Jul 10 2011
Posted by John Fernandes under June 16 Assignment
New York Vs Pennsylvania – 19th Century
When the Dutch arrived in Manhattan in the early 1600s, they had envisioned it to be one of the more popular and prominent ports in America. This was always the case thru the 17th and 18th century, but with the completion of the Eerie Canal, the ports in NYC was taken into a completely different level. Trade was such an integral and wide spreading part of NYC at that moment, that it could not restrict itself to Manhattan and soon started spreading out into Brooklyn. Merchants started building warehouses and counting houses in Brooklyn along the East River. Building of the Erie Canal reduced the prices of transportation of goods from places like Chicago by 90 percent and reduced the time by 50 percent.
Almost around this same period the Erie Canal was completed , there were a couple of canals build in Pennsylvania as well. Canals extending the use of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers were chartered before 1815, and the Lehigh Canal was completed in 1838. But these canals did not do the same wonders that Erie Canal did for NYC. Although this system linked the east to the west, its expense made the state nearly bankrupt.