New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the largest US city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is an international symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability, and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. In 2019, New York was voted the greatest city in the world per a survey of over 30,000 people from 48 cities worldwide, citing its cultural diversity.
The Second Avenue Subway (internally referred to as the IND Second Avenue Line by the MTA and abbreviated to SAS) is a New York City Subway line that runs under Second Avenue on the East Side of Manhattan. The first phase of this new line, with three new stations on Manhattan's Upper East Side, opened on January 1, 2017. The full Second Avenue Line, if and when it is funded, will be built in three more phases to eventually connect Harlem–125th Street in Harlem to Hanover Square in Lower Manhattan. The proposed full line would be 8.5 miles (13.7 km) and 16 stations long, serve a projected 560,000 daily riders, and cost more than $17 billion.
The line was originally proposed in 1920 as part of a massive expansion of what would become the Independent Subway System (IND). In anticipation of the Second Avenue Subway being built to replace them, parallel elevated lines along Second Avenue and Third Avenue were demolished in 1942 and 1955, respectively, despite several factors causing plans for the Second Avenue Subway to be cancelled. Construction on the line finally began in 1972 as part of the Program for Action, but was halted in 1975 because of the city's fiscal crisis, leaving only a few short segments of tunnels completed. Work on the line restarted in April 2007 following the development of a financially secure construction plan. The first phase of the line, consisting of the 96th Street, 86th Street and 72nd Street stations, as well as two miles (3.2 km) of tunnel, cost $4.45 billion. A 1.5-mile (2.4 km), $6 billion second phase from 96th to 125th Streets is in planning and is expected to open by 2027–2029.
Phase 1 is served by the Q train at all times, weekend and evening M trains, and limited rush-hour N and R trains. Phase 2 will extend the line's northern terminus from 96th Street to Harlem–125th Street, and both the Q and limited N services will be extended to 125th Street. Phase 3 will extend the line south from 72nd Street to Houston Street in Manhattan's Lower East Side; upon completion, a new T train will serve the entire line from Harlem to Houston Street. Phase 4 will again extend the line south from Houston Street to Hanover Square, at which point the T would provide service to the entire line. The T will be colored turquoise since it will use the Second Avenue Line through Midtown Manhattan. Read more...
The neighborhood and waterway of Mill Basin, seen from the Belt Parkway drawbridge
Mill Basin was originally Mill Island, located in Jamaica Bay. In the 17th century, a mill was built on Mill, Bergen, and Barren Islands. The archipelago was then occupied by the Schenck and Crooke families through the late 19th century, and remained a mostly rural area with oyster fishing. After Robert Crooke developed a smelting plant on Mill Island in 1890, industrial customers started developing the island and connected it to the rest of Brooklyn. In an effort to develop Mill Basin as a seaport district, ports and dry docks were built in the early 20th century, though a lack of railroad connections hindered the area's further growth. Residential development began in the 1950s, along with much of the rest of southeast Brooklyn, though some of the former industrial buildings remain.
Mill Basin has some of the most luxurious houses in New York City, though it also contains commercial and industrial tenants, as well as the Kings Plaza shopping mall in the western part of the neighborhood. The area around Mill Basin consists of a mostly white population as of the 2010 United States Census, and is sparsely served by public transportation. Nearby recreational areas include Floyd Bennett Field, the first municipal airport in New York City, which is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area and is located just southeast of Mill Basin. Read more...
The island was sparsely inhabited before the 19th century, owing mainly to its isolated location away from the rest of the city. From the 1850s to the mid-1930s, Barren Island was developed as an industrial complex. Barren Island once maintained a somewhat diverse community for its time, and at its peak housed 1,500 residents. The community was originally supported by fish rendering plants and other industries related to offal products. The island housed a plant that received the carcasses of the city's dead horses and turned them into a variety of industrial products, including glue, fertilizer, buttons, and materials for refining gold and sugar. This activity inspired the name Dead Horse Bay for the still extant body of water on the western shore.
Starting in the 1890s, Barren Island was also home to a waste processing plant. The odor from the plant was so noxious that it could be smelled from miles away. In 1916, a controversy arose when the city tried to relocate the waste processing plant away from Barren Island to Staten Island. As a result, operations on Barren Island continued until 1921. By the 1920s, most of the industrial activity had tapered off, and landfill was used to unite the island with the rest of Brooklyn for what became Floyd Bennett Field. Most of the residents were evicted, but a few were allowed to stay until 1942. No trace remains of the former island's industrial use. All of what was once Barren Island is now part of the Jamaica Bay Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area, managed by the National Park Service. Read more...
Linda Jane Laubenstein (May 21, 1947 – August 15, 1992) was an American physician and early HIV/AIDS researcher. She was among the first doctors in the United States to recognize the AIDS epidemic of the early 1980s; she co-authored the first article linking AIDS with Kaposi's sarcoma.
Laubenstein was raised in Barrington, Rhode Island, where a childhood bout of polio left her paraplegic and using a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She graduated from Barnard College in 1969 and received her medical degree from New York University School of Medicine, where she specialized in hematology and oncology. She went on to become a clinical professor before leaving to focus on treating AIDS patients in her private practice. In addition to her medical work, she was an outspoken AIDS activist and co-founded a non-profit organization, Multitasking, which provided employment to people with AIDS.
The film takes place in New York, 23 years after the original, and revolves around the 2008 financial crisis. Its plot centers on a supposedly reformed Gordon Gekko, played by Douglas, and follows his attempts to repair his relationship with his daughter Winnie (Mulligan), with the help of her fiancé, Jacob Moore (LaBeouf).
Principal photography took place in New York between September and November 2009. After having its release date moved twice, Money Never Sleeps was released theatrically worldwide on September 24, 2010, by 20th Century Fox. Prior to its official release, many journalists connected to the financial industry were reportedly shown advance screenings of the film. Read more...
Robert John Downey Jr. (born April 4, 1965) is an American actor, producer, and singer. His career has been characterized by critical and popular success in his youth, followed by a period of substance abuse and legal troubles, before a resurgence of commercial success in middle age. In 2008, Downey was named by Time magazine among the 100 most influential people in the world, and from 2013 to 2015, he was listed by Forbes as Hollywood's highest-paid actor. His films have grossed over $14.4 billion worldwide, making him the second highest-grossing box-office star of all time.
191st Street is a station on the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line of the New York City Subway. Located at the intersection of St. Nicholas Avenue and 191st Street in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan, it is served all day by the 1 train. It is the deepest station in the New York City Subway system—about 173 feet (53 m) below street level. Access to the station's main entrance is only provided by four elevators to the mezzanine. A pedestrian tunnel also extends west from the station 1,000 feet (300 m) to Broadway, connecting it with the Fort George neighborhood.
Built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT), the station opened on January 14, 1911, as an infill station along the first subway. Even though the line through the area had opened five years earlier, no station was constructed at this location because the surrounding neighborhood had a lower population than other areas of Manhattan. Before the opening of the pedestrian tunnel two years later, the area's hilly topography made it hard for area residents to access the station. The opening of the station and the tunnel led to the development of the surrounding area, including the construction of apartment buildings. Hundreds of lots held by the Bennett family since 1835 were sold at an auction in 1919. These provided additional housing opportunities for the middle class, taking advantage of the area's improved transportation access.
In 2018, the station had 2,526,932 boardings, making it the 186th most used station in the 424-station system. Read more...
The 115-acre (47 ha), 1.1-mile-long (1.8 km) beach consists of a 13-section sandy shorefront, a hexagonal-block promenade, a central pavilion with food stores and specialty shops, two playgrounds, two picnic areas, a large parking lot, and 26 courts for basketball, volleyball, and handball. It is operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Orchard Beach was built as part of Pelham Bay Park and was originally located on the eastern shore of Rodman's Neck peninsula. In the 1930s, New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses announced a project to expand Orchard Beach northward by connecting several islands in Pelham Bay Park via landfill. The expanded beach was dedicated in 1936 and opened in 1937, along with its pavilion and concession stands. Renovations to the beachfront were made in subsequent years. Sand was restored to the beach in 1964 and again in 1995. Read more...
After years of delay and controversy, reconstruction at the World Trade Center site started. The new complex includes One World Trade Center, 3 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, 7 World Trade Center, and one other high-rise office building being planned at 2 World Trade Center. The new World Trade Center complex also includes a museum and memorial, and a transportation hub building that is similar in size to Grand Central Terminal. 7 World Trade Center opened on May 23, 2006, making it the first of five skyscrapers to have been completed in the World Trade Center complex. 4 World Trade Center, the first building completed as part of the site's master plan, opened on November 12, 2013. The National September 11 Memorial opened on September 11, 2011, while the Museum opened on May 21, 2014. One World Trade Center was opened on November 3, 2014. The World Trade Center Transportation Hub opened to the public on March 4, 2016, and 3 World Trade Center opened on June 11, 2018. 2 World Trade Center's full construction was placed on hold in 2009, with a new design announced in 2015. Read more...
