1804 -- Aaron Burr challenges Alexander Hamilton to a duel.  The latter who had been thwarting Burr's meets his adversary in Weehawken, New Jersey and is shot in the abdomen.  Hamilton  dies the next day, on July 12,  in Greenwich Village in William Bayard's  Jane Street House.  Burr served three terms as Vice President of the United States, and also founded the Manhattan Company which eventually developed  into the Chase Manhattan Bank.  Also in 1804, the New York Historical Society is formed by Mayor De Witt Clinton and other prominent men, for the preservation of New York State and American historic materials.  The Society is at first housed in Federal Hall on Wall Street, but now abides on Central Park West at 77th Street.
          

1807 -- The Clermont, the world's first practicable steamboat is launched by Robert Fulton into the East River.  Shortly after a steamboat trip up the Hudson to Albany, Fulton was backed by  local capital and he inaugurated a regular  upriver service.  He then started a  steam ferry service  between Manhattan and Brooklyn.  Fulton was  preceded in efforts to perfect steam (and propeller) technology by John Fitch who experimented on the Delaware River.

1808 --  New York City's first Hook and Ladder Company is established in the late Spring. 

1809 -- American author, Washington Irving publishes under the pseudonym of Diedrich Knickerbocker,  his humorously satirical  A History of New York, which is regarded in some circles as being  the first great indigenous piece of comic literature.  Irving also contributed hugely to the famous  Salmagundi Papers (1807-09) a humorous collection of published essays.  It was in these essays, as a matter of fact, that Irving first referred to New York as "Gotham."  Perhaps he is now best remembered for his Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (London, 1820) which included the unforgettable  tales of  Rip Van Winkle and the The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

1811 -- The new City Hall building opens on July 4th, although it remains under construction for an additional year.  Also this year, the Congregation Shearith Israel establishes a new cemetery on West 11th Street to the east of The Avenue of the Americas.  Most of the original graveyard has since  been assumed for other purposes, but a small, triangular and tranquil plot still remains planted with mausoleums and tombstones engraved with solemn epitaphs.  In addition, the now-badly-polluted, downtown Collect is filled.

1812 -- Following on the heels of President Jefferson's embargo act (1808), and the impressment and imprisonment of American seamen, war breaks out with Great Britain.  Commerce is disrupted in New York harbor for about 3 years.  Noticeable too, for this year, was the erection of the first Tammany Hall at Nassau and Frankfort Streets.

1815 -- St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Prince Street and Mott Streets, is dedicated.    It is destined to accommodate the Parish which had been organized and formed 6 years earlier.    After 65 years of service, this St. Patrick's is superseded in importance by the  new St. Patrick's Cathedral, on Fifth Avenue and 50th Street, designed by the architect James Renwick.  And upon the dedication of the New St. Patrick's in 1879, old St. Patrick's was rendered back to the status of parish church.

1816 -- The Village of Brooklyn is incorporated, but has to wait until 1834 to its City Charter.  Its application was opposed by Manhattan, which favored a municipal union under its own leadership. 

1817 -- The Brooklyn brothers, James and John Harper start a printing firm using high-speed roller  presses.  It is destined to become the largest printing establishment in the United States.

1818 -- Regularly scheduled Packet Service to Liverpool is initiated by Quaker merchants on the Black Ball Line, transforming the dependability of oceangoing commerce from a gamble on favorable weather  to a certainty of performance regardless of nature's whimsies.  Other companies, such as the Red  Star and the Swallow Tail, soon followed suit.  Thus New York's preeminent position in the the commerce the world was secured.  Other significant factors in the prolonged growth of the Port of New York were the City controlled "Cotton Triangle," which linked Southern Cotton Fields and European textile manufacturers; the development of swift and easily navigable clipper ships; and finally the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825.

1822 -- Yet another yellow fever epidemic ravages New York City, killing  some 1,000 people, and driving as many as a quarter of the residents of Lower Manhattan northwards, many of whom settle permanently  in Greenwich Village.  Thus the northward expansion of the City marches on.  In this year, also, the City's first life insurance company, the Mechanics' Life Insurance and Coal Company, is incorporated on February 28th.  And St. Luke's Chapel on Hudson Street, a parish of Trinity Church, is dedicated.

1823 -- The New-York Light and Gas Company is incorporated, with the task of illuminating Broadway from the Battery up to Canal Street.   Forthwith it sets out to replace old whale-oil lamps with gaslight.

