European Cities Influence

European Influences on our Cities

The European Colonial period lasted from the 16th century to the early 20th century; European powers such as France and England established colonies throughout the American homeland, and in other geographical locations such as Asia and Africa. Since, these European settlers were the ones who founded our globally recognized cities today, obviously, they had a tremendous influence on the architectural design. The most populated newfound American cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York’s derivation were architecturally focused on human welfare and economics. The baseline of each of these modern-day economic powerhouse cities today originated from the genius and innovative ideals of the European settlers
New York was built based singularly off of economics. The supreme US Stock Market and center of trade is on Wall Street, and there is a legitimate reason why Wall Street and the rest of the city are architecturally set up the way they are. Wall Street used to be a group of houses that were literally built inside of a wall; the reason for the wall was to separate the citizens from the natives. This was a design that the Dutch brought over to New York during colonialism, and in todays world Wall street is one of the most recognized economic locations in the world, without this influential design New York would not be the economic powerhouse it is today. Besides Wall Street, the rest of New York City was also based off of the economic ideals British settlers brought over. The British were the ones to actually change the name of the city to “New York”, and along with that they brought over what is called the “grid system”. The grid system is individual 12 mile in area grids that were packed tightly with homes, this way you could fit the largest amount of homes in the smallest amount of space, so it is both cheaper and more efficient. Dissimilar to Boston, New York is designed without human welfare in mind, so the city essentially had no grasslands or commonplaces for civilians to meet, and was built solely off of the highest potential economic output. Since New York, New York was all about economic efficiency the building were extremely close/packed, and the materials were cheap, so eventually everything began to break down. Knowing this was a potential problem from the beginning the Dutch brought over the idea of residential and commercial inspectors, “To tamp down frequent fires, he and his officious burgomasters on the council appointed chimney inspectors; required buckets, ladders, and hooks on street corners; and banned roofs made of hay and