DATE: Thursday, May 15, 1997                TAG: 9705140003

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion 

SOURCE: Patrick Lackey 

                                            LENGTH:   94 lines

100 YEARS AGO, NEW YORK STATE MADE NEW YORK CITY GROW

New York City is celebrating its 100th birthday this year.

Unless you read about the celebration in the New York Times the Sunday before last, you're probably thinking, ``Doesn't New York City go back further than that? Wasn't it bought with beads?''

Yes, part of New York City goes back further than that, and legend has it Manhattan Island was bought with beads.

But the metropolis we think of today as New York City was created 100 years ago when the state forced 40 local governments to consolidate. ``Till death do ye part,'' the state legislature decreed, or words to that effect.

Previously the city consisted of Manhattan and the Bronx, both then part of New York County. The city population was 2 million. Chicago, population 1.7, seemed poised to pass New York and become the nation's largest city. This irked New Yorkers because Chicago's economy had been stoked by the Erie Canal, which New Yorkers financed. (Of course, saying a New Yorker is irked is like saying the sun rises and sets.)

With a stroke of the governor's pen on May 4, 1897, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island ceased being separate localities and became boroughs of New York City, effective the following Jan. 1. A great metropolis was born.

The city population leaped to 3.4 million, second in the world only to London. The new city had more citizens than any of the states abutting the Atlantic Ocean, not to mention 300 miles of waterfront. The consolidation condemned Chicago to be known ever after as the Second City.

It's a shame we don't have a parallel universe in which we could run social experiments over time. We could see what would have become of New York City if its borders hadn't expanded. For that matter, we could see what would have become of this region if Norfolk and Portsmouth had merged and the resulting city been allowed to expand.

At the time of New York City's expansion, according to The Times, ``All of Manhattan south of Canal Street was a smelly traffic jam of horse-drawn carts. Brooklyn and the Bronx lacked paved roads. Queens and Staten Island were agricultural lands desperate for development money.''

One argument for consolidation of 40 localities was that a single central government would be less corrupt than 40 separate ones, as legislative and journalistic watchdogs focused on a single entity. That argument does not take into account the fact that a single government is more easily and effectively bribed than a multitude of governments. New York City has hardly been the model for clean government.

Consolidation was supposed to lead to lower taxes because of economies of scale. One of those irked New Yorker would say today, ``These are low taxes?'' And consolidation was supposed to create jobs through extensive public projects. It did that.

The state Chamber of Commerce pushed for consolidation, believing greater business opportunities would follow. They did.

Business leaders hereabouts, including the Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, have attempted to spur local governments to greater regional cooperation for the same reason: , believing greater prosperity would follow. It would.

Another reason for the consolidation was that the old WASP establishment hoped, by expanding borders, to continue to impose English culture on the whole city, despite the waves of immigrants from throughout Europe.. Adding Brooklyn, then the 10th-largest American city, would help in that regard, because it was more Protestant and Republican than Manhattan. The newer immigrants soon took over anyway.

Here's something unsurprising: The mayors of New York and Brooklyn both opposed consolidation. It would cost each power. Many Brooklyn ministers railed against the merger. ``We don't need the political sewage of Europe,'' said Richard Salter Storrs, a prominent Brooklyn Congregationalist minister.

Ultimately, the legislature and the governor prevailed. They wanted the whole state to get richer and figured a more muscular New York City was key.

Some urban specialists today say the city's mistake was to stop expanding. They say it should have captured the exploding suburbs, much as Houston and San Diego do today.

Without expanding at least as much as it did, however, New York City might have suffered the fate of a Detroit, shrinking to less than a tenth of its economic region's population. Surely Manhattan, the metropolis' heart, would have beaten more weakly than it does today.

One thing is indisputable: This nation has never had a policy for keeping its cities healthy, even though they are its indispensable economic engines.

Three New York cities - Buffalo, Utica and Syracuse - are moving many government functions to the county level because the cities can't handle them.

Miami, in sorry financial shape, may vote to cease being a city in order to become part of Dade County. Something will be lost when we sing ``Moon over Dade County'' and watch ``Dade County Vice.''

In Virginia, South Boston stopped being a city in 1995 in order to join with its surrounding county. Charlottesville, Winchester, Staunton and Clifton Forge are actively considering the same option, and at least seven other cities are mulling the idea. Thus more than a fourth of Virginia's 40 cities could stop being cities, an option legally unavailable to larger ones.

New York City could not have achieved the cultural and economic greatness it did if its physical size had remained small. I wouldn't want to live there today, not with a wife, three dogs and three cats; still I'm glad for the nation's sake that the state forced the city to expand. MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

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