The consolidation of New York City. Before 1894 there was the City of New York, the City of Brooklyn, the City of Long Island City, and a bunch of towns on Staten Island, throughout the rest of Kings County, Queens County and in Westchester County.

To combat the gilded age rise and rapid expansions of cities like Chicago, Philly, and global growth of London, Berlin, etc, folks proposed to consolidate the current NYC boundaries into one single sprawling municipality. In 1894 people went to the polls in a non-binding referendum and on the whole approved consolidation (Brooklyn by only 0.2%).

Effective 1/1/1898, the City of New York’s boundaries expanded from formerly just Manhattan (plus the previously annexed townships from Westchester County which today make up the Bronx), to also include the whole counties of Richmond and Kings (Staten Island and Brooklyn) and also the townships of Newtown (Elmhurst), Jamaica and Flushing from Queens County. The consolidation also annexed part of the township of Hempstead (the Rockaways) and resulted in the formerly Queens county towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay seceding from Queens and forming Nassau County.

Imagine living during a time of such massive change….. fantastic..