From the perspective of early colonists in America, it makes sense that firewood was initially easier to collect, but that as demand grew there was a transition to coal, which was more abundant. According to https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-us-coal-industry-in-the-nineteenth-century-2/
With abundant supplies of wood, water, and animal fuel, there was little need to use mineral fuel in seventeenth and eighteenth-century America. But as colonial cities along the eastern seaboard grew in population and in prestige, coal began to appear in American forges and furnaces.
Of course, the advantage of coal over wood is greater for making steel than for simple heating.
To ask a specific question, then:
In what decade did New York City start consuming more coal than firewood for domestic heating?
