NYC never had a particularly large manufacturing or industrial base relative to other Northeastern or Midwestern cities? It certainly had some industry, but never steelworks, manufacturing plants, or other such heavy industries?

Haha. You guys don't know your history or your present. You never heard of Brooklyn Navy Yard? Or the Camden Yards? Or any of the factories that used to be Soho? You perhaps think Manhattan was always just a forest of office towers? The shores of Jersey, Manhattan and Brooklyn were a keyboard of piers, with refineries, tanks, factories and shipbuilders. It wasn't near enough the copper or the coal for steel works, but it made millions of pounds of exportable goods for years and years. And manufacturing has always been part of the city, and is a vital part of it today, lighter and more diversified.

Take it from a guy who lived there and studied the history. You have no right to say what New York never had.