City Response

On December 19, 1835, Mayor Lawrence and the city’s political leaders met at City Hall to request help from Washington and the state government. Other cities, such as Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and Albany, approved of New York’s appeal to the federal government and promised assistance themselves. Even Montreal sent $2,000 to Mayor Lawrence to help rebuild the city. It took a while for Washington to decide to pitch in, a controversial and unprecedented decision. [Not sure if it was controversial because it took them a long time to respond or because it required federal intervention in a local disaster. Needs clarificiation.] New York State quickly authorized a $6 million loan to the city. Plans began immediately to rebuild the city. Since, much of New York had arisen haphazardly from colonial times, the fire was an opportunity to alter street locations and size. Streets were widened or remapped before construction began. Plans were quickly made to rebuild the Merchant’s Exchange.

During the debate in Congress over whether to lend financial assistance to the city, Massachusetts Congressmen suggested a rationale for helping. He stated, “The city of New York is, far more distinctively than any other city, the commercial emporium of the United States. The city sustains a relation to the Government and the country which gives her a right at all times to claim from both the most-favorable consideration.” The bill passed, allowing for refunds to merchants on duties they had paid on imported goods that were destroyed in the fire. The measure was much less than the city had hoped for and that which the citizens of many other American cities had supported. In effect, Washington had done little to assist the city of New York. It would not be the last time Washington was less than helpful to the city in times of disaster.

The fire exacerbated already strained tensions between the firemen and the city politicians. Harsh criticism of the performance of the fire department followed in the wake of the Great Fire of 1835 and resulted in the ouster of Chief Gulick. Alderman accused the department of being improperly organized and unprofessional. Indeed, city firemen were such popular figures that many young boys and men unconnected to the department would appear at fires and participate in firefighting efforts. City politicians felt that this was counter-productive. Soon after the 1835 disaster, however, a resolution was passed by the Common Council, which tried to prevent non-fire department personnel from appearing and assisting at fires. The resolution placed the burden of enforcement on the fire fighters themselves. In an effort to assist them, the aldermen planned to hire additional men who would make up maintenance crews whose job it would be to keep track of equipment at the scene. Those firemen who were assistant engineers would be paid $500 a year salary to supervise the maintenance crews. The firemen saw this new policy as an attempt on the part of the politicians to transform the department from a volunteer organization in which the firemen had a large amount of control to a paid department that would be accountable to the politicians. (They were right.)