New York City Concert Life, 1801-5

When embarking on a study of New York's concert life during the first five years of the nineteenth century, one must, of course, envision quite a different community and atmosphere from that of present-day New York. A brief description of its size, appearance, and pervading interests during that earlier time should set the stage for a survey of its concert life. In 1801 the entire town was crowded onto the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The growth rate of the young metropolis was prodigious-it numbered approximately 33,000 inhabitants in 1790, a little over 60,000 in 1801, and approximately 78,000 in 1805. By 1810 the city would overtake Philadelphia as the most populous in the new nation, and by 1825, with the opening of the Erie Canal, would assume unquestioned commercial leadership among American urban centers.1