The Making Of The Modern City

The annexation of Brooklyn into the greater City of New York is perhaps the most significant event in local history.

But according to Julie Golia, public historian at the Brooklyn Historical Society, like most articles of important history, the story of how Brooklyn became a part of New York City is, in a word, "complicated."

"The late 1800s were a really complex intersection in general for both city's manufacturing growth and also the rise of a reform, progressive ethos, which envisioned a vastly efficient bureaucracy replacing the little unorganized municipalities that were in place at the time," she said.

Indeed, from a quick survey of the dynamics of 19th century New York City politics one sees twin cities, battling over water rights, struggling to claim a stake in history and teeming to develop a unique identity.

"There was the city of Brooklyn, seen by locals as this pure, pristine place where the middle class could flourish," Golia said. "Then there was the city of New York, notorious among most Brooklynites for having squalid tenements and the corruption of Tammany and Tweed."

So when Andrew Haswell Green—a New York lawyer living in Brooklyn around that time—started petitioning for the consolidation of an "Imperial City," the idea was met with staunch criticism.

"Brooklynites had this growing sense of nativism and didn't want to see their 'borough of churches' overrun by what they saw as the corrupt political machine of Manhattan," Golia said.

On the other hand, Golia pointed out that there were many ardent supporters of consolidation in Brooklyn as well.

"Real estate speculators were perhaps among those who most supported consolidation, feeling that with greater efficiency of city services, the value of land throughout the city would appreciate at a much greater rate, which turned out to correct," Golia said.

New investment began fluttering to the area; developers began gobbling up remaining farmland, parceling it off and selling it out into lots.

Before long, the former city, now borough of Brooklyn, which was at one time just a quiet hamlet of just a few thousand people, had grown to become an integral part of the super-city of the future.

“I think the most important thing to come out of the consolidation of Brooklyn and New York was that Brooklynites became very serious about their local history, developing a real self-conscious desire to preserve what it meant to be a Brooklynite,” Golia said.

Today, most people take for granted that New York City is made up of five boroughs, with Brooklyn often overshadowed by the ever-taller towers of the Gotham across the East River.

“But when one looks back at this period of New York and Brooklyn history, it's clear that much of the cities prominence in the world arena stems from the consolidation of the greater City of New York,” Golia said.