New York

New York City has functioned as the entry point for the American story for four centuries. The Dutch founded New Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan in 1626; the English renamed it New York in 1664; and by the mid-19th century it had become the largest city in the Western Hemisphere and the economic capital of the country. Between 1892 and 1957, Ellis Island processed more than 12 million immigrants through New York Harbor, making the city the most ethnically diverse place in North America and the primary lens through which the world understood what America was.

New York has been central to nearly every major thread of American history. It was the site of crucial Revolutionary War battles — including Washington's near-catastrophic defeat on Long Island — and briefly the first capital of the United States, where Washington was inaugurated in 1789. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, linked the Great Lakes to the Hudson River and New York Harbor, transforming the city into the dominant commercial hub of the continent almost overnight. Wall Street, which takes its name from the Dutch defensive wall at the northern edge of New Amsterdam, became the center of American finance and eventually global finance.

The state has produced Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and an outsized share of American cultural output — from the Harlem Renaissance to Abstract Expressionism to hip-hop. Its labor movement, forged in the garment industry sweatshops and galvanized by the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, helped establish the standards of workplace safety and union rights that spread across the country. New York remains the most populous city in the United States and, by most measures, one of the most influential cities on earth.