The City of Brooklyn

This chapter begins with a civic procession and church ceremony in celebration of the incorporation of the City of Brooklyn that was held on April 24, 1834. It highlights the symbolism of the procession itself, which left from Brooklyn's oldest church and moved toward the city's powerful new center of Yankee Protestantism. It also talks about Alden Spooner, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who predicted that the new city charter would distinguish Brooklyn from the many villages that dot New York state. The chapter recounts 1825, when local citizens first assembled to petition for a city charter and Brooklyn was already the third largest locality in the state. The chapter points out how Brooklyn suffered from a weak civic culture, which was born of an excessive preoccupation with individual speculations and many commuters' identification with the big city across the river.