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With America's entry into World War I in 1917, New York benefited from wartime trade and commerce. Perhaps surprisingly, there was little conflict between the various European communities crammed into the city. Although Germans comprised roughly one-fifth of the city's population, there were few of the attacks on their lives or property that occurred elsewhere in the country.
The postwar years saw one law and one character dominating the New York scene: the law was Prohibition , passed in 1920 (and not repealed until 1933) in an attempt to sober up the nation; the character was Jimmy Walker , elected mayor in 1925. Walker led a far from sober lifestyle, "No civilized man," he said, "goes to bed the same day he wakes up," and it was during his flamboyant career that the Jazz Age came to the city. In speakeasies all over town the bootleg liquor flowed and writers as diverse as Damon Runyon, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Ernest Hemingway portrayed the excitement of the times and musicians such as George Gershwin and Benny Goodman packed nightclubs with their new sound.
With the Wall Street crash of 1929 the party came to an abrupt end. Yet during the Depression three of New York's most opulent - and most beautiful - skyscrapers were built: the Chrysler Building in 1930, the Empire State in 1931 and in 1932 Rockefeller Center - all very impressive, but of little immediate help to those in the other depressed parts of the city.
The country's entry into World War II in 1941 had little direct impact on New York City: lights were blacked out at night in case of bomb attacks, two hundred Japanese were interned on Ellis Island and guards were placed at the entrances to bridges and tunnels. But, more importantly, the Manhattan Project , which took place behind the scenes at Columbia University, succeeded in splitting the uranium atom, thereby creating the first atomic weapon.
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