Little Germany, Manhattan

Beginning in the 1840s, large numbers of German immigrants entering the United States provided a constant population influx for Little Germany.

Stanley Nadel quotes a description of the neighborhood at its peak in the 1870s: At the beginning of the '70s, after a decade of continuously rising immigration, Kleindeutschland was in its fullest bloom.

[9]On June 15, 1904, St Mark's Evangelical Lutheran Church organized their 17th annual picnic to commemorate the end of the school year.

A large paddlewheeler, the General Slocum, was chartered for a cruise on the East River to a picnic site on Long Island, and over 1,300 passengers, mostly women and children, participated in the event.

The inadequacy of the safety equipment, compounded with the poor leadership of Captain William Van Schaick, caused an estimated 1,021 passengers to die by fire or drowning.

[10] To further complicate matters, the desire to find a culprit, conflicting public opinion, and family quarrels among survivors about the distribution of money from a relief fund led the culture of Little Germany to turn sour.

The final indignity was the jury's refusal to find Captain Van Schaick guilty of manslaughter; one of the only things he was ever punished for was lack of safety-preparedness, which was sufficient for him to receive a ten-year prison sentence.

[11] The General Slocum disaster was perhaps the final blow in hastening the end of Little Germany, but for decades before that event, the neighborhood had been contracting in size, both in population and in area.

Near the end of the 19th century, between 1870 and 1900, second-generation German-Americans began to leave the old neighborhood to resettle in Brooklyn, in particular in Williamsburg, and farther uptown on the East Side of Manhattan, in Yorkville.