New York is the most European city in the United States.
We have long been the door between the U.S. and Europe and now the world.
Promote your business with the best in the business!
A City of Immigrants
New York is a city of immigrants.
The Lenape were here since around 13,000 years ago. They called the island, “Manahatta.”
Manahatta’s first immigrant was Juan Rodríguez in 1613. He came from what is now the Dominican Republic. 🇩🇴
In 1624, the Dutch founded New Amsterdam. They brought a focus on making money and the ability for regular people to collaborate in what we now call corporations. In 1626 the Dutch made New Amsterdam a town that trafficked humans. In 1652, Africans were forced to build the wall on Wall Street. 🇳🇱
In 1654, a Portuguese Jewish community fleeing the Catholic Inquisition in Brazil made New Amsterdam an open city. New York has welcomed immigrants ever since. The community is still here. It is Shearith Israel. ✡️
In 1664, Dutch New Amsterdam became English New York. In 1711 the English put up a market that sold humans at Wall St and Pearl St. 🇬🇧
The Great Famine of 1845 brought Irish and Roman Catholicism. 🇮🇪
Italians came in multiple waves before and after 1900. 🇮🇹
The French gave us the Statue of Liberty to mark the end of human slavery in the United States. It’s a little bit ironic, given what the French did to Haiti. 🇫🇷
Jewish American poet Emma Lazarus wrote “The New Colossus” in 1883 to raise money for Lady Liberty. She was dedicated in 1886. The second verse of “The New Colossus” is the most famous. The original is in the American Jewish Historical Society near Union Square.
Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
Emma Lazarus, The New Colossus,” 1883
with silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
In the 1950s, Operation Bootstrap transformed Puerto Rico’s economy from sugar to light manufacturing. It pushed Puerto Rican farmers off their land at the same time that New York City had lots of jobs. The “Great Migration” of the 1950s made Puerto Ricans, New York’s big Latin community. 🇵🇷
So this is New York City. Immigration has moved to the Caribbean, South America, and Mother Africa. Today we are All In NYC.
“There is no way I’m going back to Mexico. I can’t stand to be in a country that is more surrealist than my paintings”
Yes the great Spanish surrealist painter Salvador Dali really said that, and that pretty much says it all. Welcome to America!