New York was the capital of the United States of America briefly for a year in 1789, and by the time it relinquished the title in 1790, it was the largest city in the country, continuing to grow at breakneck speed.
Some of the most famous buildings on the New York skyline were built to relieve New York from the Great Depression of the 1930s – the Crysler, the Rockefeller and the Empire State were initiated by Fiorello LaGuardia's privately-funded building scheme.
Local myth has it that New York (then Nieuw Amsterdam) was founded on a crooked deal by a Dutchman called Peter Minuit, who bought Manhattan island from the local Algonquin tribe for a box of trinkets worth $24.