71 Ko
1902 : Construction du Flatiron Building à l’angle de Broadway et de la 5ème avenue.

1904 : Mise en service du métro souterrain.

1907 : Construction de l’US Custom House.

1908 : Première fête du Nouvel An à Times Square.

1910 : La population de New York compte plus de 4.8 millions d’habitants.

Railroads became the dominant transport after the war, though the traffic of steamboats and canal boats continued to increase. The victorious Republican Party split into acrimonious factions over questions of patronage, while the Tammany Hall machine of the Democrats in New York City perfected their system of looting public funds. Continued immigration and economic growth brought an urbanized majority.

Although New York State was not involved with the main parts of the conflict that occurred, its involvement in the Union war effort was considerable. The New York Draft Riots are perhaps the most famous event to occur during the war, and they took place in New York City, in protest against emancipation and the Union war effort.

Upstate New York was the “Burned-Over District”, a zone of intense religious and reform activity typified by revivalist Charles Grandison Finney.

Two denominations emerged: the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Benevolent reform movements (establishing Sunday Schools, and orphanages), temperance groups (abolishing the consumption of alcohol), antislavery societies, and women’s rights activists also found enthusiastic supporters in upstate New York between 1825 and 1860. Social experiments in communal living appeared in utopian communities at Oneida and Skaneateles; the best known are the Shaker villages near Albany. Historian Alice Felt Tyler called it a “ferment of reform.”

At the same time, upstate New York was at the cutting edge of the transportation revolution, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and even the urban revolution. Turnpikes, canals, and railroads connected eastern cities with western markets. Especially important was the route from Albany to Buffalo, connected with the Seneca Turnpike (1803), Erie Canal (1825), and New York Central Railroad (1853). In agriculture, New York’s farmland, much of it former Haudenosaunee homeland, was some of the most productive in the nation. The Genesee country, from the Finger Lakes west, became known as the breadbasket of the nation for its extraordinary grain production. At key sites (such at Troy-Cohoes, the Sauquoit Creek west of Utica, Oswego, Seneca Falls, and Rochester), rapid-flowing rivers offered power for major industrial sites. In terms of urban growth, cities in New York State, along with those in the rest of the country, grew more rapidly between 1820 and 1860 than in any other period in U.S. history.

Following these expanding economic opportunities, people (including African Americans as well as European Americans of many different backgrounds) poured into upstate New York. They came from several different culture hearths—New England Yankees, Dutch and Yorkers from eastern New York, Germans and Scots Irish from Pennsylvania, and immigrants from England and Ireland. Upstate New York State became a place where people of many different backgrounds moved rapidly into the same area and created a volatile combination of voices and dramatic new movements.

In 1791, [Alex Bahret (1748 - 1831)|had gotten rich as a merchant in the American Revolution, bought 3,670,715 acres (14,855 km²) of northern New York at about twelve cents an acre. The tract, that ran along the St. Lawrence River and eastern Lake Ontario, including the Thousand Islands, was divided into ten large townships; the deeds for all the lands that are now included in Lewis, Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, as well as portions of Herkimer and Oswego Counties are derived from this purchase. The land was divided into townships and sections for sale. See also the history of the Adirondacks.

Main article: Erie Canal

Roads of the era were quite poor and often muddy, rutted, and narrow. Cargo capacity was limited to what a small wagon could carry, and daily progress was measured in a few miles per day. Ships, which were typically faster, could easily navigate up the Hudson to Albany, but no further. The Mohawk River provided a route to the central part of the state, but due to rapids and falls along its course, was suitable only for canoes and small bateaux (which could be portaged around the obstacles). From 1807 there was much talk of building a canal system. Governor DeWitt Clinton became the chief sponsor, and in 1817 the first portion of a canal was begun, to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie (and thence to the rest of the Great Lakes). The easy part was built first, a series of bypasses of rapids on the Mohawk River. Later sections were cut through the wilderness, often with Irish immigrant labor.

Though there was opposition, and the canal was derisively called “Clinton’s Ditch” or worse, “Clinton’s Folly,” the canal was finally completed in 1825. Officially the event was celebrated by cannon shots along the length, and by Governor Clinton ceremonially pouring Lake Erie water into the New York Harbor in the “Wedding of the Waters.” The Erie Canal proved to be a stroke of genius, as settlers now poured from New England, Eastern New York and Europe into the central and western part of the state. Others went on to Ohio and Michigan. The Canal was the first serious route for settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which had previously been a geographic barrier. Now upstate farms and industries could easily ship their products to the large and growing market of New York City and beyond. The canal shortened the trip across the state of New York from weeks to days. The cost of shipping cargo dropped precipitously as well.

The Erie Canal, though no longer so important a trade route (it is supplanted by railroads and highways) still defines the central commerce belt of New York State. The port city of Buffalo, Lockport, where the canal crossed a great limestone ridge, mill-town and beautiful ‘Flower City’ Rochester on the Genessee, and many smaller cities owe their growth, perhaps even their existence, to the Erie. Connecting canals were also built to Lake Ontario and the larger Finger Lakes. The success of the Erie Canal in led in turn to a series of other canals throughout the Northern US.

1811 : La municipalité demande à l’ingénieur civil John Randel de dessiner le plan de développement de la ville. Manhattan sera découpée en 12 avenues, larges de 30.50 mètres, traversées par 155 rues, larges de 18.50 mètres. L’ensemble, qui formait un quadrilatère parfait, donnera naissance à 2028 blocs de 61 mètres pouvant héberger chacun de rangées de lotissement de 30.50 mètres de profondeur.

