#150 Consolidation! Five Boroughs, One Big City

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Places & Travel, History, Documentary, Society & Culture

4.7 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2013

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Here's the story of how two very big cities and a whole bunch of small towns and villages -- completely different in nature, from farmland to skyscraper -- became the greatest city in the world. This is the tale of Greater New York, the forming of the five boroughs into one metropolis, a consolidation of massive civic interests which became official on January 1, 1898. But this is not a story of interested parties, united in a common goal. In fact, Manhattan (comprising, with some areas north of the Harlem River, the city of New York) was in a bit of a battle with anti-consolidation forces, mostly in Brooklyn, who saw the merging of two biggest cities in America as the end of the noble autonomy for that former Dutch city on the western shore of Long Island. You'll be stunned to hear how easily it could have all fallen apart! In this podcast is the story of Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island (or Richmond, if you will) and their journey to become one. And how, rather recently in fact, one of those boroughs would grow uncomfortable with the arrangement. www.boweryboyshistory.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys episode 150 consolidation and the making of New York City.
0:06.6	Hey, it's the Bowry Boys.
0:08.1	Hey.
0:09.6	The Bowry Boys is brought to you by eurochipo.com.
0:14.4	Eurochipo's editors expect and recommend the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:19.9	On the web at eurochipo.com.
0:23.6	Hi there, welcome to the Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:26.4	And this is Tom Myers and we are so happy to have you with us on our 150th episode.
0:32.7	150 episodes or our sesquicentennial.
0:36.1	Sesquicentennial or in dog years. That's 8,000 episodes.
0:40.3	Pity the poor dogs.
0:42.3	We have covered so much material in the past few years on the show in all of these episodes.
0:48.3	From Henry Hudson and the have moon.
0:50.5	All the way up to the Robert Moses years and we give him a special shout out on this show.
0:55.6	Episode 100 if you haven't already pushed your way through that one.
0:59.6	So we sat down and thought, what can we do for 150 that would feel and seem extra special.
1:05.3	But would actually be maybe a story or something that we haven't really shed any light on thus far.
1:10.6	And you know, there were some big topics that came up that we haven't attempted yet.
1:15.1	For example, the Empire State Building is a big one that people often bring up.
1:19.4	But we decided instead on something that I think is more momentous than even the Empire State Building.
1:25.6	That would be the consolidation of New York City of Greater New York.
1:29.9	The moment in time in 1898 where the five burrows of New York City were officially formed.
	...

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