1824 -- The nation's Supreme Court rules that only the federal government can regulate interstate commerce, thereby terminating a monopoly that New York State had granted to Robert Livingston to operate ferries running to New Jersey.  In this year also, Castle Clinton is transformed into Castle Garden, a 6,000-seat theater dedicated to the performance of concerts and public celebrations.      
        
1825 -- The Erie Canal opens on October 26th, joining Lake Erie with the Hudson River.  Henceforth the Mid-West has access to the Port of New York and the Atlantic Ocean,   The completion of the canal assures New York's prominence as the commercial capital of the nation, over its hitherto rival, Philadelphia.  The Hudson River School of Painting begins about this time, also, with romantic landscapes brought forth one after another by such painters as Thomas Cole and Frederic E. Church.

1827 -- The Journal of Commerce is founded by Arthur Tappan.  Also this year, the New York Merchants Exchange opens on William and Hanover Streets, replacing the Tontine Coffee House as the commercial center for the City's business.

1828 -- The Delaware and Hudson Canal is completed, opening up a water route between Pennsylvania  coalfields and growing market of New York City.

1829 -- The Seaman's Bank for Savings is incorporated.  Also in this year, the Coney Island hotel opens, the first of its kind in that location.

1831 -- New York University is chartered as a nonsectarian, privately endowed, coeducational  institution of learning, in contrast to Columbia University which was largely an Anglican and Episcopalian establishment.  It first occupied Clinton Hall at Nassau and Beekman Streets, and moved four years later to Washington Square.   Also, in this year, the Marine Society purchases a 130-acre site for the establishment of Snug Harbor, a home for ancient mariners.

1832 -- The Erie Railroad is chartered to lay tracks from New York City to Lake Erie.  Also this year Union Square on  Broadway and 14th Street is formally named, following the acquisition of land  in the previous year.   Also in 1832, 4000 people, mostly Irish, die of Cholera in the four-month period from July to October.

1835 -- A fire driven by fierce winds destroys almost all of Lower Manhattan below Wall Street.  674 buildings are destroyed, almost all of the commercrial center and the old Dutch City.  Almost all of the City's fire insurance companies go belly up from the payment of endless claims. In this same year the New York Herald was launched by James Gordon Bennett.  Known for thorough reportage, and despite a flair for sensationalism, the circulation of Bennett's newspaper rose to some 72,000 issues by 1860, making it the largest daily newspaper in the United States.

1837 -- Great inflation and financial panic results in a run on the City's banks, and almshouses close their doors  as many helpless residents starve on the streets.  Hungry and starving mobs riot at the flour warehouses.  In this same year, Samuel F.B. More demonstrates the electric telegraph.

1838 -- The Egyptian-styled Tombs, a massive prison to house the City's criminals,  is built in Lower Manhattan on the location spot where the old Collect once stood.  It soon begins to sink into the the landfilled marshes.

1840 -- The pleas of Bishop John Hughes pleas for assistance to Catholic schools fall on deaf ears, and he consequently sets up the parochial school system.  Also the immigrant Bishop founds St. John's College, the predecessor institution to the present-day Fordham University.

1841 -- The Hudson River is linked to the Delaware River with a system of canals and railroads, facilitating the transportation of  coal from Pennsylvania mines into New York City stoker-furnaces.  Also in this year, the New York Tribune is launched by Horace Greely.  Under Greely's guidance the Tribune is an  idealist instrument, favoring utopian socialism, the labor movement, temperance, and opposing the expansion of slavery.

1842 -- The New York Philharmonic Society is formed under the leadership of  Ureli Corelli Hill, and gives its first concert on December 7th in the Apollo Rooms on lower  Broadway . 63 musicians, mostly Germans, performed before and audience of  some 600 people. Also in this year, Charles Dickens arrives in New York as the first stage of a grand tour across the United States.  It was on this journey that Dickens gathered materials for his American Notes (1842).

1843 -- The Croton Aqueduct is completed bringing millions of gallons of fresh water daily from Westchester,  across High Bridge, into a reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue.  A magnificent feat of 19th century engineering (and cheap Irish immigrant labor), the City celebrates the accomplishment with parades and a splendid display of fireworks.

1844 -- Green-Wood Cemetery, a Victorian-style necropolis, opens in Brooklyn.  It houses the remains of such notables as De Witt Clinton, Boss Tweed, Currier and Ives, Samuel Morse, and the bones of over a half  million more human souls.

1845 -- The New York  Knickerbocker Baseball organization is formed, and the rules of the game are  formalized and stated in writing.  The Knickerbockers played their games at Madison Square on  27th Street.  Within a few decades baseball replaces cricket as the American national sport.