New York
City of the United States, located at the mouth of the Hudson River, in the southeast of the state of New York. In 1990 it had a population of 7,322,564 inhabitants; it spans a series of islands and peninsulas, and is divided into five boroughs or districts: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. New York is the largest city in the United States, (despite this it is not its capital), and a major world financial center, one of the largest industrial and commercial centers in the country and home to important international companies, many of which are based in the famous skyscrapers that dominate the New York skyline. It has several universities and is at the center of intense cultural and political life, large railway and air hub, one of the busiest ports in the world. It was founded in 1624 by Dutch colonists who originally named it New Amsterdam.
Of the five boroughs that make up the city, four are located on islands: Manhattan and Staten Island which are both independent islands; Brooklyn and Queens occupying western Long Island. Only the Bronx is part of the continental territory. The height of the city fluctuates between an average of 15 m on the island of Manhattan, and 120 m on Staten Island.
New York is crossed by numerous waterways, among them the two main rivers that form the New York Bay, the Hudson and the East.
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The climate of the city is continental, and although it enjoys the moderating effect of the ocean in the summer and winter months, the predominant influence of the currents from the west means that the temperatures are more extreme than what one might expect in a coastal plain.. The constant effect of the air currents prevent prolonged periods of cold or intense heat. The effect of ocean breezes does not go unnoticed on summer afternoons, as these currents considerably moderate the temperature; this effect is obviously less noticeable in winter. In winter, snowfalls are frequent but not very abundant before December.
As for rainfall, it is quite moderate. However, rainfall is more abundant between the months of May and October, when thunderstorms dominate. In summer, tropical storms are infrequent. During the rest of the year, rainfall is less intense but more persistent than between May and October.
around its port, which developed internationally in the last century and the first in the world for the quantity of goods handled until our 60s, industrial, financial and commercial activities have developed which have made it the most important economic center of the USA and of the world. Even today, its economic and financial leadership is undisputed. Its highly advanced tertiary sector also fuels the largest American industrial activity in the graphic-publishing sector (most of the books and 1/3 of the newspapers are published in New York).
New York tourist places
Broadway is one of the most famous streets in New York; it begins in lower Manhattan, in Battery Park, and runs through the entire length of the island, including the boroughs of Wall Street and City Hall.
On the corner of Broadway and 34th Street is one of the most famous department stores in the world, Macy’s, which marks the center of the clothing district. Seventh Avenue intersects Broadway at Times Square, the heart of the city’s theatrical activity. Times Square bears the name of the Times Tower and is the most famous intersection in the city. Even though the New York Times has moved from its original location to the south end of the square, the crystal ball still drops at midnight on the last day of the year, as it has since the building’s inauguration in 1906. Since 1899, when Oscar Hammerstein built the Victoria and Republic theaters, this was also the heart of the city’s theater district. In Times Square, the old-fashioned charm of Broadway coexists with modern entertainment.
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Further north, between 62nd and 66th streets, is Lincoln Center. In the Columbia University area is the St. John the Divine Cathedral, the largest in Gothic style in the world. In the heart of Manhattan is Central Park, surrounded by Central Park West (or Eight Avenue) to the west and Fifth Avenue to the east.
Fifth Avenue is famous for its shops and luxury homes. There are also many museums and art galleries known all over the world: the Frick Collection, the Guggenheim museum, the Metropolitan museum of art. New York is home to more than 60 other museums, including in addition to those mentioned above, the American Museum of Natural History, The Cloisters, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Jewish Museum and the Museum of Modern Art. One of the world’s largest collections of modern art is on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Founded in 1929, MoMA has been an example to many other museums of the genre and was also the first to include objects that are not strictly artistic in their collections: from ball bearings to microchips, to household items. The museum’s works include more than 150,000 objects.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral is also located on Fifth Avenue, opposite Rockefeller Center. The finest Gothic Revival building in New York City was designed by James Renwick Jr. and finished in 1878. The New York Public Library is one of the largest research libraries in the world. The Empire State Building was the tallest building in the world from 1931 to 1971. The building is a worldwide symbol of the city. It took just 410 days to build this 102-story limestone and brick skyscraper, averaging four and a half floors per week. In February each year, the Empire State Run-Up is held, with 150 competitors running the 1,576 steps from the lobby to the 86th floor, in 10 minutes.
Fifth Avenue ends in Washington Square Park, the heart of the area known as Greenwich Villace and long associated with the New York arts community. South of Greenwich Village is Soho, the largest concentration of cast iron buildings in the world is located in SoHo (South of Houston), a former industrial district. Its heart is Greene Street, and in an area of five blocks there are 50 cast iron buildings. The most beautiful are at numbers 72-76, the “King”, and 28-30, the “Queen”. The area had risked demolition in the 1960s, but was saved from protests from the many artists who lived and worked in its former warehouses.
