Batavia (City, New York)

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Batavia
Batavia (New York)
Batavia
Batavia
Location in New York
Basic data
Foundation : 1798
State : United States
State : new York
County : Genesee County
Coordinates : 43 ° 0 ′  N , 78 ° 11 ′  W Coordinates: 43 ° 0 ′  N , 78 ° 11 ′  W
Time zone : Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 )
Residents : 15,465 (as of 2010)
Population density : 1,154.1 inhabitants per km 2
Area : 13.6 km 2  (approx. 5 mi 2 ) of
which 13.4 km 2  (approx. 5 mi 2 ) is land
Height : 272 m
Postal code : 14020
Area code : +1 585
FIPS : 36-04715
GNIS ID : 0943150
Mayor : Marianne Clattenburg

Batavia is a city ( City ) in Genesee County of the US state of New York in the United States of America . The urban area is completely surrounded by the town of Batavia , but not part of this administrative unit .

geography

Batavia lies, like the entire Genesee County, in a landscape characterized by glaciers and the meltwater lake Lake Tonawanda of the last cold period ( Wisconsin Glaciation ). The urban area is therefore largely flat; the bottom sandy. The largest watercourse is the Tonawanda Creek , which comes from the south into the urban area and from there flows west to the Niagara River , about 55 km away .

The Ontario is located approximately 40 km north of Batavia. Buffalo and the northeastern end of Lake Erie are about 65 km west of Batavia, Rochester about 55 km northwest.

history

Population development
Census Residents ± in%
1810 100 -
1830 1671 -
1840 2000 19.7%
1850 3000 50%
1860 2868 -4.4%
1870 3890 35.6%
1880 4845 24.6%
1890 7221 49%
1900 9180 27.1%
1910 11,613 26.5%
1920 13,541 16.6%
1930 17,375 28.3%
1940 17,267 -0.6%
1950 17,799 3.1%
1960 18,210 2.3%
1970 17,338 -4.8%
1980 16,703 -3.7%
1990 16,310 -2.4%
2000 16,256 -0.3%
2010 15,465 -4.9%
2018 estimate 14,491 -6.3%

At the beginning of the 18th century, what is now Genesee County was part of the Seneca (hunting) territory . After the American Revolution , it was opened up by European settlers. Almost all of the land west of the Genesee River in New York State was sold in three parts to the Holland Land Company in December 1792 and February and July 1793 . The aim of this company, which was initially held by 13 Dutch investors through trustees, was to sell the then predominantly forested area as quickly as possible at a profit to settlers.

A settlement in Batavia , named after the Batavian Republic , was first mentioned in 1798. The Holland Land Company set up their first land office there in 1801 to manage land surveys and land sales. After the region initially belonged to Ontario County , in 1802 the entire area sold to the Holland Land Company was combined in the new Genesee County. A further nine counties were split off from the area of ​​this county in the following 40 years. The county seat of Genesee County became Batavia.

At the same time, a town Batavia was founded as a further administrative level in 1802 , including the town of Batavia. From April 23, 1823, this was legally managed as a village . At that time the place had about 1,500 inhabitants.

In 1826 a Batavian resident, William Morgan , disappeared after becoming dissatisfied with his Masonic order in nearby Ley Roy and planning to reveal secrets. Morgan's whereabouts were never cleared up, but a crime involving Freemasons was widely believed. This was a major factor in the founding of the Anti-Masonic Party in 1828.

The Erie Canal , which generally greatly accelerated the economic development of the western part of New York State, did not affect Batavia directly, but ran north of it through Orleans County . Although Batavia was connected to the second public railway line in New York State with the opening of the Tonawanda Railroad in 1837 , the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, located on both the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal, grew significantly faster than Batavia. However, with the Tonawanda Railroad, which was absorbed into the New York Central Railroad in 1853, and the Erie Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad routes opened in the following years , Batavia became a regional railway junction.

In 1915, the federal state granted the town of Batavia city rights and administrative independence from the town of the same name. From an economic point of view, Batavia became a small industrial town in the otherwise agricultural county. The largest single company was the Johnston Harvester Company, founded in 1868 for the production of harvesting machines, which was acquired by Massey-Harris (from 1953: Massey Ferguson ) in 1910 . The plant, which at times employed 2,000 people, was closed in 1959.

