The topic is your claim that:
> the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"
I think it's objectively clear that for any reasonable definitions of "lead" and "huge hinterland", it does.
I'll repeat my point for your edification. NYC was already a major city before the erie canal. As I stated, the erie canal was built because NYC was the most important city in the US. The erie canal didn't cause NYC to become the most important city in the US.
Yes, the hudson river with one of the world's major projects ( the erie canal ) eventually granted access to the hinterlands. But before the erie canal was built, it did not. Yet, NYC existed before the erie canal. Meaning without "access to the hinterlands via the artificially created erie canal", NYC would still exist because it did exist without the erie canal.
Using your logic, NYC shouldn't have even existed before the erie canal because it didn't have access to the "huge hinterlands". But we know NYC existed prior to the erie canal and access to the "huge hinterlands".
New York City exists at its location because nature made it the greatest port facility in the western hemisphere. Great cities emerge where there are transportation breaks: Seaports, rivers, lakeside sites (Chicago), the edge of mountain ranges (Denver). Any place goods need to be loaded and unloaded from long-range vehicles and onto other ones. The Erie Canal gave NYC access to America's hinterland, which floored the accelerator on the city's growth.
But don't take my word for it; here's a foreword written by perhaps the most respected authority on the history of the city of New York:
https://books.google.com/books?id=lVWSpqwqX8AC&lpg=PR15&ots=...