New York City
“Lights, camera, action.” No it is not a movie and despite it feeling like one no it is not a dream. The lights, the people, and the beauty it all comes together here in this metropolis known to the world as New York City. A place where buildings rise so high your spine begins to crack as you glance up trying to see just how high they reach. A place so vibrant and lively that you become ecstatic. To do business or just admire the marvel of man millions travel every year just to be captivated by the pizzazz of New York City. The city’s concert houses, museums, galleries, and theaters make up a collection of cultural richness challenged by a few cities. And now with New York City stronger and back on top what a better time then now to visit the colossal city.
First, one might wonder why New York City, what is so special about “The Big Apple”? Although the Dutch founded the city in 1624 and called it Fort Amsterdam and then New Amsterdam, the English captured the settlement in 1664 and renamed it New York, after the Duke of York, who later became James II of England. Located in the southeastern part of New York State just east of northern New Jersey, the city developed at the point where the Hudson and Passaic rivers combined with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. And unlike most American cities, which make up only a part of a particular county, New York is made up of five separate counties, called boroughs. At first the city only consisted of Manhattan, an island located between the Hudson and East River. In 1898 a number of surrounding communities were incorporated into the city as the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. The Bronx became the only borough on the mainland of the U.S. Manhattan and Staten Island were surrounded by water, while Queens and Brooklyn were a part of Long Island.
Next, well what do these five boroughs have to offer? Lets start with the largest borough Queens, at the western end of Long Island stretching a whopping 192 sq. mi. It is overwhelmingly residential and probably the most ethnically diverse community in the world with a population of 2,229,379 residents. With major ethnic concentrations including the Greeks in Astoria, the Irish in Woodside, the Italians in Maspeth and Ridgewood, African-Americans in Hollis, Cambria Heights, St. Albans, and South Jamaica, Jews in Forest Hills, and Chinese and Koreans in Flushing, Jackson Heights, Corona, and Elmhurst, Queens is truly home to all. With the largest cemetery in the world, housing about 2.5 million, and 6,400 acres of parkland Queens is also the host of Shea Stadium, the Aqueduct Racetrack, National Tennis Center, and both LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports.
Moving on to Brooklyn, the second largest and most heavily populated of the five boroughs. With about 2,465,326 residents in 70 sq. mi, it is the home to Bedford-Stuyvesant, the largest black community in the United States, and Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough Park, all of which have large populations of Orthodox Jews. With the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Coney Island a beach and amusement park, and Prospect Park, a well-landscaped area of broad drives and wooded hills, containing a restored carousel from 1912 and the Lefferts Homestead, a Dutch colonial farmhouse dating from 1783. Brooklyn is truly a historical and cultural location.
From there it’s Staten Island, the southernmost of the five boroughs. Staten Island has 443,728 residents spread across about 58 sq. mi. With homes dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, Staten Island is overwhelmingly white, and has dozens of distinct neighborhoods or towns, and it has the highest proportion of single-family housing and owner-occupied housing in the city. The Island is mainly known for its Conference House, where countless and effortless peace negotiations were held between the British and American representatives in 1776 during the American Revolution, the Voorlezer’s House, the nation’s oldest surviving elementary school building, the Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Art and the Staten Island Zoo. A memorial to Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, who lived on Staten Island in the 1850s, is located in the borough.
Next it’s off to the Bronx. It is the fourth largest and the northernmost of the five boroughs, housing about 1,332,650 in about 42 sq. mi. The Bronx is mainly residential, and includes dozens of vibrant neighborhoods. Such as Fieldston a neighborhood, with great stone houses set among spacious lawns and privately maintained streets. Then there’s Belmont the city’s most authentically Italian section. Other areas along Pelham Parkway and the northern reaches of the Grand Concourse are particularly prized, because the apartment buildings are well kept and the public parks are easily accessible. Last but not least, the Bronx’s is very own little fishing island section, City Island. Attractions include the world-famous Bronx Zoo, Yankee Stadium, and the New York Botanical Garden. The Bronx also has two of the largest middle-income housing projects in the United States, Parkchester housing 40,000 people in apartment buildings arranged along well-planned circular drives and Co-op City, with 35 apartment towers, 236 townhouses, and more than 50,000 residents, it is the largest single housing complex in the nation.
Finally it is my favorite place to be Manhattan. Despite being the smallest of the five boroughs, it consists principally of the island of Manhattan, but also includes Governors Island, Randalls Island, Wards Island, Roosevelt Island, U Thant Island, and Marble Hill, a small enclave on the edge of the Bronx mainland. The borough holds about 2.3 million people in 23 sq. mi. It is the site of virtually all of the hundreds of skyscrapers that are the symbol of the city including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Citicorp Center. The 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center were also among New York's famous skyscrapers until they were destroyed in a terrorist attack in 2001. Other sites include City Hall, a Federal-style building with French Renaissance detail, the Seagram Building, an office tower clad in bronze and bronze-colored glass, Grant’s Tomb, the tomb of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife. Notable religious structures also include Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the largest Gothic-style cathedral in the world. Manhattan is also the center of New York’s cultural life. With numerous stage and motion picture theaters around Broadway in Midtown, including Times Square. The borough is the home of prominent music and dance organizations, such as the New York City Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera Association, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, American Ballet Theatre, and the New York City Ballet.
Okay, now since you know the facts how can you experience New York? Well first lets talk about getting to New York because obviously you can’t experience something without being there yourself. How to get to New York, well if you live in Jersey City, or “New York City West” you can get to New York for a mere $2.00, kind of unfair for those coming from places like India or so who have to spend the equivalent of $2000 to get here. It is nearly impossible to see New York in a day but to make the trip as time efficient and cost friendly as possible the best mode of transportation is a bus. Yes public transportation, mainly buses. Every borough and place in New York is accessible through a bus, connected by a web of different bus routes New York allows you to explore all of its locations, as you travel from destination to destination for just $2 a ride. So, now with a mode of transportation you are ready to go and begin your adventure.
To begin the trip you should definitely start with New York’s wide range of museums. With 250 museums catering to every taste the museums are anything but boring. Though Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th Streets is the most important backdrop for galleries, dozens of others are located in SoHo or South of Houston Street and adjoining neighborhoods. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in Central Park, contains nearly 3 million objects in every known artistic medium, representing cultures from every part of the world, from ancient times to the present. Its permanent collections are so large that its 300 galleries can display only one-fifth of the museum’s total holdings at one time. It is the third largest art museum in the world. If you are into the medieval period The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan is the place for you. Then for the more modern there’s The Whitney Museum of American Art, at 75th Street and Madison Avenue, the only major museum in New York exclusively devoted to 20th-century American art. Designed like a pyramid the museum itself is a site to behold. Even if its modern science that fascinates you then The American Museum of Natural History, is right there on Central Park West between 77th and 81st streets. My recommendation though is The Brooklyn Museum, which contains one of North America’s top collections of pre-Columbian, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Asian art, as well as the finest collection of Russian garments and textiles outside Russia.
Well if you are going to visit the home of the largest number of professional musicians and dancers anywhere, how can you not enjoy New York’s performing arts? From the U.S. preeminent concert hall, Carnegie Hall, to Lincoln Center the largest performing arts center in the world located on Broadway at about 66th Street. It houses the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera House, American Ballet Theatre, and the Juilliard School, which is concerned the most, distinguished musical institution in the nation. And as if that’s not enough there is also the New York State Theater the home of the New York City Ballet, and the New York City Opera.
Hopefully your journey through New York isn’t a lonely one, and if it is or isn’t a stroll in New York’s parks wouldn’t hurt. Despite being called the “Concrete Jungle”, New York is far from a concrete jungle with more than 1,000 individual parks with more than 37,000 acres of parkland available to the public. With 843 acres, Central Park though not the largest is surely one of New York City’s greatest parks. Designed by American landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park has numerous playgrounds, a children's zoo, 5 mi. of bridle paths, bicycling and jogging lanes, a large reservoir, a sailboat pond, two ice-skating rinks, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a swimming pool, and a lake for row-boating. And during the summer, there are free band concerts, free dances, and free nightly performances of plays in the Delacorte Theatre, an amphitheater that seats 2,300. The park is also home to the 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle. Two of the largest parks however the Pelham Bay Park, 2,130 acres, and Van Cortlandt Park, 1,146 acres, are found in the Bronx, along with New York's largest zoo and largest botanical garden.
Offering almost every kind of sport and recreation, how can one go without catching New York’s sporty side? Home to one of the best-known outdoor athletic fields, in the United States and the home of the New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium also hosted dozens of other spectacular events, from heavyweight boxing championships to papal masses. Adjacent from the stadium is the home of National League team The New York Mets, as well as the National Tennis Center the location of the U.S. Open, and not to forget the ever famous New York Marathon pulling in about 30,000 participants who race through the five boroughs. Still though none match the outstanding Madison Square Garden, the nation’s most famous indoor arena. It’s the home of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. The garden is actually the fourth building to have that name, as each successive structure was replaced to make way for a larger facility. The first and the second were actually on Madison Square, and they became famous for public events as well as the rooftop restaurant. The current building, which also hosts rock concerts, boxing matches, and religious and cultural events, is situated above Pennsylvania Station, the nation’s busiest passenger rail terminal.
To end the tour of course, you wouldn’t want to leave without a good New York meal and a good New York shopping spree. So where else but 49th St. to Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House, the most highly recommended restaurant. With a huge serving area the size of a stadium, Del Frisco’s still has certain elegance to it nonetheless. The massive window spaces on three sides help to open up this steakhouse to the excitement of Midtown Manhattan. With top quality steaks, and appetizers that include shrimp cocktail, shrimp remoulade and marinated shrimp, its not surprising that the steak is the way to go here, but dishes like pastas, lobster and osso bucco are on the menu as well. And while you’re in Midtown don’t forget the souvenirs. Being one of the largest shopping districts with about 113 highly recognized stores you are sure to find any thing that tickles your fancy. From the Disney Store, for toys and things for the kids, to Nike town and Aldo’s for top-notch clothing and latest fashion apparel.
So, if you are looking for the most exiting time of your life here on America’s East Coast, there is no better place than New York City. Filled with attractions that capture human intelligence New York truly shows just how far man has come into this world. Not only is New York a beautiful place but also an intelligent place too as it houses Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, several other small exchanges, and the United Nations. E.B. White said it the best in “The Essays of E.B. White”, "No matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of astonishing people and events and undertakings." So grab a couple of dollars, get a camcorder, and hop on the next bus to start your adventure to experience these astonishing people and undertakings, “Lights, Camera, Action” journey into “The city that never sleeps.”
First, one might wonder why New York City, what is so special about “The Big Apple”? Although the Dutch founded the city in 1624 and called it Fort Amsterdam and then New Amsterdam, the English captured the settlement in 1664 and renamed it New York, after the Duke of York, who later became James II of England. Located in the southeastern part of New York State just east of northern New Jersey, the city developed at the point where the Hudson and Passaic rivers combined with the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. And unlike most American cities, which make up only a part of a particular county, New York is made up of five separate counties, called boroughs. At first the city only consisted of Manhattan, an island located between the Hudson and East River. In 1898 a number of surrounding communities were incorporated into the city as the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. The Bronx became the only borough on the mainland of the U.S. Manhattan and Staten Island were surrounded by water, while Queens and Brooklyn were a part of Long Island.
Next, well what do these five boroughs have to offer? Lets start with the largest borough Queens, at the western end of Long Island stretching a whopping 192 sq. mi. It is overwhelmingly residential and probably the most ethnically diverse community in the world with a population of 2,229,379 residents. With major ethnic concentrations including the Greeks in Astoria, the Irish in Woodside, the Italians in Maspeth and Ridgewood, African-Americans in Hollis, Cambria Heights, St. Albans, and South Jamaica, Jews in Forest Hills, and Chinese and Koreans in Flushing, Jackson Heights, Corona, and Elmhurst, Queens is truly home to all. With the largest cemetery in the world, housing about 2.5 million, and 6,400 acres of parkland Queens is also the host of Shea Stadium, the Aqueduct Racetrack, National Tennis Center, and both LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports.
Moving on to Brooklyn, the second largest and most heavily populated of the five boroughs. With about 2,465,326 residents in 70 sq. mi, it is the home to Bedford-Stuyvesant, the largest black community in the United States, and Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough Park, all of which have large populations of Orthodox Jews. With the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Coney Island a beach and amusement park, and Prospect Park, a well-landscaped area of broad drives and wooded hills, containing a restored carousel from 1912 and the Lefferts Homestead, a Dutch colonial farmhouse dating from 1783. Brooklyn is truly a historical and cultural location.
