Interesting Facts About New York City

Who doesn’t love the Big Apple? WorldStrides certainly does! We did some research into one of our favorite cities in the United States and learned 12 interesting facts about New York City you may not have known.

• A little over 8 million people live in New York City. That means 1 in every 38 people in the United States call the city home.
• More than 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. 4 in 10 households speak a language other than English.
• Oysters were so popular in New York in the 19th century that the shells were used to pave Pearl Street. They were also used for lime for the masonry of the Trinity Church.
• France gifted the Statue of Liberty to the United States in 1886 for its centennial celebration. The statue was shipped as 350 pieces in 214 crates and took 4 months to assemble at its current home on Ellis Island.
• New York City’s Federal Reserve Bank has the largest gold storage in the world. The vault is 80 feet below street level and contains $90 billion in gold.
• The New York Public Library has over 50 million books and other items and is the second largest library system in the nation after the Library of Congress. It is also the 3rd largest library in the world.
• The United Nations headquarters was established in New York City in 1952 after World War II.
• The first pizzeria in the United States opened in NYC in 1895. Since the 1960s, the price of a slice of pizza has been roughly the same price as a subway ride, generating the idea of “Pizza Principle” among economists.
• The borough of Brooklyn alone would be the fourth largest city in the United States. Queens would also rank fourth nationally.
• Times Square is named after the New York Times. It was originally called Longacre Square until the Times moved there in 1904.
• New York City became the first capital of the United States in 1789.
• More Chinese people live in New York City than any other city outside of Asia. More Jewish people live there than any other city outside of Israel.
• New York City, city and port located at the mouth of the Hudson River, southeastern New York state, northeastern U.S. It is the largest and most influential American metropolis, encompassing Manhattan and Staten islands, the western sections of Long Island, and a small portion of the New York state mainland to the north of Manhattan. New York City is in reality a collection of many neighbourhoods scattered among the city’s five boroughs—Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island—each exhibiting its own lifestyle. Moving from one city neighbourhood to the next may be like passing from one country to another. New York is the most populous and the most international city in the country. Its urban area extends into adjoining parts of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Located where the Hudson and East rivers empty into one of the world’s premier harbours, New York is both the gateway to the North American continent and its preferred exit to the oceans of the globe. Area 305 square miles (790 square km). Pop. (2010) 8,175,133; New York–White Plains–Wayne Metro Division, 11,576,251; New York–Northern New Jersey–Long Island Metro Area, 18,897,109; (2020) 8,804,190; New York–Jersey City–White Plains Metro Division, 12,449,348; New York–Newark–Jersey City Metro Area, 20,140,470.

• Character of the city

  

  New York is the most ethnically diverse, religiously varied, commercially driven, famously congested, and, in the eyes of many, the most attractive urban centre in the country. No other city has contributed more images to the collective consciousness of Americans: Wall Street means finance, Broadway is synonymous with theatre, Fifth Avenue is automatically paired with shopping, Madison Avenue means the advertising industry, Greenwich Village connotes bohemian lifestyles, Seventh Avenue signifies fashion, Tammany Hall defines machine politics, and Harlem evokes images of the Jazz Age, African American aspirations, and slums. The word tenement brings to mind both the miseries of urban life and the upward mobility of striving immigrant masses. New York has more Jews than Tel Aviv, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Naples, and more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Its symbol is the Statue of Liberty, but the metropolis is itself an icon, the arena in which Emma Lazarus’s “tempest-tost” people of every nation are transformed into Americans—and if they remain in the city, they become New Yorkers.

• For the past two centuries, New York has been the largest and wealthiest American city. More than half the people and goods that ever entered the United States came through its port, and that stream of commerce has made change a constant presence in city life. New York always meant possibility, for it was an urban centre on its way to something better, a metropolis too busy to be solicitous of those who stood in the way of progress. New York—while the most American of all the country’s cities—thus also achieved a reputation as both foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil, arrogance, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it. The city was inhabited by strangers, but they were, as James Fenimore Cooper explained, “essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state but to the United States.” Once the capital of both its state and the country, New York surpassed such status to become a world city in both commerce and outlook, with the most famous skyline on earth. It also became a target for international terrorism—most notably the destruction in 2001 of the World Trade Center, which for three decades had been the most prominent symbol of the city’s global prowess. However, New York remains for its residents a conglomeration of local neighbourhoods that provide them with familiar cuisines, languages, and experiences. A city of stark contrasts and deep contradictions, New York is perhaps the most fitting representative of a diverse and powerful nation.

• The landscape

  The city site

  

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  Sections of the granite bedrock of New York date to about 100 million years ago, but the topography of the present city is largely the product of the glacial recession that marked the end of the Wisconsin Glacial Stage about 10,000 years ago. Great erratic boulders in Manhattan’s Central Park, deep kettle depressions in Brooklyn and Queens, and the glacial moraine that remains in parts of the metropolitan area provide silent testimony to the enormous power of the ice. Glacial retreat also carved out the waterways around the city. The Hudson and East rivers, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and Arthur Kill are, in reality, estuaries of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Hudson is tidal as far north as Troy. The approximately 600 miles (1,000 km) of New York shoreline are locked in constant combat with the ocean, as it erodes the land and adds new sediments elsewhere. Although the harbour is constantly dredged, ship channels are continually filled with river silt and are too shallow for more modern deep-sea vessels.

