the urban infrastructure connecting those buildings, encouraging the undergrounding of electric and telephone lines, and plans were made for a subway line. Consolidation In 1855, the City of Brooklyn annexed Williamsburg and Bushwick, forming the third most-populous city in America. In 1870, Long Island City was formed in Queens. In 1874, New York City annexed the West Bronx, west of the Bronx River. The Brooklyn Bridge, completed in 1883, epitomized the heroic confidence of a generation and drew the two cities of Brooklyn and New York inexorably together. As Brooklyn annexed the remainder of Kings County in the decade from 1886 to 1896, the issue of consolidation grew more pressing. The modern city of Greater New York — the five boroughs — was created in 1898, with the consolidation of the cities of New York (then Manhattan and the Bronx) and Brooklyn with the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island. See also Timeline of New York City, 1850s-1890s New York City Police Riot of 1857 1886 New York City mayoral election References Further reading Anbinder, Tyler. "From Famine to Five Points: Lord Lansdowne's Irish Tenants Encounter North America's Most Notorious Slum." American Historical Review 107.2 (2002): 351–387. in JSTOR Anbinder, Tyler. Five Points: the 19th-century New York City neighborhood that invented tap dance, stole elections, and became the world's most notorious slum (Simon and Schuster, 2001). Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896 (2001) Broxmeyer, Jeffrey D. Electoral Capitalism: The Party System in New York's Gilded Age . (U of Pennsylvania Press, 2020) covers city and state. Burns, Ric, and James Sanders. New York: An Illustrated History (2003), large-scale book version of Burns PBS documentary, New York: A Documentary Film an eight part, 17½ hour documentary film directed by Ric Burns for PBS. It originally aired in 1999 with additional episodes airing in 2001 and 2003. Burrows, Edwin G., and Mike Wallace. Gotham: a history of New York City to 1898 (Oxford University Press, 1998), The standard scholarly survey; 1390 pages onlibe review Bernstein, Iver. The New York City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics in the Age of the Civil War (1990) Callow, Alexander B. The Tweed Ring (1966). Chernow, Ron. The house of Morgan: an American banking dynasty and the rise of modern finance (2001) Chernow, Ron. Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller,