The New-York City, Places of interest

Introduction

I have been learning English for a long time. Learning foreign languages is simply impossible without knowing the history, the places of interest the country the language of which you learn. The big City with its skyscrapers seems to be exciting and fascinating for me. I want to know more about The New York City, about its famous places. That is the main reason for my choosing this topic.

Contents

1. Introduction 1p.

2. New York. Places of interest 2p.

3. Manhattan Geography 2p.

4. The Financial District 3p.

5. Greenwich Village and the East Village. 3p.

6. Statue of Liberty History 4p.

7. City Hall 5p.

8. Brooklyn Bridge 5p.

9. Liberty State Park 6p.

10. The American Museum of the Moving Image 6p.

11. Empire State building 7p.

12. The New York Aquarium 7p.

13. Central Park 9p.

New York. Places of interest.

Although New York is not the capital of the United States, it is the biggest and most important city of the country. New York is situated on the Atlantic coast, in the North-East of the country, in the state of New York at the mouth of the deep Hudson River. It is the financial and media capital of the world, the center of the American cultural life and the national leader in fashion and entertainment. The “Big Apple” is nickname of the city. New York , with the population of 16 mln people, is the second largest city and the biggest sea port in the world. It was founded in 1613 by Dutch settlers. It consists of 5 large boroughs: Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Richmond. There are a lot of places of interest in New York. The most famous of them is The Statue Of Liberty, given to the USA by France in 1886. Its torch towers about 200 feet above the harbor and can be seen at night for many miles. It is the largest statue in the world. The Empire State Building used to be the first, but now it is only the third tallest building in the world. It is a 102- storied building with an observatory on he 86 floor. Broadway is the longest street in the world. It is 12 miles long. It is the center of entertainments. The Metropolitan Museum is by now probably the richest museum in the world in painting and other objects of Art, due to what had been bought from Europeans after World War Two. Besides, we can see the works of American painters there. The Central Park is the largest park in the world. The Fifth avenue has the best houses, hotels and fashionable shops. Times Square is known as New York’s theatre land the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other museum are situated there. The Rockefeller center belongs to the Rockefeller family. It is 15 skyscrapers housing several large corporations. It is also known as “Radio City”. There is a theatre , too. The United Nations Headquarters was built in 1952. The building and the grounds contain sculptures and other works of art, donated by member nations. Among them is the gift of the Soviet Union.

New York attract people from all over. Get on a subway in New York and look at the newspapers that people around you are reading . One person is reading a newspaper in Spanish , another in Chinese, yet others in Arabic , Russian , Italian , Yiddish, and French . New York was always a city of immigrants. It still is .

The are 5 boroughs in New York - Manhattan , Brooklyn , Queens , the bronx , and Staten Island. Brooklyn alone has so many people that if it were a separate city, it would be the fourth largest in the United States.

Manhattan Geography.

Manhattan is an island just 13 miles long and 2 miles wide . It is the center of American finance, advertising, art theatre, publishing, fashion - and much more. The borough of Manhattan is what most people think of New York, one of the most exciting cities in the world.

Manhattan is divided into the East Side and the West Side. The dividing line is Fifth Avenue. So, for example , East 47th Street begins at Fifth Avenue, as does West 47th Street.

Manhattan is also divided, with less exactness, into Lower (Downtown), Midtown and Upper (Up-town) Manhattan. As you go North, or uptown, the street numbers get higher. Lower Manhattan refers to street numbers below 14th Street and Central Park, and Upper Manhattan to the renaming, northern, part of the island.

The Financial District .

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Manhattan. To protect themselves from attack, they built a sturdy wooden wall. Although it’s now long gone, this wall gave its name to a street in Lower Manhattan and the street, in turn, became synonymous with American capitalism. The street, of course, is Wall Street. The New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange are both in the Wall Street area. So are many stockbrokers, investment blanks and others bank, and headquarters of many large corporations.

To escape the commotion of Wall Street you can visit the nearby South Street Seaport, an open area of low buildings on the East River. In addition to many shops and restaurants, the seaport has a museum.

Appropriately, the very first business deal in Manhattan was made in what became the financial district. As every American schoolchild knows, the Dutch bought Manhattan from the Indians, for the ridiculously low price of 24 dollars worth of beads and trinkets. There is, however, another, less known side of this: evidently, the Indians who had sold Manhattan did not themselves live there or in any sense own it. The Dutch and the Indians alike walked away pleased.