  South of the rockbound terrain of Manhattan stretches a sheltered deepwater anchorage offering easy access to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to enter the harbour, which he named Santa Margarita, and he reported that the hills surrounding the vast expanse of New York Bay appeared to be rich in minerals; more than 90 species of precious stone and 170 of the world’s minerals have actually been found in New York. Verrazzano’s daring expedition was commemorated in 1964, when what was then the world’s longest suspension bridge was dedicated to span the Narrows at the entrance to Upper New York Bay.

  Only the third largest American port at the time of the American Revolution, New York gradually achieved trade domination and by the mid-1800s handled more than half of the country’s oceangoing travelers and commercial trade. After 1900 New York was the world’s busiest port, a distinction it held until the 1950s. Cargo containerization, the obsolescence of its waterfront piers, and soaring labour costs shifted business to the New Jersey side of the river after the 1960s, but at the beginning of the 21st century the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey still dominated the water trade of the northeastern United States.

  Climate and plant and animal life

  The average temperature in January is about 31 °F (0 °C) and in June about 72 °F (22 °C), but recorded temperature extremes range from −15 to 106 °F (−26 to 41°C). Because of New York’s moderate climate, the harbour rarely freezes. The annual precipitation is 44 inches (1,120 mm).

  

  The city’s flora and fauna are testimony to the rapid changes in the ecosystem imposed by urban settlement. In areas that once were hunting and fishing paradises for several bands of Native Americans, the most prevalent animals today are the cockroach and the Norway rat, both introduced to the city via trade with Europe. A wide variety of animal species are still found within the city, including 80 species of fish, scores of birds from the peregrine falcon to the pigeon, and such mammals as the raccoon and the occasional urban coyote. Wildlife refuges at Jamaica Bay and in Clove Lakes (Staten Island) and Alley Pond (Queens) parks provide sanctuaries for many species, allowing them to survive even within an unfavourable city environment. Vegetation has sufficient precipitation but has been reduced and destroyed with the advance of urban sprawl. The dominant characteristics of contemporary city plants are their ability to thrive despite acid rain and air that contains large components of ozone, vehicle emissions, and industrial by-products. However, the city’s two botanical gardens, one in the Bronx and the other in Brooklyn, are highly regarded throughout the country, and zoos in every borough enchant visitors of all ages.

  The city layout

  The city’s ancient bedrock provides the immovable foundation for hundreds of modern skyscrapers. New York has more of these awesome structures than any other world city. Architects may argue about the origin of the modern skyscraper, but most agree that Manhattan was where structures with steel skeletons were combined with the elevator to create a genre of buildings where great height could be reached practicably; the very word was coined in the 1880s to describe this New York phenomenon.

  The earliest pathways for moving around Manhattan Island followed animal and Native American trails across difficult terrain; Broadway still follows one of these routes, which extended northward through the island. City planning was foreign to burghers in the 17th century, and roads were haphazardly authorized; only a few important ones to outlying agricultural communities were maintained, and it was not until 1798 that the city appointed a commissioner of streets. Colonial nonchalance is still visible in the meandering streets of Lower Manhattan. The optimistic spirit of the town is apparent in the street plan adopted in 1811, a grid of blocks, avenues, streets, and lots extending to the northern reaches of the island. City Hall, located now as then in Manhattan, was at that time so far removed from the centre of activity that its northern facade was left unfinished, since few could imagine it would ever be seen. Although often modified in specific cases, the rectilinear patterns imposed upon Manhattan in its infancy have determined its developmental patterns, and other boroughs adopted the system after the creation of Greater New York in 1898. The building of Central Park interrupted the grid, and road construction there pioneered concepts of limited-access and transverse-running roadways. In the 20th century, parkways were incorporated into the traffic patterns of all boroughs, as Eastern and Ocean parkways in Brooklyn, Riverside Drive (Manhattan), the Grand Concourse (the Bronx), and Queens Boulevard attest. Regardless of all its efforts, the modern city is infamous for the volume of traffic that clogs its well-laid-out street system.

  The boroughs of New York City

  The administrative structure of New York was shaped by the consolidation of the greater city in January 1898. Following the 19th-century pattern of urban imperialism, and in large part spurred by the challenge that Chicago posed to its primacy, modern New York was formed when the independent city of Brooklyn, the portion of Westchester county called the Bronx, Staten Island, and large parts of Queens county were added to Manhattan following a referendum. Although the population of the city expanded from about 2 million to 3.4 million, much of the new territory was still rural, and only two-fifths of all roads in the expanded city were paved. The five boroughs, which were all soon designated counties of New York state, became the basic municipal administrative units. The office of borough president was created to preserve “local pride and affection,” and its duties from 1901 to 1990 included service on the Board of Estimate, a central financial agency. Borough presidents now also serve as conduits of neighbourhood concern to the mayor, the city’s chief administrator, and are responsible for appointing members of community boards, the City Planning Commission, and the Board of Education. These officials carry much of the burden in the continuous New York battle between strong mayors seeking central authority and local leaders aspiring to independent action.

