Decode the Revolution.

The City That Nearly Lost the Revolution

New York City spent seven years under British occupation — from September 1776 to November 1783 — longer than any other American city during the Revolution. The British moved into Lower Manhattan after Washington's army fled north following the Battle of Long Island, and they never left willingly. Within weeks of their arrival, a fire consumed roughly a quarter of the city, destroying 493 buildings along the west side of Broadway from Whitehall to Barclay Street. Washington's men were blamed; the British suspected arson. The truth was never established. The ruins sat unrepaired for years, occupied by refugees and loyalists in a shantytown the occupiers called "Canvas Town." Walk that stretch of Broadway today and nothing marks what burned there.

The spy networks that ran through occupied New York were among the most sophisticated of the war. The Culper Spy Ring, organized by Benjamin Tallmadge and operating from 1778 to 1783, passed intelligence from Manhattan across Long Island Sound to Washington's headquarters in New Jersey and Connecticut. Agent 355 — a woman whose real identity remains unknown — operated inside the city, moving information through a chain of couriers that included Abraham Woodhull in Setauket and Robert Townsend, whose cover as a Manhattan merchant let him observe British troop movements firsthand. Townsend's dry-goods shop stood near Hanover Square; the building is long gone, but the intersection survives. Fraunces Tavern at 54 Pearl Street, where Washington gave his farewell address to his officers in December 1783, still stands — the oldest surviving commercial building in Manhattan, restored after a 1904 bombing by Puerto Rican nationalists, and largely overlooked by the finance workers who pass it daily.

Fort Washington, the Continental Army's last stronghold in Manhattan, fell to British forces on November 16, 1776, with the capture of nearly 2,900 American soldiers — the single largest American prisoner-of-war loss of the entire Revolution. The fort sat at present-day 183rd Street and Fort Washington Avenue in Washington Heights, where a small plaque marks the site. The prisoners were held in the city's churches and on prison ships anchored in Wallabout Bay in Brooklyn; more Americans died on those ships than in every battle of the Revolution combined. A StoryHunt through Revolutionary NYC follows the spy routes, the fire lines, and the escape corridors — real addresses, real history, and the question of who actually won the city.