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Administrative History

"An act to amend the Greater New York charter, chapter three hundred and seventy-eight of the laws of eighteen hundred and ninety-seven" was passed by the state legislature on April 4, 1901. A certified copy of the bill revising the New York City charter was then transmitted to Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck for approval and comment. Van Wyck signed and returned the bill to the legislature on April 18, certifying that it had "not been accepted by The City of New York nor by the Mayor."

Van Wyck appended to the bill, a thirty-eight page statement explaining his objections to the revised charter. The mayor concluded his response by referring to the bill as "a charter in which, even in the limited time that has intervened since its passage, there have been found so many extreme and radical changes which the experiences of the past show can only result in disaster to the people of the City." Despite Van Wyck's objections, Governor Benjamin B. Odell, Jr. signed the charter revision into law on April 22 as Chapter 466 of the Laws of 1901.