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New York City I divided "New York" into three different parts: · About New York · Boroughs · Sights I want to begin with the topic "About New York". I think, well, I hope you all know, that the state New York is in the north-east of the US. Here you are able to see its exact location. On this second map it is possible to see New York more exactly. New York is about 133.125 square miles large and has about 18.
500.000 inhabitants. New York City is about 488 square miles (780 km²) large and has about 10.000.000 inhabitants. 25 % of these 10 Millions are immigrants.
New York is one of the world's most famous and most popular cities and it's also called "The World Capital of Excitement". Who doesn't know Frank Sinatra's song "New York, New York", the nowadays destroyed World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty or the famous 5th Avenue, where you can go shopping very well but it's also very expensive there. In New York are more than 250 theatres, more than hundreds of museums, 300 cinemas and about 500 art galleries. There are also very big universities and colleges with about 300.000 students. But I think you all don't know how many churches in New York are? Guess. There are about 6000 of them! To get a working traffic, there are many subways. The subway connection is about 1050 km and 656 miles long and there are more than 460 stations.
About 3,5 millions of people are transported by those subways every day. Here you especially see the Manhattan's subway connection. For the public traffic on the streets are the yellow cabs, there are about 12.000 of them! But the traffic is not very enjoyable anyway. Maybe just for us, because we're not used to have to do with that every day but there is really much traffic. But I want to say, that most of the cars are the yellow ones - the cabs.
New York is often called "The Big Apple" but why? Well, there is no special reason for that. Some people say this and some say that. They aren't able come to one result. Here is one theory: In the language of the Jazz-musicians "Big Apple" means to get the big ticket. Since the twenties "Big Apple" is the synonym of New York because of its famous Jazz-music. A Jazz-musician was able to get the chance to become very popular and famous in New York.
"Big Apple" is an official name for New York since the seventies. You know, all our federal states have their own flags. New York, too. Here you can see it. Now, let's come to my second part of my presentation: BOROUGHS You all should know the five boroughs of New York City: · Manhattan · Brooklyn · The Bronx · Staten Island · Queens On this next page you are able to see their location. I'll begin with "Manhattan" : There are different parts of Manhattan, for example Midtown.
If you hear "Midtown" you think of the middle of Manhattan. In this area are a lot of well-known sights, for example the Chrysler Building, the Rockefeller Center, Madison Square Garden, the Empire State Building or the Grand Central Station . During the day, Midtown seems to be very crowded and hectic. You can find a lot of big hotels and elegant shopping centers there, especially on the famous 5th Avenue. The most interesting parts of it are the streets 34th till the 59th street, where you can find famous names like "Tiffany and Co." or "Cartier". There are most of the famous Broadway theaters but this area seems to be really quiet in the evenings..
At the east corner of Central Park is one of the best hotels but I'll tell you more about that later! Other parts of Manhattan are Chelsea, Greenwich Village and East Village. Those parts are in the south area down to Houston Street. The Empire State Building and the shopping center Macy*s build the border to Midtown. In Chelsea are lots of old houses from the 19th century. In the 6th Avenue is a big Flea Market every weekend - the Annex Flea Market. If you want to experience something in Chelsea, you have to go to \"The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater\".
You find a lot of comedy there. Greenwich Village is south of Chelsea. The middle of Greenwich Village is around Washington Square, which was build for George Washington. Around this are a lot of big buildings. A lot of young and also old people meet there. You can do a lot of things there: skating, reading, playing some music or playing chess. East of the 4th Avenue is East Village.
Here live a lot of immigrants for example from Germany, Poland, Russia or Puerto Rico. In the 50ies this was a meeting place for musicians, artists and students. Another part of Manhattan is Chinatown and also SOHO. SOHO is the abbreviation for South of Houston. This area is north of Houston Street and south of Canal Street. Here you can see where those two streets and SOHO are.
There are a lot of galleries and museums like the "Guggenheim Museum", the "Museum of Contemporary Art" and the "Museum of African Art". South of SOHO is Chinatown. About 150.000 Chinese people live there. That's half of all Chinese people in whole New York, so that Chinatown is the biggest Chinese settlement except the big cities in China. The "Canal Street" is the main road in Chinatown.
There are a lot of little shops which sell truck (vegetables) or fish, cheap watches, scarves, cloths, sunglasses and a lot more. Now I want to tell you something about Uptown. That's the "Upper West and East Side" and "Central Park". The area is from 59th to 96th Avenue west of Central Park. Most people, who live there are reporters or actors. But it wasn't always like this. 30 years ago, the avenues were dirty and seedy. Between the 59th Avenue and 96th Avenue are also a lot of famous museums, but I'll tell you more about those and Central Park later..
