that.

Most important, as the historian Thomas Kessner has demonstrated, New York has throughout its history offered more opportunity than other American cities. In 1625, Dutch traders, though slave owners and traders, set a standard of toleration, diversity and acceptance of human difference, no doubt in the pursuit of business. The problem in New York history is not how to find something important to highlight but how to choose among so many thousands of competing possibilities.

History not only reminds us how we got to where we are now; it also provides clues as to where we are going and how to get there. No doubt, New York faces a host of challenges. But history also reminds us that New Yorkers, through grit and hard work, have overcome difficult obstacles throughout the centuries. The Civil War, devastating fires, economic depressions, market crashes, epidemic diseases and the Sept. 11 World Trade Center attack failed to bring Gotham to its knees.

No other place on the planet has shown so clearly that different cultures, races, classes, religions, political causes and languages can exist in proximity without setting off mayhem. The record of this most heterogeneous of cities shows that diversity, toleration and acceptance of human differences, even amid the density in which its residents reside, have usually led to peace. What has always counted most is effort, talent, creativity and opportunity.

New York was the first capital of the United States, the place where George Washington was inaugurated as the first president, where Congress passed the Bill of Rights in Federal Hall on Wall Street, where the world’s dominant stock exchange was founded, where regularly scheduled shipping service was invented, where aboveground public transit in America began, where the Civil War was financed, where tenement laws began to impose restrictions on slumlords, where Black culture and leadership began to thrive and where the Stonewall Riot in Greenwich Village in 1969 was a turning point in the modern L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. And it builds on that history every day.

Recognizing New York City’s 400th birthday calls for a celebration worthy of a great metropolis that remains a beacon of opportunity. The entire city ought to come together to make the world aware of New York’s uniqueness. Mayor Adams and Gov. Kathleen Hochul need to make sure that happens.

Kenneth T. Jackson is a professor emeritus of history at Columbia University, a president emeritus of the New-York Historical Society and the editor in chief of the Encyclopedia of New York City.

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