Interesting Facts about New York City
New York City is the largest city in the United States, the home
of the United Nations, and the center of global finance, communications,
and business. New York City is unusual among cities because of its high
residential density, its extraordinarily diverse population, its
hundreds of tall office and apartment buildings, its thriving central
business district, its extensive public transportation system, and its
more than 400 distinct neighborhoods. The city's concert houses,
museums, galleries, and theaters constitute an ensemble of cultural
richness rivaled by few cities. In 2000 the population of the city of
New York was 8,008,278; the population of the metropolitan region was
21,199,865.
Unlike most American cities, which make up only a part of a
particular county, New York is made up of five separate counties, which
are called boroughs. Originally the city included only the borough of
Manhattan, located on an island between the Hudson and East rivers. In
1898 a number of surrounding communities were incorporated into the city
as the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.
Manhattan is the glittering heart of the metropolis. It is the
site of virtually all of the hundreds of skyscrapers that are the symbol
of the city. Among the more famous of these are the Empire State
Building (1931), the Chrysler Building (1930), and Citicorp Center
(1977). (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.) Manhattan is also the oldest, densest, and
most built-up part of the entire urbanized region.
Other noteworthy buildings include City Hall (1802-1811), the
Seagram Building (1958), and Grant's Tomb (1897), the tomb of President
Ulysses S. Grant and his wife. Notable religious structures include
Saint Patrick's Cathedral (1879), and the Cathedral of Saint John the
Divine (begun 1892), the largest Gothic-style cathedral in the world.
Manhattan is the center of New York's cultural life. Numerous
stage and motion picture theaters are located around Broadway in
Midtown, which includes 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.
New York has been the most ethnically diverse city in the world
since the 1640s, when fewer than 1,000 total residents spoke more than
15 languages. Between 1880 and 1919, more than 23 million Europeans
immigrated to the United States. At least 17 million of them disembarked
in New York. No one knows how many remained there, but as early as 1880,
more than half the city's working population was foreign-born, providing
New York with the largest immigrant labor force on earth. In 1996 the
U.S. Census Bureau reported that more than 11 out of every 20 New
Yorkers were immigrants or the children of immigrants. Nearly half of
all Bronx residents and one-third of Manhattan's were Hispanic and
nearly one-fifth of the population of Queens was Asian-American.
Researchers estimated that immigrants would make up about 33 percent of
the city's population in 2000, approaching the 20th-century peak of
about 40 percent, reached in 1910.
New York's 250 museums cater to every specialty and every taste
and include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Natural History Museum,
the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and many
smaller museums such as the Tenement Museum and the Frick Collection.
Did you know that New York City has ten Sister Cities? They are
(in chronological order through the year of establishment): Tokyo
(1960), Beijing (1980), Madrid (1982), Cairo (1982), Santo Domingo
(1983), Rome (1992), Budapest (1992), Jerusalem (1993), London (2001),
and Johannesburg (2003). Whereas one may wonder at the diversity of our
ten Sister Cities, one only needs to look beneath the surface of these
ten unique cities to see how much they have in common with New York and
her citizens. A sister city relationship is unique as it represents a
formalized global partnership of cooperation, exchange, and mutual
benefit between the two cities. New York City is proud to have such a
relationship with ten cities.History source: Microsoft Encarta Online 2003
New York content reprinted with permission from
New York gov
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