1. New York
Its modern success is owed to its
founders master planning
Mark Brandon
Learning important facts to overcome
my own misconceptions of the big city.

2. Episode 3 Sunshine and Shadow
• Fredrick Law Olmstead goes back to complete Central Park
in Summer of 1865, after the end of the Civil War.
• Angel of the Water’s drawn from the Bible in St. John, was
located at the Bethesda Fountain. His goal of memorial
dedicated to the Union Naval Dead of the Civil War.
• A place for “all people” to enjoy and feel a place of there
own in a growing city of diversity. This would be a way to
tear down the barriers of society.
• He knew with a lynch pin for the city to grow around, New
York could be a US hub and a worldwide hub.
• A city of 1 million needed a park escape the city and
experience the outdoors and nature. Making Olmstead a
layman psychologist of the masses.

3. Episode 3 Sunshine and Shadow
• City is divided into the Have’s and the Have Not’s.
• Civil War end until WWI period is the representation of wealth and progress of
industrialization. Social issues are exacerbated.
• Vanderbilt built the greatest shipping line and sells it reinvesting in the railroad
industry.
• Gould and Fisk tried to corner the Gold Market, among many of the common place
schemes to gain wealth in the various markets.
• People live on margin and far beyond their means, as the New York Stock Exchange
fuels the economic boom.
• In 1867 the last tree from the Dutch era is destroyed when the East River freezes
over for 5 weeks, a marker of the modernization.
• New york Bridge Co. Inc. builds the Brooklyn Bridge. Headed by a 61 year old
German born engineer John Augustus Roebling, who had previously invented wire
rope. His 32 year old son, a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, takes over
construction after his dad dies from a crushed foot injury.
• Bridge was key to growth of Manhattan into Long Island areas which seemed
endless at the time.

4. Episode 3 Sunshine and Shadow
• Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall (aka New York City Hall).
• A friend of all working immigrant poor, providing jobs, legal
support, orphanages, schools, etc.
• He has inside information of city growth plans, then later buys land
or invests using this information not available to others. This
launches his ability to run Tammany Hall using his connections in
City Hall. He eventually is turned on by a member which he caused
to lose a large sum. This eventually makes him the scapegoat for all
political and economic machine which was owed to progress in the
steel and steam era.
• 1890 1/2 of all millionaire’s have now moved into New York to get
into the center of all businesses.
• 28 October 1886 Statue of Liberty is unveiled after its foundation is
finally paid for by the New Yorkers.

5. Episode 4
The Power and the People
• 1883 Emma Lazarus Russian wrote the 14 line poem for a
contest to place on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.
Sadly, she was so sick, she could not make it on deck to see
it when she later arrived and died 3 months later in her
Brooklyn home.
• 1896 Edison’s invention of motion pictures creates great
stir, interest, and economic potential.
• 1880’s was the Easten and Southern European influx, as
opposed to the Northern in prior period.
• 1890 Ellis Island in 30 years 12 million people arrive and are
processed for immigration. The famous La Guardia was a
federal immigration interpreting agent whom the airport
was named.

6. Episode 4 The Power and the People
The New York Subway and railways are the most
important single ingredient added to the city
• Electricity and modern lighting are introduced and is the means of modernizing New York.
• Mass Transit is not the social crutch I had envisioned it to always be in any city. The 5Cent fair and 10Cent
round trip, was singularly the economic fuel for fifty years of economic growth. The momentum of this
economic leverage, made the city billions of dollars through business and personal life impacts created by
putting the system in place.
• Mass transit is used by every walk of life then as it is today. Without a means of travel which is
communications and conveyance for everyone, and which no significant technological, social, or economic
progress throughout world history has occurred without. This is the proof of the above statement, the
New York subways are always used and crowed currently.
• The Subway and rail system is the absolute key to growth of Manhattan, and later the annexing of the
surrounding suburbs called “Burroughs”, by means of travel to and from Manhattan.
• Currently in all other cities except Washington D.C, no mass transit programs are anything but social
support for the poor and disadvantaged. These current programs are some of the highest cost per user
and greatest producers of pollution generated per user as well. Just look at every bus or trolley car and it
is so easy to see how wasteful all others cities are. This standard of evaluation clearly shows New York and
Wash D.C. are total successes, and how without them, there is no metropolis and no ability to live outside
the area of where the heart of the workday is located.
• The architectural prowess of the two trains station buildings and the artwork made a public connection of
every walk of life . All walks of life without requiring translation could navigate their own lives with the
same means of travel at a price that could be afforded by virtually everyone.
• It is obvious that no individual transportation system could function and allow growth with so many
thousands of people per square block or mile. It is also clearly what makes living in the city itself possible,
with any quality.

7. Episode 4 The Power and the People
Abuse of workers in economic boom
• Ellis Island Immigration Station became needed to handle the huge volume of people coming
• Abundance of immigrant workers creates a perfect storm when combined with a lack of
appropriate laws to prevent workplace safety, conditions, and building safety problems.
• The power of money, in the hands of those who are prejudiced, unprofessional, concerned with
only themselves, or otherwise, and only looking the next profits statement, created New York as a
third world nation city. It was also is peril.
• To move to a first world city was only possible as a result of many people suffering and dying in the
many tenements, jobsites, and factories. This was pinnacled by the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire
which killed 121 women unable to get out of exits locked from the outside. This occurred at the
top 8th, 9th, and 10th floors, resulting in many jumping to their deaths.
• The abuse of workers created so much revolt that a general strike was called for by an unknown
Jewish factory working girl at a public meeting who could only speak Yiddish. This is a testament to
the power and newly arrived status of immigrants.
• The Little Italy’s, Little Ireland’s, etc. created powerful economic cyclic spending and were
responsible for the financial momentum throughout New York. This made powerful business
sectors and the most highly trained and proficient trades people, all with enormous leverage.
• These ethnically powered areas also created great heritage and American nationalist pride which
was significant in subsequent World Wars , the Cold War, and all other Undeclared Wars and
Conflicts since. The dilution of this greatness has created many current social problems, and I
perceive this as the one of the most dangerous threats to the American way of life.
• La Guardia Airport is named after an Immigration Agent translator at Ellis Island.