The Singer Building on Broadway was built by Ernest Flagg in 1904, at a time when bricks in an iron and terra cotta frame were replacing cast iron. This ornate 12-story building, adorned with wrought-iron balconies and graceful arcades painted in bright green, was the office and warehouse of the Singer sewing machine company. Aside from museums, galleries and cast iron buildings, the streets of SoHo are filled with trendy cafes, restaurants, shops and designer boutiques. It’s also the city’s best-loved neighborhood for Sunday brunch and leisure.
In the Lower Manhattan area are the Woolworth Building, and Fraunces Tavern, which dates back to 1719. The United Nations headquarters is located on the East River: the large complex includes parks, sculptures and a riverside boulevard.
Statue of Liberty – The figure overlooking the New York Bay, “the Liberty that lights up the world”, has been the symbol of freedom for millions of people since it was inaugurated by President Grover Cleveland in 1886. In the poem by Emma Lazarus, carved on the base, Lady Liberty says: “Give me the tired, poor people, the people who yearn to breathe free”. In one hand she holds a torch with a flame of 24 carat gold leaf and in the other a book with the inscription July 4, 1776 in Latin. The rays of the crown represent the seven seas and the seven continents.
Brooklyn Bridge – An engineering marvel when it was built in 1883, the bridge connected Manhattan and Brooklyn, then two separate cities. At the time it was the largest suspension bridge and the first to be built of steel. It took 16 years to build the bridge and the work of 600 people, 20 of whom lost their lives, including Roebling himself. From the pedestrian zone there are fabulous views of the skyscrapers, seen through the intertwining of the cables.
The New York park system also includes the Bronx Zoo, Central, Prospect and Van Cortlandt parks, and the Brooklyn and Bronx Botanical Gardens.
New York city boroughs
Manhattan
The Dutch settlers began building the city on the island of Manhattan, where in 1624 they built a fort that was the seed of the city of New Amsterdam. Peter Minuit bought the island from the natives for about $ 24 (60 Dutch guilders). In 1664 the British took the colony and renamed it, during the American Revolution they kept it, and it remained under their power between 1776 and 1781.
The island of Manhattan is a large block of granite located a few tens of meters above the sea. The southern tip and the center of the island are made of this material, while the areas of Greenwich Village and Chelsea are made up of softer soil. The island is flanked in the east by the Hudson River, in the west by the Harlem River, and by the East River in the south.
Brooklyn
It is the largest of the five municipalities of the city. It has several industries and is at the head of national and international trade. In the era of the Dutch settlements, the small town of Brooklyn Ferry was founded in 1816, which became the city of Brooklyn in 1834, growing, absorbing the suburban settlements. In 1855 it became the third city of the Union.
Although they shared lands with English colonists, Dutch culture was the dominant one in the 19th century. When its residents were first asked if they wanted to join New York City as a city hall in 1833, Brooklyn refused. Brooklyn became part of the city in 1898. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, a true masterpiece of engineering, was the main cause that united the borough of Brooklyn and Manhattan into a single city.
Queens
Its present territory has not been colonized for a long time, except for small farms and rural settlements, the majority of the people arrived during the 19th and 20th centuries with the influx of immigrants from Europe.
Queens was named in honor of the wife of Charles II of England, Queen Catherine of Braganza, in 1683. It became part of the city of New York in 1898 and had an immediate economic and physical development. In the early 19th century, Queens was largely populated by small farms and was predominantly rural. During the eighteenth century the area began to have industrial growth along the banks of the East River.
This area was very popular with new immigrants during the first half of the 20th century, and is divided into different neighborhoods with distinct ethnicities, in which there are great similarities with the countries of origin of the distinct colonizers, and some interracial neighborhoods.
It has the two main airports in the city, La Guardia and JFK, and many industries in the city of New York.
Bronx
It was created by Jonas Bronck in 1636 who claimed the land as his own. The demographic explosion of the district took place between the 19th and 20th centuries, due to the flow of Italian and Irish immigrants. Originally there were mostly small houses, farms and wild swamps, until a large group of Irish and Italian immigrants settled there.
The Bronx is the New York neighborhood with the worst reputation (probably even in the whole of the United States) in terms of safety. Its rise and fall took place in the same dazzling form. From the luxurious art deco apartments of the 1900s, it passed to the most absolute marginality at the end of the 20th century, which today is concentrated only in the south, near Harlem. Despite being marginal, the Bronx has two of New York’s most popular spots, the Bronx Zoo and Yankee Stadium. It is the only city hall in New York that is physically connected to the mainland.
