New York City Founded on OTHER Bank of Hudson River

The premise is simple: the founders of New Amsterdam, later NYC, decide to buy a peninsula sticking out into the water on the west side of the Hudson (that is, they buy OTL Bayonne and Jersey City) rather than Manhattan itself, reasoning that colonies can be developed better with easily accessible roads both north AND west. (There are ideas afoot of turning the Meadowlands of NJ, a swamp and an enormous barrier to the west, into a bunch of polders a la the Netherlands, and/or canal building, and/or other Dutch water-shuffling activities.) What they have is a nice set of islands nearby, a good harbor, and a set of cliffs (the Palisades) to the North.

So what happens next? Well, New Jersey, if it is founded at all, would have borders further to the south and west of OTL, unless the founders of NJ would rather go for the islands (in which case NY and NJ get reversed geographically!). While trade up the Hudson would still result in the building of the Erie Canal (presumably), there would be less of an incentive to build bridges and tunnels across the Hudson River. The Meadowlands, however, would be much more severely impacted than OTL in the (relatively) short run, with Dutch polders and dams and all cropping up. The Palisades might be turned into a park. Staten Island is closer to the city proper in ATL, leading to early suburbanization and city formation on Staten Island (which is perhaps ATL's Brooklyn). It would likely be a city more known for hills than OTL, with posh suburbs accessible by ferries across the Hudson and New York Harbor (perhaps giving way to ports in some areas later on as people seek to develop the docklands further). I suspect OTL Manhattan/Brooklyn/Queens would be more bucolic and countrified in ATL at present, although I'm not sure about this. What does Alt Hist Disc Boa think about this?
 
Someone is going to found a city there.

Similar situation in Massachusetts. The first colony was in Plymouth, but Boston was too good of a harbor-city site to pass up for long.
 
Interesting idea, though IIRC the inherent defensibility of Manhattan Island and its strategic control of both the Hudson and the East River (and therefor Long Island) made it the obvious choice. Maybe if they build a fort there and the city on the west bank...
 

boredatwork

Banned
A few points to bear in mind with the proposed site

1. The original weehauwken - bayonne peninsula was narrower than what we have today.

2. Your western approach is several miles of swampland. By the time manhattan was being settled, Europeans had figured out that starting a settlement near a swamp in the new world was not the brightest of ideas.

3. The pre-settlement island of manhattan actually had several freshwater springs (or so I am told), the bayonne peninsula does not, and the freshwater river is across those miles of swampland

4. Ports - prior to dregging and other industrial infrastructure work, the harborage on the East side of the river was almost always going to be better. So you end up with your city on one side, and your best harbor on the other. How this works when the early city is basically a port, a fort, + some farms...

Net result - slower growth, probably inevitable rise of a competing port in mahanttan/long island area, eventual eclipse of city.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
I am from Northern NJ. Our cities are all violent slums too dangerous to enter at night unless you already live there, in which case, you are probably heavily armed. Seriously. Paterson. Don't go there at night. Don't. Good punk rock dive bar right outside it on Belmont Ave in Haledon, but another couple blocks, and you're taking your life in your hands.

Newark is bad too. Camden is the worst one. People don't go to Camden. People live in it, but the few stories of people I know having wandered into it usually end with them telling of having narrowly escaped death.

If NYC was in NJ, it would basically mean you took Hell's Kitchen, bad places in the LES, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and covered the entire city in them. NYC in the 70s would be the closest analog.

NYC is lucky it is where it is as cities go.
 
I am from Northern NJ. Our cities are all violent slums too dangerous to enter at night unless you already live there, in which case, you are probably heavily armed. Seriously. Paterson. Don't go there at night. Don't. Good punk rock dive bar right outside it on Belmont Ave in Haledon, but another couple blocks, and you're taking your life in your hands.

Newark is bad too. Camden is the worst one. People don't go to Camden. People live in it, but the few stories of people I know having wandered into it usually end with them telling of having narrowly escaped death.

If NYC was in NJ, it would basically mean you took Hell's Kitchen, bad places in the LES, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens and covered the entire city in them. NYC in the 70s would be the closest analog.

NYC is lucky it is where it is as cities go.
Because of course changes in the colonization of America wouldn't affect its development centuries later.
 
Manhattan and Long Island create many natural harbors, the most essential points for settlement in the 17th and 18th centuries. Land access through New Jersey lowlands would be less strategic.
 
Camden is the worst one. People don't go to Camden. People live in it, but the few stories of people I know having wandered into it usually end with them telling of having narrowly escaped death.

That's too bad to hear. Back in the 60s I was stationed in Philadelphia during my stint in the Marine Corps, and we used to go to Camden on Sundays for a good time because Philadelphia's Blue Laws basicly shut the city down. There were a lot of nice taverns and restaurants in Camden back then, and a lot of nice folk.
 
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