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The city rebounded somewhat in the mid- and late 1990s due to the steady expansion of the national economy and the stock market boom (or bubble) that took place concomitantly, although stubbornly high unemployment remained a local problem. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a former federal prosecutor, is credited by many for revitalizing Times Square and making the city more "liveable" by cracking down on crime.

Though there was opposition, and the canal was derisively called "Clinton's Ditch" or worse, "Clinton's Folly," the canal was finally completed in 1825. Officially the event was celebrated by cannon shots along the length, and by Governor Clinton ceremonially pouring Lake Erie water into the New York Harbor in the "Wedding of the Waters."

The NYSE was closed from September 11 until September 17, 2001 as a result of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. On September 17, 2003, NYSE chairman and chief executive Richard Grasso stepped down as a result of controversy concerning the size of his deferred compensation package. He was replaced as Chairman by John S. Reed, the former Chairman and CEO of Citicorp

The city and its nearby suburbs grew rapidly for several reasons. The natural harbor at the base of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the New Jersey ports at Newark and Elizabeth provided almost unlimited capacity for trading ships and protection from storms. Not until 1985 did New York lose its place as the busiest port in the world.

The Black Thursday crash of the Exchange on October 24, 1929 and the sell-off panic which started on Black Tuesday, October 29, precipitated the Great Depression. In an effort to try to restore investor confidence, the Exchange unveiled a fifteen-point program aimed to upgrade protection for the investing public on October 31, 1938.

The Iroquois were thus a serious problem to the Americans fighting for independence. In July of 1778 a force of perhaps one thousand Iroquois and Tories led by the Tory Colonel John Butler and the Seneca war chief Cornplanter overwhelmed a few hundred Americans in the Wyoming Valley (along the Susquehanna River near present Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), which came to be known as the Wyoming Valley Massacre.

During the period prior to the American Revolution, a territorial dispute developed between New York and the Republic of Vermont that continued until after the war. Ultimately, the colonial counties of Cumberland and Gloucester were lost from New York after 1777.