#1 New York City
The City of New York, commonly called New York City and New York, nicknames: The Big Apple, Gotham, The City That Never Sleeps, The Capital of The World (Caput Mundi), The Empire City, The City So Nice They Named It Twice, The City, has been the most populous city in the United States since 1790, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, it exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment. As host of United Nations headquarters, New York is also an important center for international affairs. With a large harbor located on the Atlantic coast of the Northeastern United States, the city consists of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. The city's estimated population exceeds 8.2 million people living in just under 305 square miles. The region was inhabited by about 5,000 Lenape Native Americans at the time of its European discovery in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown, who called it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême). European settlement began with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614. Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders (about $1000 in 2006); a legend, now disproved, says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads. In 1664, the English conquered the city and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of Run (a much more valuable asset at the time) in exchange for the English controlling New Amsterdam (New York) in North America. By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200. New York City grew in importance as a trading port while under British rule. The city hosted the seminal John Peter Zenger trial in 1735, helping to establish the freedom of the press in North America. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain as King's College in Lower Manhattan. The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October of 1765. The city emerged as the theater for a series of major battles known as the New York Campaign during the American Revolutionary War. After the Battle of Fort Washington in upper Manhattan in 1776 the city became the British military and political base of operations in North America until military occupation ended in 1783. The assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly thereafter; the Constitution of the United States was ratified and in 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated there; the first United States Congress assembled for the first time in 1789, and the United States Bill of Rights drafted; all at Federal Hall on Wall Street. By 1790, New York City had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States. In the 19th century, the city was transformed by immigration and development. A visionary development proposal, the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening of the Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the North American interior. Local politics fell under the domination of Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish immigrants. Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which became the first landscaped park in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black population also existed in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827, but during the 1830s New York became a center of interracial abolitionist activism in the North. Mulberry Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, circa 1900Anger at military conscription during the American Civil War (1861–1865) led to the Draft Riots of 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history. In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens. The opening of the New York City Subway in 1904 helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication. However, this development did not come without a price. In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards. Midtown Manhattan, New York City, from Rockefeller Center, 1932In the 1920s, New York City was a major destination for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South. By 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance flourished during the era of Prohibition, coincident with a larger economic boom that saw the skyline develop with the construction of competing skyscrapers. New York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in early 1920s, overtaking London, and the metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in early 1930s becoming the first megacity in human history. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance. Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom and the development of huge housing tracts in eastern Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed and the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's ascendance as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (completed in 1950) emphasizing New York's political influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitating New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world. The pre-9/11 skyline of Lower Manhattan, August 2001In the 1960s, New York suffered from economic problems, rising crime rates and racial tension, which reached a peak in the 1970s. In the 1980s, resurgence in the financial industry improved the city's fiscal health. By the 1990s, racial tensions had calmed, crime rates dropped dramatically, and waves of new immigrants arrived from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy and New York's population reached an all-time high in the 2000 census.
The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. A new 1 World Trade Center (previously known as the Freedom Tower), along with a memorial and three other office towers, will be built on the site and is scheduled for completion in 2013. On December 19, 2006, the first steel columns were installed in the building's foundation. Three other high-rise office buildings are planned for the site along Greenwich Street, and they will surround the World Trade Center Memorial, which is under construction. The area will also be home to a museum dedicated to the history of the site.
