are the Gouverneur Reception Hospital (1885), the Harlem Reception Hospital and Dispensary (1887); and the Fordham Reception Hospital and Dispensary (1892); the City Hospital (1853) and the Metropolitan Hospital (1875), both on Blackwell’s Island; for contagious diseases Willard Parker Hospital (1866) and Riverside Hospital (1885; on North Brother Island in the East river); and for the sick, crippled and idiotic destitute children, the New York City Children’s Hospitals and Schools (1837; on Randall’s Island). The Manhattan State Hospital on Ward’s Island (1871; now used for patients from New York and Richmond counties only) Central Islip State Hospital, on Long Island, in Suffolk county (for Queens county and outside of New York City, Suffolk county) and the Long Island State Hospital (for the county of Kings) are the state insane asylums for the population of New York City.
The Charity Organization Society (organized and incorporated in 1882) investigates claims for charities and secures employment for applicants, has a bureau of information and a sociological library, has done much effective work through its Tenement House Committee and its Committee on Prevention of Tuberculosis, has a school of philanthropy begun as a summer school in 1898 but with a two-year course since 1904, and publishes a weekly journal, the Survey. In the United Charities Building (1891–1893; in E. 22nd Street), a gift of John S. Kennedy, there is housed, besides the Charity Organization Society, the Children’s Aid Society (1853), which was founded by Charles Loring Brace (1826–1890), its first secretary, has established industrial schools and lodging houses (the earliest 1854, being a Newsboys’ Lodging House in New Chambers Street), vacation schools, kindergartens, evening classes, summer houses at Bath Beach (for crippled girls) and West Coney Island, and a farm school at Kensico, and finds homes for orphans and homeless children. In the same building are the New York City Mission and Tract Society (1822, incorporated in 1867; undenominational), the first American organization to introduce district nursing, whose work is all done below 14th street, and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor (1843; incorporated in 1848), which has a department of relief, does fresh-air work at West Coney Island, supports people’s baths, and has founded the Hartley House (a memorial to Robert M. Hartley, who established the Association), a neighbourhood settlement. The Society of St Vincent de Paul in the City of New York (organized 1835; chartered 1872) is the local Roman Catholic charitable organization. The United Hebrew Charities was formed in 1874 by the union of four Hebrew societies. The Russell Sage Foundation (1907) has headquarters in New York, but is not merely local in its work; it has a charity organization department, a child helping department, and a school hygiene department. “Institutional work” by the churches is well developed.
Trade and domestic schools include the Hebrew Technical Institute and the Hebrew Technical School for Girls; the New York Trade School; Grace Institute, endowed by W. R. Grace (twice Mayor of New York City) for the instruction of women in trades; the Manhattan Trade School for Girls; the American Female Guardian Society and Home for the Friendless; the Baron de Hirsch Trade Schools, in connexion with which there are day and evening schools for the instruction of immigrants (Russian, Galician and Rumanian) in the English language, and a colony with an agricultural and industrial school at Woodbine, N.J.; the Clara de Hirsch Home and Trade Training School for Working Girls; the New York Cooking School; and the Association of Practical Home Making Centres. The New York Diet Kitchen Association (1873) has established diet kitchens in connexion with many dispensaries. The City and Suburban Home Company (1896) provides good apartments at cheap rentals; the Society for Ethical Culture has promoted the same work; and the Mills Hotels, erected by D. O. Mills (1825–1910), are low-priced but self-supporting lodging houses.
There are many orphanages and day nurseries and there are about thirty permanent homes for adults in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was incorporated in 1875, and the children’s court movement in the city has been connected with this society; in its work and in that of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Henry Bergh (1820–1888) was the American pioneer. The Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents (1824) maintains a House of Refuge on Randall’s Island; and the New York Catholic Protectory (1862), under the Brothers of the Christian Schools and the Sisters of Charity, is of a similar character. An important work has been done by the Society for the Suppression of Vice (1873), and by the Society for the Prevention of Crime, organized in 1877 and re-organized in 1891 by its president Charles Henry Parkhurst (b. 1842), a Presbyterian clergyman.
The New York Institution for the Blind was incorporated in 1831 and originated the New York point system of tangible writing and printing for the blind; the Society for the Relief of the Destitute Blind (1869) and the New York Association for the Blind (1906) are noteworthy. The New York Institute for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb (1817), of which Harvey Prindle Peet (1794–1873) was principal in 1831–1867, is a free state school and the first oral school for the deaf in America; the Institution for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes (1867) is a free city school; St Joseph’s Institute for the Improved Instruction of Deaf Mutes (Roman Catholic; 1869) has a school for boys and one for girls.
Among special hospitals the foremost are: the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary (1820), the New York Ophthalmic Hospital (1852), the Manhattan Eye and Ear and Throat Hospital (1869), the New York Orthopaedic Dispensary and Hospital (1866), the New York Skin and Cancer Hospital (1882), the General Memorial Hospital for the Treatment of Cancer (1884), the New York Bacteriological Institute (1890; maintaining the New York Pasteur Institute), and the Neurological Institute (1909). Important research is undertaken by the richly endowed Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. The St John’s Guild (1866, non-sectarian) maintains floating hospitals for tuberculosis patients and a sea-side hospital at New Dorp, Staten Island. There is a roof camp for tuberculous patients on the Vanderbilt Clinic (1886), a free dispensary, connected with the College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Many of the general hospitals have already been mentioned in the list of medical schools; others are: the New York Hospital (1771), St Luke’s (1850), Mt. Sinai (1852), the Roosevelt (opened 1871), the Presbyterian (opened 1872; undenominational), the J. Hood Wright Memorial (1862; called the Manhattan Dispensary until 1895), the Hahnemann (1875), and the Flower (1890; homoeopathic; surgical).
Population.—New York is by far the largest city in the United States in population, the census of 1910 returning its numbers as 4,766,883, and in the whole world is second to London only. Seven-eighths of the present area was annexed in the decade 1890–1900; and in those years the population increased from 1,515,301 (for an area of which the population in 1900 was 2,050,600) to 3,437,202. In 1905 the population by the state census was 4,000,403; of the separate boroughs: Manhattan, 2,102,928 (in 1900, 1,850,093; in 1890, 1,441,216); Bronx, 271,592 (in 1900, 200,507; in 1890, 88,908); Brooklyn, 1,355,106 (in 1900, 1,166,582; in 1890, 838,547); Queens, 197,838 (in 1900, 152,999; in 1890, 87,050); Richmond, 72,939 (in 1900, 67,021; in 1890, 51,693). In 1900 there was a slight preponderance of females (1,731,497 females; 1,705,705 males); the ratio of native born to foreign born was about as 176 to 100 (2,167,122 native born; 1,270,808 foreign born); less than 1·8% (60,666) were negroes; and less than 0·19% (6321) were Chinese. Of the native population seven-eighths (1,892,719 out of 2,167,122) were natives of New York state. Of the foreign-born population (1,270,080) in 1900, more than one-fourth (322,343) were Germans; more than one-fifth (275,102) were Irish, nearly one-eighth (155,201) were Russians, principally Jews; more than one-ninth (145,433) were Italians; and the next largest numbers were: 71,427 from Austria, 68,836 from England, 31,516 from Hungary, 28,320 from Sweden, 25,230 from Russian Poland,[1] 19,836 from Scotland, 19,399 English Canadians, 15,055 from Bohemia, 11,387 from Norway, 10,499 from Rumania, 8371 from Switzerland and 5621 from Denmark. In 1900 more than two-thirds of the entire population was of foreign parentage, 2,643,957 being the number of all the persons of foreign parentage and 2,339,895 the number of persons having both parents foreign-born; of this latter number 658,912 were German, 595,267 were Irish, 237,875 were Russians, 214,799 were Italians and 103,497 were Austrians—these numbers as compared with the figures just given for the foreign-born furnish a hint as to priority of the Irish and German immigration to that of the Russian Jews, who like the southern Europeans and the Slavs came to New York in comparatively few numbers more than a generation before 1900. There are in New York City more Germans than in any city of Germany, save Berlin, and more Irish than in Dublin. There are many well-defined foreign communities in the city, such as “Little Italy” about Mulberry Street, “Chinatown” on Mott, Pell and Doyers Streets, the Hebrew quarter on the Upper Bowery and east of it, a “German Colony” east of Second Avenue below 14th Street, French quarters south of Washington Square about Bleecker Street and on the west side between 20th and 34th Streets; a Russian quarter near East Broadway, a “Greek Colony” about Sixth Avenue in the 40’s, and negro quarters on Thompson Street and on the west side in the 50’s; and there are equally well-defined Armenian and Arab quarters. In 1900 35% of the total working population were employed in trade and transportation (in Boston 34%, in Chicago 32%, in Philadelphia 24%) and 37% in manufacturing and mechanical
- ↑ The immigrants from Russian Poland, from Austria Hungary, from Russia and Rumania are largely Jews, and it is estimated that one-fourth of the inhabitants of Manhattan are Jews.
