THE GREATER NEW YORK

The time came when the city of New York grew beyond the limits of the Island of Manhattan, though the island had seemed such a boundless tract of land, that it had been thought laughable for the City Plan to provide for streets over its entire length. The city grew larger and larger. It stretched up to the Harlem River, leaped over it and went branching out into the country beyond. Great libraries were built; hospitals for the sick; prisons for the wrong-doer, markets, churches, public institutions of every kind. Buildings grew taller and taller until they came to be twenty and twenty-five stories high. Even then there were so many people that there were not houses enough to hold them all. So they swarmed over into the already large city of Brooklyn, on Long Island. And the ferry-boats being no longer able to carry the vast crowds in comfort, a great suspension bridge was built over the East River from New York to Brooklyn. At last the city of New York and the city of Brooklyn had so much in common, that they, with some of their suburbs, were united into one great city in the year 1898.

Then the Island of Manhattan became simply the Borough of Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of Greater New York.

So the story of the Island of Manhattan is ended.

TABLE of EVENTS

Year

1609.