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HISTORY OF NEW YORK CITY

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New York City is the largest city in the United States and one of the world's major global cities. Located in the state of New York, the city has a population of over 8.1 million within an area of 321 square miles (830 km²), making it the most densely populated city in North America. Its metropolitan area has a population of 18.7 million and is one of the largest urban areas in the world.

New York City is an international center for business, finance, fashion, medicine, entertainment, media and culture, with an extraordinary collection of museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and financial markets. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations and to some of the world's most famous skyscrapers.

Popularly known as the "Big Apple" or the "Capital of the World," the city attracts large numbers of immigrants—over one-third of its population is foreign-born—as well as people from all over the United States who come for its culture, diversity, fast-paced lifestyle, cosmopolitanism, and economic opportunity. The city is also distinguished for having the lowest crime rate among the 25 largest American cities.

History of NYC

Main article: History of New York City

The region was inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans at the time of its discovery by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano. Although Verrazzano sailed into New York Harbor, his voyage did not continue upstream and instead he sailed back into the Atlantic. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. He discovered Manhattan on September 11, 1609, and continued up the river that bears his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site where New York State's capital city, Albany, now stands. The Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1613, which was granted self-government in 1652 under Peter Stuyvesant. The British took the city in September 1664, and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany. The Dutch briefly regained it in August 1673, renaming the city "New Orange," but ceded it permanently in November 1674.

The Castello Plan depicting New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan, 1660

Under British rule the City of New York continued to develop, and while there was growing sentiment in the city for greater political independence, the area was decidedly split in its loyalties during the New York Campaign, a series of major early battles during the American Revolutionary War. The city was under British occupation until the end of the war, and was the last port British ships evacuated in 1783.

New York City was the capital of the newly-formed United States from 1788 to 1790. In the 19th century, the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 enabled New York to overtake Boston and Philadelphia in economic importance, and local politics became dominated by a Democratic Party political machine known as Tammany Hall that drew on the support of Irish immigrants. In later years, known as the Gilded Age, the city's upper classes enjoyed great prosperity amid the further growth of a poor immigrant working class. It was also an era associated with economic and municipal integration, culminating in the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898.

Construction of the Empire State Building, 1930

A series of new transportation links, most notably the opening of the New York City Subway in 1904, bound together the newly-enlarged city. The height of European immigration brought social upheaval, and the anticapitalist labor union IWW was fiercely repressed. Later, in the 1920s, the city saw the influx of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South. The Harlem Renaissance blossomed during this period, part of a larger boom in the Prohibition era that saw the city's skyline transformed by construction the skyscrapers that have come to define New York. New York overtook London as the most populous city in the world in 1925, ending that city's century-old claim to the title.

New York City suffered during the Great Depression, which saw the end of Tammany Hall's eighty years of political dominance with the 1934 election of reformist mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. The city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under LaGuardia and his controversial parks commissioner Robert Moses.

Lower Manhattan's skyline with the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center (1973 – 2001)

New York City played a major role in World War II as a port and a center of finance and industry. It emerged from the war as the unquestioned leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's emergence as the world's dominant economic power, the United Nations headquarters (built in 1952) emphasizing its political influence, and the rise of Abstract Expressionism displacing Paris as center of the art world.

However, the growth of post-war suburbs saw a slow decline in the city's population. A decline in manufacturing, rising crime rates and white flight pushed New York into a social and economic crisis in the 1970s. ^{[citation needed]} These problems plagued the city until the 1990s. Racial tensions calmed in these years; a dramatic fall in crime rates, improvements in quality of life, economic growth and new immigration renewed the city.

The city was one of the sites of the September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people were killed in the destruction of the city's tallest buildings, the World Trade Center. The Freedom Tower, intended to be exactly 1,776 feet tall (a number symbolic of the year the Declaration of Independence was written), is to be built on the site and is slated for completion by 2010.

Geography of NYC

New York City waterways: 1. Hudson River, 2. East River, 3. Long Island Sound, 4. Newark Bay, 5. Upper New York Bay, 6. Lower New York Bay, 7. Jamaica Bay, 8. Atlantic Ocean

 Geography and environment of New York City

New York City is located at the center of the Boston-Wash megalopolis, 218 miles (350 km) driving distance from Boston and 220 miles (353 km) from Washington, D.C. The city's total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214.4 km²), of which 35.31% is water. The city is situated on the three major islands of Manhattan, Staten Island, and western Long Island. The Bronx is the only borough that is part of the mainland United States.

New York City's significance as a trading city results from the natural harbor formed by Upper New York Bay, which is surrounded by Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the coast of New Jersey. It is sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island in Lower New York Bay.

The Hudson River flows from the Hudson Valley into New York Bay, becoming a tidal estuary that separates the Bronx and Manhattan from New Jersey. The East River, actually a tidal strait, stretches from the Long Island Sound to New York Bay, separating the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates Manhattan from the Bronx.

Boroughs of New York

The five boroughs of New York: Manhattan, Brooklyn,
Queens, Bronx, Staten Island

New York City, officially the "City of New York", is comprised of the Five Boroughs. Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods, many with a definable history and character all their own. If the boroughs were independent cities, each would be among the 50 most populous cities in the United States.

Manhattan (New York County, pop. 1,593,200) is the business center of the city, and the most superlatively urban of the boroughs. It is the most densely populated, and the home of most of the city's skyscrapers. It is loosely divided into downtown, midtown, and uptown regions.

The Bronx (Bronx County, pop. 1,357,589) is known as the birthplace of hip hop culture, as well as the home of the New York Yankees and the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City. Excluding its minor islands, the Bronx is the only borough of the city that is on the mainland of the United States.

Brooklyn (Kings County, pop. 2,486,235), the most populous borough, was until 1898 an independent city and has a strong native identity. It ranges from a modern business district downtown to large historic residential neighborhoods in the central and south-eastern areas. It also features a long beachfront and Coney Island, famous as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.

Queens (Queens County, pop. 2,241,600⁾ is geographically the largest borough and, according to the US census, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States.^[9] Prior to consolidation with New York City it was composed of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch. It is home to the New York Mets, two of the region's three major airports, and Flushing Meadows Corona Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs.

Staten Island (Richmond County, pop. 464,573) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs, but has gradually integrated with the rest of the city since the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964, an event that caused controversy and even an attempt at secession. Until 2001, Staten Island was the home of the infamous Fresh Kills Landfill, formerly the largest landfill in the world, and now being reconstructed as one of the largest urban parks in the United States.

Climate and environment of New York City

Although located at a more southern latitude than Italian Tuscany or the French Riviera, New York has a humid continental climate resulting from prevailing wind patterns that bring cool air from the interior of the North American continent. New York winters are typically cold but somewhat milder than those of inland cities at a similar latitude in the Eastern and Midwestern United States. Snowfall varies from year to year, usually averaging about 2 ft (60 cm) in total. Rain is more common than snow in the winter, because the Atlantic Ocean helps keep temperatures warmer than in the interior Northeast.

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