From there it’s Staten Island, the southernmost of the five boroughs. Staten Island has 443,728 residents spread across about 58 sq. mi. With homes dating from the 17th and 18th centuries, Staten Island is overwhelmingly white, and has dozens of distinct neighborhoods or towns, and it has the highest proportion of single-family housing and owner-occupied housing in the city. The Island is mainly known for its Conference House, where countless and effortless peace negotiations were held between the British and American representatives in 1776 during the American Revolution, the Voorlezer’s House, the nation’s oldest surviving elementary school building, the Jacques Marchais Center of Tibetan Art and the Staten Island Zoo. A memorial to Italian nationalist Giuseppe Garibaldi, who lived on Staten Island in the 1850s, is located in the borough.
Next it’s off to the Bronx. It is the fourth largest and the northernmost of the five boroughs, housing about 1,332,650 in about 42 sq. mi. The Bronx is mainly residential, and includes dozens of vibrant neighborhoods. Such as Fieldston a neighborhood, with great stone houses set among spacious lawns and privately maintained streets. Then there’s Belmont the city’s most authentically Italian section. Other areas along Pelham Parkway and the northern reaches of the Grand Concourse are particularly prized, because the apartment buildings are well kept and the public parks are easily accessible. Last but not least, the Bronx’s is very own little fishing island section, City Island. Attractions include the world-famous Bronx Zoo, Yankee Stadium, and the New York Botanical Garden. The Bronx also has two of the largest middle-income housing projects in the United States, Parkchester housing 40,000 people in apartment buildings arranged along well-planned circular drives and Co-op City, with 35 apartment towers, 236 townhouses, and more than 50,000 residents, it is the largest single housing complex in the nation.
Finally it is my favorite place to be Manhattan. Despite being the smallest of the five boroughs, it consists principally of the island of Manhattan, but also includes Governors Island, Randalls Island, Wards Island, Roosevelt Island, U Thant Island, and Marble Hill, a small enclave on the edge of the Bronx mainland. The borough holds about 2.3 million people in 23 sq. mi. It is the site of virtually all of the hundreds of skyscrapers that are the symbol of the city including the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and Citicorp Center. The 110-story twin towers of the World Trade Center were also among New York's famous skyscrapers until they were destroyed in a terrorist attack in 2001. Other sites include City Hall, a Federal-style building with French Renaissance detail, the Seagram Building, an office tower clad in bronze and bronze-colored glass, Grant’s Tomb, the tomb of President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife. Notable religious structures also include Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of New York and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the largest Gothic-style cathedral in the world. Manhattan is also the center of New York’s cultural life. With numerous stage and motion picture theaters around Broadway in Midtown, including Times Square. The borough is the home of prominent music and dance organizations, such as the New York City Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera Association, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, American Ballet Theatre, and the New York City Ballet.
Okay, now since you know the facts how can you experience New York? Well first lets talk about getting to New York because obviously you can’t experience something without being there yourself. How to get to New York, well if you live in Jersey City, or “New York City West” you can get to New York for a mere $2.00, kind of unfair for those coming from places like India or so who have to spend the equivalent of $2000 to get here. It is nearly impossible to see New York in a day but to make the trip as time efficient and cost friendly as possible the best mode of transportation is a bus. Yes public transportation, mainly buses. Every borough and place in New York is accessible through a bus, connected by a web of different bus routes New York allows you to explore all of its locations, as you travel from destination to destination for just $2 a ride. So, now with a mode of transportation you are ready to go and begin your adventure.
To begin the trip you should definitely start with New York’s wide range of museums. With 250 museums catering to every taste the museums are anything but boring. Though Madison Avenue between 57th and 86th Streets is the most important backdrop for galleries, dozens of others are located in SoHo or South of Houston Street and adjoining neighborhoods. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, located in Central Park, contains nearly 3 million objects in every known artistic medium, representing cultures from every part of the world, from ancient times to the present. Its permanent collections are so large that its 300 galleries can display only one-fifth of the museum’s total holdings at one time. It is the third largest art museum in the world. If you are into the medieval period The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum, located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan is the place for you. Then for the more modern there’s The Whitney Museum of American Art, at 75th Street and Madison Avenue, the only major museum in New York exclusively devoted to 20th-century American art. Designed like a pyramid the museum itself is a site to behold. Even if its modern science that fascinates you then The American Museum of Natural History, is right there on Central Park West between 77th and 81st streets. My recommendation though is The Brooklyn Museum, which contains one of North America’s top collections of pre-Columbian, Egyptian, Near Eastern, and Asian art, as well as the finest collection of Russian garments and textiles outside Russia.
Well if you are going to visit the home of the largest number of professional musicians and dancers anywhere, how can you not enjoy New York’s performing arts? From the U.S. preeminent concert hall, Carnegie Hall, to Lincoln Center the largest performing arts center in the world located on Broadway at about 66th Street. It houses the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Metropolitan Opera House, American Ballet Theatre, and the Juilliard School, which is concerned the most, distinguished musical institution in the nation. And as if that’s not enough there is also the New York State Theater the home of the New York City Ballet, and the New York City Opera.
Hopefully your journey through New York isn’t a lonely one, and if it is or isn’t a stroll in New York’s parks wouldn’t hurt. Despite being called the “Concrete Jungle”, New York is far from a concrete jungle with more than 1,000 individual parks with more than 37,000 acres of parkland available to the public. With 843 acres, Central Park though not the largest is surely one of New York City’s greatest parks. Designed by American landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park has numerous playgrounds, a children's zoo, 5 mi. of bridle paths, bicycling and jogging lanes, a large reservoir, a sailboat pond, two ice-skating rinks, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a swimming pool, and a lake for row-boating. And during the summer, there are free band concerts, free dances, and free nightly performances of plays in the Delacorte Theatre, an amphitheater that seats 2,300. The park is also home to the 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle. Two of the largest parks however the Pelham Bay Park, 2,130 acres, and Van Cortlandt Park, 1,146 acres, are found in the Bronx, along with New York's largest zoo and largest botanical garden.
Offering almost every kind of sport and recreation, how can one go without catching New York’s sporty side? Home to one of the best-known outdoor athletic fields, in the United States and the home of the New York Yankees, Yankee Stadium also hosted dozens of other spectacular events, from heavyweight boxing championships to papal masses. Adjacent from the stadium is the home of National League team The New York Mets, as well as the National Tennis Center the location of the U.S. Open, and not to forget the ever famous New York Marathon pulling in about 30,000 participants who race through the five boroughs. Still though none match the outstanding Madison Square Garden, the nation’s most famous indoor arena. It’s the home of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. The garden is actually the fourth building to have that name, as each successive structure was replaced to make way for a larger facility. The first and the second were actually on Madison Square, and they became famous for public events as well as the rooftop restaurant. The current building, which also hosts rock concerts, boxing matches, and religious and cultural events, is situated above Pennsylvania Station, the nation’s busiest passenger rail terminal.
To end the tour of course, you wouldn’t want to leave without a good New York meal and a good New York shopping spree. So where else but 49th St. to Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House, the most highly recommended restaurant. With a huge serving area the size of a stadium, Del Frisco’s still has certain elegance to it nonetheless. The massive window spaces on three sides help to open up this steakhouse to the excitement of Midtown Manhattan. With top quality steaks, and appetizers that include shrimp cocktail, shrimp remoulade and marinated shrimp, its not surprising that the steak is the way to go here, but dishes like pastas, lobster and osso bucco are on the menu as well. And while you’re in Midtown don’t forget the souvenirs. Being one of the largest shopping districts with about 113 highly recognized stores you are sure to find any thing that tickles your fancy. From the Disney Store, for toys and things for the kids, to Nike town and Aldo’s for top-notch clothing and latest fashion apparel.
So, if you are looking for the most exiting time of your life here on America’s East Coast, there is no better place than New York City. Filled with attractions that capture human intelligence New York truly shows just how far man has come into this world. Not only is New York a beautiful place but also an intelligent place too as it houses Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, several other small exchanges, and the United Nations. E.B. White said it the best in “The Essays of E.B. White”, "No matter where you sit in New York you feel the vibrations of great times and tall deeds, of astonishing people and events and undertakings." So grab a couple of dollars, get a camcorder, and hop on the next bus to start your adventure to experience these astonishing people and undertakings, “Lights, Camera, Action” journey into “The city that never sleeps.”