Greenwich Village and the East Village.

Greenwich Village and the East Village have always been at the center of New York’s excitement. Both have been places for people with different and creative ideas. Both have an active nightlife with plenty of bars, restaurants and clubs.

In the early 1900s the charm Greenwich Village attracted bohemians - writers and artists. By the 1920s, the streets of the Village were filled with other people, curious to see how these odd Villagers lived. The artists and writers began moving out, some to the East Village. Today, the Village has many elements : students attending New York University ; an active jazz scene; and in Washington Square - it’s center - street performers, police. Drug dealers, joggers, roller skates, and just about everyone else.

When bohemians moved to the East Village 1920s, they found an area similar to the Lower East Side. There were many immigrants, much dirt and grime. The East Village has changed very little. Over the years it has been a center for many movements - for the beat poets of the 1950s, the hippies of the 1960s, and, more recently, for New York’s punk scene.

Statue of Liberty History

The Statue of Liberty National Monument officially celebrated her 100th birthday on October 28, 1986. The people of France gave the Statue to the people of the United States over one hundred years ago in recognition of the friendship established during the American Revolution. Over the years, the Statue of Liberty has grown to include freedom and democracy as well as this international friendship. Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a sculpture with the year 1876 in mind for completion, to commemorate the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence. The Statue was a joint effort between America and France and it was agreed upon that the American people were to build the pedestal, and the French people were responsible for the Statue and its assembly here in the United States. However, lack of funds was a problem on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. In France, public fees, various forms of entertainment, and a lottery were among the methods used to raise funds. In the United States, benefit theatrical events, art exhibitions, auctions and prize fights assisted in providing needed funds. Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi required the assistance of an engineer to address structural issues associated with designing such as colossal copper sculpture. Alexandre Gustave Eiffel (designer of the Eiffel Tower) was commissioned to design the massive iron pylon and secondary skeletal framework which allows the Statue's copper skin to move independently yet stand upright. Back in America, fund raising for the pedestal was going particularly slowly, so Joseph Pulitzer (noted for the Pulitzer Prize) opened up the editorial pages of his newspaper, "The World" to support the fund raising effort. Pulitzer used his newspaper to criticize both the rich who had failed to finance the pedestal construction and the middle class who were content to rely upon the wealthy to provide the funds. Pulitzer's campaign of harsh criticism was successful in motivating the people of America to donate.

The story of the Statue of Liberty and her island has been one of change. The Statue was placed upon a granite pedestal inside the courtyard of the star-shaped walls of Fort Wood (which had been completed for the War of 1812.) The United States Lighthouse Board had responsibility for the operation of the Statue of Liberty until 1901. After 1901, the care and operation of the Statue was placed under the War Department. A Presidential Proclamation declared Fort Wood (and the Statue of Liberty within it) a National Monument on October 15th, 1924 and the monument's boundary was set at the outer edge of Fort Wood. In 1933, the care and administration of the National Monument was transferred to the National Park Service. On September 7, 1937, jurisdiction was enlarged to encompass all of Bedloe's Island and in 1956, the island's name was changed to Liberty Island.

City Hall

irectly at the heart of Philadelphia, on Center Square, a National Historic Landmark rises 510 feet into the air. The exact geographical center of William Penn's original plan for Philadelphia, Center Square, known today as Penn Square, was designated by Mr. Penn to be the location for a building of "publick concerns" - home of Philadelphia's City Hall.he huge granite mass of City Hall, throughout its 100+ year history, has indeed been a building of "publick concerns". An elaborate temple of local politics, City Hall is one of the nation's finest examples of French Second -Empire Architectural style. Controversy has surrounded the building from its earliest conception in 1860 to the present day. It has weathered severe criticism, hints of bribery and graft, campaigns to demolish it, shortages of funding to maintain it, and disrespect of vandals who deface it. Yet, it has also earned a great deal of respect and admiration as a unique architectural and sculptural achievement. ts future remains uncertain, but its story is fascinating.

Brooklyn Bridge

A VISION FOR A BRIDGE: Plans for a crossing between the city of Brooklyn and lower Manhattan dated back to the early 1800's. When the East River crossing was planned, Brooklyn, with about 400,000 residents, was still more rural than urban. The city of New York - which at the time consisted only of Manhattan - had twice as many