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166-560: Since 1937, the library has been housed in the former John S. Rogers Mansion at 53 East 79th Street on Manhattan 's Upper East Side , the fifth location in its history. The stone Renaissance Revival building was one of the earliest recognized as a New York City landmark in 1967, and it was further listed on the National Register of Historic Places (as the John S. Rogers House ) in 1983 in recognition of both its architecture and

332-618: A charter from King George III . During the Revolutionary War , New York was occupied by the British Army . The library's small collection suffered from extensive looting. Soldiers tore book paper up to make wadding for their muskets , or sold the books for rum . After independence was achieved in 1783, the New York State Legislature recognized the library's charter. During that time, Congress

498-541: A rented house in Lansingburgh, almost 12 miles north of Albany. Nothing is known about what Melville did or where he went for several months after he finished teaching at Sikes. On November 12, five days after arriving in Lansingburgh, Melville paid for a term at Lansingburgh Academy to study surveying and engineering. In an April 1839 letter recommending Herman for a job in the Engineer Department of

664-629: A visit . The illusion is quite dispelled however when Herman stalks into my room without even the ceremony of knocking, bringing me perhaps a button to sew on, or some equally romantic occupation". On February 16, 1849, the Melvilles' first child, Malcolm, was born. In March 1848, Mardi was published by Richard Bentley in London, and in April by Harper in New York. Nathaniel Hawthorne thought it

830-472: A 160-acre farm in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Melville had high hopes that his next book would please the public and restore his finances. In April 1851 he told his British publisher, Richard Bentley , that his new book had "unquestionable novelty" and was calculated to have wide appeal with elements of romance and mystery. In fact, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities was heavily psychological, though drawing on

996-462: A 160-acre farm in Pittsfield. Melville called his new home Arrowhead because of the arrowheads that were dug up around the property during planting season. That winter, Melville paid Hawthorne an unexpected visit, only to discover he was working and "not in the mood for company". Hawthorne's wife Sophia gave him copies of Twice-Told Tales and, for Malcolm, The Grandfather's Chair . Melville invited them to visit Arrowhead soon, hoping to "[discuss]

1162-595: A 1981 article in Rolling Stone magazine calling the stretch of West 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues the "sleaziest block in America". By the late 1990s, led by efforts by the city and the Walt Disney Company , the area had been revived as a center of tourism to the point where it was described by The New York Times as "arguably the most sought-after 13 acres of commercial property in

1328-454: A Revolutionary War veteran was serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1853. From November 1853 to 1856, Melville published fourteen tales and sketches in Putnam's and Harper's magazines. In December 1855 he proposed to Dix & Edwards, the new owners of Putnam's , that they publish a selective collection of the short fiction. The collection, titled The Piazza Tales , was named after

1494-606: A bankrupt ... and we removed from the city; for when I think of those days, something rises up in my throat and almost strangles me". With Melville, Arvin argues, one has to reckon with "psychology, the tormented psychology, of the decayed patrician". When Melville's paternal grandfather died on September 16, 1832, Maria and her children discovered Allan, somewhat unscrupulously, had borrowed more than his share of his inheritance, meaning Maria received only $ 20 (equivalent to $ 600 in 2023). His paternal grandmother died almost exactly seven months later. Melville did his job well at

1660-526: A blank register for indexing remarkable passages from books one had read for easy retrieval. Among the sample entries that Gansevoort made showing his academic scrupulousness was "Pequot, beautiful description of the war with," with a short title reference to the place in Benjamin Trumbull's A Complete History of Connecticut (Volume I in 1797, and Volume II in 1818) in which the description could be found. The two surviving volumes of Gansevoort's are

1826-470: A children's library and 10,000 volumes in its special collections. Foremost among these latter are 290 books from the personal library kept by Puritan settler John Winthrop and his descendants. Another significant collection are the Italian-language books kept by Mozart 's librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte , who spent his last years in New York. He started an Italian Library Society in 1827 under

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1992-683: A clerk, Melville joined the U.S. Navy on August 20, as an ordinary seaman on the frigate USS  United States . During the next year, the homeward bound ship visited the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, and Valparaiso, and then, from summer to fall 1844, Mazatlan, Lima, and Rio de Janeiro, before reaching Boston on October 3. Melville was discharged on October 14. This Navy experience is used in White-Jacket (1850), Melville's fifth book. Melville's wander-years created what biographer Arvin calls "a settled hatred of external authority,

2158-704: A close friend of Melville's father, and Shaw's marriage with Melville's aunt Nancy was prevented only by her death. His warmth and financial support for the family continued after Allan's death. Melville dedicated his first book, Typee , to him. Lizzie was raised by her grandmother and an Irish nurse. Arvin suggests that Melville's interest in Lizzie may have been stimulated by "his need of Judge Shaw's paternal presence". They were married on August 4, 1847. Lizzie described their marriage as "very unexpected, and scarcely thought of until about two months before it actually took place". She wanted to be married in church, but they had

2324-461: A contract on Christmas Day with the ship's agent as a "green hand" for 1/175th of whatever profits the voyage would yield. On Sunday the 27th, the brothers heard Reverend Enoch Mudge preach at the Seamen's Bethel on Johnnycake Hill, where white marble cenotaphs on the walls memorialized local sailors who had died at sea, often in battle with whales. When he signed the crew list the next day, Herman

2490-509: A copy of his father's account of his adventures aboard the Essex . Ten years later, Melville wrote in his other copy of the book: "The reading of this wondrous story upon the landless sea, & close to the very latitude of the shipwreck had a surprising effect upon me". On September 25, the ship reported having 600 barrels of oil to another whaler, and in October 700 barrels. On October 24,

2656-554: A couple, $ 270 for an individual to gain borrowing privileges and access to the upper floors, with two closed stacks, a members' lounge and exhibit hall. There's also a $ 100 e-membership which includes access to the digital collection and 10 building visits a year. Those fees and the library's endowment support a staff of 18 full-time and 10 part-time employees and headed by director Carolyn Waters. The library acquires an average of 4,000 new volumes every year and subscribes to approximately 100 periodicals. The collection also includes

2822-589: A day celebrated as Evacuation Day , marking when the last British forces left the city. From January 11, 1785, until 1789, New York City was the fifth of five capitals of the United States under the Articles of Confederation , with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern ). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of

2988-547: A further meeting of the two. In March 1847, Omoo , a sequel to Typee , was published by Murray in London, and in May by Harper in New York. Omoo is "a slighter but more professional book," according to Milder. Typee and Omoo gave Melville overnight renown as a writer and adventurer, and he often entertained by telling stories to his admirers. As the writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote, "With his cigar and his Spanish eyes, he talks Typee and Omoo, just as you find

3154-493: A genial latitudinarianism that gave novelty to a South Sea idyll at once erotically suggestive and romantically chaste". An unsigned review in the Salem Advertiser written by Nathaniel Hawthorne called the book a "skilfully managed" narrative by an author with "that freedom of view ... which renders him tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own". Hawthorne continued: This book

3320-559: A governor of Sailors' Snug Harbor . Part of a well-established and colorful Boston family, Allan Melvill spent considerable time away from New York City, travelling regularly to Europe as a commission merchant and an importer of French dry goods. Both of Melville's grandfathers played significant roles in the American Revolutionary War , and Melville later expressed satisfaction in his "double revolutionary descent". Major Thomas Melvill (1751–1832) participated in

3486-563: A growing number of Indian restaurants and spice shops along a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th Streets which has become known as Curry Hill . Washington Heights in Uptown Manhattan is home to the largest Dominican immigrant community in the United States. Harlem , also in Upper Manhattan, is the historical epicenter of African American culture. Since 2010, a Little Australia has emerged and

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3652-447: A home with Melville regardless of place, a willingness to please her husband by performing such "tasks of drudgery" as mending stockings, an ability to hide her agitation, and a desire "to shield Melville from unpleasantness". The Kennedys conclude that "If the ensuing years did bring regrets to Melville's life, it is impossible to believe he would have regretted marrying Elizabeth. In fact, he must have realized that he could not have borne

3818-930: A language other than English at home. Points of interest on Manhattan Island include the American Museum of Natural History ; the Battery ; Broadway and the Theater District ; Bryant Park ; Central Park , Chinatown ; the Chrysler Building ; The Cloisters ; Columbia University ; Curry Hill ; the Empire State Building ; Flatiron Building ; the Financial District (including the New York Stock Exchange Building ; Wall Street ; and

3984-604: A lasting impression on both his thought and his art, as did his almost encyclopedic knowledge of both the Old and the New Testaments. In October 1831, Melville left the Academy. While the precise reason is not known definitively, Parker speculates it was for financial reasons, since "even the tiny tuition fee seemed too much to pay". In December 1831, Allan Melvill returned from New York City by steamboat, but he had to travel

4150-487: A lust for personal freedom", and a "growing and intensifying sense of his own exceptionalism as a person", along with "the resentful sense that circumstance and mankind together had already imposed their will upon him in a series of injurious ways". Scholar Robert Milder believes the encounter with the wide ocean, where he was seemingly abandoned by God, led Melville to experience a "metaphysical estrangement" and influenced his social views in two ways: first, that he belonged to

4316-457: A madman. We were somewhat startled at the remark, but still more at learning, a few days after, that Melville was really supposed to be deranged, and that his friends were taking measures to place him under treatment. We hope one of the earliest precautions will be to keep him stringently secluded from pen and ink. On May 22, 1853, Melville's third child and first daughter Elizabeth (Bessie) was born, and on or about that day Herman finished work on

4482-691: A month as beachcomber and island rover ("omoo" in Tahitian), eventually crossing over to Moorea . He drew on these experiences for Omoo , the sequel to Typee . In November, he contracted to be a seaman on the Nantucket whaler Charles & Henry for a six-month cruise (November 1842 – April 1843), and was discharged at Lahaina , Maui , in the Hawaiian Islands , in May 1843. After four months of working several jobs in Hawaii, including as

4648-633: A most amiable and innocent child, I cannot find it in my heart to coerce him". Emotionally unstable and behind on paying the rent for the house on Broadway, Herman's father tried to recover by moving his family to Albany, New York , in 1830 and going into the fur business . Herman attended The Albany Academy from October 1830 to October 1831, where he took the standard preparatory course, including reading and spelling, penmanship, arithmetic, English grammar, geography, natural history, universal, Greek, Roman, and English history, classical biography, and Jewish antiquities. In early August 1831, Herman marched in

4814-515: A multibillion-dollar rebuilding plan was unveiled to restore the historic grandeur of Penn Station, in the process of upgrading the landmark's status as a critical transportation hub . The 700,000 sq ft (65,000 m ) Moynihan Train Hall , developed as a $ 1.6 billion renovation and expansion of Penn Station into the James A. Farley Building , the city's former main post office building,

4980-491: A new ship, the Acushnet . Built in 1840, the ship measured some 104 feet in length, almost 28 feet in breadth, and almost 14 feet in depth. She measured slightly less than 360 tons and had two decks and three masts, but no quarter galleries . The Acushnet was owned by Melvin O. Bradford and Philemon Fuller of Fairhaven, Massachusetts , and was berthed near their office at the foot of Center Street in that town. Herman signed

5146-774: A particularly warm and loving father," while Maria was "warmly maternal, simple, robust, and affectionately devoted to her husband and her brood". Melville's education began when he was six. In 1824, the Melvills moved to a newly built house at 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan . In 1825, Herman and his brother Gansevoort enrolled in New York Male High School. In 1826, the year that Herman contracted scarlet fever , Allan Melvill described him as "very backwards in speech & somewhat slow in comprehension" at first, but his development increased its pace and Allan

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5312-496: A period of parties, picnics, and dinners. Nathaniel Hawthorne and his publisher James T. Fields joined the group while Hawthorne's wife stayed at home to look after the children. On one picnic outing organized by Duyckinck, Hawthorne and Melville sought shelter from the rain together and had a deep, private conversation. Melville had been given a copy of Hawthorne's short story collection Mosses from an Old Manse , though he had not yet read it. Melville then avidly read it and wrote

5478-575: A position as a United States customs inspector . From that point, Melville focused his creative powers on poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866) was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War . In 1867, his eldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Melville's metaphysical epic Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

5644-485: A private wedding ceremony at home to avoid possible crowds hoping to see the celebrity. The couple honeymooned in the then-British Province of Canada , and traveled to Montreal. They settled in a house on Fourth Avenue in New York City (now called Park Avenue). According to scholars Joyce Deveau Kennedy and Frederick James Kennedy, Lizzie brought to their marriage a sense of religious obligation, an intent to make

5810-503: A prosperous merchant whose death in 1832 left the family in dire financial straits. He took to sea in 1839 as a common sailor on a merchant ship and then on the whaler Acushnet , but he jumped ship in the Marquesas Islands . Typee , his first book, and its sequel, Omoo (1847), were travel-adventures based on his encounters with the peoples of the islands. Their success gave him the financial security to marry Elizabeth Shaw,

5976-545: A review, " Hawthorne and His Mosses ", which appeared in two installments, on August 17 and 24, in The Literary World . Melville wrote that these stories revealed a dark side to Hawthorne, "shrouded in blackness, ten times black". He repeatedly compared Hawthorne to Shakespeare, and urged that "men not very much inferior to Shakespeare are this day being born on the banks of the Ohio." The critic Walter Bezanson finds

6142-433: A rich book "with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life". According to Milder, the book began as another South Sea story but, as he wrote, Melville left that genre behind, first in favor of "a romance of the narrator Taji and the lost maiden Yillah," and then "to an allegorical voyage of the philosopher Babbalanja and his companions through the imaginary archipelago of Mardi". In October 1849, Redburn

6308-470: A romanticized account of his experiences in Polynesia ; and Billy Budd, Sailor , a posthumously published novella . At the time of his death Melville was not well known to the public, but 1919, the centennial of his birth, was the starting point of a Melville revival . Moby-Dick eventually would be considered one of the great American novels . Melville was born in New York City, the third child of

6474-535: A series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights . In

6640-633: A similar death in Pierre . The death of Allan caused many major shifts in the family's material and spiritual circumstances. One result was the greater influence of his mother's religious beliefs. Maria sought consolation in her faith and in April was admitted as a member of the First Reformed Dutch Church. Herman's saturation in orthodox Calvinism was surely the most decisive intellectual and spiritual influence of his early life. Two months after his father's death, Gansevoort entered

6806-578: A spirit proper enough to a young and adventurous sailor, and which makes his book the more wholesome to our staid landsmen. Pleased but not overwhelmed by the adulation of his new public, Melville later expressed concern that he would "go down to posterity ... as a 'man who lived among the cannibals'!" The writing of Typee brought Melville back into contact with his friend Greene—Toby in the book—who wrote confirming Melville's account in newspapers. The two corresponded until 1863, and in his final years Melville "traced and successfully located his old friend" for

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6972-467: A wildlife sanctuary, and several lawns and sporting areas, as well as 21 playgrounds, and a 6-mile (9.7 km) road from which automobile traffic has been banned since 2018. While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped; the construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects, with some 20,000 workers moving 5 million cubic yards (3.8 million cubic meters) of material to shape

7138-558: A year and a half to write, but it did not find an audience, and critics scorned his psychological novel Pierre: or, The Ambiguities (1852). From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, including " Benito Cereno " and " Bartleby, the Scrivener ". In 1857, he traveled to England, toured the Near East , and published his last work of prose, The Confidence-Man (1857). He moved to New York in 1863, eventually taking

7304-562: A year. In 1961, the struggling Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex. Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead & White -designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City. Despite these efforts, demolition of

7470-598: Is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem , a city in the Netherlands. Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen , alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton). Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo , which is mixed use, are known for upscale shopping as well as residential use. Others, such as Greenwich Village , the Lower East Side , Alphabet City and

7636-762: Is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from the Bronx and the mainland United States. Early in the 19th century, land reclamation was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street . When building the World Trade Center in 1968, 1.2 million cubic yards (920,000 m ) of material excavated from

7802-410: Is flanked by two Doric pilasters supporting a horizontal lintel, set in rusticated stone. Above that story is a full-width balustrade . On the upper stories the stone is laid in an ashlar pattern with quoins at the corners. The second story windows are double glass doors topped with carved bracketed pediments (rounded in the center). Belt courses at sill level divide the stories. Above

7968-508: Is growing in Nolita, Lower Manhattan. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan . The term uptown also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 72nd Street and downtown to the southern portion below 14th Street , with Midtown covering the area in between, though definitions can be fluid. Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as

8134-559: Is inscribed to Nathaniel Hawthorne". On October 18, 1851, The Whale was published in Britain in three volumes, and on November 14 Moby-Dick appeared in the United States as a single volume. In between these dates, on October 22, 1851, the Melvilles' second child, Stanwix, was born. In December, Hawthorne told Duyckinck, "What a book Melville has written! It gives me an idea of much greater power than his preceding ones." Unlike other contemporaneous reviewers of Melville, Hawthorne had seen

8300-558: Is land and 10.8 square miles (28 km ) (32%) is water. The northern segment of Upper Manhattan represents a geographic panhandle . Manhattan Island is 22.7 square miles (59 km ) in area, 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide, at its widest point, near 14th Street . The borough consists primarily of Manhattan Island, along with the Marble Hill neighborhood and several small islands, including Randalls Island and Wards Island and Roosevelt Island in

8466-519: Is lightly but vigorously written; and we are acquainted with no work that gives a freer and more effective picture of barbarian life, in that unadulterated state of which there are now so few specimens remaining. The gentleness of disposition that seems akin to the delicious climate, is shown in contrast with the traits of savage fierceness...He has that freedom of view—it would be too harsh to call it laxity of principle—which renders him tolerant of codes of morals that may be little in accordance with our own,

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8632-658: Is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010 has been 25.8 inches (66 cm); this varies considerably from year to year. Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention, nor do they have official boundaries. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side ), or ethnically descriptive ( Little Italy ). Others are acronyms , such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly"), and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park"). Harlem

8798-601: Is still seeking the return of the books. After Congress moved out, the library built its collection back up again to 5,000 volumes and moved to its own building on Nassau Street . It continued to grow in membership and volumes, remaining there through 1840, when it joined the New York Atheneum at Leonard Street and Broadway . Among the visitors recorded at that location were Henry David Thoreau and John James Audubon . Edgar Allan Poe and Ralph Waldo Emerson lectured there. Like other subscription libraries at

8964-913: Is the world's seventh-tallest building (as of 2023) . The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide. On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction in the borough, ravaging portions of Lower Manhattan with record-high storm surge from New York Harbor, severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems. The storm and its profound impacts have prompted discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around

9130-408: Is the economic engine of New York City , with its 2.45 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost more than half of all jobs in New York City. Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions. In 2010, Manhattan's daytime population was swelling to 3.94 million, with commuters adding a net 1.48 million people to

9296-638: Is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City . Coextensive with New York County , Manhattan is the smallest county by geographical area in the U.S. state of New York . Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area . Manhattan serves as New York City's economic and administrative center and has been described as

9462-647: Is the most expensive shopping street in the world. The borough hosts many prominent bridges , tunnels , and skyscrapers including the Empire State Building , Chrysler Building , and One World Trade Center . It is also home to the National Basketball Association 's New York Knicks and the National Hockey League 's New York Rangers . Manhattan was historically part of the Lenapehoking territory inhabited by

9628-534: Is unknown, biographer Hershel Parker says that Maria "thought her mother's money was infinite and that she was entitled to much of her portion" while her children were young. How well the parents managed to hide the truth from their children is "impossible to know", according to biographer Andrew Delbanco . In 1830, the Gansevoorts ended their financial support of the Melvilles, at which point Allan's lack of financial responsibility had left him in debt to both

9794-708: Is well suited for the foundations of Manhattan's skyscrapers . It is part of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region. Under the Köppen climate classification , New York City features both a humid subtropical climate ( Cfa ) and a humid continental climate ( Dfa ); it is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with a humid subtropical climate. The city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually. Winters are cold and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore temper

9960-621: The Acushnet cooperatively set about its whaling endeavors several times with the Columbus of New Bedford, which also took letters from Melville's ship; the two ships were in the same area just south of the Equator. On June 16, the Acushnet carried 750 barrels of oil and sent home 200 on the Herald the Second , and, on June 23, she reached the Marquesas Islands and anchored at Nuku Hiva . In

10126-580: The Acushnet crossed the equator to the north, and six or seven days later arrived at the Galápagos Islands. This short visit would be the basis for " The Encantadas ". On November 2, the Acushnet and three other American whalers were hunting together near the Galápagos Islands; Melville later exaggerated that number in Sketch Fourth of "The Encantadas". From November 19 to 25, the ship anchored at Chatham's Isle, and on December 2 reached

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10292-666: The American Revolutionary War . The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British military and political center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war. British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan,

10458-467: The Boston Tea Party , and Melville's maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort (1749–1812), commanded the defense of Fort Stanwix in New York in 1777. At the turn of the 19th century, Major Melvill did not send his son Allan (Herman's father) to college, but instead sent him to France, where he spent two years in Paris and learned to speak French fluently. In 1814, Allan, who subscribed to his father's Unitarianism , married Maria Gansevoort, who

10624-449: The East Village , have long been associated with the Bohemian subculture. Chelsea is one of several Manhattan neighborhoods with large gay populations and has become a center of both the international art industry and New York's nightlife. Chinatown has the highest concentration of people of Chinese descent outside of Asia . Koreatown is roughly centered on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Rose Hill features

10790-447: The Erie Canal , Peter Gansevoort says his nephew "possesses the ambition to make himself useful in a business which he desires to make his profession," but no job resulted. Just weeks after this failure, Melville's first known published essay appeared. Using the initials "L.A.V.", Herman contributed "Fragments from a Writing Desk" to the weekly newspaper Democratic Press and Lansingburgh Advertiser , which printed it in two installments,

10956-553: The FBI as "something of a deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11", was a terrorist attack in which six people were killed when a van bomb filled with explosives was detonated in a parking lot below the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex . On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft and collapsed in the September 11 attacks launched by al-Qaeda terrorists. The collapse caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in

11122-426: The Harlem and Hudson rivers, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan. Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from the Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland. After a May 1984 court ruling that Marble Hill was simultaneously part of the Borough of Manhattan (not the Borough of the Bronx) and part of Bronx County (not New York County),

11288-424: The Hearst Tower , the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center , and the Bank of America Tower —the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification. The skyscraper , which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline , has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. Structures such as the Equitable Building of 1915, which rises vertically forty stories from

11454-422: The Munsee , Lenape , and Wappinger tribes . There were several Lenape settlements in the area including Sapohanikan , Nechtanc , and Konaande Kongh , which were interconnected by a series of trails. The primary trail on the island, which would later become Broadway , ran from what is now Inwood in the north to Battery Park in the south. There were various sites for fishing and planting established by

11620-497: The South Street Seaport ); Grand Central Terminal ; Greenwich Village (including New York University ; Washington Square Arch ; and Stonewall Inn ); Harlem and Spanish Harlem ; the High Line ; Koreatown ; Lincoln Center ; Little Australia ; Little Italy ; Madison Square Garden ; Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art ); Penn Station , Port Authority Bus Terminal ; Rockefeller Center (including Radio City Music Hall ); Times Square ; and

11786-496: The U.S. mainland . Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each cutting across the borough's long axis: Lower Manhattan, Midtown , and Upper Manhattan. Manhattan is one of the most densely populated locations in the world, with a 2020 census population of 1,694,250 living in a land area of 22.66 square miles (58.69 km ), or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154 residents/km ), and coextensive with New York County, its residential property has

11952-590: The World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Museum and One World Trade Center ). There are also numerous iconic bridges across rivers that connect to Manhattan Island, as well as an emerging number of supertall skyscrapers . The Statue of Liberty rests on Liberty Island , an exclave of Manhattan, and part of Ellis Island is also an exclave of Manhattan. The borough has many energy-efficient office buildings, such as

12118-466: The citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam ( Nieuw Amsterdam ), in what is now Lower Manhattan. The establishment of Fort Amsterdam is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony. New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653. In 1664, English forces conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after

12284-401: The coffered ceilings, stone walls and arched entryways on the first and second floors. The wood paneling and mantels in the card catalog room, second floor lounge and director's office is also original. Architectural historian Henry Hope Reed Jr. has described the main stairs as "the only [ones] in New York fit for a cardinal ". Members pay an annual fee of $ 350 for a family, $ 335 for

12450-478: The deaths of 2,606 of the 17,400 who had been in the buildings when the planes hit, in addition to those on the planes. Since 2001, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored, although there has been controversy surrounding the rebuilding. In 2014, the new One World Trade Center , at 1,776 feet (541 m) measured to the top of its spire, became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and

12616-681: The topography and create the English-style pastoral landscape that Olmsted and Vaux sought. The remaining 70% of Manhattan's parkland includes 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts , and many other amenities. The next-largest park in Manhattan, the Hudson River Park , stretches 4.5 miles (7.2 km) along the Hudson River and comprises 550 acres (220 ha). Other major parks include: Manhattan

12782-527: The world's tallest building . Manhattan's majority white ethnic group declined from 98.7% in 1900 to 58.3% by 1990. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers , leading to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes , and workplace safety regulations. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched upon Washington Square Park to commemorate

12948-745: The 1,537,195 counted in the 2000 census . In 2010, the largest organized religious group in Manhattan was the Archdiocese of New York , with 323,325 Catholics worshiping at 109 parishes, followed by 64,000 Orthodox Jews with 77 congregations, an estimated 42,545 Muslims with 21 congregations, 42,502 non-denominational adherents with 54 congregations, 26,178 TEC Episcopalians with 46 congregations, 25,048 ABC-USA Baptists with 41 congregations, 24,536 Reform Jews with 10 congregations, 23,982 Mahayana Buddhists with 35 congregations, 10,503 PC-USA Presbyterians with 30 congregations, and 10,268 RCA Presbyterians with 10 congregations. Altogether, 44.0% of

13114-407: The 1820s, Melville lived a privileged and opulent life in a household supported by three or more servants at a time. Every four years, the family moved to more spacious and elegant quarters, finally settling on Broadway in 1828. Allan Melvill lived beyond his means, on large sums that he borrowed from his father and from his wife's widowed mother. Although his wife's opinion of his financial conduct

13280-711: The 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance , part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline, with the Woolworth Building (1913), 40 Wall Street (1930), Chrysler Building (1930) and the Empire State Building (1931) leapfrogging each other to take their place as

13446-440: The 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through the decade and into the beginning of the 1990s. The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street , and Manhattan reclaimed its role as

13612-417: The 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at its southern end that was considered ideal for the making of bows. In April 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano , sailing in service of Francis I of France , became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City. Verrazzano entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named

13778-530: The Agatha story, Isle of the Cross . Melville traveled to New York to discuss a book, presumably Isle of the Cross , with his publisher, but later wrote that Harper & Brothers was "prevented" from publishing his manuscript because it was lost. After the commercial and critical failure of Pierre , Melville had difficulty finding a publisher for his follow-up novel Israel Potter . Instead, this narrative of

13944-535: The Albany city government procession of the year's "finest scholars" and was presented with a copy of The London Carcanet , a collection of poems and prose, inscribed to him as "first best in ciphering books". As Melville scholar Merton Sealts observed, The ubiquitous classical references in Melville's published writings suggest that his study of ancient history, biography, and literature during his school days left

14110-567: The Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada . Tammany Hall , a Democratic Party political machine , began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish , culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood , in 1854. Covering 840 acres (340 ha) in the center of the island, Central Park , which opened its first portions to

14276-571: The East River; and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor . The Island is about 13.4 miles (21.6 km) from north to south, and at its widest, 2.3 miles (3.7 km). Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Downtown ( Lower Manhattan ), Midtown ( Midtown Manhattan ), and Uptown ( Upper Manhattan ), with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan lengthwise into its East Side and West Side . Manhattan Island

14442-708: The English Duke of York and Albany , the future King James II. In August 1673, the Dutch reconquered the colony, renaming it "New Orange", but permanently relinquished it back to England the following year under the terms of the Treaty of Westminster that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War . Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign , a series of major battles in the early stages of

14608-536: The Lenape throughout Manhattan. The name Manhattan originated from the Lenape 's language, Munsee , manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means " bow ", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems ). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in

14774-519: The Melvill and Gansevoort families for a sum exceeding $ 20,000 (equivalent to $ 572,000 in 2023). But Melville biographer Newton Arvin writes that the relative happiness and comfort of Melville's early childhood depended less on Allan's wealth or on his profligate spending, as on the "exceptionally tender and affectionate spirit in all the family relationships, especially in the immediate circle". Arvin describes Allan as "a man of real sensibility and

14940-551: The New York Society's auspices, to supplement his courses at Columbia , the first college courses in that language in the United States. Those 600 volumes made up a large share of the library's 1838 catalog, and are today separately organized as the Da Ponte collection. Head librarians have included: Manhattan Manhattan ( / m æ n ˈ h æ t ən , m ə n -/ man- HAT -ən, mən- )

15106-511: The Ohio River. Inspired by contemporaneous popular cultural reading, including Richard Henry Dana Jr. 's new book Two Years Before the Mast and Jeremiah N. Reynolds 's account in the May 1839 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine of the hunt for a great white sperm whale named Mocha Dick , Herman and Gansevoort traveled to New Bedford, where Herman signed up for a whaling voyage aboard

15272-596: The Philo Logos Society, which Peter Gansevoort invited to move into Stanwix Hall for no rent. In the Albany Microscope in March, Melville published two polemical letters about issues in vogue in the debating societies. Historians Leon Howard and Hershel Parker suggest the motive behind the letters was a youthful desire to have his rhetorical skills publicly recognized. In May, the Melvilles moved to

15438-609: The United Nations is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan. Manhattan hosts three of the world's top 10 most-visited tourist attractions: Times Square , Central Park , and Grand Central Terminal . Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere . Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere. Fifth Avenue

15604-719: The United States , from March 4, 1789, to August 12, 1790, at Federal Hall . Federal Hall was where the United States Supreme Court met for the first time, the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, and where the Northwest Ordinance was adopted, establishing measures for admission to the Union of new states. New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton 's policies and practices as

15770-456: The Universe with a bottle of brandy & cigars" with Hawthorne, but Hawthorne would not stop working on his new book for more than one day and they did not come. After a second visit from Melville, Hawthorne surprised him by arriving at Arrowhead with his daughter Una. According to Robertson-Lorant, "The handsome Hawthorne made quite an impression on the Melville women, especially Augusta, who

15936-666: The bank to man the cap and fur store. In 1835, while still working in the store, Melville enrolled in Albany Classical School, perhaps using Maria's part of the proceeds from the sale of the estate of his maternal grandmother in March 1835. In September of the following year, Herman was back at The Albany Academy , participating in the school's Latin course. He also participated in debating societies, in an apparent effort to make up as much as he could for his missed years of schooling. During this time, he read Shakespeare , including Macbeth , whose witch scenes gave him

16102-523: The bank; although he was only 14 in 1834, the bank considered him competent enough to be sent to Schenectady, New York, on an errand. Not much else is known from this period except that he was very fond of drawing. The visual arts became a lifelong interest. Around May 1834, the Melvilles moved to another house in Albany, a three-story brick house. That same month a fire destroyed Gansevoort's skin-preparing factory, which left him with personnel he could neither employ nor afford. Instead he pulled Melville out of

16268-500: The best evidence for Melville's reading in this period. Gansevoort's entries include books Melville used for Moby-Dick and Clarel , including "Parsees—of India—an excellent description of their character, and religion and an account of their descent—East India Sketch Book p. 21". Other entries are on Panther, the pirate's cabin, and storm at sea from James Fenimore Cooper 's The Red Rover . The Panic of 1837 forced Gansevoort to file for bankruptcy in April. In June, Maria told

16434-496: The cap and fur business. Uncle Peter Gansevoort, a director of the New York State Bank, got Herman a job as clerk for $ 150 a year (equivalent to $ 4,600 in 2023). Biographers cite a passage from Redburn when trying to answer what Herman must have felt then: "I had learned to think much and bitterly before my time," the narrator remarks, adding, "I must not think of those delightful days, before my father became

16600-524: The chance to teasingly scare his sisters. By March 1837, however, he again withdrew from The Albany Academy. Gansevoort served as a role model and support for Melville throughout his life, particularly during this time trying to cobble together an education. In early 1834, Gansevoort became a member of Albany's Young Men's Association for Mutual Improvement, and in January 1835 Melville joined him there. Gansevoort also had copies of John Todd's Index Rerum ,

16766-534: The city became a hotbed of revolution (including anarchists and communists among others), syndicalism , racketeering , and unionization . In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River established a road connection to Brooklyn and the rest of Long Island . In 1898, New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City of Greater New York ", and Manhattan

16932-450: The city were commercial, such as the B. Altman and Company Building and the St. Regis Hotel on Fifth Avenue , and the east wing of the American Museum of Natural History . The John S. Rogers House is considered a prime example of their residential work. The library is housed in a five-story, three- bay building faced in limestone . The main entrance at street level, behind a long awning ,

17098-578: The city's skyline, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and 30 Rockefeller Plaza . A postwar economic boom led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, the largest being Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village , which opened in 1947. The United Nations relocated to a new headquarters that was completed in 1952 along the East River. The Stonewall riots were

17264-410: The coast of Peru and anchored at Tombez near Paita , with 570 barrels of oil on board. On December 27, the Acushnet sighted Cape Blanco, off Ecuador. Point St. Elena was sighted the next day, and on January 6, 1842, the ship approached the Galápagos Islands from the southeast. From February 13 to May 7, seven sightings of sperm whales were recorded, but none were killed. From early May to early June,

17430-1054: The coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically warm to hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 76.5 °F (24.7 °C) in July. Nighttime conditions are often exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C). Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936. Manhattan lies in USDA plant hardiness zone 7b (5 to 10 °F/-15 to -12.2 °C). Manhattan receives 49.9 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation annually, which

17596-411: The conventions of the romance, and difficult in style. It was not well received. The New York Day Book published a venomous attack on September 8, 1852, headlined "HERMAN MELVILLE CRAZY". The item, offered as a news story, reported, A critical friend, who read Melville's last book, Ambiguities , between two steamboat accidents, told us that it appeared to be composed of the ravings and reveries of

17762-458: The cultural, financial, media , and entertainment capital of the world. Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonists in 1624 on southern Manhattan Island; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted

17928-567: The daughter of the Boston jurist Lemuel Shaw . Mardi (1849), a romance-adventure and his first book not based on his own experience, was not well received. Redburn (1849) and White-Jacket (1850), both tales based on his experience as a well-born young man at sea, were given respectable reviews, but did not sell well enough to support his expanding family. Melville's growing literary ambition showed in Moby-Dick (1851), which took nearly

18094-472: The decade to 1,694,250, representing 19.2% of New York City's population of 8,804,194 and 8.4% of New York State's population of 20,201,230. The population density of New York County was 70,450.8 inhabitants per square mile (27,201.2/km ) in 2022, the highest population density of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual U.S. city . At the 2010 census , there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% from

18260-407: The demarcation line for east/west designations. South of Waverly Place , Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south. This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. As of the 2020 census , Manhattan's population had increased by 6.8% over

18426-469: The essay "so deeply related to Melville's imaginative and intellectual world while writing Moby-Dick " that it could be regarded as a virtual preface and should be "everybody's prime piece of contextual reading". Later that summer, Duyckinck sent Hawthorne copies of Melville's three most recent books. Hawthorne read them, as he wrote to Duyckinck on August 29 that Melville in Redburn and White-Jacket put

18592-412: The fifth story the roofline is marked by a frieze and cornice topped by another balustrade. Behind it is a small terrace sheltered by a wide overhang. An end chimney rises from the gabled tile roof. The interior was extensively modified for the library in 1937. Much of this effort was focused on the rear; when it was completed, 39 rooms had been combined into 24. Original treatments remain, such as

18758-511: The fire. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of women's liberation , reflecting the alliance of the labor and suffrage movements. Despite the Great Depression , some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of

18924-610: The first Secretary of the Treasury to expand the city's role as a center of commerce and industry. By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the most populous city in the United States. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan . The city's role as an economic center grew with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, cutting transportation costs by 90% compared to road transport and connecting

19090-473: The first on May 4. According to Merton Sealts, his use of heavy-handed allusions reveals familiarity with the work of William Shakespeare , John Milton , Walter Scott , Richard Brinsley Sheridan , Edmund Burke , Samuel Taylor Coleridge , Lord Byron , and Thomas Moore . Parker calls the piece "characteristic Melvillean mood-stuff" and considers its style "excessive enough [...] to indulge his extravagances and just enough overdone to allow him to deny that he

19256-481: The flow of his delightful mind on paper". In 1847, Melville tried unsuccessfully to find a "government job" in Washington. In June 1847, Melville and Elizabeth "Lizzie" Knapp Shaw were engaged, after knowing each other for approximately three months. Melville had first asked her father, Lemuel Shaw , for her hand in March, but was at first turned down at the time. Shaw, Chief Justice of Massachusetts, had been

19422-462: The genteel classes, but sympathized with the "disinherited commons" he had been placed among and, second, that experiencing the cultures of Polynesia let him view the West from an outsider's perspective. Upon his return, Melville regaled his family and friends with his adventurous tales and romantic experiences, and they urged him to put them into writing. Melville completed Typee , his first book, in

19588-491: The highest sale price per square foot in the United States. Manhattan is home to Wall Street as well as the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization , the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq . Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, as are numerous colleges and universities, such as Columbia University and New York University . The headquarters of

19754-473: The land around Upper New York Harbor New Angoulême , in reference to the family name of King Francis I; he sailed far enough into the harbor to sight the Hudson River , and he named the Bay of Santa Margarita – what is now Upper New York Bay – after Marguerite de Navarre , the elder sister of the king. Manhattan was first mapped during a 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson . Hudson came across Manhattan Island and

19920-499: The lands to his brother, the Duke of York . New York, based in present-day Lower Manhattan , served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of arriving immigrants in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898 , and houses New York City Hall ,

20086-472: The last 70 miles in an open carriage for two days and two nights in subfreezing temperatures. In early January, he began to show "signs of delirium", and he grew worse until his wife felt that his suffering deprived him of his intellect. On January 28, 1832, he died, two months prior to reaching his 50th birthday. Since Herman was no longer attending school, he likely witnessed his father's medical and mental deterioration. Twenty years later, Melville described

20252-499: The library of his friend Evert Duyckinck . These readings proved significant, occurring as Melville radically transformed his initial plan for the novel over the next several months, conceiving what Delbanco described in 2005 as "the most ambitious book ever conceived by an American writer". From August 4 to 12, 1850, the Melvilles, Sarah Morewood , Duyckinck, Oliver Wendell Holmes , and other literary figures from New York City and Boston came to Pittsfield, Massachusetts , to enjoy

20418-434: The library's historic role in the city. The library's collection of 300,000 volumes includes audio recordings and periodicals, as well as books on a broad range of subjects. It is open for browsing and research by the general public; only members may borrow books or use the upper floors. The library is a non-profit organization supported primarily by its membership fees and endowment . Six residents of New York City, which

20584-618: The matter was definitively settled later that year when the New York Legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation declaring the neighborhood part of both New York County and the Borough of Manhattan. Within New York Harbor , there are three smaller islands: Other smaller islands, in the East River , include (from north to south): The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan consists of three rock formations: Inwood marble , Fordham gneiss , and Manhattan schist , and

20750-581: The moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean , yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachians keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 32.6 °F (0.3 °C); temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter, and reach 60 °F (16 °C) several days in

20916-473: The native people living there, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River . Manhattan was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata , in the logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on the voyage. A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island . In 1625, construction was started on

21082-541: The nine guide-books listed in chapter 30 of the book had been part of Allan Melvill's library. He arrived back in New York October 1, 1839 and resumed teaching, now at Greenbush, New York, but left after one term because he had not been paid. In the summer of 1840 he and his friend James Murdock Fly went to Galena, Illinois, to see if his Uncle Thomas could help them find work. Unsuccessful, he and his friend returned home in autumn, likely by way of St. Louis and up

21248-522: The original World Trade Center , which was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks . Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors , the borough is bounded by the Hudson , East , and Harlem rivers and includes several small adjacent islands , including Roosevelt , U Thant , and Randalls and Wards Islands . It also includes the small neighborhood of Marble Hill now on

21414-848: The population was claimed as members by religious congregations, although members of historically African-American denominations were underrepresented due to incomplete information. In 2014, Manhattan had 703 religious organizations, the seventeenth most out of all US counties. There is a large Buddhist temple in Manhattan located at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown . As of 2015, 60.0% (927,650) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 22.63% (350,112) spoke Spanish, 5.37% (83,013) Chinese, 2.21% (34,246) French, 0.85% (13,138) Korean, 0.72% (11,135) Russian, and 0.70% (10,766) Japanese. In total, 40.0% of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke

21580-547: The population, along with visitors, tourists, and commuting students. The commuter influx of 1.61 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any county or city in the country. Herman Melville Herman Melville ( born Melvill ; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist , short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works are Moby-Dick (1851); Typee (1846),

21746-476: The public in 1858, became the first landscaped public park in an American city. New York City played a complex role in the American Civil War . The city had strong commercial ties to the South , but anger around conscription , resentment against Lincoln's war policies and paranoia about free Blacks taking the jobs of poor immigrants culminated in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, among

21912-469: The purchase of the building, which was a mansion built just 20 years earlier. Notable patrons at the present location have ranged from W. H. Auden and Lillian Hellman in the early years to David Halberstam and Wendy Wasserstein more recently. Trowbridge & Livingston designed the house at 53 East 79th Street for the John S. Rogers family in 1917, in the firm's later years. Most of their buildings in

22078-427: The reality "more unflinchingly" before his reader than any writer, and he thought Mardi was "a rich book, with depths here and there that compel a man to swim for his life". But he cautioned, "It is so good that one scarcely pardons the writer for not having brooded long over it, so as to make it a great deal better". In September 1850, Melville borrowed three thousand dollars from his father-in-law Lemuel Shaw to buy

22244-596: The seat of the city's government . Harlem in Upper Manhattan became the center of what is now known as the cultural Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village , part of the Stonewall National Monument , is considered the birthplace in 1969 of the modern gay rights movement , cementing Manhattan's central role in LGBT culture . Manhattan was the site of

22410-569: The ship anchored for the first time since Rio, in Santa Harbor. The cruising grounds the Acushnet was sailing attracted much traffic, and Captain Pease not only paused to visit other whalers, but at times hunted in company with them. From July 23 into August, the Acushnet regularly gammed with the Lima from Nantucket, and Melville met William Henry Chase, the son of Owen Chase , who gave him

22576-654: The shorelines of the borough and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future. On October 31, 2017 , a terrorist drove a truck down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight. According to the United States Census Bureau , New York County has a total area of 33.6 square miles (87 km ), of which 22.8 square miles (59 km )

22742-432: The sidewalk, prompted the passage of the 1916 Zoning Resolution , requiring new buildings to contain setbacks withdrawing progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order to preserve a view of the sky at street level. Manhattan's skyline includes several buildings that are symbolic of New York, in particular the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building , which sees about 4 million visitors

22908-499: The site was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City . Constructed on piers at a cost of $ 260 million, Little Island opened on the Hudson River in May 2021, connected to the western termini of 13th and 14th Streets by footbridges . Marble Hill was part of the northern tip of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal , dug in 1895 to better connect

23074-587: The structure began in October 1963. The loss of Penn Station led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission , which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage ". The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including over 1,000 in New York City. In 2017,

23240-611: The summer of 1842, Melville and his shipmate Richard Tobias Greene ("Toby") jumped ship at Nuku Hiva Bay. Melville's first book, Typee (1846), is based on his stay in or near the Taipi Valley . By around mid-August, Melville had left the island aboard the Australian whaler Lucy Ann , bound for Tahiti , where he took part in a mutiny and was briefly jailed in the native Calabooza Beretanee . In October, he and crew mate John B. Troy escaped Tahiti for Eimeo . He then spent

23406-755: The summer of 1845 while living in Troy, New York. His brother Gansevoort found a publisher for it in London, where it was published in February 1846 by John Murray in his travel adventure series. It became an overnight bestseller in England, then in New York, when it was published on March 17 by Wiley & Putnam. In the narrative, Melville likely extended the period of time he had spent on the island and also incorporated material from source books he had assembled. Milder calls Typee "an appealing mixture of adventure, anecdote, ethnography, and social criticism presented with

23572-427: The ten letters Melville wrote to the older man. In the essay on Hawthorne's Mosses , Melville wrote: "I feel that this Hawthorne has dropped germinous seeds into my soul. He expands and deepens down, the more I contemplate him; and further, and further, shoots his strong New-England roots into the hot soil of my Southern soul." Melville dedicated his book to Hawthorne: "In token of my admiration for his genius, this book

23738-421: The third of eight children to Allan Melvill (1782–1832) and Maria (Gansevoort) Melvill (1791–1872), who were of Scottish and Dutch descent. His seven siblings, who played important roles in his career and emotional life, were Gansevoort (1815–1846), Helen Maria (1817–1888), Augusta (1821–1876), Allan (1823–1872), Catherine (1825–1905), Frances Priscilla (1827–1885), and Thomas (1830–1884), who eventually became

23904-492: The time, members paid a membership fee to access the collection. A board of trustees was elected which hired the librarians, chose materials for the collection and drafted and enforced regulations for library use. The nature of the collection represented the ideals of the library and contained works of a great variety. Although Christian theological texts were included, so was the Koran and books on Catholic saints and popes. There

24070-527: The travelogue, the nautical adventure, the sentimental novel, the sensational French romance, the gothic thriller, temperance tracts, urban reform literature, and the English pastoral". His next novel, White-Jacket , was published by Bentley in London in January 1850, and in March by Harper in New York. The earliest surviving mention of Moby-Dick is from a May 1, 1850, letter in which Melville told fellow sea author Richard Henry Dana Jr. "I am half way in

24236-684: The uniqueness of Melville's new novel and acknowledged it. In early December 1852, Melville visited the Hawthornes in Concord and discussed the idea of the "Agatha" story he had talked of with Hawthorne. This was the last contact between the two writers before Melville visited Hawthorne in Liverpool four years later when Hawthorne had relocated to England. After having borrowed three thousand dollars from his father-in-law in September 1850 to buy

24402-427: The visitors to that location. It had a double-height central reading room and shelf space for 100,000 books. This building would serve the NYSL for 81 years. In 1937, with the collection having grown to 150,000 volumes, the library moved to its present location at 53 East 79th Street, on the Upper East Side between Madison and Park avenues. It was thanks to a generous donation from the Goodhue family that enabled

24568-491: The weight of those years unaided—that without her loyalty, intelligence, and affection, his own wild imagination would have had no "port or haven". Biographer Robertson-Lorant cites "Lizzie's adventurous spirit and abundant energy," and she suggests that "her pluck and good humor might have been what attracted Melville to her, and vice versa". An example of such good humor appears in a letter about her not yet used to being married: "It seems sometimes exactly as if I were here for

24734-423: The work." In June, he described the book to his English publisher as "a romance of adventure, founded upon certain wild legends in the Southern Sperm Whale Fisheries," and promised it would be done by the fall. The original manuscript has not survived. That summer, Melville read Thomas Carlyle , borrowing copies of Sartor Resartus (1833–34) and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, & the Heroic in History (1841) from

24900-423: The world's financial center , with Wall Street employment doubling from 1977 to 1987. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis , with Greenwich Village at its epicenter. In the 1970s, Times Square and 42nd Street – with its sex shops , peep shows , and adult theaters, along with its sex trade , street crime, and public drug use – became emblematic of the city's decline, with

25066-470: The world." By the 1990s, crime rates began to drop dramatically and the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonus payments to fuel the growth of the real estate market. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley , emerged in the Flatiron District , cementing technology as a key component of Manhattan's economy. The 1993 World Trade Center bombing , described by

25232-427: The worst incidents of civil disorder in American history. The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and Manhattan became the first stop for millions seeking a new life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. This immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations,

25398-407: The younger children they needed to leave Albany for somewhere cheaper. Gansevoort began studying law in New York City while Herman managed the farm before getting a teaching position at Sikes District School near Lenox, Massachusetts . He taught about 30 students of various ages, including some his own age. The semester over, he returned to his mother in 1838. In February he was elected president of

25564-643: Was a great fan of his books". They spent the day mostly "smoking and talking metaphysics". Robertson-Lorant writes that Melville was "infatuated with Hawthorne's intellect, captivated by his artistry, and charmed by his elusive personality," but "the friendship meant something different to each of them," with Hawthorne offering Melville "the kind of intellectual stimulation he needed". They may have been "natural allies and friends," yet they were also "fifteen years apart in age and temperamentally quite different" and Hawthorne "found Melville's manic intensity exhausting at times". Bezanson identifies "sexual excitement" in all

25730-464: Was a variety of natural philosophy texts alongside works by Shakespeare . Resources were also available for a variety of vocational purposes, including manuals for merchants and farmers. By 1856, the collection had reached 35,000 and it was once again time for the library to move. A larger building for its exclusive use was erected at 109 University Place, reflecting the city's continuing northerly expansion. Herman Melville and Willa Cather were among

25896-519: Was advanced $ 84. On January 3, 1841, the Acushnet set sail. Melville slept with some twenty others in the forecastle ; Captain Valentine Pease, the mates, and the skilled men slept aft . Whales were found near The Bahamas, and in March 150 barrels of oil were sent home from Rio de Janeiro. Cutting in and trying-out (boiling) a single whale took about three days, and a whale yielded approximately one barrel of oil per foot of length and per ton of weight (the average whale weighed 40 to 60 tons). The oil

26062-426: Was committed to her family's more strict and biblically oriented Dutch Reformed version of the Calvinist creed. The Gansevoorts' severe Protestantism ensured that Maria was well versed in the Bible, in English as well as in Dutch, the language that the Gansevoorts spoke at home. On August 19, almost three weeks after his birth, Melville was baptized at home by a minister of the South Reformed Dutch Church. During

26228-438: Was established as one of the five boroughs of New York City . The Bronx remained part of New York County until 1914, when Bronx County was established. The construction of the New York City Subway , which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did the completion of the Williamsburg Bridge (1903) and Manhattan Bridge (1909) connecting to Brooklyn and the Queensboro Bridge (1909) connecting to Queens. In

26394-490: Was kept on deck for a day to cool off, and was then stowed down; scrubbing the deck completed the labor. An average voyage meant that some forty whales were killed to yield some 1600 barrels of oil. On April 15, the Acushnet sailed around Cape Horn and traveled to the South Pacific, where the crew sighted whales without catching any. She then went up the coast of Chile to the region of Selkirk Island , and on May 7, near Juan Fernández Islands , she had 160 barrels. On June 23,

26560-416: Was meeting in the building in New York City. The NYSL effectively served as the first Library of Congress for two years, and its records show borrowings by George Washington , John Adams and Alexander Hamilton , among other early American notables from that time. Washington is believed to have failed to return two books due in 1789; the library has announced that it plans to waive the $ 300,000 fine but

26726-439: Was opened in January 2021. Parkland covers a total of 2,659 acres (10.76 km ), accounting for 18.2% of the borough's land area; the 840-acre (3.4 km ) Central Park is the borough's largest park, comprising 31.6% of Manhattan's parkland. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux , the park is anchored by the 12-acre (4.9 ha) Great Lawn and offers extensive walking tracks , two ice-skating rinks,

26892-487: Was published by Bentley in London, and in November by Harper in New York. The bankruptcy and death of Allan Melvill, and Melville's own youthful humiliations surface in this "story of outward adaptation and inner impairment". Biographer Robertson-Lorant regards the work as a deliberate attempt for popular appeal: "Melville modeled each episode almost systematically on every genre that was popular with some group of antebellum readers," combining elements of "the picaresque novel,

27058-433: Was published in 1876. In 1886, his other son Stanwix died of apparent tuberculosis , and Melville retired. During his last years, he privately published two volumes of poetry, and left one volume unpublished. The novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at the time of his death, but was published posthumously in 1924. Melville died from cardiovascular disease in 1891. Melville was born in New York City , on August 1, 1819,

27224-490: Was surprised "that Herman proved the best Speaker in the introductory Department". In 1829, both Gansevoort and Herman transferred to Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School , and Herman enrolled in the English Department on September 28. "Herman I think is making more progress than formerly," Allan wrote in May 1830 to Major Melvill, "and without being a bright Scholar, he maintains a respectable standing, and would proceed further, if he could only be induced to study more—being

27390-531: Was taking his style seriously". For Delbanco, the style is "overheated in the manner of Poe, with sexually charged echoes of Byron and The Arabian Nights ". On May 31, 1839, Gansevoort, then living in New York City, wrote that he was sure Herman could get a job on a whaler or merchant vessel. The next day, he signed aboard the merchant ship St. Lawrence as a "boy" (a green hand ), which cruised from New York to Liverpool. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) draws on his experiences in this journey; at least two of

27556-419: Was then located primarily on what is now Lower Manhattan , formed the New York Society in 1754. At the time, the city did not have a library, and the New York Society believed that such an institution would be useful to the community. They convinced Colonial Governor James DeLancey to let them use a room in the original City Hall , at Wall and Broad streets, for that purpose. In 1772, the Society received

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