New York

Cultural life

Cultural institutions

The state is home to some 1,300 museums and art galleries, more than 200 theatres, and dozens of performing arts centres. Much of the style and tone of life in the United States is set in New York City, which remains the artistic and cultural capital of the country. The fashion industry is headquartered in its garment district. The heart of the country's live theatre is found on and off Broadway; many television programs originate in New York City, where several broadcast and cable networks have their home offices, and many motion pictures are filmed on its streets. The city's museums, theatres, orchestras, dance companies, and other institutions set standards across the country. This cultural preeminence was celebrated by E.B. White when he wrote:

The city is like poetry. It compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents—but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.

Cultural activities are not confined to New York City, however. Many art museums are located in the state's large and small cities. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, in Buffalo, has collections of contemporary American and European paintings and sculptures. In Rochester are the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, the Rochester Museum and Science Center, the Strong National Museum of Play, and the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House. Syracuse's Everson Museum of Art houses collections of American and international art in a building designed by I.M. Pei, and the city's Erie Canal Museum is devoted to the history of the canal. The New York State Museum in Albany is the oldest (founded 1836) state museum in the United States. Symphony orchestras outside New York City include those of Buffalo and Rochester, while the Eastman School of Music in Rochester is internationally known. Fine architecture is found across the state, and the performing arts are pursued by professional and amateur groups. The cultural life of the state's many college and university towns often is centred on these institutions.

The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs is the summer home of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York City Ballet. Theatrical performances also are held at this modern cultural centre. The Chautauqua Institution, founded in 1874 on Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York, inspired the national chautauqua movement of public lectures and adult education during the late 19th and early 20th centuries; the institution now offers a wide range of cultural and educational activities, including concerts, opera, drama, and lectures.

Cooperstown, founded by the father of the novelist James Fenimore Cooper, is known as the village of museums, the best known of which is the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. At the Angel Moroni Monument on Hill Cumorah, near Palmyra, an annual pageant depicts the founding of the Mormon Church. South of Palmyra are the Greyton H. Taylor Wine Museum, in Hammondsport, and the Corning Museum of Glass, in Corning. Historic homes, forts, and battlefields are found throughout the state; more than one-third of all the battles of the American Revolution, including the Battles of Saratoga, were fought in New York.

New York was the first state in the Union to establish a program for continuing financial support of the arts. The New York State Council on the Arts, which administers the program, funds organizations in the fields of the performing arts, visual arts, film and media, and special programs.

Sports and recreation

New York is the home of a number of important sports events, notably the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament, held at Flushing Meadows. The Belmont Stakes, part of American horse racing's Triple Crown, takes place at Belmont Park, near New York City, each June. The Olympic Winter Games have been held twice at Lake Placid (1932 and 1980). The state also has many professional sports teams, including, in gridiron football, the Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants and Jets, which, like the New York Red Bulls (major league football [soccer]), play in northern New Jersey. In men's basketball, the Knicks frequently have been one of the standout teams, and baseball's Mets and Yankees (both in New York City) have had storied histories. The New York Liberty was one of the charter teams of women's professional basketball. Professional ice hockey teams are the New York Islanders (Long Island) and Rangers and the Buffalo Sabres.

The variety of New York's geography provides not only great beauty but also opportunities for recreation, relaxation, and a study of the past. In 1885 New York established the country's first state park (Niagara Falls State Park), and it has developed an extensive system of state parks and recreation areas. With the cool summers of the Adirondacks, the snowy slopes of the Catskills, the ocean beaches and lakes, and a variety of aquatic sports, New York state has a broad recreational base.

Press and broadcasting

Several major publishing houses have their headquarters in New York City, as do a large number of national magazines. The central offices of many of the country's largest corporations are located there, supporting a great many banks, public-relations firms, advertising agencies, management consultants, and law firms. Because of this concentration of business and culture, New York City maintains a leading national position in American life.

Newspaper publishing in New York dates to colonial times, and by the early 19th century more than 100 papers were being published in the state. Two of New York City's major papers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, are now also published in national editions. In addition, dozens of cities upstate support daily and weekly newspapers; some also have local business journals. Book publishers of all descriptions, including university presses and other scholarly and trade publishers, are scattered throughout the state.

