New York In The Nineteenth Century Essay

New York resident and poet, Dorothy Parker, once said, “London is satisfied, Paris is resigned, but New York is always hopeful.” New York City truly is a hopeful place, and that is why it is often referred to as the city of dreams. While it has its imperfections, it contains an intoxicating magic that keeps it young at heart. This begs the question: Who is this character who has a sense of hope that is strong enough to attract millions? The answer can be found through an investigation of the writings of New Yorkers in the nineteenth century. The writings of Philip Hone, George Templeton Strong, and Jacob Riis reveal that if New York was a person, she would be an uncertain but hopeful eighteen-year-old girl about to graduate from high school.

With the end of high school approaching, she is indecisive about where to attend college and which direction to take her life in. Likewise, New York has numerous groups of living in it, so it is hard to find an answer to all of the problems that exist in the city. Hone reflects on this when he discusses the Irishmen pulling their money out of the bank after the fire. While most of the people in the city are in the middle of a crisis, these Irishmen take advantage of the opportunity to break the banks. This causes a slight amount of conflict in the city. The Opera House Riot also appears in Hone’s journals as an internal conflict of the city. It arose because a British person and an American were performing the same production. The nativists wanted the American to be successful, so they rioted. This shows that there are conflicting peoples and ideas in New York which can cause the people to react in a way that shows a bit of rivalry. The conflicting opinions in New York City are similar to an eighteen-year-old because they toy with different ideas about where they want their lives to