Jazz Age, Depression & Post-War Boom

The Roaring Twenties & the Skyscrapers

The 1920s were New York's most glamorous decade: jazz exploded in Harlem (Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, Louis Armstrong at the Savoy Ballroom), the Harlem Renaissance (Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston) brought a literary and artistic bloom, and the skyline soared. The Chrysler Building (1930, Art Deco, still the most beautiful skyscraper in the world) and the Empire State Building (1931, 381 meters, built in just 14 months!) defined the skyline we know today.

The Great Depression (1929–1939)

The stock market crash on Wall Street (October 29, 1929, "Black Tuesday") plunged the world into depression. In New York: mass unemployment, soup kitchens, Hoovervilles (homeless camps) in Central Park. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and city planner Robert Moses used New Deal funds to build bridges, parks, highways, and public facilities — many of which still stand today.

Post-War New York

After World War II, New York became the capital of the world: the United Nations (headquarters on the East River, 1952), Wall Street as a financial center, the Pop Art movement (Andy Warhol, Studio 54), and the era of great cultural institutions (Lincoln Center, MoMA expansion). At the same time, decline began: in the 1970s and 80s, New York was bankrupt, crime exploded (Times Square was a red-light district, the Bronx literally burned), and the city seemed lost. The resurgence under Mayor Rudy Giuliani (1990s, controversial zero-tolerance policy) and the subsequent boom under Michael Bloomberg transformed New York back into the safe, prosperous, overpriced global city of today.