Now, let's come to "Brooklyn": Brooklyn the largest borough of New York. There are 2,3 millions of inhabitants. Brooklyn was its own state till 1898. Brooklyn became a borough of New York with just a few votes. Brooklyn is connected with Manhattan since 1885 and by subway since 1905 by Brooklyn Bridge . The first immigrants in Brooklyn were from the Netherlands.
You see, the name "Brooklyn" is also originally Dutch. After people from the Netherlands had decided to stay there, it was named Breukelen, just like a southern city of Amsterdam. Brooklyn is also worth a visit because of Brooklyn Bridge, but I'll give more details later. Brooklyn has been divided into two parts by the 15 km long Flatbush Avenue since the eighties. In the north east of Brooklyn are parts where the people with lots of social problems live. In the south east are the prosperous residential areas like Park Slope and Brooklyn Heights.
Brooklyn Heights are between Brooklyn Bridge and the Atlantic Avenue. Here are the pretty villas with little front gardens and avenues. On the west side of Brooklyn Heights is a beautiful promenade. A lot of people have taken photos of this promenade because of the great view onto Manhattan. The shopping center of Brooklyn is Fulton Street. There are different shops like electronic shops or restaurants and banks. In Brooklyn is also a big park, like Central Park. That's Prospect Park and it was also - like Central Park- it was built by Mr Olmsted and Mr Vaux.
This park is not as crowded as the New Yorker Park but that's it's advantage. Especially in fall because of those colorful trees. The third borough, I want to talk about is "The Bronx" North of Manhattan across the Harlem River is the most northern borough of New York City - the Bronx. The Bronx is not very big, just 42 square miles but it is the only main-land borough of New York City. It has more parkland than any of the others, including Pelham Bay Park. 24% of the Bronx is green area.
About 1,3 million people live in the Bronx. The borough takes its name from Jonas Bronck, a Dutch sea captain, who settled there in 1639 and built a farmstead, which became 132nd Street and Lincoln Avenue. A small group of Dutch, German, and Danish people settled with him. But the question is, why is "Bronx not just "Bronx"? Well, a long time ago, visitors that wanted to go to the farm said: "Let's visit the Broncks". That's why the article is still in the name. A little group of Dutch, German and Danish people arrived at the farm where nowadays 123rd Street crosses Lincoln Avenue. In 1898 the Bronx became part of Greater New York exactly like the other boroughs.
The mixture of people is still a bit more different than somewhere else. However, the biggest group is Hispanic. The New York Yankees , a baseball team, has its home there and the Yankee Stadium, located in the southern part of the Bronx, is a place where a lot of New Yorkers come to every week. The Bronx is also proud of its "Bronx Zoo", which is one of the biggest in the world, the Fordham University and the Hall of Fame for Great Americans. Some famous people came from and lived in the Bronx. For Example Edgar Allen Poe and Mark Twain.
Mr Poe's cottage can still be visited. Finally break dancing and salsa music were born in the Bronx. Now let's talk about Staten Island Staten Island is the greenest borough of all. Staten Island is admired because of its forests, water- and wet landscape with a lot of animals and birds. But the number of inhabitants went up for 30% and its now home for 440,000 people. The borough is very proud of its parks.
In spite of the grown number of inhabitants, the borough was able to win 20% more park area. That project cost about 54 million Dollar. Henry Hudson, an English explorer sailing under the flag of the Netherlands, entered New York Bay in 1609. He named the island Staten Eyelandt in honor of the Dutch Parliament. In 1683 the island was renamed Richmond County and in 1975 this borough was renamed the second time into "The Borough of Staten Island". Staten Island has interesting museums as well.
The "Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art" is one of only two Himalayan-style museums and the only one in the United States. The "Garibaldi-Meucci Museum", a place that was once the home of Antonio Meucci, who helped to develop the telephone, and Giusseppe Garibaldi features period rooms, historic telephone models and documents. "Snug Harbor Cultural Center" is a National Historic District with 28 historic buildings set among gardens and a museum performing arts complex. The last of five boroughs is Queens If you cross the East River southbound from the Bronx you will reach Long Island. On the western part of it are located the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. Queens was named after Catherine of Braganza, wife of England\'s King Charles II.
