New York city

New York, officially the City of New York, and in common use New York City, is the most populous city in the United States. It is located on the southern tip of New York State, at the mouth of the Hudson River into the Atlantic Ocean. It is the center of a metropolitan area that extends to neighboring countries and is one of the most populous in the world. The city was founded by the Dutch in 1625 as New Amsterdam, and fell to the English in 1664. From 1785 to 1790, New York was the capital of the United States and since 1790 has been the largest city in the United States. It is currently one of the world's centers of trade and finance. New York also has a global influence in media, politics, education, entertainment, arts, advertising and fashion. In 2014, New York ranked first in the prestigious ranking of the most influential fashion cities in the world and can officially use the designation "Capital of Fashion". New York is also the focus of international relations and diplomacy, as it is the headquarters of the United Nations.

New York is sometimes nicknamed "The City That Never Sleeps" or "Big Apple" due to the hustle and bustle of the day.

History

At the time of European discovery in 1524, the area was inhabited by about 5,000 Lenapan Indians. The discoverer of the area was Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian traveler in the service of the French crown, who named the place New Angoulême (Nouvelle Angoulême). The first European settlement, called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam), was founded by the Dutch on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614 for the fur trade. The leader of the Dutch colonies, Peter Minuit, bought Manhattan from the Lenape tribe in 1626 for 60 guilders (a legend has now been denied that Manhattan was bought for $ 24 worth of glass beads). In 1664, the city was conquered by the English and renamed New York in honor of the later King James II, then Duke of York and Albany. At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch gained control of the Indonesian island of Run, which was much more important to them at the time, and the British were able to retain control of New York in exchange. By 1700, the population of the Lenape tribe had declined to 200 people.

The importance of New York as a port under British rule grew. In 1754 it was a charter issued by George II. based in lower Manhattan Columbia University, at the time called Kings's College. During the American Revolutionary War, a series of battles known as the New York Campaign took place in the city. In 1789, Congress met in New York and the first President, George Washington, was inaugurated in the Federal Hall building on Wall Street. In 1790, New York overtook Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.

The 19th century meant an influx of immigrants and constant development for the city. The visionary development plan of 1811 proposed to expand the network of streets throughout Manhattan. In 1819, the Erie Canal was opened, connecting the port of New York with agricultural areas in the north of the country. Local politics was dominated by Tammany Hall, a political grouping within the Democratic Party controlled by Irish immigrants. Some members of the merchant aristocracy advocated the establishment of Central Park, which was eventually established in 1857. There was a strong free black minority in both Manhattan and Brooklyn. Slavery in New York existed until 1827, but during the 1930s, New York became one of the centers of abolitionism.

Anger over contributions to the Civil War (1861-1865) led to a series of riots in 1863, one of the most significant cases of civil disobedience in US history. In 1897, the modern appearance of New York was formed by merging Brooklyn (then an independent city), New York County (which then included parts of the Bronx), Richmond County, and the western part of Queens County. The opening of the metro in 1904 contributed to the connection of the city.

During the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center of industry and commerce. However, it was affected by several tragedies. In 1904, the steamer General Slocum burned down in the East River, claiming 1,021 casualties. In 1911, a fire broke out in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, which killed 146 people, mostly seamstresses. The tragedy has led to the growth of the International Ladies 'Garment Workers' Union and to increased factory safety.

In the 1920s, New York was one of the main goals of the migration of the black population from the southern states of the Union during the so-called Great Migration. In 1916, New York became the home of the largest black community in North America. The black art trend called the "Harlem Renaissance" flourished in an era of Prohibition and tremendous economic growth, which was reflected in the construction of skyscrapers characteristic of New York. New York became the world's most populous city in 1948, overtaking London for more than a hundred years. During the Great Depression, the reformer Fiorello H. La Guardia was elected mayor in 1934, ending Tamman Hall's 80-year rule.

World War II veterans and immigrants from Europe participated in the post-war development of the city, which was symbolized by e.g. example of a row of houses in South Queens. After the war, New York gained the position of a global metropolis with Wall Street as the economic center of the world, the UN headquarters as the center of world diplomacy, and thanks to the development of abstract expressionism, New York became the capital of world culture. In the 1960s, the city was hit by economic problems, racial tensions and rising crime, which peaked in the 1970s.

Between 1976 and 1977, David Berkowitz terrorized the city by shooting; killed 6 people and wounded 7 (later arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment).

The resurrection of the financial sector in the 1980s helped to improve the city's budget. In the 1990s, racial tensions eased, crime fell dramatically and there was a mass influx of immigrants from Asia and Latin America. New industries, such as information technology, began to influence the city's economy, and in 2000, according to the census, New York reached the largest population in history.

The city was the main target of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when almost 3,000 people died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. In 2013, the One World Trade Center skyscraper was completed at the site of the attacks.

Many local monuments are known around the world. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants who arrived in the United States at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Wall Street, the headquarters of the Lower Manhattan Stock Exchange, has been the world's most important financial center since World War II. The city is characterized by skyscrapers that are still among the tallest not only in the United States but around the world, such as the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and, until 2001, the so-called twins in the World Trade Center.

Tourism

Tourism is a major source of income, as the city is visited by about 40 million tourists a year. The most popular destinations are Empire State Building, Ellis Island, theaters on Broadway, museums like Metropolitan Museum of Art and other places like Central Park, Washington Square Park, Rockefeller Center, Times Square, Bronx Zoo, New York Botanical Garden, luxury shops on 5. and Madison Avenue and / or events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the Tribeca Film Festival and performances in Central Park. The most popular attraction is the Statue of Liberty, one of the icons of the United States.

