Rome wasn’t built in a day–neither was New York. It’s taken close to 400 years for the city to evolve from a small Dutch village on the south end of Manhattan to a sprawling, five-borough beast covering nearly 500 square miles of land. It’s a far cry from the size of Rome, but it’s not any less glorious.
My proposal is to explore how the city changed and expanded in those 400 years, and what role the constant turnover of immigrants played in it. We already know that this nation as a whole was built on the backs of immigrants (both willing and unwilling)–we know, for example, that Irish and Chinese immigrants built the railroads. But what other groups took part in constructing this city? How did outer boroughs like Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx go from being farmland to urban sprawl? Who were the landscapers of Central Park? Who built the bridges? Who dug the subways?
Who are the unknowns that built the Empire?
The project would involve researching key periods in the city’s history, such as its time under Dutch rule, its transition to English rule, becoming a U.S. state, the boom in wealth and status it experienced during the Industrial Revolution, and onward. Once these periods are determined, we’d break into groups, with each group taking a different time period.
Each group would research what were the dominant ethnic groups that lived in New York at the time, and what historical factors caused them to have come to live there (for example, were they escaping persecution? Were they there for employment?) Although this proposal focuses more on growth in the geographical sense, it could also focus on the economic sense. What groups were key in the textile industries? Or the meat industry? What made New York so attractive to socialites and billionaires–and where were those socialites and billionaires from? Each group would also try to find and research into the lives of one man and one woman from their time period–each one would preferably be little-known figures, historically (although this wouldn’t be a must).
The last part of this project would involve researching construction and economic growth in the city today, and what groups are fueling them. Which ethnic groups are designing and constructing buildings and bridges today? Does any one particular group have a high tendency to work in the subway tunnels? What are the cultural and ethnic trends among up-and-coming entrepreneurs? This portion could include interviews with people who work in these fields, if possible.
Thank you for reading my proposal!
