Utica
Utica, New York is a city in the state of New York, and the county seat of Oneida County. The current mayor of Utica is David Roefaro. The City of Utica is situated within the region referred to as the Mohawk Valley and the Leatherstocking Region in Eastern New York State. Utica has an extensive park system, with winter and summer sports facilities. Utica and the neighboring city of Rome are principal cities of the Utica–Rome, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Oneida and Herkimer counties.
Like many industrial towns and cities in the northeastern Rust Belt, Utica has experienced a major reduction in manufacturing activity in the past several decades, and is in serious financial trouble; many public services have been curtailed to save money. Suburbs in Utica have begun to experience suburban sprawl; this is common in many Upstate New York cities, which are suffering from what the Sierra Club termed "sprawl without growth," although recently notable efforts have been made to revitalize the Downtown and Oneida Square areas of Utica by planning the construction of quality apartment housing.
The arrival of a large number of Bosnian immigrants over the past several years has stanched a population loss that had been steady for more than three decades. Bosnian immigrants now constitute about 10% of the total population of Utica. The city's economy is heavily dependent on commercial growth in its suburbs, a trend that is characterized by development of green sites in neighboring villages and does little to revitalize the city itself.
History
Utica was first settled in 1773, on the site of Fort Schuyler which was built in 1758 and abandoned after the French and Indian War. The city's name was said to have been picked out of a hat [citation needed]; it is named after Utica, Tunisia.
During the American Revolution the original settlement was destroyed by Tories and Native Americans. General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben turned General George Washington's Continental Army volunteers into a more professional fighting force. The settlement was eventually rebuilt. Utica was incorporated in 1832.
Utica's location on the Erie Canal stimulated its industrial development. The middle section of the Canal, from Rome to Salina, was the first portion to open in 1820. The Chenango Canal, connecting Utica and Binghamton, opened in 1836, and provided a further stimulus for economic development by providing water transportation of coal to Northeast Pennsylvania.
The Utica Psychiatric Center, the first psychiatric center in New York State, has been open in Utica since 1843.
F. W. Woolworth opened his first store in Utica in 1878, but the store failed within a year [1].
By the late 19th century, Utica had become the home of the textile industry of the United States, but, by the mid-20th century, virtually all of the textile mills closed and migrated to the American South. In the wake of the demise of the textile industry, Utica became a major player in the tool and die industry, which thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, eventually declining in the late 20th century. Like the textile industry before it, the machine tool industry largely forsook Utica for the American South, with one notable example being The Chicago Pneumatic Company, which shuttered its extensive manufacturing facility in Utica in 1997 and relocated to Rock Hill, South Carolina.
In the early and mid-20th century, Utica had become a major manufacturing center for radios, manufactured by the General Electric company, which, at one time, employed some 8,000 workers there, and was once known as: "The radio capital of the world." However, by the mid-1960s, General Electric had moved its radio manufacturing to the Far East. In the early 1990s, GE's Light Military Electronics operation in Utica was sold to Lockheed Martin and soon closed altogether. In 1996 the former Lockheed facility was purchased by Oneida County's Industrial Development Association for lease to ConMed Corporation (founded by Utica local Eugene Corasanti) for use as a manufacturing facility and the company's worldwide headquarters, bringing 500 new jobs to the area [2].
In the 1930s through the 1950s Utica became nationally if not internationally known as "Sin City" for the extent of its corruption and control by the political machine of Rufus P. Elefante.
Because of the decline of industry and employment in the mid to late twentieth century, Utica became known as "The City that God Forgot." In the 1980s and early 1990s, some of Utica's residents could be seen driving cars with bumper stickers that read "Last One Out of Utica, Please Turn Out The Lights," clearly taking a more humorous stand on their city's rapid population loss and continued economic struggles.
This article is issued under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from entry Wikipedia: "English".
