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Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York
Shows vividly how the Great Fire of 1835, which nearly leveled Manhattan also created the ashes from which the city was reborn.
On a freezing December night almost two centuries ago, a fire erupted in lower Manhattan. The city's inhabitants, though accustomed to blazes in a town with so many wooden structures, a spotty water supply, and a decentralized fire department, looked on in horror at the scale of this one. Philip Hone, a former mayor of New York, wrote in his diary how "the progress of the flames, like flashes of lightning, communicated in every direction, and a few minutes sufficed to level the lofty edifices on every side." By the time the fire was extinguished, a huge swath of land had been transformed from a thriving business center into the "Burnt District," an area roughly the same size as was devastated during the September 11th attack. In the end, nearly 700 buildings were destroyed. So vast was the conflagration that it was immediately and henceforth known as the Great Fire of 1835.
Manhattan Phoenix reveals how New York emerged from the disaster to become a global powerhouse merely a quarter of a century later. Daniel S. Levy's book charts the city's almost miraculous growth during the early 19th century by focusing on the topics that shaped its destiny, starting with fire but including water, land, disease, culture, and politics, interweaving the lives of New Yorkers who took part in its transformation. Some are well-known, including the land baron John Jacob Astor. Others less so, as with the Bowery Theatre impresario Thomas Hamblin and the African-American restaurateur Thomas Downing. The book celebrates Fire Chief James Gulick, who battled the Great Fire, examines the designs of the architect Alexander Jackson Davis who built marble palaces for the rich, follows the abolitionist Arthur Tappan, chronicles the career of the merchant Alexander Stewart, and reveals how the engineer John Bloomfield Jervis succeeded in bringing clean water into homes. The city's
resurrection likewise owed much to such visionaries as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who designed Central Park, creating the refuge that it remains to this day.
Manhattan Phoenix offers the story of a city rising from the ashes to fulfill its destiny to grow into one of the world's greatest metropolises―and in no small part due to catastrophe. It is, in other words, a New York story.
On a freezing December night almost two centuries ago, a fire erupted in lower Manhattan. The city's inhabitants, though accustomed to blazes in a town with so many wooden structures, a spotty water supply, and a decentralized fire department, looked on in horror at the scale of this one. Philip Hone, a former mayor of New York, wrote in his diary how "the progress of the flames, like flashes of lightning, communicated in every direction, and a few minutes sufficed to level the lofty edifices on every side." By the time the fire was extinguished, a huge swath of land had been transformed from a thriving business center into the "Burnt District," an area roughly the same size as was devastated during the September 11th attack. In the end, nearly 700 buildings were destroyed. So vast was the conflagration that it was immediately and henceforth known as the Great Fire of 1835.
Manhattan Phoenix reveals how New York emerged from the disaster to become a global powerhouse merely a quarter of a century later. Daniel S. Levy's book charts the city's almost miraculous growth during the early 19th century by focusing on the topics that shaped its destiny, starting with fire but including water, land, disease, culture, and politics, interweaving the lives of New Yorkers who took part in its transformation. Some are well-known, including the land baron John Jacob Astor. Others less so, as with the Bowery Theatre impresario Thomas Hamblin and the African-American restaurateur Thomas Downing. The book celebrates Fire Chief James Gulick, who battled the Great Fire, examines the designs of the architect Alexander Jackson Davis who built marble palaces for the rich, follows the abolitionist Arthur Tappan, chronicles the career of the merchant Alexander Stewart, and reveals how the engineer John Bloomfield Jervis succeeded in bringing clean water into homes. The city's
resurrection likewise owed much to such visionaries as Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who designed Central Park, creating the refuge that it remains to this day.
Manhattan Phoenix offers the story of a city rising from the ashes to fulfill its destiny to grow into one of the world's greatest metropolises―and in no small part due to catastrophe. It is, in other words, a New York story.