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California and the second largest in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed The City of Angels, Los Angeles has an estimated population of 3.8 million and spans over 498.3 square miles (1,290.6 km2) in Southern California. Additionally, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is home to nearly 12.9 million residents, who hail from all over the globe. Los Angeles is the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most diverse counties in the United States. Its inhabitants are known as "Angelenos", or "Angelinos" when using the proper Spanish language spelling. Los Angeles was founded September 4, 1781, by Spanish governor Felipe de Neve as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of the river of Porziuncola). It became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its independence from Spain. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Los Angeles and California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States; Mexico retained the territory of Baja California. Los Angeles was incorporated as a municipality on April 4, 1850, five months before California achieved statehood. The Los Angeles coastal area was first settled by the Tongva (or Gabrieleños) and Chumash Native American tribes thousands of years ago. The first Europeans arrived in 1542 under Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese-born explorer who claimed the area as the City of God for the Spanish Empire. However, he continued with his voyage and did not establish a settlement. The next contact would not come until 227 years later, when Gaspar de Portola, along with Franciscan missionary Juan Crespí, reached the present site of Los Angeles on August 2, 1769. Crespí noted that the site had the potential to be developed into a large settlement. In 1771, Franciscan friar Junípero Serra built the Mission San Gabriel Arcangel near Whittier Narrows, in what is now called San Gabriel Valley. In 1777, the new governor of California, Felipe de Neve, recommended to Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa, viceroy of New Spain that the site noted by Juan Crespí be developed into a pueblo. The town was officially founded on September 4, 1781, by a group of forty-four settlers known as "Los Pobladores". Tradition has it that on this day they were escorted by four Spanish colonial soldiers, two priests from the Mission and Governor de Neve. The town was named El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula (The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the Porciúncula River). These pueblo settlers came from the common Hispanic culture that had emerged in northern Mexico among a racially mixed society. Two-thirds of the settlers were mestizo or mulatto, and therefore, had African and Indian ancestry. More importantly, they were intermarrying. The settlement remained a small ranch town for decades, but by 1820 the population had increased to about 650 residents. Today, the pueblo is commemorated in the historic district of Los Angeles Pueblo Plaza and Olvera Street, the oldest part of Los Angeles. New Spain achieved its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821, and the pueblo continued as a part of Mexico. During Mexican rule, Governor Pío Pico, made Los Angeles Alta California's regional capital. Mexican rule ended during the Mexican–American War: Americans took control from the Californios after a series of battles, culminating with the signing of the Treaty of Cahuenga on January 13, 1847. Los Angeles City Hall, was built in 1928 and was the tallest structure in the city until 1964, when height restrictions were removed.Railroads arrived when the Southern Pacific completed its line to Los Angeles in 1876. Oil was discovered in 1892, and by 1923 Los Angeles was producing one-quarter of the world's petroleum. By 1900, the population had grown to more than 102,000 people, putting pressure on the city's water supply. 1913's completion of the Los Angeles Aqueduct, under the supervision of William Mulholland, assured the continued growth of the city.
In the 1920s, the motion picture and aviation industries flocked to Los Angeles. In 1932, with population surpassing one million, the city hosted the Summer Olympics. The post-war years saw an even greater boom, as urban sprawl expanded the city into the San Fernando Valley. In 1969, Los Angeles became one of the birthplaces of the Internet, as the first ARPANET transmission was sent from UCLA to SRI in Menlo Park.
Also in the 1980s, Los Angeles became the center of the heavy metal music scene, especially glam metal bands. In 1984, the city hosted the Summer Olympic Games for the second time. Despite being boycotted by 14 Communist countries, the 1984 Olympics became the most financially successful in history, and only the second Olympics to turn a profit – the other being the 1932 Summer Olympics, also held in Los Angeles. Downtown Los Angeles saw heavy development from the 1980s to 1990s, including the construction of some of the city's tallest skyscrapers.During the remaining decades of the 20th century, the city was plagued by increasing gang warfare, drug trades, and police corruption. Racial tensions erupted again in 1992 with the Rodney King controversy and the large-scale riots that followed the acquittal of his police attackers. In 1994, the 6.7 Northridge earthquake shook the city, causing $12.5 billion in damage and 72 deaths. Voters defeated efforts by the San Fernando Valley and Hollywood to secede from the city in 2002. As the home base of Hollywood, it is known as the "Entertainment Capital of the World",
Chicago, Illinois
Chicago is the largest city in the U.S. state of Illinois, nicknames: The Windy City, The Second City, Chi-Town, Hog Butcher for the World, City of Big Shoulders, The City That Works, and is located along the southwestern shore of freshwater Lake Michigan. With over 2.8 million people, Chicago is the third-most populous city in the U.S., and the largest city in the Midwest. The Chicago metropolitan area (commonly referred to as Chicagoland) has a population of over 9.5 million people living in three U.S. states (Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin) and was the third largest U.S. metropolitan area in 2000. After a series of wars with the local American Natives, Chicago was founded in 1833, near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, and incorporated as a city in 1837. During the mid-18th century the area was inhabited by the Native American tribe known as the Potawatomis, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples. The first known nonindigenous permanent settler in Chicago, Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable,a man of mixed African and European heritage born in Saint-Domingue (modern day Haiti), arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first trading post. In 1795, following the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over by some Native Americans in the Treaty of Greenville to the United States for a military post. In 1803 the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the 1812 Fort Dearborn massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded additional land to the United States in the 1804 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were eventually forcibly removed from their land following the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of around 200. Within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837. The name "Chicago" is the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa, meaning “wild leek.” The sound shikaakwa in Miami-Illinois literally means 'striped skunk', and was a reference to wild leek, or the smell of onions. The name initially applied to the river, but later came to denote the site of the city.
