Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [465]
In March 1835 stockholders of Fulton Ferry decided to compromise. They agreed to permit New York City to grant a license to a different group of investors. The Common Council agreed, though it designated the new ferry’s terminus as Whitehall, Manhattan’s most remote and inconvenient point. Tensions eased. New York had bought itself a ten-year truce in the ferry wars. (Concessions were made on the Hudson side too: in 1833, New York and New Jersey settled their boundary dispute by fixing Manhattan’s boundary in midriver, not at water’s edge as long claimed.)
New York proved unable, however, to stave off Brooklyn’s emergence as a full-fledged city. Since its formation, the town around the ferry landing had been growing at a rate exceeding Manhattan’s. The Village Council wanted enhanced authority, both to press disputes with its bullying big neighbor and to promote local development by installing street lights, clearing pigs from the streets, and cleaning up grogshops. The council also sought more substantial headquarters, cramped as it was in the upper floor of the Apprentices’ Library, which, since a fire in 1832 had destroyed the new Flatbush courthouse, it had been forced to share with the county government as well.
In 1833 a bill to incorporate Brooklyn as a city passed the Assembly. New York’s opposition killed it in the Senate. In 1834 Brooklyn tried again. New York officials countered with a remonstrance requesting that all of Kings and Richmond counties be made part of New York City. Brooklyn won, aided by upstaters. An act passed April 8, 1834, invested their community with the privileges of a city. But Brooklyn’s charter was quite different from New York’s. This city was to be an administrative agency, not a private and propertied corporation. It had specific responsibilities, as well as things it was forbidden to do—like regulating the prices of any commodity except bread, or infringing the chartered rights of the Corporation of the City of New York. The new city promptly set up wards, elected aldermen, and chose its first mayor, George Hall—son of a Flatbush Irish farm family, an Erasmus Hall graduate, and a leading temperance advocate.
In July 1834 a town meeting began to talk of building a City Hall that would outdo New York’s. This suited Hezekiah Pierrepont perfectly. In 1833 Hezekiah had sent his son Henry Evelyn Pierrepont to Europe to study cities. Like Ithiel Town, he came back enamored of crescents and squares. The Pierreponts decided to map out the old Livingston lands behind Brooklyn Heights in the same grand manner. The terrain was still open country, however, and nearly a mile from the waterfront. To lure commercial and professional interests it needed an anchor. A grand City Hall would do nicely. In May 1835, accordingly, the Pierreponts and Remsens sold Brooklyn a triangular site at the intersections of Fulton, Joralemon, and Court streets. In 1836 a cornerstone was laid for a Greek Revival structure. It would be by far the most conspicuous building in Brooklyn, rivaling anything in fashionable Manhattan.
The formation of the City of Brooklyn stimulated the cupidity of many local landowners and touched off an extravagant binge of speculation in town lots. This fever soon spread way beyond Brooklyn proper. For miles in all direction, farms were surveyed, subdivided, laid out into streets, and sold off at auction sales—at the manic pace of the land booms in Manhattan and out west.
To the north, on the other side of Wallabout Bay with its Navy Yard, flourished Williamsburgh. Incorporated as a village in 1827, Williamsburgh extended its borders