With 108 square miles, it is the largest of the five boroughs. The great waves of Irish and German immigration that swept into nearly all the East Coast cities during the mid-nineteenth century reached Queens as well. Middle Village, which had been English in the 1840s, became almost German by 1860. Queens was devided into large parts of farmland up to the end of the 19th century. This changed very fast after 1909, when the Queensboro Bridge between Manhattan and Queens was finished. A lot of Tourists and New Yorker came to Queens over that bridge.
You also was able to reach Queens by the New Yorker subway. Clearly the number of inhabitants went up from 284,000 in 1910 to 1.1 million in 1930 very fast. After World War I ended in 1918, people built the biggest buildings in the borough's history. Today the Borough of Queens is a complex with a population of 2.2 million.
Many visitors just look at Queens only as a touch down point in JFK Airport and they are just looking for the next cab to reach Manhattan. But this borough has a lot more to offer. Now, let's go to my last but not least part of this presentation; sights There are a lot of sights in New York, most of them are in Manhattan. That's why I want to begin with the sights in Manhattan. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island One of most important sights is the Statue of Liberty! Liberty Island is the home of the Statue of Liberty also called Miss Liberty. The small island is located just south of Manhattan.
Here you can see its location. The statue was given to the city by France and the original name for it was Liberty Enlightening the World. The statue was designed by F. A. Bartholdi. It was shipped to New York in June 1885 but one thing was missing.
A pedestal. The French didn't want to pay for that, too. That should be the New Yorkers' job. After a big article in the famous magazine "The World", to give money for the missing pedestal, the statue was revealed in October 28th 1886 by President Cleveland. Inside the pedestal you will find the Liberty Museum. Ellis Island Those who wanted to immigrate in the USA between 1892 and 1924 stepped onto American ground on Ellis Island for the first time.
There, the US made decisions for more than 2.000 people a day whether they could stay or were sent back with the next ship. A doctor made a lot of examinations and asked for their opinions. Today the Ellis Island Immigration Museum is located there. Right on the ground floor you notice a lot of bags and suitcases. Those are originals left to the museum by the immigrants themselves or by their relatives .
A lot of other items can be seen in this interesting museum. The Empire State Building At First a few numbers: there are 73 elevators, 102 floors and more than 650.000 tons of steel. The construction time was 13 months, there are more than 250.000 square yards office space and its height is 1.250 feet, that's about 390 meters! 25.
000 people are working there and 10.000 are living in this building. 5 million visitors a year come to see the Empire State Building It was opened on May 1st, 1931 by President Hoover. It remained the tallest building in the world up until 1973. On the 86th floor there is an observation deck and on the 102nd floor there is a lookout platform which is usually closed because of the weather. The illumination at night-time is quite interesting.
A New York knows the specific holiday or day of remembrance just when watching the illumination. For example on the independence day, the illumination is red, white and blue from bottom to top. But not just one day. The illumination is from July the 3rd till July the 6th. Here you can see all those different illuminations. Central Park Another thing you just have to visit is "Central Park": After 16 years of construction the New York's Central Park was opened in 1873.
Central Park is about 1312 square miles large and about 6.4 miles long. The park is the largest green area in the world. It is larger than Monaco. It contains 26.000 trees and it has 15 million visitors a year.
There isn't any New Yorker who can imagine life without Central Park. The roads through the park are closed on the weekends and the New Yorkers enjoy jogging, inline-skating, doing music sessions, taking their pets for a walk or simply lie down on the grass there. The Chrysler Building This building took over as the tallest building in the world with 1.046 feet from the Woolworth Building in 1930. But only for a few months because the Empire State Building outstripped the Chrysler Building in 1931. Well, it still is one of the 25 tallest buildings in the world.
The top of the building is formed like a Chrysler hood. 8 chrome eagles, rise to the sky on the 61st floor. The lobby is also made of chrome, precious wood and marble. The Flatiron Building Manhattan's oldest skyscraper is the Flatiron Building, completed in 1902. It has 22 floors and is about 282 feet high. It looks like an iron, that's why it's named "The Flatiron Building".
The iron form is because it was built at the corner of Broadway and Fifth Avenue . The people from Manhattan thought, after it was completed, the building would break down in the first thunderstorm. But the flatiron has survived till today. The Rockefeller Center You could call the Rockefeller Center a city within Manhattan. More than 250.000 people are working in this community connected with underground streets.
The complex was built from 1932 - 1940, financed by John D. Rockefeller jr. It is more than 55 square miles large. Today most of it is owned by Japanese business interests. One of the best known buildings, which belongs to the Rockefeller Center is "Radio City Music Hall". The NBC studios are here, too.
