Brooklyn: America's True Second City

rooklyn is America’s true Second City. The Dutch settlement of Breuckelen, part of New Netherland prior to the British conquest of 1664, long predated Chicago. Indeed, by the time the City of Chicago was incorporated in 1837, Brooklyn—renamed by the British—was a thriving town, complete with a fledgling library and newspapers and surrounded by large, Dutch-owned farms. But if it has a greater claim to Number Two status than Chicago does, Brooklyn can also claim to speak more authentically for America than Manhattan can. More human in scale, more stubbornly pastoral, Brooklyn was an independent city until 1898. Even after the Brooklyn Bridge was built, Manhattan remained an exotic destination for many in the outer borough. Marty Markowitz, the borough’s current president, still jokingly refers to the incorporation of Brooklyn into the City of New York as the Great Mistake.