  In the early 20th century, when the population of Greater New York more than doubled, a major concern of city administrators was interlacing communication and transportation systems to create coherence within the metropolitan area. The first segment of the subway system opened in 1904, and soon all the boroughs were linked except Staten Island. In the 1930s and ’40s the system often handled more than two billion passengers per year; the world’s most extensive subway system soon became the best way to move about the metropolis. An ever-growing number of bridges, tunnels, and highways, designed to facilitate commerce, now take, along with the subways, hordes of commuters into Manhattan in the morning and return them home at night. Hundreds of thousands of “outer borough” residents and suburbanites work in and travel to Manhattan every day, in one of the great marvels of urban planning. Except for Staten Island, each of the boroughs considered independently would rank among the largest cities in the United States. Borough legislators constantly complain that their concerns are ignored, and many believe that local interests are usually sacrificed for the welfare of New York county (Manhattan). This perception led Staten Island to contemplate seceding from New York City and becoming an independent city in the 1990s, although ultimately nothing came of the movement.

  Manhattan

  

  More than 30 million tourists visit New York annually, but most of these rarely see much beyond the 22.6 square miles (58.5 square km) of Manhattan island, the smallest city borough. Divided by 12 north-south avenues and crossed by 220 east-west streets, Manhattan is easily understood and infinitely alluring. It is the original New York, boasts the world’s largest collection of skyscrapers, and is overloaded with cultural institutions and places of enduring interest. Even to residents of the other boroughs, Manhattan is “the city,” the administrative, business, and financial centre of the metropolis and the basis of their renown. In no other part of New York are there such stark contrasts between rich and poor. The high-rise elegance of Park Avenue and the Upper East Side rapidly gives way to the teeming streets of Harlem to the north and to the crowded bohemian existence of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village to the south. This cruel modern dichotomy echoes the 19th-century city, where industrial millionaires lived in luxury in Fifth Avenue mansions (now largely converted into cultural centres) far from the immigrant masses on the Lower East Side (whose sufferings the Tenement Museum now honours).

  

  Within this formidable historical imbalance, Manhattan is really composed of neighbourhoods that offer peaceful havens to contented residents. Many areas of the island are world famous, among them such ethnic enclaves as Chinatown, Yorkville, Little Italy, Spanish Harlem, and Black Harlem. In the streets snaking north from the ancient Dutch Battery, twisting lanes remind walkers that Manhattan was a trade centre before Boston, Philadelphia, or Williamsburg existed. Wall Street, the financial centre of the globe, was originally a Dutch fortification (1653) against feared British or Native American attacks that never came. The jumble of pre-Revolutionary streets continues up to Houston Street, where the grid pattern becomes dominant and continues up the island. Soho (short for “south of Houston”) covers much of the old immigrant East Side and now has been matched by a Noho neighbourhood. To the west is Henry James’s Washington Square and beyond that Greenwich Village, formerly a haven for artists but today home to the affluent and professional classes.

  Brooklyn of New York City

  

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  The most populous borough of New York, Brooklyn occupies 81 square miles (210 square km) to the east of Manhattan on the western fringe of Long Island. Sections of the area were first settled by the Dutch in the 1630s, and six largely agricultural towns—Brooklyn, Flatlands, Flatbush, New Utrecht, Bushwick, and Gravesend—soon thrived. Consolidated as Kings county in 1683, the region grew modestly as an appendage of Manhattan. During the American Revolution, Brooklyn was the scene of the Battle of Long Island (August 27, 1776). After the British occupied New York, their notorious prison ships were anchored in Wallabout Bay; a memorial to the thousands who died stands in Fort Greene Park. Early in the 19th century, Brooklyn became the world’s first modern commuter suburb, and Brooklyn Heights was transformed into a wealthy residential community. Modern-day entrepreneurs have restored ferry service across the East River, and the esplanade along the heights rewards visitors with an unrivaled view of Manhattan’s shore and skyline.

  

  To the chagrin of New York, Brooklyn became an independent city in 1834 and soon adopted the grid form of street layout. By the 1880s it had about 20,000 industrial jobs and handled more waterborne tonnage than its rival; during the American Civil War the Monitor had been constructed at the Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint. Brooklyn had its own Academy of Music (1859) and Historical Society (1863) and, in Prospect Park (1870s), an urban green space that represented a more mature version of Olmsted’s vision across the river; it ranked among the largest cities in the country in the last four decades of the 19th century. However, the construction of John Roebling and Washington Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan (completed 1883) doomed its independent existence, as business interests craved closer ties to the metropolis. Overcoming the opposition of the local Democratic machine, Brooklyn accepted consolidation by a margin of only 277 votes and became a part of Greater New York in 1898.

  Source:-Britannica