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 ...