History of New York City (1784–1854) as the financial and mercantile capital of the western hemisphere. The Great New York City Fire of 1845 destroyed 345 wooden buildings in the Financial District. The Hudson River Railroad (which grew into the New York Central) opened October 3, 1851; it extended the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, the first railroad built in the state, south to New York City. The city and its nearby suburbs grew rapidly for several reasons. The natural harbor at the base of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey ports at Newark and Elizabeth provided almost unlimited capacity for trading ships and protection from storms.
New York City English Weehawken, Hoboken, Jersey City, Bayonne, and Newark, plus Middlesex and Monmouth Counties, are all within the New York City metropolitan area and thus also home to the major features of New York City English. With the exception of New York City's immediate neighbors like Jersey City and Newark, the New York metropolitan dialect as spoken in New Jersey is rhotic (or fully "r"-pronouncing), so that, whereas a Brooklynite might pronounce "over there" something like "ovah theah/deah" , an Elizabeth native might say "over there/dare" . "The Atlas of North American English" by William Labov et al. shows that the New