Houston, Texas
Houston is the 4th largest city in the United States and the largest city within the state of Texas. As of the 2007 U.S. Census estimate, the city has a population of 2.2 million within an area of 600 square miles (1,600 km²). Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area the sixth-largest metropolitan area in the U.S. with a population of 5.7 million. Houston was founded on August 30, 1836 by brothers Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen on land near the banks of Buffalo Bayou. The city was incorporated on June 5, 1837 and named after then President of the Republic of Texas former General Sam Houston who had commanded at the Battle of San Jacinto, which took place 25 miles (40 km) east of where the city was established. The burgeoning port and railroad industry, combined with oil discovery in 1901, has induced continual surges in the city's population. In the mid-twentieth century, Houston became the home of the Texas Medical Center the world's largest concentration of healthcare and research institutions, and NASA's Johnson Space Center, where the Mission Control Center is located. In August 1836, John Kirby Allen and Augustus Chapman Allen, two real estate entrepreneurs from New York City, purchased 6,642 acres (27 km²) of land along Buffalo Bayou with the intent of founding a city. The Allen brothers decided to name the city after Sam Houston, the popular general at the Battle of San Jacinto, who was elected President of Texas in September 1836. Houston was granted incorporation on June 5, 1837, with James S. Holman becoming its first mayor. In the same year, Houston became the county seat of Harrisburg County (now Harris County) and the temporary capital of the Republic of Texas. In 1840, the community established a chamber of commerce in part to promote shipping and waterborne business at the newly created port on Buffalo Bayou. Houston, circa 1873By 1860, Houston had emerged as a commercial and railroad hub for the export of cotton. Railroad spurs from the Texas inland converged in Houston, where they met rail lines to the ports of Galveston and Beaumont. During the American Civil War, Houston served as a headquarters for General John Bankhead Magruder, who used the city as an organization point for the Battle of Galveston. After the Civil War, Houston businessmen initiated efforts to widen the city's extensive system of bayous so the city could accept more commerce between downtown and the nearby port of Galveston. By 1890 Houston was the railroad center of Texas. In 1900 Galveston was struck by a devastating hurricane.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in Pennsylvania and the sixth-most-populous city in the United States. In 2005, the population of the city proper was estimated to be over 1.4 million, while the Greater Philadelphia metropolitan area's population of 5.8 million made it the country's fifth-largest. The city is the nation's fourth-largest urban area by population Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the Philadelphia area was the location of the Lenape (Delaware) Indian village Shackamaxon.
Europeans arrived in the Delaware Valley in the early 1600s, with the first settlements founded by the Dutch, British and Swedish. After Sweden's first expedition to North America embarked in late 1637, the Swedes took control of land on the west side of the Delaware River from just below the Schuylkill River: today's Philadelphia, southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their military defeat of the English province of Maryland. But 11 years later, the Dutch sent an army to the Delaware River, nominally taking control of the colony, though Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to have their own militia, religion, court, and lands. The English conquered the New Netherland colony in October 1663-1664, but the situation did not really change until 1682, when the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania.
In 1681, in partial repayment of a debt, Charles II of England granted William Penn a charter for what would become the Pennsylvania colony. Despite the royal charter, Penn bought the land from the local Lenape to be on good terms with the Native Americans and ensure peace for his colony. According to legend Penn made a treaty of friendship with Lenape chief Tammany under an elm tree at Shackamaxon, in what is now the city's Fishtown section. As a Quaker, Penn had experienced religious persecution and wanted his colony to be a place where anyone could worship freely despite their religion. Penn named the city Philadelphia, which is Greek for brotherly love (philos, "love" or "friendship", and adelphos, "brother"). "Penn's Treaty with the Indians" by Benjamin West.Penn planned a city on the Delaware River to serve as a port and place for government. Hoping that Philadelphia would become more like an English rural town instead of a city, Penn laid out roads on a grid plan to keep houses and businesses spread far apart, allowing them to be surrounded by gardens and orchards. The city's inhabitants didn't follow Penn's plans and crowded by the Delaware River and subdivided and resold their lots. Before Penn left Philadelphia for the last time, he issued the Charter of 1701 establishing Philadelphia as a city. The city soon established itself as an important trading center, poor at first, but with tolerable living conditions by the 1750s. A significant contributor to Philadelphia at the time was Benjamin Franklin. Franklin helped improve city services and founded new ones, such as the American Colonies' first hospital. Philadelphia's importance and central location in the colonies made it a natural center for America's revolutionaries: the city hosted the First Continental Congress before the war, the Second Continental Congress, which signed the United States Declaration of Independence, during the war, and the Constitutional Convention after the war. Several battles were fought in Philadelphia and its environs as well. After the war, Philadelphia served as the temporary United States capital in the 1790s. In 1793, the largest yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history killed as many as 5,000 people in Philadelphia—roughly 10% of the population. Benjamin FranklinThe state government left Philadelphia in 1799 and the federal government left soon after in 1800, but the city remained the young nation's largest and a financial and cultural center. New York City soon surpassed Philadelphia in population, but construction of roads, canals, and railroads helped turn Philadelphia into the United States' first major industrial city. Throughout the 19th century, Philadelphia had a large variety of industries and businesses, the largest being textiles. Major corporations in the 19th and early 20th centuries included the Baldwin Locomotive Works, William Cramp and Sons Ship and Engine Building Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad.[11] Industry, along with the U.S. Centennial, was celebrated in 1876 with the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's Fair in the United States. Immigrants, mostly German and Irish, settled in Philadelphia and the surrounding districts. The rise in population of the surrounding districts helped lead to the Act of Consolidation of 1854 which extended the city of Philadelphia to include all of Philadelphia County. In the later half of the century immigrants from Russia, Eastern Europe and Italy and African Americans from the southern U.S. settled in the city. 8th and Market Street, showing the Strawbridge and Clothier department store, 1910s.By the 20th century, Philadelphia had become known as "corrupt and contented," with a complacent population and entrenched Republican political machine. The first major reform came in 1917 when outrage over the election-year murder of a police officer led to the shrinking of the Philadelphia City Council from two houses to just one. In the 1920s the public flouting of Prohibition laws, mob violence, and police involvement in illegal activities led to the appointment of Brigadier General Smedley Butler of the U.S. Marine Corps as director of public safety, but political pressure prevented any long term success in fighting crime and corruption. The population peaked at more than two million residents in 1950, after which the city's population declined while its suburban counties grew. Revitalization and gentrification of neighborhoods began in the 1960s and continues into the 21st century, with much of the development in the Center City and University City areas of the city. After many of the old manufacturers and businesses had left Philadelphia or shut down, the city started attracting service businesses and began to more aggressively market itself as a tourist destination. Glass and granite skyscrapers were built in Center City. Historic areas such as Independence National Historical Park located in Old City and Society Hill were resuscitated during the reformist mayoral era of the 1950s through the 1980s and are now among the most desirable living areas of Center City. This has slowed the city's forty-year population decline after losing nearly a quarter of its population.
Phoenix, Arizona
Phoenix is the capital and largest city in the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the 5th most populous city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,552,259 residents, and is the anchor of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, the 12th largest metro area by population in the United States with 4,281,899 residents. In addition, Phoenix is the county seat of Maricopa County, and is one of the largest cities in the United States by land area.
Phoenix was incorporated as a city in 1881 after being founded in 1868 near the Salt River, near its confluence with the Gila River. The city eventually became a major transportation hub in North America and a main transportation, financial, industrial, cultural and economic center of the Southwestern United States. Located in the northeastern reaches of the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix has the hottest climate of any major city in the United States. For more than 1,000 years, the Hohokam peoples occupied the land that would become Phoenix. Father Eusebio Kino, an Italian Jesuit in the service of the Spanish Empire, was among the first Europeans to travel here in the 1600s and 1700s. American and European "Mountain Men" likely came through the area while exploring what is now central Arizona during the early 19th century. Phoenix as a city begins with Jack Swilling, an American Civil War veteran who had come west to seek wealth in the 1850s and worked primarily in Wickenburg. On an outing in 1867, he stopped to rest at the foot of the White Tank Mountains. By 1881, Phoenix had outgrown its original townsite-commissioner form of government. The 11th Territorial Legislature passed "The Phoenix Charter Bill", incorporating Phoenix and providing for a mayor-council government.
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the second largest city in the state of Texas and the seventh largest city in the United States. Located in the northern part of South Texas and the American Southwest, San Antonio is the epicenter of Tejano culture and Texas tourism. The city is the seat of Bexar County with a population of 1,328,984 as of the 2007 U.S. Census estimate. It was the fourth-fastest-growing large city in the nation from 2000-2006.[1] Its metropolitan area has a population of 2,031,445 based on the 2008 U.S. Census estimate, making it only the 28th-largest metropolitan area in the U.S and third in Texas (behind Dallas and Houston). San Antonio was named for the Portuguese St. Anthony, whose feast day is on June 13, when a Spanish expedition stopped in the area in 1691. The city has a strong military presence—it is home to Fort Sam Houston, Lackland Air Force Base, Randolph Air Force Base, and Brooks City-Base, with Camp Bullis and Camp Stanley right outside the city. Furthermore, Kelly Air Force Base (now Port San Antonio) operated out of San Antonio until 2001. Americans originally lived in (near) the San Antonio River Valley, in the San Pedro Springs area, calling the vicinity "Yanaguana," meaning "refreshing waters." In 1536,Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, a shipwrecked captive of Native Americans, visited the interior of what would later be called Texas. He saw and described the river later to be named the San Antonio.
