The 425 exam cometh...

...and just in time, some thoughts on those pesky questions on part II of the test...

Here’s a few things to think about…

On geography…remember that New York has probably the best, or at least one of the best, natural harbors in the world. That was very attractive at the time New Amsterdam was founded, and even well before, since we know a number of explorers landed there to look around. If ships can come and go easily, and find the kind of natural shelter from the ocean tempests that New Amsterdam offered, then it’s very likely that the mainland will become a commercial center.

Because it was so ideally positioned and equipped to become a commercial center, the city was a magnet for immigrants seeking work. And because there always was work for newcomers, those newcomers tended not to venture farther, which helped make New York the most dynamic city in the country. And of course, those immigrants all arrived by ship, until well into the 20th century…

Related to that is the Hudson river, which flows into the Atlantic at Manhattan and allows access to the north American inland. It allowed far more when DeWitt Clinton’s enterprise and brain power was applied to cutting a waterway that linked the Great Lakes and the Hudson. There’s natural geography and man-made geography, or rather man helping natural geography along…both were key to New York’s becoming the commercial HQ of the north American continent.

In the revolutionary war, New York just happened to be located right in the center of the American colonies…it was about equidistant from Virginia and Boston. This meant that if the British took and held New York in the war, they could probably hold most of the rest of north America. But they failed to hold New York, which goes a long way towards explaining their ultimate failure to hold onto the American colonies. So goes New York, so goes the rest of the nation.

And then there is the island factor…because Manhattan is a slender piece of land with finite space, the buying and selling of real estate has always been an obsession there, from the time that the Dutch bought “Manahatta” from the Lenape in 1624…remember, the city’s first millionaire, Mr. John Jacob Astor, made most of his millions by buying up as much of the island as he could and reselling--after he quit the fur trading biz. The finite space factor also determined what the city would look like…if you are on an island and you want to make $$$, you pretty much have to build up. Remember all the skyscrapers, e.g the Flatiron building, Woolworth’s, Empire State and Chrysler before the WTC…they didn’t just go up because people wanted tall buildings. The higher they go, the more office space and/or apartments you can build and the more rent you can charge…that was the imperative behind the WTC’s being 110 floors/tower.

Does this help? What you really need to do, granted probably not before the exam, is make a pilgrimage to Gotham and look for evidence yourself. In any case, you'll be an informed visitor when you do get there.