8. A Merger that puts New York on Top
By Mike Clough La Times 1/16/2000
• The issue is: “…whether New York, the unrivaled capital of the old American
national industrial economy, will dominate…”
• E commerce requires no specific location, making cost of operations and employee
costs work against those high costs of New York.
• Many industries such as steel and television have been lost to these same
economic forces.
• In past decades many sectors of business have consolidated into bigger
conglomerates and impacts US and worldwide economies. This could greatly
assist New York’s infrastructure to takeover and centralize these businesses.
• Crime and social-economic issues have created decades of negative quality of life
in New York resulting in empowering other locations such as Atlanta, Silicon Valley,
Redmond, Los Angeles, Pittsburg, Chicago, etc.
• The public as a whole has grown so tired of the problems of urban life, that I feel
this is the single largest problem New York has to overcome on this issue.
• The areas outside New York are very competitive among each other and lack
cohesive goals, giving leverage to a centralized New York.
• New York has all aspects of business and the common condensed office spaces to
handle the centralizing of the growing global information technology economy.

9. Immigrants and Cities
Driving factors of immigration
• “…unintentionally captured Americans' ambivalent attitudes toward immigrants, beckoning "the homeless, tempest-tossed"
while labeling them "the wretched refuse" of the Old World”.
• This noteworthy essay does not address the lack of understanding in the origin of the poem, from a Russian woman who
had not even made it to the US yet, entering a contest for the Statue of Liberty! This is not a story which I could find anyone
who could admit to knowing, but all agreed it was profoundly important!
• Europeans have migrated around Europe for financial and political reasons for hundreds of years. This moving temporarily
for work and returning to or with the family is an idea not common in todays New World society, and must be introduced at
the beginning of this presentation.
• From 1870 to 1920, we transitioned as agrarian society into an urban one. Modernizing agriculture, national transportation
systems, and industry growth laid the foundation for big cities; millions of immigrants provided much of the required
population growth to support it.
• Wary and cautious native-born Americans who originated from Europe, had natural concerns mass immigration would
"Europeanize" the American society and way of life. These were the same concerns they left to start the Free New World.
• Present analysis in the mixing of Old and New World forces shaping American urban society during its most explosive era.
• Most immigrants, per the essayist, were not political or religious refugees but job-seekers, and transatlantic migration was
simply the extension of an old practice of traveling within Europe in search of economic opportunity.
• No one doubts that the flow of migrants out of Europe accelerated in the nineteenth century, beginning in the 1840s and
1850s, then shot upward after 1870 when steamships almost completely replaced sailing ships.
• The sailing ships were slower and much more disease perpetuating, and until the 1850’s when ships became faster with the
combination of and replacement by steam power, deaths from typhus, cholera, or other contagions frequently killed 10
percent, and occasionally 25 percent, of the passengers during a crossing. In the 1850s mortality fell sharply, as voluntary
and government-imposed health and sanitary regulations were implemented.

10. Immigrants and Cities
slavery, ratios of men and women
• After 1880 migration to the United States started changing its national origins and
more importantly, it changed according to purpose: from settlement on farmland
to wage labor in industry, construction, or mining.
• European immigration from the East and Southern regions became majority.
• In 1900, 72 percent of German and about 84 percent of the Irish-stock men
worked outside of agriculture. These men by then "had attained relative
occupational parity with native white America." Supporting this was many post-
Famine Irish women who had a range of white-collar jobs.
• Black slaves existing in the South kept pressure on the available work and
depressed wages as compared to other areas in the US, this kept the blacks in the
South and prevented the desire of immigrants from migrating to the Southern
region. In the post WWI era passed strict immigration laws and this allowed the
Blacks to start migrating out of this Southern region and into the rest of the US.
• The men to women ratio in these immigrant population centers, had great power
over the family life being created as an “American way of life”.
• A much different dynamic would have occurred if this balance was more like Italy
for example, where it was 3 men per every 1 woman in the population.

11. Immigrants and Cities
Various government interventions
• The census chief pleaded in 1896 for a restriction law, since 40 percent of migrants
by then were arriving from East and South Europe.
• To show how disconnected and prejudiced a government official can be; "They are
beaten men from beaten races," wrote Walker. "They have none of the ideas and
aptitudes which fit men to take up readily and easily the problem of self-care and
self-government, such as belong to those who are descended from the tribes that
met under the oak trees of old Germany to make laws and choose chieftains.“
• Not mentioned is the Flu Pandemic effects on populations immigrating in the
essay. This had to have great implications leading up to 1924.
• Anti-immigrant agitation led to a harshly restrictive quota law of 1924, which,
along with the Great Depression, slowed the flow of European newcomers to a
trickle.
• These effects greatly manipulated the coming and going of cyclical immigrants
taking money and goods back to the old country.
• It is easy to see how Borders, Language, and Culture are the most important
tenants of keeping an orderly society with generous and fair immigration policies.
The problems of today with unfair and illegal immigration hurt both the legal
citizens and the legal immigrants with devastating financial impact.