The Democratic political machines in the boroughs generally controlled politics. New York boasted the nation's strongest financial system, a large upscale market for luxury goods, and a flourishing high culture based on many philanthropists, museums, galleries, universities, artists, writers, and publications. Labor unions rose and fell and rose again. The main bases of the economy were construction, ocean shipping, garments, machine tools, and printing. The economy recovered by 1940 and flourished during the World War II years. The economy of New York City prospered after 1896, with a few short dips, until the decade-long Great Depression, which began with a Wall Street stock market crash in late 1929.

New York's financial sector came to dominate the national and the world economies. The Roaring Twenties were years of glamour and wealth, highlighted by a construction boom, with skyscrapers built higher and higher in the famous skyline. They sponsored the Harlem Renaissance of literature and culture celebrating the black experience. Labor shortages during the war attracted African Americans from the Southeast, who headed north as part of the Great Migration. Increased immigration of Catholic and Jewish workers from Southern and Eastern Europe expanded the labor force until the World War ended immigration in 1914. New transportation links, especially the New York City Subway, opened in 1904, bound together the new metropolis. The era began with the formation of the consolidated city of the five boroughs in 1898, with a total population of 3.4 million. More than one-fourth of the 300 largest corporations in 1920 were headquartered there.

New York City became the capital of national communications, trade, and finance, and of popular culture and high culture. Mulberry Street, on the Lower East Side, circa 1900ĭuring the years of 1898–1945, New York City consolidated.

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