Sesame Workshop (SW), formerly the Children's Television Workshop (CTW), is an American nonprofit organization that has been responsible for the production of several educational children's programs—including its first and best-known, Sesame Street—that have been televised internationally. Television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and foundation executive Lloyd Morrisett developed the idea to form an organization to produce Sesame Street, a television series which would help children, especially those from low-income families, prepare for school. They spent two years, from 1966 to 1968, researching, developing, and raising money for the new series. Cooney was named as the Workshop's first executive director, which was termed "one of the most important television developments of the decade".
Sesame Street premiered as a series on National Educational Television (NET) in the United States on November 10, 1969, and moved to NET's successor, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), in late 1970. The Workshop was formally incorporated in 1970. Gerald S. Lesser and Edward L. Palmer were hired to perform research for the series; they were responsible for developing a system of planning, production, and evaluation, and the interaction between television producers and educators, later termed the "CTW model". They also hired a staff of producers and writers. After the initial success of Sesame Street, they began to plan for its continued survival, which included procuring additional sources of funding and creating other television series. The early 1980s were a challenging period for the Workshop; difficulty finding audiences for their other productions and a series of bad investments harmed the organization until licensing agreements stabilized its revenues by 1985.
After Sesame Street's initial success, the CTW began to think about its survival beyond the development and first season of the show, since their funding sources were composed of organizations and institutions that tended to start projects, not sustain them. Government funding ended by 1981, so the CTW developed other activities, including unsuccessful ventures into adult programs, the publications of books and music, international co-productions, interactive media and new technologies, licensing arrangements, and programs for preschools. By 2005, income from the CTW's international co-productions of the series was $96 million. By 2008, the Sesame StreetMuppets accounted for $15–17 million per year in licensing and merchandising fees. Cooney resigned as CEO in 1990; David Britt was named as her replacement. Read more...
Denise Huxtable Kendall is a fictional character who appears on the American sitcom The Cosby Show (1984–1991), portrayed by actress Lisa Bonet. Denise also stars in the first season of its spin-off sitcom, A Different World (1987). The second-born child of Cliff and Clair Huxtable, Denise is known for her eccentric clothing and free-spirited, rebellious nature, earning her a reputation as the Huxtable family's wild child. Alternating between regular and recurring character, Denise appears on the sitcom on-and-off throughout its eight-year run, from its pilot "Theo's Economic Lesson" to the seventh season episode "Cliff and Jake", for a total of 98 episodes, after which Bonet departed for the remainder of the series.
Created by comedian Bill Cosby, Denise was originally conceived as the Huxtable's eldest child until older sister Sondra was introduced in the show's second episode to establish that her parents had already successfully raised a college-educated daughter. Struggling academically, Denise drops out of school shortly after enrolling at the historically black Hillman College and briefly returns home to explore various career opportunities before traveling to Africa. While there, she meets and marries Lt. Martin Kendall, becoming stepmother to his daughter Olivia. Bonet was quickly cast as Denise because the producers found that she naturally embodied some of the character's unique traits. Based on Cosby's daughter Erinn, the show's creator incorporated real-life experiences from his relationship with his own daughter into Denise's storyline about self-discovery and independence.
Bonet had a difficult professional relationship with Cosby while working on The Cosby Show, particularly regarding her decisions to appear in the controversial film Angel Heart (1987) and subsequently pose nude for various magazines. Although Cosby denies having been opposed to Bonet's career trajectory, he developed A Different World amidst their dispute to provide the actress with a more mature platform. However, Bonet was soon fired from the spin-off shortly after its first season and temporarily rejoined the cast of The Cosby Show when she became pregnant because Cosby was unwilling to entertain the prospect of the sitcom's main character being a pregnant teenager. After leavingThe Cosby Show for one year to give birth to her child, Bonet returned as a series regular at the beginning of its sixth season until Cosby ultimately fired her during season seven due to creative differences. Read more...
Grrrrrrrrrrr!! is a 1965 oil and Magna on canvas painting by Roy Lichtenstein. Measuring 68 in × 56.125 in (172.7 cm × 142.6 cm), it was bequeathed to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum collection from Lichtenstein's estate. It depicts a head-on representation of an angry dog growling with the onomatopoeic expression "Grrrrrrrrrrr!!". The work was derived from Our Fighting Forces, which also served as the source for other military dog paintwork by Lichtenstein. Read more...
