New York

NEW YORK
New York is the largest city in the USA and an industrial port (printing, publishing, clothing). It lies on the east coast at the mouth of the Hudson and East Rivers and coves an area of 780 square kilometres. The number of inhabitants varies and depends whether the whole metropolitan area is counted (about 18 million people) or only the central area (about 7,323,000 in 1992). Out of these about 43 per cent are white, 25 per cent black and 24 per cent Hispanic. New York lies on three islands: Manhattan, Long Island and Staten Island. New York has five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island (Richmond). It is one of the most important financial, commercial and cultural centres in the world. NY is called Capital of the world or Big Apple and The Melting Pot. The place were races and nations mix - cosmopolitan society. It is a city of contrast, a combination of everything that is typical American and everything that represents the rest of the world. It is a seat of U.N.O. (United Nation Organisation). The heart of the city is Manhattan. Many blacks people live in Harlem that is a Negro quarter on the north of centre.
The Statue of Liberty from France is situated on Liberty island in NY Harbor. It is bronze figure of a woman holding a torch in one hand and book in the other. The book represents The Declaration of Independence. There is a circular staircase to the crown of the statue. It serves as a lighthouse at night.
Bronx had many park and there is the largest Zoo in America. But it is also very criminal part of NY.
Culture and Entertainment: There are many cultural institutions in NY. The Time Square is centre of theatre district. Here are some museums: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum - it’s an unusual round building of concrete with a glass dome. It illumenants the building with natural light. There are paintings by such masters as Marc Chagall, Modigliani and Picasso. The American Museum of Natural History is a science museum. A famous concert hall is a Carniqie Hall (1891). Another centre of cultural is a the Radio City Music Hall. It’s the largest theatre in the world. There was passing of Awards Grammy.
The Carnegie Hall is very important supporting cultural centre from 19th century.
Sport centres are Madison Square Garden Center, Flushing Meadows Park is knows for it’s tennis tournaments. Central Park is a green largest area of NY. There can you walk, ice-skating, running, go on boat on the lake, listen to the concerts, roller-skating etc. Flushing Meadows Park on Long Island in Queens, is world known for its tennis championships. Long Island exactly Brooklyn is one of NY leisure time centre.
History: It is not exactly known when the site of New York was first populated. The original inhabitants were Indians, which is resembled by the name of the oldest part - Manhattan Island. In the 16th century the area was occupied by Algonquin tribes.
Giovanni da Verrazano was the first European to enter New York Bay in 1524. Later one of the bridges (between Brooklyn and Staten Island) was named after him. However this discovery was not followed up, and it was not until 1609 that the Englishman Henry Hudson, then employed by the Dutch East Indian Company, entered the bay and sailed up the river which was the bear his name. Manhattan  was bought from the Indians by the Dutch in 1625 for goods worth US$ 25. The original name was New Amsterdam. In 1644 the British captured the city and renamed it New York. Because of its favourable position it soon became an important trading port. By 1775 its population was about 25,000.
In southern part of Manhattan island there used to be a wall against Indians, now there is Wall Street - the centre of financial life with the most important stock-exchange in the world.
Manhattan city plan: The city was built on a modern plan of streets and avenues which follow a geometry shape and are numbered. Streets run east-west and avenues north-south (e.g. Fifth Avenue is the shopping centre). Only a few of them - the oldest - have got their names, e.g. Wall Street or Broadway which runs north-south nearly the whole length of the island. Broadway is the centre of cultural life. The island is washed by two rivers - the East River and the Hudson River.
In southern Manhattan we can find the liveliest boroughs such as Little Italy, Chinatown, Soho (South of Hudson) - since the 60’s the centre of contemporary art. Artists created studio lofts in 19 century industrial buildings. East Village is a multi-cultural area with many ethnic restaurants, funky boutiques, rock and jazz clubs. Many musical groups started their career here. Greenwich Village is the home of artists, homosexuals, writers and N.Y.U. students. Lower East Side was traditionally Jewish but the Chinese, Blacks and Hispanics have now replaced the Jews. The oldest building in NY is St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
The city is notorious for its crime. There are drug battles, gang wars and homeless people living in the streets. Many believes New York is no longer a healthy place to live and lots of people, especially with small children, are moving away.
Skyscrapers: New York is famous for its Manhattan skyline - a large number of skyscrapers on a small area. They started to build skyscrapers here because of the lack of space and the high price of land on the island. The first skyscraper here were built in 1903 and 1913. A skyscraper uses a steel frame rather than the walls to support the vertical load, now they are built with the help of computers which can take into consideration all possible phenomena - wind, earthquake - skyscrapers are also an interesting sociological phenomenon as the building is a small facilities, fitness centres, swimming pool - living in a skyscraper is expensive, e.g. one unit in Trump Tower sells for US$ 700,000.
The World Trade Center (WTC, Twins Buildings), the New York’s highest skyscraper built in 1973, is 417 m high, has 110 storeys and more than 100,000 people come and go here every day. Other interesting and beautiful skyscrapers in New York are the Empire State Building (1931, 381m), Chrysler Building (1930, 913m), Citicorp Center (1977, 280m), PanAm Building, Trump Tower etc. There is also the UN (United Nations) building here by the East River. The Empire State Building has 102 floors, a TV tower, 2 observatories, 74 lifts and a restaurant at the top. The whole city can be see well from there.
Life in NY: New York is cosmopolitan and quiet a dangerous city. Nationalities stay in their own areas like Russian section, the German section. There is German town called also York Town. And there is row of German shops, all German-speaking. The shops are open till ten o’clock. And some supermarkets are open twenty-four hours a day and on Sunday. The holidays and the public holiday are longer and only the banks are shut. Everything else stays open, so it makes life much easier. There are a lot of height buildings called skyscrapers. Everything is faster and the people are much ruder. Pushing in the streets and fights about getting on the bus in normal. People don’t stand in a queue. Taxi drivers are the most rudest. They never speaks and they don’t seem to know where anything is. The subways are unusable, dirty and uncomfortable. Americans themselves are really friendly and open, they speak their minds, so if they don’t like something, they actually tell you directly.