Following independence, the city was - for a brief period - the country's capital, with Washington inaugurated as first President of the United States, on the steps of Federal Hall in 1789.

By 1835, the population increased to 242,300, making it the largest city in the country. Around the middle of the century, the population was around 800,000, and by 1861 the American Civil War had begun. With the war going poorly for the Union, President Lincoln initiated the draft in 1863 and on July 13, draft riots broke out in the area of Five Points [now close to the Federal Building] which resulted in many dead and injured after clashes with federal troops.

In 1898, the five boroughs joined together - by the smallest of margins in Brooklyn's case. Until then, New York City consisted solely of Manhattan and the Bronx, but Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island merged to create the city of five boroughs. Between 1900-1910, the population exploded from over 3.4m to 4.7m. What followed was an unprecedented expansion of building and population growth as the huge levels of immigration during the first two decades of the century increased the population of New York to more than 6.9m by 1930. The city's power and cultural importance grew throughout 1940-1960.

However, by the 1970s, it had the image of a crime-ridden, corrupt city. Tourism declined and the city hit a financial crisis. It was feared the city would have to declare bankruptcy. With President Gerald Ford refusing to help the city out of its financial crisis with federal money, headlines in the New York Daily News read 'Ford to City: Drop Dead'. However, a clever tourism campaign in the 1970s, featuring the 'Big Apple' icon helped New York through this period. During this time, the World Trade Center was built [1973], with most New Yorkers at the time regarding it as an ugly blot on the skyline.

By the 1990s, with a highly successful zero-tolerance crime policy, the turnaround in the city's fortunes continued. The unpopular mayor during this time - Rudy Giuliani - felt his popularity spike briefly with his composed handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. Today it continues to defy its old image with statistics indicating the lowest crime rate of any metropolitan area in the country [and lower than London's] with the highest per capita income of any large city in the US.

A Short History
What is now the New York area was populated mostly by the Munsee branch of the Lenape indian nation. They in turn gave their names to many places in the present day city. Canarsie in Brooklyn is named after one branch of the Lenape along with the Algonquian. Giovanni da Verrazano was the first European to see New York Harbour in 1524, when he dropped anchor in the narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn. Henry Hudson sailed into the harbour in 1609 on a commission for the Dutch East India Company in his search for the North West Passage. However, Europeans first settled in New York in 1624, with many Dutch families settling on the tip of Manhattan, they named the settlement Nieuw Amsterdam and the colony Nieuw Netherlands. They also named one area Breukelen [Brooklyn], another Haarlem [Harlem] and what is today the Bronx was named after Pieter Bronck.

Exactly 140 years after Verrazano, two British Navy battle groups arrived in the colony. One dropped anchor in Grafe Ende Bay, (now Gravesend Bay, in modern-day Brooklyn) and marched marines north to take the ferry crossing on the East River. The other sailed up the Hudson River just before dawn into what is now Outer New York Harbour. This fleet dropped anchor in the Narrows, adjacent to what is now Bay Ridge and Staten Island.

As dawn broke one of the few Dutch farmers on Staten Island woke to see British warships at anchor. Frigates sailed to the settlement and took it without a fight. The British Commander - Richard Nicolls - gave the colony to the the King's brother, the Duke of York, James. He named the area New York and the city New York too.

The town grew rapidly, and it remained an important city, with the New York colony eventually becoming one of the largest of the 13 American colonies. During the revolution, with his army in tatters after losing the Battle of New York at Brooklyn, Washington's army was forced into retreat, pursued by General Cornwallis's much larger army.

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