ABSTRACT
In 1910, photographer Alfred Stieglitz used the title "The City of Ambition" to describe his image of New York's busy harbor set against smoking factories and towering office buildings. From 1900 to 1919, that quest would repeatedly roil New York as ambition pervaded the city, challenged convention, and stimulated conflict. Tragedy provided Progressivism with a champion when, in 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) became president of the United States after President William McKinley was assassinated by an anarchist. The country cheered Roosevelt's assault on the money moguls of Wall Street and dubbed him a trustbuster, even though he only wanted to control corporate growth. New York City's early-twentieth-century Bohemian Rebellion horrified but fascinated America. Staten Island provided an alternative to the rambunctiousness of the Bohemian Rebellion, Coney Island, racial tension, labor strikes, women's activism, and Emma Goldman. Goldman was implicated as an accomplice but, being in New York at the time, avoided arrest.
