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Learn about New York City, the most populous and diverse city in the United States, and its history, culture, economy, and attractions. Find out how the city is composed of five boroughs, each with its own county, and how it is a global hub for finance, commerce, and diplomacy.
Things to Do in New York City. Start with sightseeing NYC’s greatest hits: Times Square, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and spend the rest of your time checking out neighbourhood gems.
- Overview
- Character of the city
- The city site
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New York City is located at the mouth of the Hudson River in southeastern New York state, which is in the northeastern section of the United States.
What are the five boroughs of New York City?
The five boroughs of New York City are Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island.
Why is New York City important in the United States?
New York City is the largest and most influential American metropolis and the most populous and the most international city in the country. Located where the Hudson and East rivers empty into one of the world’s premier harbors, New York is both the gateway to the North American continent and its preferred exit to the oceans of the globe.
What does the seal of New York City look like?
New York is the most ethnically diverse, religiously varied, commercially driven, famously congested, and, in the eyes of many, the most attractive urban centre in the country. No other city has contributed more images to the collective consciousness of Americans: Wall Street means finance, Broadway is synonymous with theatre, Fifth Avenue is automatically paired with shopping, Madison Avenue means the advertising industry, Greenwich Village connotes bohemian lifestyles, Seventh Avenue signifies fashion, Tammany Hall defines machine politics, and Harlem evokes images of the Jazz Age, African American aspirations, and slums. The word tenement brings to mind both the miseries of urban life and the upward mobility of striving immigrant masses. New York has more Jews than Tel Aviv, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Naples, and more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Its symbol is the Statue of Liberty, but the metropolis is itself an icon, the arena in which Emma Lazarus’s “tempest-tost” people of every nation are transformed into Americans—and if they remain in the city, they become New Yorkers.
For the past two centuries, New York has been the largest and wealthiest American city. More than half the people and goods that ever entered the United States came through its port, and that stream of commerce has made change a constant presence in city life. New York always meant possibility, for it was an urban centre on its way to something better, a metropolis too busy to be solicitous of those who stood in the way of progress. New York—while the most American of all the country’s cities—thus also achieved a reputation as both foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil, arrogance, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it. The city was inhabited by strangers, but they were, as James Fenimore Cooper explained, “essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state but to the United States.” Once the capital of both its state and the country, New York surpassed such status to become a world city in both commerce and outlook, with the most famous skyline on earth. It also became a target for international terrorism—most notably the destruction in 2001 of the World Trade Center, which for three decades had been the most prominent symbol of the city’s global prowess. However, New York remains for its residents a conglomeration of local neighbourhoods that provide them with familiar cuisines, languages, and experiences. A city of stark contrasts and deep contradictions, New York is perhaps the most fitting representative of a diverse and powerful nation.
Sections of the granite bedrock of New York date to about 100 million years ago, but the topography of the present city is largely the product of the glacial recession that marked the end of the Wisconsin Glacial Stage about 10,000 years ago. Great erratic boulders in Manhattan’s Central Park, deep kettle depressions in Brooklyn and Queens, and the glacial moraine that remains in parts of the metropolitan area provide silent testimony to the enormous power of the ice. Glacial retreat also carved out the waterways around the city. The Hudson and East rivers, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and Arthur Kill are, in reality, estuaries of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Hudson is tidal as far north as Troy. The approximately 600 miles (1,000 km) of New York shoreline are locked in constant combat with the ocean, as it erodes the land and adds new sediments elsewhere. Although the harbour is constantly dredged, ship channels are continually filled with river silt and are too shallow for more modern deep-sea vessels.
Britannica Quiz
Anywhere USA
South of the rockbound terrain of Manhattan stretches a sheltered deepwater anchorage offering easy access to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to enter the harbour, which he named Santa Margarita, and he reported that the hills surrounding the vast expanse of New York Bay appeared to be rich in minerals; more than 90 species of precious stone and 170 of the world’s minerals have actually been found in New York. Verrazzano’s daring expedition was commemorated in 1964, when what was then the world’s longest suspension bridge was dedicated to span the Narrows at the entrance to Upper New York Bay.
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Learn about New York City, the largest and most influential American metropolis, with its diverse neighborhoods, iconic landmarks, and global role. Explore its geography, history, culture, economy, and facts with Britannica.
- George Lankevich
New York, also called New York State, [ b] is a state in the Northeastern United States. One of the Mid-Atlantic states, it borders the Atlantic Ocean, New England, Canada, and the Great Lakes. [ c] With almost 19.6 million residents, it is the fourth-most populous state in the United States and eighth-most densely populated as of 2023. [ 5] .
Things to Do in New York City. Hotel and Visitor Information for Greater New York City. Discover things to do, places to dine and where to spend the night.
New York, USA, North America. Epicenter of the arts. Architectural darling. Dining and shopping capital. Trendsetter. New York City wears many crowns, and spreads an irresistible feast for all. Best Time to Visit.
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A lifetime’s worth of experiences in one city. With a globally recognizable skyline and 8.4 million people who call it home, New York City is bursting with diversity and excitement – from the iconic attractions you've seen on TV and in the movies to hidden gems waiting to be uncovered.
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