Manhattan Phoenix: The Great Fire of 1835 and the Emergence of Modern New York

In 1835, a merchant named Gabriel Disosway marveled at a great fire enveloping New York, commenting on how it "spread more and more vividly from the fiery arena, rendering every object, far and wide, minutely discernible-the lower bay and its Islands, with the shores of Long Island and New Jersey." The fire Disosway witnessed devastated a large swath of lower Manhattan, clearing roughly the same number of acres as the World Trade Center bombing.



Manhattan Phoenix explores the emergence of m...