The migration of manufacturing industries continued, as in other Rust Belt towns, over the following decades. The mechanical engineering factory O&K Trojan, which was founded in 1920 as the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company, was sold to Faun-Werke in 1982 and thus to Orenstein & Koppel in 1986 . The plant, which mainly produced wheel loaders under the Trojan brand , had a maximum of 500 employees and was the namesake of the local professional baseball team, Batavia Trojans .

At the time of construction of the first railway lines, the place was mostly north of the railway facilities, but expanded to the south in the following decades. The heavily used, in the first half of the 20th century four-track main line of the New York Central Railroad represented an increasing traffic obstacle with numerous level crossings. From 1951 to 1957 the line was therefore relocated to the southern edge of the city, where a new station for the until 1971 offered passenger transport was established. On the previous route only remained sidings .

Infrastructure

The highway Interstate 90 leading north of town in east-west direction through the Town Batavia, where it is part of the New York State Thruway .

The railway line originally built by the Tonawanda Railroad and adapted many times over by the New York Central Railroad has been operated by CSX Transportation since 1999 . It is also used by Amtrak passenger trains, but they do not stop in Batavia. Local rail freight is also provided by the Depew, Lancaster and Western Railroad , serving the sidings on the original New York Central Railroad route as well as a remnant of the Lehigh Valley railway line, which is otherwise disused in the region.

Sports

Batavia is the Batavia Muckdogs one in Dwyer Stadium minor league - baseball team the New York - Penn League resident. This makes the city one of the smallest places in the USA with a professional baseball team. Today's team goes back to the Batavia Clippers , founded in 1939 . In 1957 the name was changed to Batavia Indians and in 1961 to Batavia Pirates , before the team played as Batavia Trojans from 1966 . From 1988 to 1997 the original name Batavia Clippers was used again, which goes back to a Johnston Harvester harvester . The team's major league affiliate has been the Miami Marlins since 2012 .

Sons and daughters of the place

Web links

Commons : Batavia, New York  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Batavia city, New York. In: 2010 Census. United States Census Bureau , 2010, accessed December 26, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Batavia city, New York. United States Census Bureau , accessed December 26, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Barbara Ann Toal: Batavia (Images of America) . Arcadia Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-1-4396-1057-2 , pp. 17 : "In 1798, ... were recorded inhabitants of the village of Batavia"
  4. ^ Laws of the State of New York: Passed at the fifty-ninth Session of the Legislature . E. Croswell, Printer to the State, Albany, New York 1836, pp. 168 : "An act to incorporate the village of Batavia in the county of Genesee, passed April 23, 1823"
  5. ^ William Preston Vaughn: The Anti-Masonic Party in the United States: 1826-1843 . University Press of Kentucky, 1836, ISBN 978-0-8131-5040-6 , pp. 2-4 .
  6. ^ New York Legislative Documents, Volume 8 . JB Lyon Company, 1954: "In 1915 Batavia became a city"
  7. ↑ Barbara Ann Toal: Batavia (Images of America) . Arcadia Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-1-4396-1057-2 , pp. 7 .
  8. ^ New York (State). Legislature. Joint Committee on the State's Economy (1960-) . 1974: "Batavia 's industrial decline ... In 1957, when Massey-Ferguson's employment had dropped to 700 from the war-time high of 2,000, it finally gave in to these economic pressures and closed."
  9. ^ Keith Haddock: The Earthmover Encyclopedia . MotorBooks International, 2007, ISBN 978-1-61059-209-3 , pp. 101 .
  10. ↑ Batavia Manufacturer to close within 2 months. The Buffalo News , January 8, 1992, accessed December 26, 2019 .
  11. ^ Larry Barnes: Batavia Revisited (Images of America) . Arcadia Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-0-7385-7404-2 , pp. 41-48 .
  12. ↑ Barbara Ann Toal: Batavia (Images of America) . Arcadia Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-1-4396-1057-2 , pp. 74 : "In 1957, the tracks were moved southward and the (new) New York Central Railroad Station was built"
  13. ^ Bill Kauffman: Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town's Fight to Survive . 978-0312423162, 2003, ISBN 978-1-4396-1057-2 , pp. 62 .