Finally the golden Prometheus, standing in front of the building, are worth seeing. Times Square Over one million people cross Times Square every day. In this area are more than 40 Broadway theaters and over 25 cinemas, a lot of restaurants and a Madame Tussaud\'s Wax Museum. I wanted to show you a map of the whole of Times Square, but it is very big! So you can't see very much of what's going on on this map. Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden Center is worth visiting although it is not as famous as other places from a sightseeing perspective. The arena seats 20.
000 people and there are about 600 events a year for more than 6 million people. For some years famous musical performances have been directed there by The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, and Barbara Streisand, to name only a few. It is built above Pennsylvania Station and there are also cinemas, rooms with a lot oft art in it, bowling alleys, offices, a shopping mall, restaurants etc. The Woolworth Building The Woolworth Building, at the southern end of City Hall Park, was the tallest building in the world with 792 feet - that's about 241 meters - above the ground. It was constructed in 1910 and opened April 24, 1913. It remained the tallest building until 1930 when the Chrysler Building passed it by 254 feet.
This building represented the department store with the same name. Built by Frank W. Woolworth, it was paid for by the profits of his "Nickel and Dime Store" operations, which made him very rich. The tower has a very impressing hall, which is decorated with symbols made of terra-cotta and a lot of floors which are also made of expensive materials. Here you can see the lobby. The observation deck at the 58th floor was attracted by about 100,000 visitors each year.
But now this deck is closed. Ground Zero The 11th September, 2001 is a day, the world will never forget. At first some pictures taken on the 11th September. Two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center. The two towers of the 1.352 feet high WTC collapsed.
Thousands of people were killed. "This is a national tragedy" were the words spoken by President George W. Bush. Another airplane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and caused a big fire.
Many people were killed by this attack, too. The White House was evacuated. Finally the passengers and the crew of another airplane overpowered a number of terrorists when flying over Pennsylvania. The air plane crashed into a forest, all people on board were killed, but another disaster could be avoided. It was later learned that the 4th airplane was to crash into the US Congress Building in Washington DC. The New York WTC will not be rebuilt but instead of which a memorial and a number of office blocks will be build, at most half as high as the World Trade Center.
Here some old photos of the now a days destroyed WTC. Broadway You already know, where Broadway is and that this is the only street, that doesn't go straight from north to south or east to west. There are a lot of theaters, musical theaters and cinemas. Broadway is about 150 miles long - that's one of the longest streets of all cities around the world. Brooklyn Bridge Johann A. Roebling, a German origin, had the idea of bridge, which should go across the East River in 1831.
Unfortunately he was the first who died during the construction of the bridge. From then on his son Washington headed the project together with his wife Emily. 14 years later, on May 24th 1883 the bridge was opened. Today more than 100.000 bicycles pass the bridge every day. Brooklyn Bridge is also very famous by joggers.
If you take the Bus over the Bridge to Brooklyn and walk back. You will be able to see a great view of the skyline of Manhattan. St. Patrick's Cathedral Located next to the Olympic Tower, St. Patrick\'s Cathedral is one of the best-known churches in Manhattan. St.
Patrick's Cathedral was built between 1856 - 1879. It was named after the Irish saint. This church is built of stone and white marble. Each of its towers is 361 feet tall and were not finished until 1889. The Grand Amy Plaza A little while ago, I told you something about one of the best and most popular hotel at the east corner of Central Park. Well, it is the "Grand Army Plaza"! There are 18 floors over the ground and it is about 77m and 252ft high.
It was built in 1905 and it was finished two years later in 1907. Metropolitan Museum of Art A little while ago, I told you something about famous museums in New York. There is for example the "Metropolitan Museum of Art" - short "MET". That's the world's third biggest museum. It was built in 1870 and finished later than 1965. There are more that 3,3 million works of art.
But you can see only 100.000 of them. Last year, the museum had about 5.2 million visitors. Museum of Modern Art And a third famous museum is the Museum of Modern Art. Here they are together, the big names of the 19th and 20th century: Monet, Matisse, Picasso, Miró and a lot of others.
You should take a little bit of time to have a good look at Chagall and Dali and all the other galleries. It would be impossible to talk in detail about all the wonderful galleries, there are too many of them. At the moment there is a construction for another floor. The Guggenheim Museum The building of the Guggenheim Museum was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and it was completed in 1959. A new section in this museum was added in 1992. But although there were twice as many works of art to see, it wasn't enough space for everything, they wanted to show.
That's why they are still working for another section. The museum houses a large collection of abstract art and much of it was collected by Solomon R. Guggenheim himself beginning in the 1920s.
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