New York, a city of staggering contrasts, diversity and culture, ranks among history’s greatest trade and cultural centers. From Wall Street to the United Nations, the world’s most powerful and influential men and women prize success in New York above all other places. Its population hails from every country on the globe, bringing a variety of culture and viewpoints. However, above all else New York has always been about money and ambition.

Europe’s first contact with this area occurred in 1524, when Italian explorer Giovanni de Verrazano viewed New York from the base of Manhattan. The following year, a black Portuguese explorer named Esteban Gomez reached the Hudson River. Despite these early encounters, the Dutch settled New York first, after explorer Henry Hudson lent his name to the world’s largest tidal river. In 1625, six farms called “boweries” were started in Manhattan. The next year, Governor Peter Minuet purchased Manhattan from the Native American Indians for USD24 worth of trinkets. By 1640, the predominately Dutch New Amsterdam (as it was then called) was teeming with the diversity of the New World, as the tolerant Dutch welcomed all.

Rapid expansion soon pitted early Dutch Manhattanites against English Puritans who had moved to the colony. Less than tolerant, the Puritans had banned bowling and even the celebration of Christmas. While initially seen as outsiders, the prosperous and hardworking Puritans soon had the political upper hand. After an invasion by British troops in 1664, an Anglo-Dutch treaty handed the city over to the English.

Under British rule, the renamed New York City saw its population grow from 6,000 to 20,000 by the end of the 17th century. Events in Europe also brought turmoil to the city. Wars between England and France gave birth to privateering, or legalized piracy, that allowed the likes of Wall Street resident William Kidd to go capture enemy ships off the coast of New York. During this time, New York City tolerated (and in some circles encouraged) the slave trade and a large and prosperous slave market was located on Wall Street.

As the 18th century wore on, England’s passage of restrictive acts of trade and imposition of tariffs on the American colonies brought about protest and ultimately revolution. New York City was strategically vital during the American Revolutionary War. Early on, from Brooklyn to Harlem, General George Washington’s army suffered a series of defeats and barely escaped capture. The British took the city and stationed itself there. At the end of the war, Washington was sworn in as the first president on the steps of New York’s Federal Hall.

New York’s stint as the United States capital was short lived. Political wrangling dictated the newly created District of Columbia would be the new nation’s capital. However, the 1792 founding of the New York Stock Exchange launched the city as a financial center.

The explosive expansion and revolutionary invention of the 19^th century forever transformed New York City. The Erie Canal, in its day the world’s greatest engineering feat, had New York’s ports at its terminus and strengthened the city’s position as a national trade center. Later, the city commissioned Central Park, designed and planned to save breathing space as the population boom moved uptown.

The American Civil war brought much sorrow and misery to New York, but also great prosperity as war profits soared. Yet, New York’s status as a Union stronghold became threatened with the passage of the nation’s first conscription act. Poor immigrants, angered that the wealthy could buy their way out of the draft, rioted violently.

As the century passed, New York displayed more technological marvels. A workforce thousands strong constructed Brooklyn Bridge, then the tallest and longest in the world. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, and soon electric streetlights illuminated lower Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, was erected near the Battery. The present St. Patrick’s Cathedral was also built. At the end of the 19th century, a string of palatial mansions rose along New York’s Fifth Avenue.

At the same time, economic conditions in Europe brought massive immigration to New York City, primarily consisting of Irish, German, Italian and Eastern Europeans. Immigrants worked long hours under harsh conditions and lived in unhealthy tenements.

Reformers, galvanized by the success of the abolitionist movement as well as the gaining momentum of the suffragist and temperance movements, actively joined the fight to assist the immigrant poor. By the 1920s, all of Manhattan was populated. Harlem, which had started as a Dutch farm, now attracted New York blacks as well as those migrating from the South. Jazz and blues and Prohibition era speakeasies made the neighborhood an entertainment Mecca for all races. Black musicians, artists and writers together formed a movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. On Broadway, Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein and George and Ira Gershwin led the popular music industry. The hedonistic decade ended however with a crash on Wall Street, leading to the Great Depression.

A backlash against corrupt politics ushered Fiorella LaGuardia into the mayor’s office, and the city began to work its way out of the Depression. Robert Moses built parks and the Rockefellers erected Radio City Music Hall and Rockefeller Center.

New York emerged from the Depression and World War II with a new fervor for industry and building. The United Nations complex started the post-war Boom and was completed in the 1950s. Lower Manhattan’s skyline with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. New York City played a major role in World War II as a port and a center of finance and industry. It emerged from the war as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America’s emergence as the world’s dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters emphasizing its political influence, and the rise of Abstract Expressionism displacing Paris as the center of the art world.

However, the growth of post-war suburbs saw a slow decline in the city’s population. A decline in manufacturing, rising crime rates and white flight pushed New York into a social and economic crisis in the 1970s. These problems plagued the city until the 1990s.

Racial tensions calmed in these years; a dramatic fall in crime rates, improvements in quality of life, economic growth and new immigration renewed the formerly dying city.

Tragically, on Sept. 11, 2001-after almost 30 years of enduring as a symbol of New York City-The World Trade Center was destroyed by terrorists. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for completion by 2012.

But at the dawn of the new millennium, New Yorkers know they will survive this tragedy and come together to build a better city. Fifth Avenue is still a bastion of the wealthy, and numerous other neighborhoods are home to yet another wave of immigration from Latin America, the Far East and Eastern Europe. New York still attracts hordes of ambitious people-historian Peter Quinn, commenting on New York’s nature, said the city that started with Peter Minuet’s $24 purchase is still the same, and if possible, even more so: “Donald Trump would have tried to pay $22.”

The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the city’s tallest buildings, the World Trade Center.