The modern city of New York was created in the 1890s by merging several of the then-independent boroughs together. Major administrative changes create headaches, as everyone who has got a new driver’s license or changed their name knows. This merger was no exception. Among other things, ironing out the finances of the merger proved to be painful.
In a previous post, I discussed the forgotten history of how judicial decisions abolished cities. Here I will balance that out by discussing how public finance helped create a city—history that manages to be even sillier.