In 1691, a group of Spanish explorers and missionaries came upon the river and Native American settlement (located in the area of present-day La Villita) on June 13, the feast day of Saint Anthony of Padova, Italy and named the place and river "San Antonio" in his honor. In 1716, The Spanish Council of War approved a site on the San Antonio River for construction of a presidio (fort). The Domingo Ramón expedition, accompanied by the trader St. Denis from Louisiana (who had come to the site two years previous) established a presidio on the river. That council also approved a request by Father Olivares to establish a Catholic Mission at the site. In 1718, Martin de Alarcón, then Governor of Texas, reinforced the presidio and the ten soldiers and their families were recognized officially as the beginning of the villa. Alarcón named the presidio San Antonio de Béjar in honor of the Duke of Béjar, in Spain, the viceroy's brother, who died what was considered a hero's death defending Budapest from the Ottoman Empire in 1686. That same year, the Mission of San Francisco de Solano was moved from the Rio Grande to merge with Mission San Antonio de Padua. Father Olivares renamed his merged mission Mission San Antonio de Valero. The presidio, the villa and the mission comprised the municipality named San Antonio de los Llanos (of the Plains) by Governor Alarcón. One year later, in 1719, Mission San Antonio moved to its second site on the east bank near the present day St. Joseph's Church on Commerce. (The names are in dispute because there are no such saints and only a Pope can name saints.) In 1721, The Marquis de Aguayo moved the presidio San Antonio de Béjar to its present site on the Plaza de Armas, where permanent quarters were constructed for the soldiers. In 1726 the official settlement population was 200, including 45 military and their families.
The Mission San Antonio was moved to its third and final site on Alamo Plaza in 1724 because of hurricane flooding at the previous location.
At eleven o'clock on the morning of March 9, 1731, sixteen families (56 people) from the Canary Islands, often referred to as the "Canary Islanders," arrived at the Presidio of San Antonio de Bexar in the Province of Texas. By royal decree of the King of Spain, they founded La Villa de San Fernando and established the first civil government in Texas. The Marquis of Casafuerte, Viceroy of Spain, (King of Spain) bestowed upon each Canary Island family titles of nobility. Many descendants of these first settlers still reside in San Antonio. San Antonio grew to become the largest Spanish settlement in Texas. After the failure of Spanish missions to the north of the city San Antonio became the farthest northeastern extension of the hispanic culture of the Valley of Mexico. It was for most of its history the capital of the Spanish, later Mexican, province of Tejas. From San Antonio the Camino Real, today Nacogdoches Road in San Antonio, ran to the American border at the small frontier town of Nacogdoches. After Mexico achieved independence in 1821 American settlers, at the invitation of the Mexican government, began to settle in Texas in areas northeast of San Antonio. When Antonio López de Santa Anna unilaterally rescinded the Mexican constitution of 1824 violence ensued in many provinces of Mexico. In Texas the anglo settlers joined many hispanic Texans in calling for the return to the constitution of 1824. In a series of battles the anglo Texans, who called themselves Texians, succeeded in forcing Mexican forces out of the anglo settlement area. Under the leadership of Ben Milam, in the Battle of Bexar, December, 1835, Texian forces captured San Antonio from forces commanded by General Martin Perfecto de Cos, Santa Anna's brother in law. This gave the forces opposing Santa Anna control of the entire province of Texas. Today Milam Park and the Cos House, commemorate this battle. After putting down resistance in other regions of Mexico, in the spring of 1836 Santa Anna marched on San Antonio. Texian leader Sam Houston, believing that San Antonio could not be defended against the regular Mexican army, called for the Texian forces to abandon the city and join him. A volunteer force under William Barrett Travis, newly arrived in Texas, and including James Bowie, Davy Crockett and his company of Tennesseans, and Juan Seguin's company of hispanic Texan volunteers, occupied the deserted fort, the Alamo, and determined to hold San Antonio against all opposition. The Battle of the Alamo took place from February 23 to March 6, 1836. Santa Anna, without waiting to bring up his heavy artillery, hurled his troops against the walls of the fort in mass assaults. These were carried out with great courage by the Mexican troops and were repelled with equal courage by the defenders of the Alamo. The defenders of the Alamo included both anglo and hispanic Texans who fought side by side under a banner that was the flag of Mexico with the numerals "1824" superimposed. This was meant to indicate that the defenders were fighting for their rights to democratic government under the Mexican constitution of that year. It was only during the siege that the Texas Congress declared an independent Republic of Texas. After 13 days the 189 Texan defenders were overwhelmed by a final assault from the 4,000 Mexican troops led by Antonio López de Santa Anna. Those defenders who were captured were executed as rebels on the specific orders of Santa Anna. While legally entitled to do this, the deaths of these "Martyrs to Texas Independence" inspired greater resistance to Santa Anna's regime, and the cry "Remember the Alamo" became the rallying point of the Texas Revolution. Texas independence was finally attained at the subsequent Battle of San Jacinto the following April. The site of the Alamo, which was in 1836 across the San Antonio River from the city, is now an integral part of downtown. Alamo Plaza contains the Cenotaph, which covers the remains of the Heroes of the Alamo, and bears the names of all who fought there on the Texan side. Among the hispanic Texans, Tejanos who fought on the side of the Texas independence forces, was Juan Seguín. He was elected to the Texas senate following independence, and later served as mayor of San Antonio. He was forced out of that office at gunpoint by Anglo politicians in 1842. The next Hispanic mayor would not come until Henry Cisneros was elected in 1981. The Alamo is a former Roman Catholic mission and fortress compound. It is maintained as a shrine and museum located in the heart of downtown, and is surrounded by many hotels and tourist attractions. It is clearly San Antonio's best known landmark, and is featured in its flag and seal and in the city's nickname, "The Alamo City." Across the street from the Alamo is the world famous Crockett Hotel, named after the legendary pioneer Davy Crockett. In 1845 the United States annexed Texas and included it as a state in the Union. This led to the Mexican War between the United States and Mexico which concluded with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848. Under this treaty Mexico ceded to the United States not only Texas but California, New Mexico, Arizona, and all of what is now the American Southwest. The war was devastating to San Antonio and at its end the population of the city had been reduced by almost two thirds, to only 800 inhabitants. Peace and economic connections to the United States restored prosperity to the city and by 1860, at the start of the Civil War, San Antonio had grown to a city of 15,000 people. This period saw a large immigration from Germany. The beautiful King William district just south of downtown was built at this time as the home to the most successful of the city's German merchants. During this period a visitor was as likely to hear German as English or Spanish, spoken on the streets of the city. The Guenther Flour Mills, Gebhardt's Chili Powder, and Mahncke Park, are just a few of the local institutions which recall San Antonio's German heritage.
During the Civil War San Antonio was not deeply involved in the secessionist cause, due in part to the fact that many of the city's residents, notably those of German or Mexican ancestry, supported the Union. After the war San Antonio prospered as a center of the cattle culture. There is an argument to be made that it was in San Antonio that the American cowboy originated since it was there that Spanish and Mexican techniques of herding cattle on horseback were transferred to anglo American cattle ranchers. It is undoubted that major cattle trails, including the Chisholm Trail began in San Antonio. It was for this reason that promoter "Bet a Million" Gates chose San Antonio to demonstrate the value of barbed wire. In 1876 he fenced off Alamo Plaza with the new invention then had cowboys drive a herd of cattle into the wire. When the wire held the cattle many of the ranchers in attendance placed orders for the new product. San Antonio was thus crucial both to the beginning and ending of the open range period in American ranching culture.
During this period San Antonio remained a frontier city. Its isolation and its diverse cultures gave it the reputation as a beautiful and exotic place. When Frederick Law Olmstead, the architect who would two years later design Central Park in New York City, visited San Antonio in 1856 he described San Antonio as having a, "jumble of races, costumes, languages, and buildings," which gave it a quality which only New Orleans could rival in, "odd and antiquated foreignness." Much of the mystique which drives today's tourist industry in San Antonio has it origins, then, in a sense of the uniqueness of the city which is over 150 years old. In 1877 the first railroad reached San Antonio and the city was no longer on the frontier but began to enter the mainstream of American society. At the beginning of the 20th century the streets of downtown, the old Spanish and Mexican city, were widened to accommodate street cars and modern traffic. In the process many historic building were destroyed. These included the Veramendi House, the home of the prominent family into which Jim Bowie had married when he came to city. Standing on the southwest side of the intersection of Houston and Soledad Streets this building was a massive quadrangle built of adobe around a central courtyard in the typical Mexican style. When the street was widened by 20 feet the building was leveled. Like many municipalities in the American Southwest, San Antonio experiences steady population growth. The city's population has nearly doubled in 35 years, from just over 650,000 in the 1970 census to an estimated 1.2 million in 2005 through both steady population growth and land annexation (considerably enlarging the physical area of the city).