New York gastronomy is influenced by immigrants. Jews and Italians are famous for their local pastries, bagels, cheesecakes and New York pizza. More than 4,000 licensed street vendors, including many immigrants, offer Middle Eastern dishes such as falafel and kebabs, but hot dogs and pretzels remain the most popular. The city also has many of America's most renowned restaurants.

There are parks in New York with an area of ​​about 113 km2 and 22 km of public beaches. The thousand-acre Gateway National Recration Area belongs to the system of national parks. The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge covers an area of ​​36 km2 and thus covers most of Jamaica Bay. Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is the most visited park in the United States with 30 million visitors, which is ten million more than Lincoln Park in Chicago, which is the second most visited. Prospect Park in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted and Vaux, has a 36-hectare meadow. The 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs were held at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens, the city's third largest.

Sport

New York has representatives in the four largest American sports leagues, with all leagues based in the city. New York is one of the few American cities where baseball is more popular than American football. Fourteen duels between New York teams took place here as part of the World Series, and these duels are nicknamed the Subway Series. New York is one of five metropolitan areas that have two baseball teams in the top competition (the others are Chicago, Washington-Baltimore, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area). Currently, New York at MLB is represented by the New York Mets and New York Yankees, who will compete six times during the season. The Yankees have won World Series twenty-six times and the Mets twice. The New York Giants (now San Francisco Giants) and Brooklyn Dodgers (now Los Angeles Dodgers) were based in the city. Both teams moved to California in 1958. The city also has two Minor League baseball teams, the Staten Island Yankees and the Brooklyn Cyclones.

The city's National Football League (American Football) representatives are the New York Jets and the New York Giants (officially the New York Football Giants), although both teams play their matches at Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

In the National Hockey League, they represent the New York Rangers, who play their home games at Madison Square Garden, and the New York Islanders, who play at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, Long Island.

New York Red Bulls and New York City FC represent the city in Major League Soccer. However, the Red Bulls play home games in New Jersey at the Red Bull Arena.

The National Basketball Association is represented by the New York Knicks and Brooklyn Nets, and in Women ' with the National Basketball Association team New York Liberty. The first college basketball tournament, the National Invitation Tournament, took place in New York in 1938 and is still held there today. Rucker Park in Harlem is a famous course where many professional athletes take part in the summer league.

Many international sporting events also take place in New York. U.S. tennis is held every year in Queens. Open, one of the Grand Slam tournaments. The New York Marathon is the largest marathon in the world, and the years 2004-2007 are in the first four places among the marathons in terms of the number of runners who finished. In 2007, a total of 38,557 runners completed the race. The Millrose Games is an annual athletics meeting that runs a one-mile race known as the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also popular in New York City and hosts several tournaments each year, such as the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves at Madison Square Garden.

Many sports are closely linked to immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was played mainly by working-class youth of Italian, German and Irish descent in the 1930s. Stickball is played on the streets to this day, and one street in the Bronx was renamed Stickball Blvd. In recent years, cricket has spread in immigrant communities in South Asia and the Caribbean. Street hockey, football and basketball are other sports that can be found on the streets of New York. Due to the fact that all kinds of sports and athletes of all ages can be found on the streets, New York is sometimes described as “the largest urban playground in the world."

Transport

Public transport is very important in New York. About one-third of U.S. public transit users and one-third of railroad users live in New York City and surrounding suburbs. In the rest of the country, on the other hand, 90% of the population use cars to commute to work. New York is the only city in the United States where most households do not own a car. In Manhattan, it is not owned by 75% of the population, while the national average is only 8%. The average New Yorker spends one week a year commuting to work, 38.4 minutes a day, the largest U.S. city.

The New York City Subway (officially the New York City Subway, commonly called the only subway) is the largest subway system in the world in terms of 468. It connects all parts of the city except Staten Island. The subway carries 1.5 billion passengers a year, which is the third largest number in the world. The New York subway is unique in that most lines operate 24 hours a day, in contrast to the London, Paris and Tokyo subways, which are closed at night.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the United States, and Holland's tunnel was the first mechanically ventilated car tunnel in the world. There are about 12,000 characteristic yellow taxis in the city, Roosevelt Island is connected to Manhattan by a cable car and Manhattan is connected to other places inside and outside the city by ferries.

The New York subway has the most stations in the world and carries 1.5 billion passengers a year. New York has the largest bus fleet in the United States. The rail network connecting suburban areas in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has more than 250 stations and 20 lines. New York City has two of the busiest train stations in the United States, Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station.

Most international airline passengers are bound for New York within the United States. There are three major airports in the area, John F. Kennedy International, Newark Liberty International and LaGuardia, and it is planned to expand Stewart International Airport, near Newburgh. The three airports used about 100 million passengers in 2005, making the airspace over New York the densest in the United States. About a quarter of Americans who flew abroad in 2005 used JFK and Newark airports.

With massive public transportation, more than 120,000 cyclists and many pedestrians, New York is the most energy-efficient major city in the United States. While in the United States walking and cycling are used as a form of transportation in 8% of cases, in New York it is 21%.

New York also has a network of highways that connect the city with New Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island and Connecticut. These motorways are used by millions of people to commute, so there are common traffic jams, especially during rush hour. The George Washington Bridge is considered one of the busiest bridges in the world.

Manhattan is characterized by the division of streets into streets leading from east to west and avenues leading from north to south. Many of New York's streets are known worldwide, such as Fifth Avenue with its luxury shops and the Macy's department store, Wall Street as the headquarters of the stock exchange, or Broadway as the headquarters of musical theaters.

Published on  March 23rd, 2022