Staten Island
Giovanni da Verrazano is considered the “father” of Staten Island because he sailed to New York Bay in 1524 and landed on the island. In 1687 the Duke of York offered the island as a prize in a sailing competition, which the Manhattan team won. Until 1713, when the first public ferry left the island, there was no way to get there and back, except by private boat. Finally, in 1964, Othmar Amman built the Verrazano-Narrows bridge, which facilitated communication with the island. Currently, the Staten Island ferry connects the island to Battery Park in Manhattan, with a free service.
Its relations with the rest of the city are not very good, because the island has tried several times to separate itself from the rest of New York in order to be autonomous. Nowadays it is an upscale residential area with many green areas.
New York history
The region where the city of New York now stands was inhabited until the arrival of Europeans by the Algonquin Indians. Giovanni di Verrazano was the first European who landed in this region in the year 1524. However, Henry Hudson was the first who thoroughly explored this region, entering in 1609 the river that today bears his name in search of the “Northern Passage West”. Hudson, who sailed on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, paved the way for the Netherlands to begin colonizing this point on the American coast in 1624. Thus, in that year he founded a fort that later grew to become the city of New Amsterdam. In 1626,
The disputes in America between the Dutch and the English, who soon realized the strategic advantages of the Hudson Bay, culminated in a confrontation in 1664 when the English army, led by the Duke of York, managed to take the port of New Amsterdam and forced Peter Stuyvesant, Dutch governor, to hand over the city. The arrival of the British accelerated the growth of New York, immediately renamed with this name. In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century New York already had seven thousand inhabitants.
The American Revolution that allowed the Independence of the United States was supported by the inhabitants of this city. Thus, in 1765 New York hosted the Stamp Act Congress, where the measures to be taken in the face of the British decision to demand payment of a special tax on paper for official use and for publishing were discussed. When the first clashes began between the colonists and British troops, they made sure to control New York due to its economic and strategic importance, which they achieved by winning the Battle of Long Island in 1776. New York remained under British control until the end. of the War of Independence in 1783. After the war, New York remained the seat of the United States Congress until 1790. In this city Washington was sworn in in 1789 as the first president of the United States of America; New York was during this period (1789 and 1790) the capital of the Union; it was also the state capital until 1797.
During the 19th century, New York grew to become the largest city in the United States, surpassing Boston and Philadelphia, the two cities that traditionally represented colonial prosperity. With the arrival of new settlers, the city experienced an impressive urban expansion. Later on, huge groups of Italians and families from other European countries joined the German, Irish and Scandinavian immigrants who arrived at the port of New York with the desire to integrate into the mosaic of American society.
During the Civil War years, New York did not support the abolitionist cause, although its industry served to maintain the union of the United States. This ambiguity was due to the fear of some industrialists of losing trade relations with the southern states, which after all provided the raw material for the industries, and was also an important market for the city’s products. The recruitment of people into the Union troops caused severe unrest in 1863 that resulted in the deaths of nearly a thousand people, until troops from Gettysburg managed to restore order.
After the Civil War, the struggle for power over the city was great, cases of corruption were common during the 19th century, such as that of William “Boss” Tweed, a Democratic Party politician who was arrested in 1871 for manipulation of the electoral system and corruption..
In 1883, the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge allowed the borough to join the rest of the city. This was the first step in the creation of New York, as sixteen years later the Bronx, Queens and Staten Islan joined together to form the macro city that is now known as the Big Apple.
In 1934, Italian-born politician Fiorello Henry La Guardia was chosen mayor, and ruled until 1945 in a city hard hit by the effects of the Great Depression, which began in 1929 after the stock market crash. The Guard managed to stabilize the city’s economy, reduce crime, and introduce support programs to the most disadvantaged sectors.
The enormous size of the city and the problems that this entails for the government became evident in 1966, when a strike by the transport workers managed to paralyze New York. In 1975 the city came to the brink of bankruptcy, this forced the federal government to approve extraordinary measures to help restore the economy of this big city, the world capital of finance, nevertheless, it is also the capital of contrasts, where they find the two extremes of the social ladder, absolute poverty and the greatest prosperity of the United States.
In 1989 the Supreme Court of the United States forced to modify the local electoral law for the election of municipal authorities, since the most populous districts did not have a representation proportional to that of the constituencies with the lowest number of inhabitants. Partly as a result of this change, New York’s first black mayor, David N. Dinkins, was elected in 1989, a post he held until 1993. From that year on, Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani.
