New York (city)

I

Introduction

New York (city), New York State, United States. America's most populous city, New York, the “Big Apple”, is one of the world's leading commercial, financial, and cultural centres. New York is subdivided into five boroughs; in descending order of area, the boroughs are Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, the Bronx, and Manhattan. Almost all of the Bronx is situated on the mainland, but the other boroughs are situated on, or comprise, islands. In all, New York comprises some 50 islands. In postal addresses, “New York” is synonymous with “Manhattan”.

New York has been the gateway to America for successive influxes of immigrants from Europe, later Asia and Russia. The population of the city remains more racially and ethnically diverse than many areas of the United States. In 1990 the population of New York was 52 per cent white, 29 per cent black, 7 per cent Asian and Pacific Islander, and 12 per cent other races. Those of Hispanic origin comprised 24 per cent of the total population. The latest influx is from post-Communist Russia. Land area, 800 sq km (309 sq mi). Population 8,143,197 (2005 estimate).

II

Economy

New York is a financial, commercial, manufacturing, and tourist centre. A national focus of road, rail, water, and air transport, it also contains the headquarters of many major corporations. The financial district of Lower Manhattan, centred on Wall and Broad streets, includes the New York Stock Exchange (1817) and a United States Federal Reserve bank as well as other prominent banking, brokerage, and financial institutions. Much domestic and international trade is conducted in New York's offices. Two international airports—La Guardia and John F. Kennedy, both in Queens—are major air-cargo terminals, and large amounts of freight pass through the city's port facilities. Nearby ports in New Jersey, however, with Newark International Airport, now handle much of the freight that formerly passed through New York.

Wholesale and retail trade are important to New York's economy. The city is particularly noted for its many retail outlets, including large department stores and specialized shops. Fifth and Madison avenues, in Manhattan, are especially famous for their elegant shops.

As a manufacturing centre, New York is a national leader in the production of clothing (notably in the Garment District of Midtown Manhattan on the West Side), printed materials, and processed foods. Other principal products include wood, paper, and metal goods, machinery, chemicals, and textiles. Many manufacturing concerns have left New York since the 1960s, largely because of the high cost of operating in the city. In specialized service activities, however, the city remains strong and it is a major centre of the world financial industry; both the advertising and the communications industries have major concentrations in New York. The leading national television and radio networks have headquarters in the city, as do many prominent book and magazine publishers.

III

Places of Interest

Manhattan south of 14th Street grew by the accretion of small, independent hamlets during the period from the city's founding in the early 1600s to the early 19th century. Consequently, this area is characterized by irregularly laid-out districts such as City Hall Plaza and Greenwich Village. North of 14th Street, a grid plan (established 1811) prevails, with named or numbered avenues running roughly north and south, and mostly numbered streets running east and west—superimposed on such irregular roads as Broadway, which pre-dates the plan. Central Park, designed by the American landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, has dominated the grid from 59th to 110th streets since the 1850s. Among the most distinct of Manhattan's numerous neighbourhoods are Chinatown (where Chinese immigrants began to settle in the 1850s) and SoHo, the latter a former warehouse and factory district with many refurbished loft apartments—both located south of Greenwich Village; the Upper East Side, an elegant residential area; and, north of 96th Street, Harlem, a largely black and Hispanic section. Manhattan is linked to New Jersey by the George Washington Bridge, the Holland and Lincoln tunnels, and the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH); and to Staten Island by a ferry service.

The city's other boroughs are much less regular in plan, having been formed by the coalescence of numerous historically separate towns and villages. Staten Island is the least urban of the boroughs and remains, to some extent, more a collection of towns than a single urban area. It has, however, grown considerably since being linked to Brooklyn in 1964 by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, one of the world's longest suspension bridges. Brooklyn is the most populous borough; its diversified neighbourhoods include elegant Brooklyn Heights, middle-class ethnic enclaves such as Sheepshead Bay, and the impoverished Brownsville section. Prospect Park, at the heart of the borough, is another major design project of Frederick Law Olmsted. Brooklyn is connected to Manhattan across the East River by the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges and by the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. In Queens, neighbourhood consciousness is particularly strong and, as in all the boroughs of New York, many neighbourhoods have a distinguishing ethnic population. The Bronx, like the other boroughs, has great diversity, ranging from an area of devastated buildings in the south to the large homes and luxury apartment buildings of Riverdale in the west. In the centre of the borough is Bronx Park, which includes the International Wildlife Conservation Park (known as the Bronx Zoo) and the New York Botanical Garden.

New York, and particularly Manhattan, boasts many distinguished architectural sites. Skyscrapers dominate the skyline; the Flatiron Building, completed in 1902, was one of the first in the city. Others include the Chrysler Building (1930), the Woolworth Building (1915), the Empire State Building (1931), and the group of buildings that constitute Rockefeller Center (begun 1931). The former World Trade Center (1972) ranked among the world's tallest buildings until its destruction by terrorist action on September 11, 2001. Older structures include Gracie Mansion (late 18th century), now the mayor's residence, and City Hall (1802-1811). Among the city's well-known religious edifices are St Patrick's Cathedral (1879), the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine (begun 1892), and Temple Emanu-El. New York's most famous landmark is the Statue of Liberty (1886) on Liberty Island; Ellis Island, from 1892 to 1954 was the point of entry of immigrants to the United States; Grand Central Terminal (1913) is the main railway station; and the vast United Nations complex is along the East River in Midtown Manhattan. Professional baseball teams play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx (New York Yankees), and Shea Stadium in Queens (New York Mets). Other major sports facilities in the city include Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, home of the New York Knickerbockers (Knicks) basketball and New York Rangers ice hockey teams. The New York Islanders ice hockey team plays in Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in nearby Uniondale.

