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New York City. New York, often called New York City[b] or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. New York is a global center of finance [11] and commerce, culture ...
- Yellow taxicabs. Need I say more? Yellow taxicabs are part and parcel of life in the Big Apple. Anywhere you go, the streets are filled with these bright-colored cars, often starring in popular movies and television shows set in New York.
- “I Love New York” logos. No trip to New York City is complete without taking home a t-shirt, a cap, a souvenir, or any kind of merchandise with the “I Love New York” slogan!
- New York subway signs. Do you recognize these tell-tale subway signs? These bold subway signs are distinctive icons of New York City. Not only will these signs tell you where you are and where you’re heading, but they also make eye-catching sights to admire at the train station.
- Empire State Building. Who can ever forget that inspiring song by Alicia Keys? “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There’s nothing you can do, now you’re in New York!”
- Overview
- Character of the city
- The city site
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.
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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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- George Lankevich
- Jillian Anthony
- Everyone wants to tap this. Once again, New York City’s tap water received first-place honors at the annual statewide taste test, held at the New York State Fair this August.
- You can do these activities 24/7. Devour a plate of pierogi at Veselka. Rock-climb at Rock Health & Fitness Club. Lazily check out hotties at Cafeteria.
- Every year, fun spots keep popping up on our waterfronts. Transforming from an industrial wasteland to a jewel box of fabulous green spaces, the upgraded NYC waterfront has been years in the making, but it really went into overdrive this year with the opening of three major parks.
- The East Village is now a mecca for lovers of Chinese cuisine. With Little Tong Noodle Shop, Szechuan Mountain House, Hunan Slurp, Málà Project and other new spots, the Chinese-food scene in the East Village is off the charts right now.
- Visit the iconic Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The iconic copper-green Statue of Liberty dominates a small island in New York Harbor, casting a protective shadow over neighboring Ellis Island, the site of a stirring Immigration Museum.
- Soak up the views from the Empire State and Chrysler Buildings. The tallest building in the world when it opened in 1931, the 1454ft Empire State Building remains a much-loved character on the NYC skyline.
- Pay tribute to lost lives at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum. The National 9/11 Memorial is located where the World Trade Center Twin Towers once stood.
- Have family-friendly seaside fun at Coney Island. Jutting like a Brooklyn thumb out into New York Harbor's Lower Bay, Coney Island boasts a wide beach, a popular seaside boardwalk and a lively amusement park, all reachable by subway in about an hour from Midtown Manhattan.
New York City is located in the Northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. [73] The city includes all of Manhattan Island and Staten Island , and the western end of Long Island .
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Jul 26, 1999 · New York, constituent state of the U.S., one of the 13 original colonies and states. Its capital is Albany and its largest city is New York City, the cultural and financial center of American life. Until the 1960s New York was the country’s leading state in nearly all population, cultural, and economic indexes.
