Manhattan Island Great American Railroad Journeys

I have crossed the Atlantic,

to ride the railroads of America...

with a new travelling companion.

Published in 1879, my Appletons' General Guide will steer me

to everything that's novel...

beautiful...memorable

or curious in the United States.

-ALL:

-Amen.

As I cross the continent, I'll discover America's Gilded Age,

when powerful tycoons launched a railway boom

that tied the nation together

and carved out its future as a superpower.

I'm beginning my American adventure

in New York, the Empire State.

Starting in New York City, I'll continue up the Hudson

to Poughkeepsie and the New York State capital of Albany.

From here, I'll turn west to the Great Lakes,

taking in Rochester and Buffalo.

I'll finish my journey on the Canadian border at Niagara Falls.

Today, I'll explore New York's Manhattan Island

using the subway, the busiest rail transit system in the United States.

I'll start at the magnificent Grand Central Terminal.

In the financial district,

I'll hear about the robber barons of America's Gilded Age.

I'll take in that most theatrical of streets, Broadway,

and visit the tenements of the Lower East Side.

I'll finish this first leg of my journey

at the new World Trade Center.

Along the way,

I visit the gateway to the nation for millions of immigrants...

People would be sitting on the benches, anxiously shuffling

their feet, awaiting their trains that would take them to new lives,

to a new adventure.

..uncover shady deals and crooked politicians...

Railroads could not have been built without federal support,

and they relied very, very heavily

on sort of corrupt political connections.

# Pardon me, boy

# Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo...? #

..I'm thoroughly choo-chooed on Broadway...

# ..Chattanooga Choo Choo Won't you choo-choo me home?... #

APPLAUSE

..and I witness the future for transport in New York City.

The sun will shine directly into this building

at the moment the last tower fell. We call that the wedge of light.

Like the 19th-century tourist following my guide book,

I'm starting in New York City.

"Grand Central Depot, the largest and finest in the country,

"built of brick, stone and iron,

"692 feet long and 240 foot wide."

That was written in 1879,

and now it's been replaced by a lofty temple,

a building of such elegance, sophistication

and grandeur that the Big Apple says,

"I don't care where you've been before,

"this city admits no near equal."

In the foyer of this awe-inspiring building,

I'm meeting Dan Brucker, who's been guiding tourists

around Grand Central Terminal for over 25 years.

-Hi, I'm Dan Brucker.

-Hello, Dan, I'm Michael.

-Hi.

I was just obviously admiring Grand Central Station,

and this is an amazing bit of architecture.

So when was this finally opened to the public?

Right, this opened up in February of 1913.

It was then and remains to this day the world's largest train terminal.

Also, every single day, coming through Grand Central Terminal,

pass more than 750,000 people.

I can believe it.

The mastermind behind this railroad cathedral was the industrial

magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt.

He built the first station on the site in 1871.

It stood until 1902,

when a catastrophic collision

between two steam-powered passenger trains in an approach tunnel

led the New York Central Railroad Company

to switch to electricity,

and Grand Central was completely redesigned for a new age,

with 49 platforms over two levels.

The steam railyards north of the station were built over.

Above them rose Park Avenue,

offering some of the most prestigious real estate

in the world, whose revenues flowed to Vanderbilt.

He was a shrewd man.

And so shrewd he made sure that his mark was going to be literally

engraved throughout here.

On the very tippy top of that clock,

that is an acorn, and throughout this terminal

you'll see acorns and oak leaf clusters aplenty.

It was a Vanderbilt family symbol,

-because from the acorn rose a mighty oak.

-It certainly grew.

In its heyday, Grand Central was the gateway to the nation,

a place from where millions of eager migrants set out west

to forge a new life in the New World.

-Vanderbilt Hall.

-Yes.

It has...quite a history to it.

Because here on this magnificent floor,

you will notice that there are little scoops.

People would be sitting on the benches, awaiting their trains

that would take them to new lives, to a new adventure.

So they'd be sitting here, anxiously shuffling their feet,

as they were about to begin an entire new life

across these United States.

Today, distances travelled from the terminal are more modest.

How many people on this train?

Right, we've got 1,200 people on this train alone.

Now, we have more tracks and track platforms

than any other station in the world.

We have 42 tracks, serving 63 track platforms,

and trains are arriving here every 47 seconds

during the morning rush hour and these numbers are greater than ever.

It's an unbelievable building.

-Do you ever lose your sense of awe for it?

-No, I never do.

My favourite part of the terminal

is not the building in and of itself,

but people's expressions as they come from out of town,

from the Midwest, Europe,

and they come in here and they see this place, wide-eyed.

-And that includes my face?

-Yes, there's that too.

For strangers passing through the imposing Terminal Hall,

the challenge is how to find the right track

and information on their train.

-Hello.

-Hi.

-So my name's Michael, what's yours?

-Michael, I'm CP.

Great to see you, CP. How did you learn all these train times?

-Do you sit down and study?

-Sometimes I do. If they do change us...

-Just a moment.

-OK.

-Hi, excuse me.

-Can you point me to...?

-I need track 29.

-29 what?

-Um, it's rail, to Poughkeepsie.

Oh, you want to go to Poughkeepsie.

-All right, young lady, hurry up, one minute, right behind me.

-OK.

-Mm-hm.

So, New Yorkers, of course, have a worldwide reputation

for being THE most polite people in the world, is that right?

-No, that's not polite. No, they're not polite.

-No?

Sometimes, they can be very rude, but you go with it.

-Yeah?

-We're dealing with people.

But you're trained to be polite back, are you?

I'm born polite, I can't help it.

All those people pouring into New York,

the human fuel that makes this motor run.

Yes. Yes, yes. But it's fun.

And like so many before me,

I leave these majestic marble halls to begin my adventure.

Before I explore today's Manhattan at ground level,

an eagle-eyed view is in order.

A short journey north from Grand Central

takes me to the Rockefeller Center.

This vast complex was constructed

by the oil tycoon and philanthropist John D Rockefeller,

during the Great Depression,

and opened in 1933.

I'm heading to the top.

Appletons' map of New York City, 1879,

and it's all completely recognisable.

There's the Hudson River to my right, the East River to my left.

Down there where the Freedom Tower is,

that was old colonial New York,

and you could recognise it on the map

because all the streets are higgledy-piggledy.

But the city had planned its expansion on a grid system

and you can see the grid from here.

You can't maybe see the streets, but you can tell that all the buildings

are in the same orientation, they're facing me directly.

But you have to remember, when this map was published,

there were no skyscrapers.

It was all little houses and warehouses and storehouses,

and everything that's happened since has transformed the city,

but - it's all developed according to plan.

Bounded by water, Manhattan Island had limited space to grow.

The answer? Push the limits of technology and build up.

Here, you can see how skyscrapers began.

This is the wonderful Flatiron Building.

They were made possible by a new way of producing steel,

patented by an Englishman, Henry Bessemer.

And that meant that you could have a building that was elegant

and slim from bottom to top.

And then the decoration, well,

that's drawn from Classical Greece and from the Renaissance.

And so, the technology was British, the decoration was European,

but the boldness, the chutzpah, was all American.

One early investor in the Bessemer steel-making process

in the United States was Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie.

Steel rails were more durable than iron, and in 1875, Carnegie built

a steel plant devoted to the needs of the expanding railroad industry.

He became one of the wealthiest men in America.

100 years before Carnegie left Britain

to seek his fortune in the New World,

New York was a British colony.

I'm heading to Bowling Green to find out what the city was like then

from historian Jessica Baldwin Phillips.

-Hello.

-Hello, Jessica. Good to see you.

-Good to see you as well.

Ah, I, um... I'm pursuing my travels with my Appletons' and it tells me

that Bowling Green is the cradle of New York City.

"In colonial times it was the heart of highest fashion of the colony,

"having been successively the residence and headquarters

"of Lords Cornwallis and Howe,

"General Sir Henry Clinton and General Washington."

So tell me about the place in those days.

It was bustling. There were homes, people lived here,

there were peddlers, there was livestock, it was quite the centre.

It was the first park of New York City.

What was the architecture like in those days?

-A lot smaller than it is today.

-Well, that's for sure.

So Trinity Church would have been the tallest building,

and you had a lot of wood-framed buildings,

not as much stone, no skyscrapers.

Before the Revolution, how much of Manhattan was built upon at all?

Hardly much at all. Just the lower portion of Manhattan, the tip,

really, was where there were streets and building after building,

but after you got maybe 15, 20 blocks in, it's farmland.

-And this is all because of the port, the natural harbour?

-Correct.

So before the Revolution, these big names of the British establishment

that I've mentioned,

-they lived a British establishment life away from home.

-Correct.

These were the colonies. This technically was their home

and they had a vested interest

in making sure that it was prosperous for the crown.

And after the war, a lot of the loyalists either left the city

or they stayed here and made do.

What happened to those who stayed?

They became the Americans of today.

Three blocks east of Bowling Green

I find a restaurant that regularly hosted grand Americans

of Appletons' day,

and which is still thriving.

Delmonico's, according to Appletons',

is "One of the best restaurants in the world

"and famous for its elaborate dinners".

This is where those with the Midas touch would meet and eat.

Open since 1837,

some 40 years before the publication of my guide book,

Delmonico's was the first restaurant in the United States

to feature tablecloths.

And it claims to have invented many dishes, including Eggs Benedict.

On the menu tonight is their famous Lobster Newburg.

-Ah, here it is.

-Here we go.

-Wow.

-Beautiful Lobster Newburg.

-Thank you.

-That is impressive.

'My dining companion is a historian

'from the City University of New York, Nora Slonimsky.'

Oh, that's delicious.

Nora, I suggested this restaurant

because apparently it was very popular during the Gilded Age.

What was the Gilded Age?

The Gilded Age was a period in American history

from about 1870 to 1890, and the phrase basically expresses

sort of the paradox of the changes that are happening in this moment,

that on the one hand you have this incredible technological innovation,

innovation really is personified by the railroads

and railroad expansion, in which incredible wealth

and incredible economic expansion is happening,

but on the other, that wealth is very misleading

because there are a lot of people who are not benefitting.

So in that sense, it's gilded.

After the Civil War,

the railroads bring together this vast single economy

but they also, I suppose, unite the country metaphorically,

-after the Civil War. Is that true?

-Yes, I would say they do.

So the railroad sort of had to be sold, in a lot of ways,

to the American people in this period, and one of the issues

they were selling was that "we can truly unite the country."

In 1869, four years after the end of the American Civil War,

the first trans-continental railroad was completed in Utah.

By the end of the century, the railways were by far

the biggest business in the United States,

whose tentacles connected every sizable community.

Much like the internet, I think, is today,

the railroad was sort of this transformative moment for modernity,

for nationalism, for sort of society as a whole in this time.

Who were the big figures in this period?

Oh, well, there's several,

but I would say perhaps the most iconic figure, definitely someone

who would probably eat here, would've been Jay Gould.

And Jay Gould is from New York and he started his career

as a book-keeper to a blacksmith, actually.

And then, relatively quickly, right before the Civil War,

began investing in New York railroads, local railroads.

And after the Civil War,

when that opportunity...

for, really, just westward expansion exploded,

he really capitalised on that very quickly and began,

through a series of business connections

and government relations, to invest very heavily in railroads.

At the height of Gould's power in the 1880s,

he controlled one seventh of the entire American rail network.

Although tycoons' business practices

and their treatment of workers varied,

Gould and fellow industrialists like Vanderbilt

and Carnegie were popularly labelled "robber barons."

It's not a flattering name, by any means,

and what it basically combines

is a pretty longstanding American scepticism about aristocracy

with a dislike for sort of common criminality.

-And were they? Were they dishonest?

-Yes, I would say a lot

of the practices they engaged with were pretty dishonest.

They were very brutal to their employees,

they were very ruthless with their competitors and they relied very,

very heavily on sort of corrupt political connections

to ensure that their enterprises succeeded.

The railroads could not have been built without federal support

and someone like Gould knew that.

And Gould's most probably infamous relationship

was with a New York City politician, William or "Boss" Tweed,

and their dynamic was very close.

When Boss Tweed was finally caught for embezzlement charges,

Gould paid his, I believe, 1 million bond.

Do you think it's conceivable, then, that a robber baron met here

-with a corrupt politician, over a Lobster Newburg?

-I would...

I would absolutely say that there's a very strong possibility that

Jay Gould and William Boss Tweed could have sat right over there.

No money has changed hands this evening, but it has been a pleasure

-dining with you. Thank you.

-Thank you so much.

New York might be the city that never sleeps,

but after that fine dinner, I won't attempt to keep up.

I'll let the 24-hour hum of Manhattan continue without me.

This morning, I'm starting the day in Manhattan's Central Park,

with the morning papers.

New York newspaper review, 1879.

In The New York Times, under the heading "John Smith Cannibal",

we learn that the Massachusetts herdsman, who eats reptiles

and would like to eat human flesh, is a former marine.

There's a report from London, England,

that a Parliamentary committee's report on electric lighting

says that sufficient progress has been made

to encourage the belief that electricity has an important future,

for illuminating and as a source of mechanical power.

The New York Herald covers its front page with an advertisement for ale,

but inside, a harrowing description of a railroad accident.

It seems that one of the most remarkable accidents of the age

occurred on the Chesapeake and Ohio railroad.

The train was going at 30mph when it jumped the track

and the coupling of the rear first class coach snapped in two

and the coach went rolling over and over,

down the declivity, a distance of 30 feet, to the Greenbrier River.

So...gory tales of crime, predictions of the future,

and accidents.

Nothing changes much.

Appletons' tells me that Central Park is one of the largest

and finest parks in the world.

And indeed it's an urban oasis.

Not many parks have an official historian,

but Sara Cedar Miller of the Central Park Conservancy

holds that honour.

Sara, why did New York City want a big park?

Well, there were really two factors in why it needed a park.

Number one was that, in the 1840s,

America was getting its first wave of immigration

and people were not getting along. There were riots, lots of tension,

and people decided, "You know what? If we make a beautiful park,

"everyone will come with their families,

"they'll see we're all just alike." And it worked.

-And the second reason?

-The second reason has to do with New York,

which was not a world capital at the time,

but it desperately wanted to be.

And so they decided that we should have a big park

just like London and Paris.

In 1857, the state of New York announced a competition

to design America's first landscaped public park.

The superintendant in charge was Frederick Law Olmsted.

He teamed up with a British architect, Calvert Vaux,

to produce the winning design.

It was a hugely ambitious project.

How difficult was it to make a park here in the centre of Manhattan?

Well, it was a rocky, swampy mess,

and in order to make it, it took

almost 11 million,

which in the 1860s and '70s

was an enormous amount of money.

And it took 1,600 people a year to build the park

and it took 16 years.

At the eastern edge of Central Park,

on 5th Avenue and 82nd Street,

Appletons' says that I'll find,

"the spacious building of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

"a fine collection of the Old Masters,

"loaned by the wealthy virtuous of the city."

Many of the robber barons who played hardball in the boardroom

proved generous philanthropists outside it.

Today, the museum is the third most visited

in the United States, and the seventh most popular globally.

I'm meeting Jim Moske, archivist at the Met,

to find out how the riches of the railway trade provided a boon

for the city's art lovers.

Jim, what is so striking to me, as a European,

is that this amazing collection of art is not a national gallery.

-How did it all start?

-That's right, it's not a national gallery.

The Metropolitan, it was founded in 1870

by a group of public-spirited citizens of New York

who were art collectors, businessmen,

financiers and bankers and the like.

Railroads were a big way of making a fortune in the 19th century.

Are they strongly connected with the origins of the museum?

Many of the early trustees of the museum

were involved in the railroad industry.

In fact, the museum's first president

was a man named John Taylor Johnston,

who was an art collector and a patron of the arts,

but he was also a businessman

who was the president of the Central New Jersey Railroad.

And do we have a good feel for what kind of a man he was?

Yeah, Johnston was a very curious man in his business matters

and did lots of research before he leapt into any investment,

and so, as a person interested in financing railroad construction,

he travelled the rails quite often himself.

Johnston remained president of the Met from 1870 to 1889.

As well as running the museum,

he seeded its galleries from his personal art collection.

Now, I know you're obsessed with railroads, so I'd like you to take

a look at this picture by American genre artist Edward Lamson Henry.

And this was actually commissioned by John Taylor Johnston.

He wanted a scene like this to decorate his home, to remind him

of how he was making his money, I guess.

Johnston paid Henry 500 for this painting.

Henry at that time was quite a young artist,

and it was a tidy sum for him at that point in his career.

And as a European, may I just say,

that is the archetypal United States locomotive.

So I'd like to show you a painting by the artist John Singer Sargent

of the second president of the Metropolitan Museum, Henry Marquand.

-How had HE made his money?

-In railroads.

Yeah, if you were a millionaire in New York,

it was the thing to do to have your portrait painted by Sargent

or another prominent artist of the day.

Any idea what Sargent might have got for a portrait like that?

-They paid Sargent 3,100 American dollars for this picture.

-Wow.

That's a lot of money at the time, but, er,

-a mere nothing compared with a railroad fortune.

-That's true.

As the Gilded Age reached its zenith,

the Metropolitan benefitted from lavish bequests made by tycoons.

James, what an extraordinary work of art that table is.

How did it find its way to the Metropolitan Museum?

It was originally made in the 19th century

for the Vanderbilt family, and it was displayed prominently

in the library of their Fifth Avenue mansion.

Many of these tycoons actually made great donations of art.

Some of them were known as robber barons.

I'm wondering, why did they make donations?

Is there a paradox here, or is there an explanation?

Well, I think for many of them who had longstanding ties

to the Metropolitan and other institutions,

they felt genuine senses of wanting to share their aesthetic experience

with the general public.

Others of them, frankly, I think

were motivated by wanting to enhance their public image

by making sizable, you know,

substantial contributions of artworks to places like the Met.

And now these tycoons are perhaps better remembered for their virtues

-than for what may have been their sins.

-That's very true.

In my Appletons' Guide, even in 1879,

when it comes to theatres and amusements,

there's one street name that occurs again and again.

They say the neon lights are bright,

they say there's magic in the air...

on Broadway.

After the advent of electric light in the early 20th century,

theatres on Broadway dazzled audiences with their signage,

hence its name, The Great White Way.

Today, bright lights still draw the crowds to Times Square.

I've arranged to meet urban historian Timothy R White.

-Tim, how nice to see you.

-Nice to see you. Welcome to Times Square.

My Appletons' Guide lists many theatres on Broadway,

is it talking about this part of town?

Well, you would think so because of all the history here, but most

of the theatres in the mid-19th century were closer to Union Square,

and a little bit later, toward Herald Square.

Was there quite a vigorous theatre scene in those days?

Quite active. But different. Different types of shows

and a different relationship to the rest of the United States.

Are we talking about classical theatre,

or are we talking about music hall...?

There were both of those but they did many melodramas,

that was very popular, and they were easy to produce.

Did these shows go on tour?

Not really until the latter half of the 19th century,

because that's when you've got more railroads available.

And the shows that made a hit in New York could then go to another city.

Once you get into the proper railroad age,

the number of tours increases and the capacity to go from,

as we say in the States, sea to shining sea,

is quite expanded.

In the 1870s, when Appletons' Guide was published,

what's the scene in New York?

People liked to get a bit of spectacle in their theatre

and there was quite a sensation

when the British Blondes arrived here stateside.

They wore quite form-fitting costumes.

They were revealing the shape of the female to their audiences

and they did quite well at the box office.

Without a ticket for a show,

I've heard of a place where resting Broadway actors

keep their song and dance routines sharp - Ellen's Stardust Diner,

the singing waiters.

We have something very special for you this evening.

It's for a special guest who's here today, Michael...

-ALL:

-..who loves trains.

This one's for you, Michael.

MUSIC BEGINS

# Pardon me, boy Is that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

# Right on track 29

# Boy, you can give me a shine

# When you hear the whistle blowin' eight to the bar

# Then you know that Tennessee is not very far

# Shovel all the coal in Gotta keep it rollin'

# Whoo-whoo, Chattanooga There you are

# So, Chattanooga Choo Choo

# Won't you choo-choo me home?

# Climb aboard

# Choo-choo

# Chattanooga Choo Choo Won't you choo-choo me home? #

APPLAUSE

Thank you.

There is nothing you can name that is anything like a Manhattan dame.

Choo-choo!

The New York City that was briefly capital of the United States

under President George Washington

was a small cluster of low-rise streets

at the southern tip of Manhattan.

A century later, at the time of my Appletons',

buildings and railroads had swarmed uptown.

And then, following a Gilded Age of super-rich tycoons,

the city sprouted skyscrapers,

Grand Central Terminal and an art museum.

The growth of New York City

has been more dramatic than anything that's yet appeared on Broadway.

It's a new day

and I'm continuing my exploration of New York City's Manhattan Island

using the subway.

I'm drawn into a drama of my own

on the Lower East Side,

and scale the heights of the city's most elevated park,

before taking to the water to visit the gateway to America for millions,

Ellis Island.

I end this part of my journey at the new World Trade Center.

During the late 19th century,

the American railroad industry grew rapidly.

In 1860,

there were just 30,000 miles of tracks across the continent.

By 1900, 200,000 miles of railroad connected the states

and tied the nation together.

But profits from the booming new business

were concentrated in very few hands.

New York City was the starting point for many wanting a new life.

SIREN WAILS

I'm taking the subway to the Lower East Side,

a part of town definitely not mentioned in my guide book.

In a Gilded Age that began around the time of my Appletons' Guide,

tycoons who'd made their fortunes from railroads

and steel and banking,

dined and danced and smoked their cigars

by the light of countless chandeliers

and travelled in private railway cars -

but how did the other half live?

In the last decades of the 19th century,

the city's population grew from 1 million to 3.5 million.

Thousands of immigrants crowded into insanitary buildings

in Lower Manhattan.

To get an idea of those conditions,

I'm meeting Annie Polland at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

-Annie, hello.

-Hi. Welcome.

-I find you in this rather gruesome tenement.

-Yes.

How many people would have lived in a place like this?

Around 1870, about 80 people lived in a tenement,

so about four to five people per apartment.

-One room or several rooms?

-Three small rooms.

They called them railroad apartments because there was no hallway

within the actual apartment, so one room led to another room.

There was no running water in the building at this time.

All running water was outside, so, if you needed water to clean,

to wash, you're going to go down the stairs,

out into what was called the rear yard.

And then next to the water faucet, basically,

is about four outdoor toilets.

And, presumably, people were carrying their waste

-down from their apartments.