The many fine institutions of higher education throughout the five boroughs include Columbia University (1754), Barnard College, New York University, Pratt Institute (1887), Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, City University of New York, Fordham University, St John's University, Rockefeller University, Union Theological Seminary, and the Manhattan School of Music (1917). Among the leading art museums are the vast Metropolitan Museum of Art (1880); the Museum of Modern Art (1929); the Frick Collection (1935); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1959), designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (SoHo branch, 1992); and the Whitney Museum of American Art (1966). Other museums include the American Museum of Natural History (1869); the Jewish Museum; El Museo del Barrio, devoted to the culture of Puerto Rico and Latin America; the Studio Museum in Harlem, exhibiting works by black artists; and the National Museum of the American Indian. The city's major libraries include the New York Public Library, with some 10 million volumes. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a branch of the New York Public Library, houses the world's largest collection of documents about the literature and history of black people. The hub of the city's theatre district is Times Square, with more than 30 theatres. Near the south-western corner of Central Park is the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a large cluster of buildings that includes the Metropolitan Opera House; Avery Fisher Hall, home of the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, commonly known as the New York Philharmonic; the New York State Theater, where the New York City Ballet and New York City Opera perform; and the Juilliard School.

IV

History

The New York Bay area had been inhabited for centuries by Native Americans of the Algonquian and Iroquois groups. The first European to visit the area was Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian navigator in the service of France, who landed here in 1524. Henry Hudson, whose expedition sailed under the Dutch flag, explored the Hudson River in 1609, and in 1613 Adriaen Block, also sailing for the Dutch, was forced to winter on Manhattan Island after his boat caught fire. In 1624 the Dutch West India Company established the colony of New Netherlands (later New York). A Dutch trading post called New Amsterdam was established on Manhattan's southern tip in 1625, but a permanent white settlement was not established until the following year. During the mid-17th century, further colonization of Manhattan Island took place, and other settlements were begun in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. In 1664 Peter Stuyvesant, then governor, surrendered the colony to the English. It was retaken by the Dutch a few years later but was finally ceded to the English in 1674 by the Treaty of Westminster. The impetus to the city's growth was mercantile, with coast, river, and ocean trade all contributing. By now renamed, New York played an important role in events leading to the American War of Independence (1775-1783): in 1735 the printer John Peter Zenger, jailed for criticizing his British rulers, won his case and established the principle of a free press; and in 1765 the Stamp Act Congress met in the city. After the Battle of Long Island (1776), New York was occupied by British troops until the end of the War of Independence, and was devastated by fires in 1776 and 1778. The American Congress met in New York in 1785-1790, and George Washington was inaugurated as the first United States president here in 1789.

The community continued to grow, but its great expansion occurred after the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825. The canal opened the great markets of the west, and New York became a major centre of commodity exchange, banking, marine insurance, and manufacturing. Immigrants, particularly Irish, German, Jewish, and Italian, began to arrive in large numbers. Between 1820 and 1840, the city's population more than doubled; by 1850 it had doubled again. From the mid-19th century until well into the 20th century, the city government was under control of a Democratic party machine, known as the Tammany Society. The machine controlled politicians of both parties, the police, the courts, state and local governments, and newspapers.

By the late 19th century the population was swelled by immigrants from southern and eastern Europe as well as from China. Growth was further enhanced by the great age of bridge construction that was initiated by the achievement of John A. Roebling and Washington A. Roebling: the beautiful, wire-enlaced Brooklyn Bridge (1883). Other bridges soon followed, setting the stage for the consolidation that, in 1898, created the five-borough city. In 1904 construction of the complex underground transport system linking the boroughs was begun and integrated the boroughs into the pattern recognizable today. In the period during and after World War II, the city received numerous black immigrants, largely from the southern states. Immigration from Puerto Rico and from other parts of the Caribbean and Latin America followed in the 1950s.

Under a new city charter, effective January 1, 1963, a mayor was elected for a four-year term to head a centralized city government. The city sought an end to its chronic fiscal problems in the mid-1970s, when special financial entities (such as the Municipal Assistance Corporation) were created to keep the city from defaulting on its loans. The financial picture improved in the late 1970s and early 1980s, in part because outlays for city services were closely regulated. New York's financial affairs continued to improve for most of the 1990s under the Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani, elected for the maximum two terms in 1993 and 1997, although towards the end of his tenure the threat of recession had begun to resurface. Among the achievements of Giuliani’s administration were the introduction of wide-ranging measures to reduce the city's once notorious crime rate, and the transformation of Times Square in the late 1990s. However possibly his most memorable achievement, according to many New Yorkers, was his handling of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Giuliani became a stable, reassuring presence—in person and in the media—as he rallied the city’s population after the destruction of the World Trade Center, during the anthrax scares that followed, and in the wake of the airliner crash in November in Queens. He handed over his mayorship in November to Michael Bloomberg, another Republican, who pledged to focus on reviving the city’s economy.