480 pages, Hardcover
Published February 22, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 18, 2023
Author Daniel S. Levy really took on too much in this book, though it's not entirely his fault. His premise -- that the aftereffects of the Great Fire of December 1835 transformed New York City into the most important metropolitan area in the US -- demanded that he look at the ensuing changes in every aspect of NY life: water, fire, sewage, real estate policy, housing, demographics and immigration, parks and recreation, politics, arts, the news media, commerce, trade, slavery, gambling, corruption, the temperance movement .... While he could have cut his time frame shorter, the end of the Civil War made for an obvious termination. (Arguably, in fact, the book should have continued into the 1880s, which would have encompassed such turning points as the merger of Brooklyn and Queens into NYC, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge, and the construction of the Statue of Liberty.)
The positive result is that this book gives the reader a rich insight into an important era in New York history, providing both context and detail. The scope of the author's research is mind-boggling.
To give a couple of examples of the complexity of the book's narrative, thesis, and research:
One immediate result of the devastating 1835 fire was that city officials realized they needed a professional fire department. That led to a network of local firehouses, each of which became a close-knit community of full-time firefighters. Those communities, in turn, were an easy target for ambitious (and sometimes corrupt) politicians to organize, ward by ward, into foot soldiers. Boss Tweed began his rise as an eager firehouse hanger-on.
A different sort of example was the conflict between two social goods: Virtually everyone agreed that NYC needed a large, public open space, and the biggest plot of available, relatively low-cost, mostly undeveloped land was the approximately 850 acres in the center of Manhattan now known as Central Park. However, it wasn't totally undeveloped. There was a uniquely thriving, middle-class Black neighborhood of about 225 residents, called Seneca Village, on the western edge. Could the neighborhood have been preserved, with the park curving around it? Today, we see that possibility, but back then, Seneca Village was torn down.
The book's achievements of scope and detail, however, are also its flaws. It ends up with an unwieldy combination of speed and slowness: It rushes through the Great Fire, John Jacob Astor's real estate savvy, NY's pro-South sympathies, the creation of Columbia College, Walt Whitman, Central Park, Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, Boss Tweed, and dozens of other topics at a dizzying pace. P.T. Barnum comes and goes. So does John Brown. (What does he have to do with NYC? Not too much) At the same time, the book also plods along -- a flaw common to nonfiction books -- dragged down by far too many mind-numbing, unnecessary details. How many examples do we really need of famous New Yorkers who enlisted in the Civil War or the sites where wealthy residents built their post-fire homes?
I wonder if the author would have done better to break this into several books, perhaps one for each decade? Or focused on the first post-fire decade and summarized the next two decades in an epilogue?
Still, I have to emphasize: Kudos to Mr. Levy for his incredible research.
The positive result is that this book gives the reader a rich insight into an important era in New York history, providing both context and detail. The scope of the author's research is mind-boggling.
To give a couple of examples of the complexity of the book's narrative, thesis, and research:
One immediate result of the devastating 1835 fire was that city officials realized they needed a professional fire department. That led to a network of local firehouses, each of which became a close-knit community of full-time firefighters. Those communities, in turn, were an easy target for ambitious (and sometimes corrupt) politicians to organize, ward by ward, into foot soldiers. Boss Tweed began his rise as an eager firehouse hanger-on.
A different sort of example was the conflict between two social goods: Virtually everyone agreed that NYC needed a large, public open space, and the biggest plot of available, relatively low-cost, mostly undeveloped land was the approximately 850 acres in the center of Manhattan now known as Central Park. However, it wasn't totally undeveloped. There was a uniquely thriving, middle-class Black neighborhood of about 225 residents, called Seneca Village, on the western edge. Could the neighborhood have been preserved, with the park curving around it? Today, we see that possibility, but back then, Seneca Village was torn down.
The book's achievements of scope and detail, however, are also its flaws. It ends up with an unwieldy combination of speed and slowness: It rushes through the Great Fire, John Jacob Astor's real estate savvy, NY's pro-South sympathies, the creation of Columbia College, Walt Whitman, Central Park, Lincoln's Cooper Union speech, Boss Tweed, and dozens of other topics at a dizzying pace. P.T. Barnum comes and goes. So does John Brown. (What does he have to do with NYC? Not too much) At the same time, the book also plods along -- a flaw common to nonfiction books -- dragged down by far too many mind-numbing, unnecessary details. How many examples do we really need of famous New Yorkers who enlisted in the Civil War or the sites where wealthy residents built their post-fire homes?
I wonder if the author would have done better to break this into several books, perhaps one for each decade? Or focused on the first post-fire decade and summarized the next two decades in an epilogue?
Still, I have to emphasize: Kudos to Mr. Levy for his incredible research.
March 26, 2022
I received this book from Netgalley as an ARC in exchange for an honest review. Although the book was extensively researched and informative, I found the subject matter to be a little dry and at times found myself wandering off into other thoughts which is why I can only give this book 3 stars. I think that this was also because the audiobook narrator was a little monotone. I had to increase the speed of the reading to 1.25x the normal speed so as to get rid of the monotone issue.
I lived in Manhattan for about 10 years, so it was interesting to learn about its past. As I mentioned above, the author seems to have done extensive research on this subject and gives a lot of information about the past of the City. I was immensely impressed — I imagine it took a lot of work to get this book compiled in the cohesive manner in which it is presented.
On the other hand, this is not the typical nonfiction book that I read (I’m more interested in natural disasters, science topics such as viruses and genetics, women’s issues, etc) — I was expecting this book to be more about the fire of 1835 (which is why I had picked it up), but instead it was 90% about the growth of Manhattan which came after the fire.
That being said, I think that this book would be great for history buffs who also have a love for the City.
I lived in Manhattan for about 10 years, so it was interesting to learn about its past. As I mentioned above, the author seems to have done extensive research on this subject and gives a lot of information about the past of the City. I was immensely impressed — I imagine it took a lot of work to get this book compiled in the cohesive manner in which it is presented.
On the other hand, this is not the typical nonfiction book that I read (I’m more interested in natural disasters, science topics such as viruses and genetics, women’s issues, etc) — I was expecting this book to be more about the fire of 1835 (which is why I had picked it up), but instead it was 90% about the growth of Manhattan which came after the fire.
That being said, I think that this book would be great for history buffs who also have a love for the City.
July 20, 2022
Overall, I liked the book, and it was interesting. It essentially covers New York City in the 1800s, but to a certain extent it includes history of New York from well before that. It was not a great book for several reasons. First, I don't think it really proved its supposed thesis that the fire of 1835 somehow led to the modern city. Certainly it shaped the city, but it was not really some pivotal moment. Second, the book covers such a wide variety of history and people that I could not keep track of who all the people were. It got rather overwhelming. The book also could have been organized somewhat better. I am not sure how, but when it would change to a different topic of the history, it would go back in time again then forward such that sometimes I couldn't remember what time period it was talking about.
August 27, 2022
As much a history of the Croton Aqueduct and the growth of Manhattan as it is a history of a specific event, the fire of 1835 is just a place-holder in the documentation of getting water, and the wisdom of public health, to NYC. Buildings burned, and burned again; diseases flared up and were tamped down with the cleansing powers of fresh water, only to ignite again in pockets of unavailability, neglect, or irrationality.
Not unlike our present attempts to staunch antibiotic-resistant strains, Covid, Polio, and whatever the next public health issue is that will cross the horizon, our society can see the cure but not always affect it completely. Whether the fault is geography, engineering, finances, or simple human stupidity, we seem destined to keep on rebuilding the wheel that is science.
Not unlike our present attempts to staunch antibiotic-resistant strains, Covid, Polio, and whatever the next public health issue is that will cross the horizon, our society can see the cure but not always affect it completely. Whether the fault is geography, engineering, finances, or simple human stupidity, we seem destined to keep on rebuilding the wheel that is science.
July 24, 2022
Very good historical book about the growth of Manhattan during the 19th century
May 3, 2024
Well written history of Manhattan and the role fire played in the first half of the nineteenth century.
April 20, 2023
The growth of NYC in the 1800s, specifically after the fire of 1835. Interesting stories and characters. Learned some about history of city during this time.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews