Excerpt from Illustrated History of the Borough of Queens, New York City For these reasons the history of the Borough 'of Queens-contained in the fol lowing pages does not confine itself to the past. It does indeed furnish a complete sketch of the settlement of the territory from the time when the first white man set foot upon the soil of Long Island, and it follows the efforts made to change a wilder ness into a blooming garden through the march Of the centuries, but it goes further. It shows how the borough has been developed, and in what manner, and for what reasons it is apt to grow in the future. It points out the great natural advantages the territory possesses, and the enterprises which, in the near future, will tend to bring about even greater changes than the past has produced. The history naturally deals with the men who have played important roles in the shaping of the destinies of the localities now forming the Borough of Queens in the past, and who have left their mark upon the conditions evolving slowly from insecurity almost amounting at times to chaos, until a staple and regular government was formed. But it shows, in addi tion, in the biographies of men who are at the present time interested in the welfare of the borough, and who, in public life or private enterprise, are devoting themselves to the upbuilding of the community, the forces that are at work. No better way could be found, in our opinion, to show what Queens is now, and what it is destined to be, for the work of man, even if intended for the day only, always influences the future and it is impossible to draw a line that divides sharply the work of those living from that of coming generations. Those who come after us will have to build upon what we have accomplished; they cannot entirely get away from it, and even if they choose new paths, they must reckon with those laid out by their forerunners. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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An expanded edition of the only comprehensive illustrated history of New York—with more than 600 ravishing photographs and illustrations—that tells the remarkable 400-year-long story of the city from its beginning in 1624 up to the current moment. The companion volume to the acclaimed PBS series. This landmark book traces the spectacular growth of New York from its initial settlement on the tip of Manhattan through the destruction wrought by the Revolutionary War to its rise as the nation’s premier commercial capital and industrial center and as a magnet for immigrant hopes and dreams in the 19th century to its standing as a beacon of modern culture in the 20th century and as a worldwide symbol of resilience in the 21st century. The story continues here with new chapters delivering a sweeping portrait of New York at the dawn of the 21st century, when it emerged after decades of decline to assert its place at the very center of a new globalized culture. Here is a city challenged—indeed, sometimes shaken to its core—by a series of profound crises: the aftermath of 9/11, the continual struggle with racial injustice, the financial crisis of 2008, the devastation of Superstorm Sandy, the still unfolding cataclysm of the COVID-19 pandemic—whose earliest and deadliest urban epicenter was New York itself. Here too is a lively portrait of the city’s vibrant street life and culture: the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx, Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates in Central Park, the musicals of Broadway, the explosion in location filmmaking in every borough, the pivotal rise of the tech industry, and so much more. The history of this city—especially in the tumultuous and transformative two decades detailed in the new chapters—is an epic story of rebirth and growth, an astonishing transfiguration, still in progress, of the world’s first modern city into a model and prototype for the global city of the future.