Stateside with Rosalea: New York

“New York, New Yorkshire! It’s a wonderful town.” Hmmm. Let me try that again with 1977 lyrics instead of 1949 ones: “These vagabond shoes are longing to stray right through the heart of it, New York, New Britain!” Nope, there’s something wrong here.

Of course! When the British took over New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, they didn’t follow their predecessor’s naming convention for the colony it was part of—New Netherlands—and instead gave the metropolis and the Province the same name. (And if you’re anything like me—a daft Coca Colonial—you simply thought the songwriters were saying the city’s name twice for dramatic effect!)

The State of New York was the tenth to ratify the US Constitution, and the last of the 13 original states that were part of the initial Confederation to do so before the very first presidential election took place between December 15, 1788, and January 10, 1789. George Washington was unopposed for the Presidency, so the only real question was who was going to be elected Vice President.

Not that New York was much help in that regard. The state legislature deadlocked over whom its Electors would support. New York’s ratification of the Constitution hadn’t come easily. One of the most important series of documents in US history—the 85 essays collectively known as the Federalist Papers—were written to convince the voters of NY state to ratify the Constitution, which Anti-Federalists felt favored the interests of commerce and metropolitan areas rather than farmers and rural communities, and also had the potential of creating a new monarchy.

The tension between the interests of New York, the city, and those of New York, the largely rural and small-town state, have always played a major role in its politics. After an 1894 referendum about creating a “Greater New York” by amalgamating five boroughs passed, the State Constitution was amended to provide that no city could elect a majority of the State Assembly. (That amendment was later struck down by the US Supreme Court ruling that it violated the one man-one vote provision of the Fourteenth Amendment.)

The 1894 referendum is of interest in itself, so I’ll abandon my plan to wax lyrical about beautiful New York State, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the river that now bears his name, and about the birthplace of what has been called “the first American pastime”—harness racing—to look a bit more closely at the creation of what is now known as NY City.

Which, coincidentally, is holding a special election this week for the Board President of one of its five boroughs because the former Bronx BP has accepted a post with the Obama Administration. One of the two contenders in Tuesday’s election is the actor who played Tony Soprano’s chauffeur in the HBO TV series The Sopranos, and used to appear in commercials for Ginzu Knives.

So. It’s 1834—yes, more than 60 years before the consolidation actually came into effect—and a future mayor of Brooklyn goes on record saying, “Between New York and Brooklyn there is nothing in common, either in object, interest or feeling—unless it be the waters that flow between them. And even those waters, however frequently passed, must forever continue to form an insurmountable obstacle to their union.”

But he reckoned without Andrew H. Green, who campaigned so tirelessly for consolidation that the plan became known as “Andy Green’s hobby”. In Green’s own words—worthy of any Ginzu Knife promoter: “Great as our interests in this result are, they are trivial in comparison with those which our example will affect throughout this country, the world, and history and without exaggeration it may be said that we owe it to ourselves, to all our countrymen, and perhaps even to mankind...”

The date of those words is not given on the wonderful little webpage that the Department of History at Fieldston School has put together about “Inventing Gotham”, but a lively cartoon printed by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, dated November 5, 1894, shows that one of the greatest fears of Brooklynites was that their elected officials would fall prey to the party boss tactics that characterized local politics in the City. The cartoon shows a maiden, with “VOTE” written on her white robe, being protected by a Centurion against the leaping voracity of a tiger with the word “TAMMANY” written on its body.

The Rev. Storrs’ 1896 remarks at a mass meeting opposed to the consolidation—which didn’t come into effect until January 1, 1898—perhaps get to the heart of the matter during that time: “It is a question, whether good government is possible in such an immense, shifting, heterogeneous population of three million...with a large proportion of recent immigrants, and into which the political sewage of Europe is being dumped every week...the Chrysotom of Brooklyn preferred to rely on Brooklyn’s comparatively homogeneous population, two thirds of which had been trained from childhood in American traditions, for good local government.”

The New York City that we know today is comprised of five boroughs—Manhattan, the original New York, which is on Manhattan Island; Brooklyn and Queens, on the western tip of Long Island; the Bronx, to the north of those three boroughs and separated from them by the East River and the Harlem River; and Staten Island to the south. The Bronx is the only borough that isn’t on an island, being the southern tip of the land mass east of the Hudson River. Confused? Well, here’s a link to an excellent map and history of the five boroughs on the NY Genealogical and Biographical Society’s website.

According to Wikipedia, the effect of the consolidation is that “the borough president has minimal executive powers, and there is no legislative function within a borough. Most executive power is exercised by the mayor of New York, and legislative functions are the responsibility of the members of the New York City Council.”

There are 51 members of the New York City Council and, although local elections are supposed to be nonpartisan, the City’s official website lists party affiliation and shows just three of them as Republican and the rest as Democrat. Two of the Republicans represent Staten Island, which has long been Republican-leaning—so much so that, under the terms of the Home Rule provisions of the NY State Constitution, the island threatened to secede from the City in the late 1990s, leading ultimately to the election of Rudi Giuliani as Mayor of New York.

Oddly, even though municipal elections are supposed to be nonpartisan, candidates in New York are expected to make up a name of a party they represent. The two candidates in Tuesday’s Bronx election, for example, are Bronx Unity candidate Ruben Diaz Jr. and
People First candidate Anthony J Ribustello. The latter is the Sopranos actor, who is hoping for Republican support, though he knows there’ll be precious little of it.

So there you go, my poppets—particularly those of you who live north of the Bombay Hills in New Zealand! The weird and wonderful world of municipal consolidation, a la New York.

But wait! There’s more! The 1894 referendum only passed in Brooklyn because some wily political operative convinced that city to annex some towns just before the vote was held and voters in those towns tipped the balance.

For an interesting history of the Bronx’s relationship with “Greater” New York City, you should take a look at this April 2007 article about the Board President who has recently resigned, Adolpho Carrion. The article is subtitled: Ombudsman for Borough Dwellers.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

--PEACE—

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