San Diego, California
San Diego named after Saint Didacus (Didacus of Alcalá) in Spanish, is the second-largest city in California and the eighth largest city in the United States, located along the Pacific Ocean on the west coast of the United States. The California Department of Finance estimates the city's population at 1,353,993 as of January 1st 2009. This coastal city is also the county seat of San Diego County as well as the economic center of the San Diego–Carlsbad–San Marcos metropolitan area. As of 2008, this metropolitan area is the 17th-largest in the United States with a population of 3,001,072. The area of San Diego has long been inhabited by the Kumeyaay Indians. The first European to visit the region was Portuguese-born explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailing under the Spanish Flag, who sailed his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain. In 1542, Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire and named the site San Miguel. In November of 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast. Arriving on his flagship San Diego, Vizcaíno surveyed the harbor and what are now Mission Bay and Point Loma and named the area for the Catholic Saint Didacus, a Spaniard more commonly known as San Diego. On November 12, 1602, the first Christian religious service of record in Alta California was conducted by Fray Antonio de la Ascensión, a member of Vizcaíno's expedition, to celebrate the feast day of San Diego. In 1769, Gaspar de Portolà established the Fort Presidio of San Diego overlooking Old Town. Around the same time, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was founded by Franciscan friars under Father Junípero Serra. By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in and around the mission proper. After New Spain won its independence from the Spanish Empire in 1823, Mission San Diego de Alcalá's fortunes declined in the 1830s after the decree of secularization was enacted, as was the case with all of the missions under the control of Mexico. In 1847 San Diego was a destination of the 2,000-mile (3,200 km) march of the Mormon Battalion which built the city's first courthouse with brick. After the Battle of San Pasqual, the end of the Mexican-American War, and the gold rush of 1848, San Diego was designated the seat of the newly-established San Diego County and was incorporated as a city in 1850. The city charter was drafted in 1889. In the years before World War I, the Industrial Workers of the World labor union conducted a free speech fight in San Diego, arousing a brutal response. Significant U.S. Naval presence began in 1907 with the establishment of the Navy Coaling Station, which gave further impetus to the development of the town. San Diego hosted two World's Fairs, the Panama-California Exposition in 1915, and the California Pacific International Exposition in 1935. Many of the Spanish/Baroque-style buildings in the city's Balboa Park were built for these expositions, particularly the one in 1915. Intended to be temporary structures, most remained in continuous use until they progressively fell into disrepair. All were eventually rebuilt using castings of the original facades to faithfully retain the architectural style. After World War II, the military played an increasing role in the local economy, but post-Cold War cutbacks took a heavy toll on the local defense and aerospace industries. The resulting downturn led San Diego leaders to seek to diversify the city's economy, and San Diego has since become a major center of the emerging biotechnology industry. It is also home to telecommunications giant Qualcomm. In 2003, San Diego was the site of the Cedar Fire, which has been called the largest wildfire in California over the past century. In addition to damage caused by the fire, smoke from the fire resulted in a significant increase in emergency room visits due to asthma, respiratory problems, eye irritation, and smoke inhalation. This caused San Diego County schools to close for a week(s) due to the smoke of the wildfire.
Boston, Massachusetts
Boston is the capital and largest city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England Boston city proper had a 2007 estimated population of 608,352, making it the twenty-first largest in the country
In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Boston was founded on September 17, 1630, by Puritan colonists from England. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony are sometimes confused with the Pilgrims, who founded Plymouth Colony ten years earlier in what is today Bristol County, Plymouth County, and Barnstable County, Massachusetts. The two groups, which differed in religious practice, are historically distinct. The separate colonies were not united until the formation of the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1691. The Shawmut Peninsula was connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus and was surrounded by the waters of Massachusetts Bay and the Back Bay, an estuary of the Charles River. Several prehistoric Native American archaeological sites that were excavated in the city have shown that the peninsula was inhabited as early as 5,000 BC. Boston's early European settlers first called the area Trimountaine, but later renamed the town after Boston, Lincolnshire, England, from which several prominent colonists had emigrated. Massachusetts Bay Colony's original governor, John Winthrop, gave a famous sermon entitled "A Model of Christian Charity," popularly known as the "City on a Hill" sermon, which captured the idea that Boston had a special covenant with God. (Winthrop also led the signing of the Cambridge Agreement, which is regarded as a key founding document of the city.) Puritan ethics molded a stable and well-structured society in Boston. For example, shortly after Boston's settlement, Puritans founded America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and America's first college, Harvard College (1636). Boston was the largest town in British North America until Philadelphia grew larger in the mid-18th century. Map showing a British tactical evaluation of Boston in 1775In the 1770s, British attempts to exert more-stringent control on the thirteen colonies primarily via taxation prompted Bostonians to initiate the American Revolution. The Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, and several early battles including the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston occurred in or near the city. During this period, Paul Revere made his famous midnight ride. After the Revolution, Boston had become one of the world's wealthiest international trading ports because of the city's consolidated seafaring tradition exports included rum, fish, salt, and tobacco. During this era, descendants of old Boston families were regarded as the nation's social and cultural elites; they were later dubbed the Boston Brahmins. View of Boston from Dorchester Heights, 1841The Embargo Act of 1807, adopted during the Napoleonic Wars, and the War of 1812 significantly curtailed Boston's harbor activity. Although foreign trade returned after these hostilities, Boston's merchants had