What: Armed protest of doctors who were grave robbing for medical dissection
When: 1788
Where: Trinity Church and then Manhattan-wide
Feb 24, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: Alexander Hamilton, Columbia College, George Clinton, James Duane, James Thacher, John Hicks, John Jay, Negros Burial Ground, New York Hospital | Leave A Comment »
What: Women suffering from infection during childbirth were treated with high doses of opium
When: Mid Nineteenth Century
Where: Bellevue Hospital
Feb 15, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Midtown East | Tags: Alonzo Clark, Bellevue Hospital, childbed fever, Ignaz Semmelweiss, maternal health, opium, puerperal fever, Stephen Smith | Leave A Comment »
What: The patent act of 1790 and commercial competition led to steamboat innovation in New York City waters
When: 1790s to 1820s
Where: New York Harbor
Jan 07, 2016 | Categories: All stories, Battery Park City, Early America (1784-1854), Technology & Engineering | Tags: 1790 patent law, Clermont, ferries, Hoboken Steamboat Ferry Co., John Fitch, New York Harbor, Robert B. Livingston, Robert Fulton | Leave A Comment »
What: The path of an underground creek that still runs today.
When: For much of the island’s history, until early the early 1800s
Where: In the West Village, around New York University
Dec 31, 2015 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Environment, Greenwich Village | Tags: Minetta Brook, New York University, sewers, Steve Duncan, watershed | Leave A Comment »
What: Elgin, America’s first public botanical garden, cultivated many plants with medical properties. Centuries later, one of those plants would reappear in medical stores in Chinatown.
When: 1801
Where: Fifth Avenue with 50 Street, Manhattan
Apr 07, 2014 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Midtown East | Tags: American ginsing, Chinatown, Chinese medicine, David Hosack, Elgin botanical garden, James Reston, Nixon in China, Panax quinquefollus | Leave A Comment »
What: About 20,000 hogs—one for every five people—roamed the city in the first half of the 19th century. After the outbreak of cholera epidemics in the 1830s, the pigs were persecuted by the police and driven to other boroughs. It was later discovered that they were not to blame for the epidemics.
When: 1820
Where: Everywhere in Manhattan
May 07, 2013 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Health & Medicine, Zoology | Tags: Central Park, Charles Dickens, cholera, garbage, Hog Town, hogs, Piggery Wars, pigs, pork, sanitation | Leave A Comment »
What: New York City’s first aqueduct brought Manhattan 75 million gallons of water a day.
When: 1842
Where: It ran 41.5 miles, from Dutchess County to what is now the Great Lawn in Central Park
Oct 21, 2012 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Technology & Engineering, Upper East Side, Upper West Side | Tags: Croton Aqueduct, David Douglass, East River, Harlem River, Hudson River, James Renwick Jr., John B. Jervis, Yorkville Reservoir | Leave A Comment »
What: Discovered in 1989, this slave cemetery held an estimated 15,000 individuals, and overturned the widespread notion that slavery in America was largely a Southern phenomenon.
When: 1700s
Where: 290 Broadway
Jul 17, 2012 | Categories: All stories, British Occupation to Revolution (1665-1783), Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: African Burial Ground, archaeology, Doctors' Riot, slavery | Leave A Comment »
What: Repeated yellow fever outbreaks led to quarantines and a fence
When: 1822
Where: Financial District, Manhattan
Jul 31, 2011 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Financial District, Health & Medicine | Tags: Carlisle Street, epidemic, Marine Hospital, Rector Street, Trinity Place, Washington Square Park, yellow fever | Leave A Comment »
What: Samuel Morse developed the electric telegraph
When: Early 1800s
Where: New York University
Sep 08, 2010 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Greenwich Village, Scientists & Institutions, Technology & Engineering | Tags: communications, electronics, New York University, Richard John, Samuel Morse, telegraph, Washington Square | Leave A Comment »
First Floor: The Future
What: America’s first world fair, with exhibits of design, art, food as well as many mechanical innovations and inventions—including Elisha Otis’s safety elevator.
When: 1853
Where: New York Crystal Palace, now Bryant Park
May 16, 2010 | Categories: All stories, Early America (1784-1854), Midtown West | Tags: Crystal Palace, elevator, Elisha Otis, exhibition, industry, Industry of All Nations, Samuel Morse | Leave A Comment »