-Absolutely.

Have we any idea how many New Yorkers lived in tenements?

By 1900, you have about 75% of New Yorkers living in tenements.

Heavens.

'On the floor above, a tenement from the 1900s has been recreated.'

-What are the differences?

-First of all, you have many more people

living in the tenements by the end of the 19th century.

By 1900, we have about 111 people, according to the Census.

There might have been even more than that.

The majority of people living here are East European Jews

who've come over in large numbers to make New York

the largest Jewish city in the world.

The tenements became the heart of the garment industry.

Manufacturers used home workers,

avoiding the expense of running a factory.

So, in this very apartment,

a man named Harris Levine lived with his wife, Jenny,

would end up having five children -

and every day at least three workers

would come and sit with him and make dresses.

And the irony, I suppose, is that a pretty pink dress like that

was not something that these people could have afforded.

No, this dress would go to Macy's

or would go in a catalogue and be shipped elsewhere.

The harsh conditions in the tenements

were captured by the pioneering photojournalist Jacob Riis

in his ground-breaking work of 1890, How The Other Half Lives.

So what impact did the publication of How The Other Half Lives make?

It was very important because it showed people who did not live

in the tenements what tenement life was like

and one of the goals of the Progressive Reform Movement

was to persuade people that it was not immigrants or the working-class

moral disposition that caused the problems they were in,

but rather it was the conditions they lived in,

and so they argued for a series of laws and reforms

that would improve the conditions

and therefore improve the life for people in the city.

We all live in the city together and therefore the conditions

of the people who live downtown are going to affect the conditions

of the people who live uptown and therefore these laws and standards

are good not only for the tenement dwellers but for the whole city.

Riis' work shocked many Americans

and prompted the city to pass the 1901 Tenement House Act.

It stipulated indoor bathrooms and running water,

and appointed inspectors to push landlords to comply with the law.

Irish immigrants were recruited to a corrupt political machine

known as Tammany Hall,

which, by means of ballot rigging,

helped to maintain Democratic Party control in the city

under leader William "Boss" Tweed.

Please!

What are you doing? Please, please!

-Joseph, is that your name?

-Yes.

I want you to listen to me close, all right?

Now, I asked you to deliver votes, right?

If you can't deliver the votes for me, you're no good to me,

you're no good to Boss Tweed, you're no good to Tammany Hall,

you're no good to the Regular Democratic Party.

Do you understand me? Yes.

-Do you love your family? Do you want to keep them safe?

-Yes.

All right. Remember what I told you and be on your way.

What's going on here? Who are you people?

What was all that about Tammany hall?

It's the organisation what looks after these folks around here.

Tammany Hall is the seat of democratic power

-here in the city of New York.

-It didn't sound very democratic.

-I heard you mention Boss Tweed.

-Right.

He's the head of the Democratic Party.

I used to be in politics myself, actually.

-Did you now?

-Yes, I did, I did.

But I didn't buy any votes. Didn't buy any votes.

Well, neither did I, did I now?

-We don't buy votes.

-OK.

Gentlemen, I'm so sorry. A misunderstanding.

You certainly did misunderstand.

I thought you said something about buying votes. I'm so sorry.

I think you better head back north where you came from.

-That was the way I was going.

-The streets down here can be dangerous

-if you don't know your way around.

-Very nice to meet you, gentlemen.

Come on!

I'm no stranger to bruising political battles,

but city government in 19th century New York

was a particularly rough-and-tumble business and often alcohol-fuelled.

After that encounter, I need a good stiff drink -

and at The Dead Rabbit bar,

named after one of the most notorious Irish gangs in the city,

I'm meeting cocktail historian David Wondrich.

David.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome.

-What are we mixing today?

We thought we'd make some whiskey cocktails.

The original, the precursor to the Manhattan,

what the gents were drinking in all the saloons of New York

in the early 19th century.

So, we'll just take a glass,

then you're going to take your sugar syrup - just a spoonful,

-and that goes in your glass.

-Thank you.

So how did cocktails really get going?

This was originally a morning drink,

an eye-opener as it were -

which is a little bit frightening -

and it comes from the English tradition

but with that special American brashness added to it.

Like so many things that are American,

we took something that somebody else had invented

and we put extra spin on it and made it our own.

In England, it was a tonic,

in America, it was the foundation of our culture, let's say.

A little bit of orange liqueur just to make it tasty,

maybe half a spoonful.

We're going to dash... three dashes of bitters.

The bitters is what make it the cocktail, originally.

-And who were the big inventors of cocktails?

-Bartenders.

If you wanted a drink, you didn't make it yourself,

you went and saw a professional.

You went and saw somebody who knew how to mix.

Somebody who would take rye whisky, like our big bottle here.

This is the original jigger we're using -

the original spirits measure.

And who was the most famous bartender?

Jerry Thomas in the 19th century was the most famous bartender.

In 1862, he wrote the first bartender's guide.

-Wow.

-Cocktails...

-Was that a first?

-It was the first of its kind.

And was he a flamboyant man?

He would consider you a little underdressed.

He tended bar with a bowler hat on and a pair of white rats

on his shoulder that would scamper around on his hat

and on his shoulders while he talked to people.

Could you make much money as a barman in those days?

Jerry Thomas made more money than the Vice President

of the United States at the peak of his career.

He was doing extremely well.

And why is this place called The Dead Rabbit?

It's named after the Irish gang that John Morrissey led.

Irish gang leader, bare-knuckle pugilist

and United States Congressman.

My day has been plagued by Irish gangs.

New York is as Irish a city as it is anything else, that's for sure.

I will cut us a couple of lemon twists.

Beautifully done. All right.

You have made your first whisky cocktail. Let's see how it is.

19th century style.

Boy-oh-boy, that's lovely.

To oblivion.

After an evening of indulgence,

this morning I'm heading to the far West side of Manhattan Island

to visit a park known as the High Line.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries,

freight trains servicing the port were routed down Tenth Avenue.

A rather terrible death toll

when trains used to run along here at street level

led first to a horseman having to ride in front of each train,

waving a red flag,

and then to the creation of this elevated railway

which literally pierced the buildings on its path.

When it eventually fell out of use,

it was narrowly saved from demolition

and this beautiful linear park was created.

This sliver of leafy serenity above the crowded Manhattan streets

is nearly a mile and a half long

and the first section opened in 2009.

It's a magnificent example of railway heritage

adapted to bring greenery to the city.

A journey downtown takes me to Battery Park,

the southernmost tip of Manhattan.

The world at the time of my Appletons' Guide

bore some similarities to today's.

There were wars and massacres and persecutions

and terrified and impoverished migrants set out for a new life.

But, unlike nowadays, here, there was a vast, underpopulated continent

with a government willing to receive them

and New York City, as its gateway,

took in up to a million in a single year.

A short boat trip across the harbour

will take me to the first port of call for New York-bound immigrants.

-TANNOY:

-Welcome aboard. Our next stop will be Ellis Island.

Immigrants were greeted by the towering Statue of Liberty -

a gift from the people of France to the United States.

Dedicated in 1886,

seven years after the publication of my guide book,

Liberty's outstretched torch signified landfall,

new opportunities and freedom from persecution.

The settlers were processed at Ellis Island.

Between 1892 and 1924,

it was the nation's busiest immigration station.

I'm meeting genealogist Megan Smolenyak in the main hall.

Megan, this hall, with its vaulted ceiling,

I suppose, for immigrants coming from European villages,

would have been impressive - and intimidating, too.

I think absolutely. It was intended to impress.

Most of them were coming from villages

with populations of maybe 500 or 1,000 people.

This hall was designed to process 4,000 people

and sometimes, at its peak,

it processed as many as three times that per day.

So just imagine the cacophony of echoes,

you're hearing all the sound, all these languages, just chaos,

and it's right when you're on the cusp of starting your new life.

At the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th,

where were they coming from, principally?

Well, we were starting to get a shift.

Previously had been mostly from western Europe,

from the British Isles, Germany, that kind of thing.

Now, all of a sudden, we were getting lots of people

from southern and eastern Europe.

So, lots of Italians, Poles, Slavs,

lots of people who were Jewish escaping the pogroms,

that kind of thing.

And the thing about immigrants is they're all survivors and strivers.

They didn't all get in. What was the process of weeding them out?

Basically, the process started as soon as you came up the stairs.

Whether you knew it or not, you were already being watched.

What the inspectors were looking for were medical conditions.

If they saw something, what happened is they would chalk you,

and that would be an indication

that you had to go for a further inspection.

Fortunately, not too many people did get sent home.

It was less than 2%.

Roughly half of that was for medical reasons

and half was for legal reasons.

On January 1st, 1892, the main building on Ellis Island

opened its doors to the world's tired and poor.

"Huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Those words are from the sonnet by Emma Lazarus.

You can find them engraved at the Statue of Liberty.

How many immigrants passed through Ellis Island?

It's estimated that about 12 million people came through Ellis Island

and that translates into about 40% of Americans today

having at least one Ellis Island immigrant in their family tree.

Did any of those millions become American celebrities?

I would say so.

You might have heard of a fellow by the name of Bob Hope, perhaps,

but also Bela Lugosi, Cary Grant also came here.

This was the place where they took their first step on American soil.

Unlike British-born Cary Grant and Bob Hope, most immigrants

passing through Ellis Island didn't become household names.

As they stepped onto the island, they started new lives as Americans.

Today, their descendants come from across the country

and the world to search for them on a computerised database.

-Hello, ladies. Excuse me.

-Hi.

-Are you simply tourists here

or do you have a family connection with Ellis Island?

We do have a family connection. We're looking for our grandfather.

-Where did your grandfather come from?

-He came from Greece.

Do you know which bit of Greece? Do you know what became of him?

He came from the island of Crete.

He was a well-known pharmacist in New York City.

-Really?

-And he married an immigrant family from Irish descent.

It is exciting because to know that our ancestors came here

and started their life and we have what we have today because of them.

They were brave enough to come here. It gives me tingles.

Well, I hope it's a really successful day

and in the nicest sense of the word an emotional one for you, too.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Of the millions of immigrants who arrived here at Ellis Island,

some lived in poverty,

some did OK,

others became notorious gangsters,

some film stars,

others begat presidents.

Altogether, US immigration has been one of the greatest

social experiments in human history.

Back in Lower Manhattan, I'm drawn to visit the site

where the World Trade Center stood

until destroyed on September 11th, 2001.

We all remember where we were

when we heard about the terrorist attack of 9/11

and the horror that we felt and the fear.

And here at the pools that have been built in the footprint

of the Twin Towers, water pours ceaselessly into a void

whose depths are invisible, with a symbolism that I find very moving.

And here is the place to remember what we felt that day

and those who perished.

Here, very close to where the Twin Towers once stood,

they have built the Oculus -

the future transportation hub of Lower Manhattan.

An extraordinary piece of architecture.

What is it? It reminds me of a human rib cage,

perhaps a reminder of the frailty of the body.

Or is it, maybe, a bird?

I think that's it. I think it's a bird taking off.

It's a reminder that New York, once laid low by terrorism,

is now taking flight again.

Designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava,

the transportation hub will link 11 subway lines

with trains to New Jersey and the Hudson River Ferry Terminal.

Underground, the walls are covered with Italian marble

and one borders the original retaining wall

from the fallen North Tower.

The exterior ribs rise triumphantly

160 feet above ground level,

giving New York a new public space beneath.

I'm meeting Steven Plate, the deputy chief of capital planning

at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey,

who is giving me a rare glimpse inside the ongoing construction.

Wow!

What an extraordinary building.

The skylight up above you, consisting of 40 pieces of glass,

will open so when you look down from up above

you'll see something looking like an eye looking at you.

The significance is, we went to great pains to turn the building

to the exact alignment of the sun

as it appears on September 11th at 10:28am,

that precise time the sun will shine directly into this building

at the moment the last tower fell. We call that the wedge of light.

It truly is one of a kind.

It is really a wonder.

The project has not been without difficulty.

Costs have doubled to almost 4 billion.

But no recent addition to New York's transit infrastructure

has dared to combine public utility

with such architectural flair.

It's a 21st century Grand Central.

The centrepiece of Ground Zero's redevelopment

is the nearly complete One World Trade Center,

once known as the Freedom Tower.

I'm taking the lifts at 23mph

to a part of the building normally off-limits to the public.

LIFT BEEPS RHYTHMICALLY Floor, floor, floor.

Every second, another floor, all the way up to 102.

-102.

-Thank you very much.

My ears are popping.

This is certainly a very special place,

here at the base of the mast that rises to 1,776 feet.

And a privileged few who have been able to visit here

have added their signatures.

Here's one from a survivor of 9/11.

And, in tribute, I'll add mine too.

A century ago, when New York City had already astonished the world

with its skyscrapers,

it proclaimed its greatness with an iconic gateway.

A railroad temple - Grand Central Terminal.

In the attack on the city on 9/11,

the terrorists symbolically mutilated the city

by destroying its two tallest buildings

as they murdered thousands of its citizens.

Here, rising 1,776 feet above their memorial,

the city has defiantly created and even taller building

while below it announces its comeback with a transport hub -

a latter-day railway cathedral.

Next time, I'll see how tourists following my guide book

glimpsed soaring views.

People thought they were just flying with the birds

walking across this bridge.

I'll discover how America's biggest infrastructure project

is reshaping both Manhattan and Long Island.

-You were literally blasting.

-We were literally blasting.

-Wow.

-And their Martinis didn't even shake.

-No, definitely not.

James Bond would have liked it!

And I'll relive the fun and the decadence of the Roaring Twenties.

CHARLESTON DANCE MUSIC