Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1929
Wall Street Crash. America enters the Great Depression. Many of the lavish buildings com-
missioned and begun in the 1920s reach completion. Skyscrapers combine the monumental
with the decorative in a new and distinctive Art Deco style: Chrysler Building (1930) and
Empire State Building (1931). Rockefeller Center, the first exponent of the idea of a city-
within-a-city, is built throughout the decade.
1932
Lucky Luciano takes control of the Five Families of the New York mafia; he is imprisoned
in 1936.
1934
Fiorello LaGuardia elected Mayor (which he would remain until 1945). To rebuild New
York after the Depression, he increases taxation, curbs corruption and improves the city's
infrastructure with new bridges, roads, and parks (with much federal funding).
1939
Blue Note Records founded. Jazz legend Charlie Parker moves to New York, where he
helps create bebop; he dies in the city in 1955.
1949-1950
Miles Davis records his seminal album
Birth of the Cool
in New York for Capitol Records,
heralding a new era in jazz.
Late 1940s to 1950s
The East Village becomes home to the Beat poets - Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Wil-
liam Burroughs.
1950
United Nations established in New York. The UN secretariat building introduces the glass
curtain wall to Manhattan.
1958
The plaza of the newly built Seagram Building causes zoning regulations to be changed
again - this time to encourage similar public spaces.
1959
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum opens.