found alternatives for their capital investments in the interim. Manufacturing became an important component of the city's economy, and by the mid-1800s, the city's industrial manufacturing overtook international trade in economic importance. Until the early 1900s, Boston remained one of the nation's largest manufacturing centers and was notable for its garment production and leather-goods industries. A network of small rivers bordering the city and connecting it to the surrounding region made for easy shipment of goods and led to a proliferation of mills and factories. Later, a dense network of railroads facilitated the region's industry and commerce. From the mid-19th to late 19th century, Boston flourished culturally; it became renowned for its rarefied literary culture and lavish artistic patronage. It also became a center of the abolitionist movement. The city reacted strongly to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which contributed to President Franklin Pierce's attempt to make an example of Boston after the Burns Fugitive Slave Case. Scollay Square in the 1880sIn 1822, the citizens of Boston voted to change the official name from "the Town of Boston" to "the City of Boston", and on March 4, 1822, the people of Boston accepted the charter incorporating the City. At the time Boston was chartered as a city, the population was about 46,226, while the area of the city was only 4.7 square miles (12 km2). In the 1820s, Boston's population began to swell, and the city's ethnic composition changed dramatically with the first wave of European immigrants. Irish immigrants dominated the first wave of newcomers during this period. By 1850, about 35,000 Irish lived in Boston. In the latter half of the 19th century, the city saw increasing numbers of Irish, Germans, Lebanese, Syrians, French Canadians, and Russian and Polish Jews settle in the city. By the end of the 19th century, Boston's core neighborhoods had become enclaves of ethnically distinct immigrants—Italians inhabited the North End, Irish dominated South Boston and Charlestown, and Russian Jews lived in the West End. Irish and Italian immigrants brought with them Roman Catholicism. Currently, Catholics make up Boston's largest religious community,[34] and since the early 20th century, the Irish have played a major role in Boston politics, prominent figures include the Kennedys, Tip O'Neill, and John F. Fitzgerald. Haymarket Square, 1909Between 1631 and 1890, the city tripled its physical size by land reclamation, by filling in marshes, mud flats, and gaps between wharves along the waterfront a process that Walter Muir Whitehill called "cutting down the hills to fill the coves." The largest reclamation efforts took place during the 1800s. Beginning in 1807, the crown of Beacon Hill was used to fill in a 50-acre (20 ha) mill pond that later became the Haymarket Square area. The present-day State House sits atop this lowered Beacon Hill. Reclamation projects in the middle of the century created significant parts of the South End, the West End, the Financial District, and Chinatown. After The Great Boston Fire of 1872, workers used building rubble as landfill along the downtown waterfront. During the mid-to-late 19th century, workers filled almost 600 acres (2.4 km²) of brackish Charles River marshlands west of the Boston Common with gravel brought by rail from the hills of Needham Heights. Also, the city annexed the adjacent towns of Roxbury (1868), Dorchester (1870), Brighton, West Roxbury (including present day Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and West Roxbury), and Charlestown. The last three towns were annexed in 1874. Other towns include Hyde Park, Mattapan, and East Boston.
Government Center, 1999By the early 20th and mid-20th century, the city was in decline as factories became old and obsolete, and businesses moved out of the region for cheaper labor elsewhere. Boston responded by initiating various urban renewal projects under the direction of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), which was established in 1957. In 1958, BRA initiated a project to improve the historic West End neighborhood. Extensive demolition was met with vociferous public opposition to the new agency. BRA subsequently reevaluated its approach to urban renewal in its future projects, including the construction of Government Center. In 1965, the first Community Health Center in the United States opened, the Columbia Point Health Center, in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. It mostly served the massive Columbia Point public housing complex adjoining it, which was built in 1953. The health center is still in operation and was rededicated in 1990 as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center. The John F. Kennedy Library, located on the Columbia Point peninsula, By the 1970s, the city's economy boomed after 30 years of economic downturn. Hospitals such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Brigham and Women's Hospital led the nation in medical innovation and patient care. Schools such as Harvard University, MIT, Tufts University, Boston University, Boston College, and Northeastern University attracted students to the Boston area. Nevertheless, the city experienced conflict starting in 1974 over desegregation busing, which resulted in unrest and violence around public schools throughout the mid-1970s. In 1984, the City of Boston gave control of the Columbia Point public housing complex to a private developer, who redeveloped and revitalized the property from its rundown and dangerous state into an attractive residential mixed-income community called Harbor Point Apartments, which was opened in 1988 and completed by 1990. It was the first federal housing project to be converted to private, mixed-income housing in the United States, and was used as a model for the federal HUD HOPE VI public housing revitalization program that began in 1992. The North End has been experiencing gentrification since the completion of the Big Dig in the early 2000s, which moved the elevated Central Artery freeway mostly into tunnels. This has also been changing the traditional Italian American culture of the area. In the early 21st century, the city has become an intellectual, technological, and political center. It has, however, experienced a loss of regional institutions, which included the acquisition of The Boston Globe by The New York Times, and the loss to mergers and acquisitions of local financial institutions such as FleetBoston Financial, which was acquired by Charlotte-based Bank of America in 2004. Boston-based department stores Jordan Marsh and Filene's have both been merged into the New York-based Macy's. Boston has also experienced gentrification in the latter half of the 20th century, with housing prices increasing sharply since the 1990s. Living expenses have risen, and Boston has one of the highest costs of living in the United States, and was ranked the 99th most expensive major city in the world in a 2008 survey of 143 cities. Despite cost, Boston ranks high on livability ratings, ranking 35th worldwide in quality of living in 2009 in a survey of 215 major cities.