Scatterbrain
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History
Gotham City, Gotham County is one of the oldest Eastern urban centers in the US. It nestles at the mouth of the turbid Gotham River upon islands once populated by the Miagani tribe of Native Americans, several centuries before European explorers ever crossed the Atlantic. The Miagani tribe no longer exists, and there is much speculation as to their final fate. One posited theory suggests that a mysterious blight came across the land so they had little choice but to abandon their homes in search of fertile ground. Two days into their journey however, a rival tribe came upon them and slaughtered them.
In 1609, the Dutch East India Company selected English explorer Henry Hudson to chart an easterly passage to Asia. Along his journey, he surveyed the Northeastern coastal region of what would one day become the United States. Following Hudson's course, Dutch pioneers led by Captain Jon Logerquist sailed for this New World and began populating the region once inhabited by the Miagani, founding Nieuw Rotterdam (what we now know as Gotham County) in 1635, it was later taken over by the British and renamed Fort Adolphus until a major battle during the American Revolutionary War forced them to withdraw.
During the latter half of the 18th century and the early half of the 19th century, Gotham City was a major port city known as Gotham Town. Beginning as early as 1799, Darius Wayne began construction on a family estate that would eventually become known as Wayne Manor.
In 1840, Gotham underwent a major urban planning initiated by Judge Solomon Wayne and architect Cyrus Pinkney that laid the foundation of Gotham City. Under Wayne's commission, Pinkney's design was meant to invoke a "bulwark against the godlessness of the wilds wherein we may nurture the gifts of Christian civilisation and be protected from the savagery which lurks in untamed nature." Pinkney saw his designs as an organic whole, almost a living being that would itself fight against evil. Although vehemently criticised by Wayne's fellow Gothamites, the edifice pleased the judge and, in fact was highly successful in that it attracted others to locate their ventures nearby - which in fact became the focal point for a thriving commercial centre in Gotham's financial district. Together Wayne and Pinkney raised no fewer than a dozen other similar buildings. Pinkney's "Gotham Style" structure, for a time, was widely imitated, both in Gotham and elsewhere despite universal vilification in the architectural world.
By the end of the century, Gotham City became a bustling hub of industry. However, it also became a haven for crime, known more for its poverty, the squalidness of its slums and the utter corruption of its government than for commercial and cultural achievements.
By the 1930s, crime and corruption had reached a significant height in Gotham in which it became immortally characterised as a dark foreboding metropolis
During the 1950s, Gotham evolved with the changing times, particularly in light of the paranoia perpetuated by the Cold War. Various bomb shelters were erected all throughout the city. By the 1960s, Gotham City planners began an ambitious project called the Underground Highway. Beginning at Fourth Avenue, they began building an actual subterranean thoroughfare designed to link with the subway system. They only managed to complete two-hundred yards worth of tunnel before budget cuts forced them to abandon the project. In later years, the unfinished highway became a haven for the homeless and even a few criminals.
Crime in Gotham would continue to proliferate in the later half of the century. This increase in criminal activity would lead to the appearance of the Batman.
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