History

First peoples

Two major groups of Native American peoples were living in the New York region when Europeans first arrived: the Algonquian-speaking Mohican (Mahican) and Munsee tribes near the Atlantic coast and, farther inland, the five tribes of the Iroquois— Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca—that formed the Iroquois Confederacy between 1570 and 1600. (The Tuscarora joined the confederacy in 1722.) This association of Native American tribes, with its advanced social and governmental institutions, reached the height of its power about 1700. The alignment of these tribes with the British against the French, with whom the confederacy's traditional enemies were allied, probably enabled the British to emerge as victors in the nearly 150 years of struggle between the two European powers in northern North America.

Colonial period

New York was originally settled as a colony of the Netherlands following Henry Hudson's exploration in 1609 of the river later named for him. In 1624 at what is today Albany, the Dutch established Fort Orange as the first permanent European settlement in New York. One year later New Amsterdam was established at the southern end of Manhattan Island. To legalize that settlement, Peter Minuit, the Dutch governor, paid the Indians merchandise worth about 60 Dutch guilders at the time—converted to the legendary $24. Although the Dutch established several settlements along the Hudson, their interest was more in trade than in permanent agricultural development. Thus, while its trading posts prospered and aided the general expansion of its empire, the Netherlands planted no deep roots of permanent colonization in New York. The most likely explanation for this lies in the economic prosperity and social stability of the homeland. The Dutch citizens had no strong economic motivations to move overseas, nor were there sufficient religious or political quarrels to promote any such movement. An English fleet sailed into New York harbour in 1664; Gov. Peter Stuyvesant was obliged to surrender, the citizens and the Dutch government having no will to fight. Although controversy ensued for several years, the colony was firmly in English hands by 1669. Under the English it was renamed New York, for James, duke of York (later James II).

Despite this change in ownership and sovereignty, however, the colony developed slowly. Like the Dutch, the English crown granted large tracts of land to private individuals. This system of landownership was not attractive to settlers such as the farmer-colonists who had settled the New England area, and agricultural development, particularly in the areas along the Hudson valley, remained slight.

The European war between France and England in the mid-18th century had its counterpart in North America (the French and Indian War). The French, established along the St. Lawrence River and in Quebec, made a number of forays into northern and central New York. The strong Iroquois Confederacy aligned itself with the English in New York and New England because of aid given earlier by the French to rival tribes. This warfare discouraged settlement beyond Albany. The military situation was brought to a conclusion in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which confirmed English dominance of the New York region. A gradual but steady movement of settlers from New England was the beginning of New York's population explosion. The New Englanders moved across the borders of Connecticut and Massachusetts, some remaining on the east bank of the Hudson and others passing through Albany to the interior.

In 1698 the colony's population was about 18,000, two-thirds of it concentrated in and around New York City. By the eve of the American Revolution, it had grown to 163,000, with the concentration nearly exactly reversed, but New York still ranked only seventh among the American colonies. Dutch culture remained strong in New York City and in Albany, while most of the settlements in the interior had a flavour and dialect of the New England Yankee; there were also several German communities. This emerging pattern of cultural heterogeneity was reported in 1782 by the French writer Michel-Guillaume-Saint-Jean de Crèvecoeur (known in America as J. Hector St. John). He described the practices of the farmers along the lower Hudson valley and analyzed the forces creating the “American character.” He asked,

What then is the American, this new man?…He is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced.…Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men.… Americans are the western pilgrims.

This cultural diversity would continue to have a considerable influence on the politics of the state, as would the waves of immigration from Europe that followed the war and continued well into the 20th century.

Revolution, statehood, and growth

New York contains many of the battlegrounds of the American Revolution. The war in New York took on many of the characteristics of a civil war, since the area probably had a higher proportion of residents who were loyal to the crown than did any other colony.

Following the war a part of New York's leadership aligned itself with leaders from other colonies to urge establishment of a strong central government for the new country rather than the loose confederation that was then in power. New York delegates to the Constitutional Convention (1787), especially Alexander Hamilton, played a notable role in the drafting of the Constitution, but the politics of ratification within the state legislature were intense and bitter. New York became one of the last states—the 11th—to ratify the U.S. Constitution. The first state capital was Kingston (1777); in 1797 the capital was moved to Albany.

The American Revolution and the War of 1812 temporarily interrupted New York's expansion to the west, but thereafter the movement began in earnest. Turnpikes spread westward from Albany and from other locations up and down the Hudson River, and settlers moved across the state. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 confirmed New York's position as the gateway to the lands being settled west of the Appalachians, and the cities on its route, including Rochester, Buffalo, Syracuse, and Utica, grew dramatically in the years following the opening of the canal. The railroads followed in quick order and tended to follow the pattern of trade that had been established earlier by the turnpikes and the canal.

According to the census of 1800, New York state had the third largest population in the Union, trailing Virginia and Pennsylvania; 10 years later it had surpassed all other states. Its leadership was not only in population, size, and growth but also in the areas of manufacturing, trade, and transportation—and in the increasing heterogeneity of its population. This fact was reported by French political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville while he was traveling through New York in the 1830s. He noted,

American society is composed of a thousand different elements recently assembled. The men who live under its laws are still English, French, German and Dutch. They have neither religion, morals, nor ideas in common; up to the present one cannot say that there is an American character, at least unless it is the very fact of not having any. There is no common memory, no national attachments here. What then can be the only bond that unites the different parts of this huge body? Interest.

Growth and change also were reflected in the political and governmental history of the state. The original state constitution restricted suffrage to property holders and established a governing system that was dominated by large property holders and leading commercial interests. The change in population composition, as well as shifting political attitudes in the country, soon caused New York to move in a more democratic direction. During the 1830s a vigorous campaign was launched against the system of landownership in the Hudson valley, with renters eventually being given the opportunity to own the land they tilled. The constitutional convention of 1846 confirmed these democratic moves by expanding suffrage among males and restricting the power of both legislature and governor.

New York became a centre of the woman suffrage movement during that period. A landmark convention on women's rights took place in Seneca Falls in 1848; subsequent conventions were held in Rochester later that year and in Syracuse in 1852. At the 1894 state constitutional convention, woman suffrage activists presented 600,000 signatures petitioning for the right to vote, though the effort failed. Women were not granted the vote in New York until 1917.

Emergence of political divisions

New York continued to grow in virtually every dimension, but its political development became centred on the increasing chasm of interest and affection between New York City and upstate New York. The issue of home rule—the demand of the city for total powers of self-government—remained central to the conflict.

During the 1780s an organization, eventually known as Tammany Hall, was formed in New York City to combat attempts by propertied Revolutionary leaders to limit the franchise. By the mid-19th century, Irish politicians had come to dominate the Tammany organization and the office of mayor. This trend culminated in the control of the Democratic Party machine after 1868 by “Boss” William Magear Tweed, under whose leadership the name Tammany became an international byword for municipal corruption. The existence of such a situation in predominantly Democratic New York City fueled antagonism between the city and Republican-dominated upstate New York.

Much of Tammany Hall's power was based on its social services to the waves of immigrants who had inundated New York City until changes in immigration laws slowed the tide during the 1920s. When the state and federal governments began to take over such services as social security, worker's compensation, unemployment, welfare, and health benefits, notably during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Tammany's hold began slowly to erode.

Strengthening and rebuilding

Between World War II and 1980, New York's social and educational services increased dramatically, while its industrial base eroded. This created a difficult financial situation for both the state and New York City, with the latter barely avoiding bankruptcy in 1975. In the last two decades of the 20th century, however, a succession of governors and legislative leaders were able to gradually reduce taxes and broaden the state's economic base. Led by financial services in New York City, centred on Wall Street, and by high technology in such upstate cities as Corning and Rochester, New York entered the 21st century in a position of economic strength and optimism. However, in 2001 the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City's World Trade Center crippled the economies of both the city and the state for a time. New York state responded by supporting the city's rebuilding efforts.

Alan K. Campbell, Paul Joseph Scudiere

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