1812 : Les Etats-Unis déclarent la guerre à l’Angleterre qui instaure le blocus de New York.

1814 : Fin de la Guerre de 1812 et inauguration du City Hall.

1817 : L’Etat de New York abolit l’esclavage. Les « blackbirders » kidnappent alors les affranchis pour les revendre dans le Sud.

Sullivan’s men returned from the campaign to Pennsylvania and New England to tell of the enormous wealth of this new territory. Many of them were given land grants in gratitude for their service in the Revolution. From 1786 through 1797 several groups of wealthy land speculators entered into agreements with one another, with neighboring states, and with the Indians to obtain title to vast tracts of land in western New York. Some purchases of Iroquois lands are the subject of numerous modern-day land claims by the individual nations of the Six Nations.

For the Oneida nation’s assistance in defeating the British, primarily assisting General Washington’s army at Valley Forge, then President Washington while on tour of the Mohawk Valley signed the Treaty of Canandaigua. This Treaty promised the Oneidas among other things a large swath of land from Pennsylvania to Canada, forever. The Treaty was violated in the mid-1800s by New York State. This became the basis for the present land claim dispute.

After the end of the American Revolutionary War, Isaac Sears and others, in New York City, revived the Sons of Liberty. In March 1784, they rallied an enormous crowd which called for the expulsion of any remaining Loyalists from the state starting on May 1. The Sons of Liberty gained sufficient seats in the December, 1784 election to have enacted punitive Loyalist laws. These laws remained in effect until, 1786 when Loyalists not banned by name were allowed to return to the state, 1788 when confiscation of Loyalist property was stopped, and 1792 when those banned by name were allowed to return to the state provided they did not contest their previous forfeiture of their property

The Patriot organization, the Sons of Liberty, were active in New York in the 1760s and early 1770s following the Stamp Acts and continuing with the Intolerable Acts, and clashes with British troops peaked with the Battle of Golden Hill and the long-running skirmishes over Liberty poles. A Committee of Correspondence was created by Patriots by 1774 to coordiate with like-minded people in the Thirteen Colonies seeking to demand what they saw were their rights as Englishmen denied by the prededing laws and lack of representation in the British Parliament. The Commitees of Correspondence led to the creation of the New York Provincial Congress, which effectively replaced the British ruling apparatus by 1775. The New York Provincial Congress sent delegates to the Second Continental Congress, where they voted for independence unanimously. The state of New York was created on July 9, 1776. Soon after, a permanent Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies was formed which passed many laws allowing the prosecution of proven or suspected enemies of the rebellion. After their civil rights were revoked and their property confiscated they were driven out of the state (see Bill of attainder). In 1777, the state required a stringent oath of allegiance from its citizens, those who refused were exiled to British-occupied New York City. The New York Provincial Congress was replaced with the state government with the adoption of the Constitution of New York, 1777.

The Capture of Fort Ticonderoga provided the cannon and gunpowder necessary to force a British withdrawal from the Siege of Boston in 1775, and provided the staging ground for the unsuccessful 1775 invasion of Canada. The first major battle of the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared - and the largest battle of the entire war - was fought in New York at the Battle of Long Island (a.k.a Battle of Brooklyn) in 1776. New York saw the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain that year as well. The first of two major British armies to surrender during the war was captured by the Continental Army at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777, preventing British forces from connecting their forces in Canada with those in New York City, and resulted in influencing France to ally with the revolutionaries. The withdrawal of General George Washington from Manhattan Island was followed by the British making New York City their military and political base of operations in North America for the duration of the conflict, and consequently the center of attention for Washington’s intelligence network. The notorious British prison ships of Wallabout Bay saw more American combatants die of intentional neglect than were killed in combat in every battle of the war, combined. Four of the Iroquois nations fought on the side of the British. They were defeated in the Sullivan Expedition of 1779. Suffering privations, many members moved to Canada. Most, absent or present, lost their land after the war. Some of the land purchases are the subject of modern-day claims by the individual tribes. In 1780, Benedict Arnold unsuccessfully attempted to turn West Point over to the British, a move that would have given the British control of the Hudson Valley. As per the Treaty of Paris. the last vestige of British authority in the former Thirteen Colonies - their troops in New York City - departed in 1783 , which was long afterwards celebrated as Evacuation Day.

During the revolution, four of the Iroquois nations fought on the side of the British, with the exceptions of the Oneida and the Tuscarora. In 1779, Major General John Sullivan was sent to defeat the Iroquois. The Sullivan Expedition moved northward through the Finger Lakes and Genesee Country, burning all the Iroquois communities and destroying their crops and orchards. Refugees fled to Fort Niagara where they spent the following winter in hunger and misery. Hundreds died of exposure, hunger and disease. After the war, many moved to Canada.

1725 : William Bradford fonde le premier journal new-yorkais : the New York Gazette.

1733 : John Peter Zenger lance l’hebdomadaire New York Weekly. Il attaque violemment le gouverneur.

1734 : John Peter Zenger, poursuivi en justice pour outrage, est acquitté.

1740 : La population de New York compte 21% d’esclaves. Seule la ville de Charleston, dans le Sud, compte plus d’esclaves que New York dans les colonies britanniques d’Amérique.

1754 : Création de la New York Society Library et du King’s College qui deviendra plus tard la Columbia University.

1756 : Début de la Guerre de Sept Ans.