During his three-year tenure, a number of improvements were made to the campus, including the completion of Gaston Hall, the construction of the entrances to Healy Hall, and renovations of several other buildings. The Georgetown University Hospital also was established during his presidency. After the end of his term, he went to Boston College for several years as treasurer, before doing pastoral work in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, and Baltimore, where he became prefect of St. Ignatius Church. He continued to spend time at Boston College, where he died in 1917. Read more...
The mural recreated version, known as Man, Controller of the Universe
Man at the Crossroads (1934) was a fresco by Diego Rivera in New York City's Rockefeller Center. It was originally slated to be installed in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the main building of the center. Man at the Crossroads showed the aspects of contemporary social and scientific culture. As originally installed, it was a three-paneled artwork. A central panel depicted a worker controlling machinery. The central panel was flanked by two other panels, The Frontier of Ethical Evolution and The Frontier of Material Development, which respectively represented socialism and capitalism.
The Rockefeller family approved of the mural's idea: showing the contrast of capitalism as opposed to communism. However, after the New York World-Telegram complained about the piece, calling it "anti-capitalist propaganda", an image of Vladimir Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade were secretly added in protest. When these were discovered, Nelson Rockefeller – at the time a director of the Rockefeller Center – wanted Rivera to remove the portrait of Lenin, but Rivera was unwilling to do so. In May 1933, Rockefeller ordered the mural to be plastered-over and thereby destroyed before it was finished, resulting in protests and boycotts from other artists. Man at the Crossroads was peeled off in 1934 and replaced by a mural from Josep Maria Sert three years later. Only black-and-white photographs exist of the original incomplete mural, taken when Rivera suspected it might be destroyed. Using the photographs, Rivera repainted the composition in Mexico under the variant title Man, Controller of the Universe.
The controversy over the mural was significant because Rivera's communist ideals contrasted with the theme of Rockefeller Center, even though the Rockefeller family themselves admired Rivera's work. The creation and destruction of the mural is dramatized in the films Cradle Will Rock (1999) and Frida (2002). The reactions to the mural's controversy have been dramatized in Archibald MacLeish's 1933 collection Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City as well as in E. B. White's 1933 poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity". Read more...
The facade of St. Philip's Episcopal Church, on whose property the Lafargue Clinic operated.
The Lafargue Mental Health Clinic, more commonly known as the Lafargue Clinic, was a mental health clinic that operated in Harlem, New York, from 1946 until 1958. The clinic was named for French Marxist physician Paul Lafargue and conceived by German-American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, who recognized the dire state of mental health services for blacks in New York. With the backing of black intellectuals Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, as well as members of the church and community, the clinic operated out of the parish house basement of St. Philip's Episcopal Church and was among the first to provide low-cost psychiatric health services to the poor, especially for poor blacks who either could not afford treatment at New York hospitals or were victimized by racism from doctors and other hospital staff. The staff consisted entirely of volunteers, and Wertham and Hilde Mosse were the clinic's lead doctors.
Though the clinic only operated for 12 years, Wertham and Mosse's experiences from Lafargue were cited in a court decision to integrate schools in Wilmington, Delaware, and later in Brown v. Board of Education, which ruled that separate black and white schools were unconstitutional. Wertham would use case studies from his time at the clinic to support his later arguments that comic books caused juvenile delinquency, as evidenced in his 1954 work Seduction of the Innocent.Read more...
A race riot took place in Harlem, New York City, on August 1 and 2 of 1943, after a white police officer, James Collins, shot and wounded Robert Bandy, an African-American soldier; and rumors circulated that the soldier had been killed. The riot was chiefly directed by black residents against white-owned property in Harlem. It was one of six riots in the nation that year related to black and white tensions during World War II. The others took place in Detroit; Beaumont, Texas; Mobile, Alabama; and Los Angeles. In Beaumont and Mobile, the riots were white defense industry workers attacking blacks.
In Harlem, Bandy had witnessed a black woman's arrest for disorderly conduct in a hotel and sought to have her released. According to the police, Bandy hit the officer, who shot the soldier as he was trying to flee from the scene. A crowd of about 3,000 people gathered at police headquarters, after a smaller crowd had followed Bandy and the officer to a hospital for treatment. When someone in the crowd at police headquarters incorrectly stated that Bandy had been killed, a riot ensued in the community that lasted for two days and resulted in six deaths and hundreds injured, with nearly 600 arrests. The riot had a pattern mostly of vandalism, theft, and property destruction of white-owned businesses in Harlem, resulting in monetary damages, rather than attacks on persons. New York City MayorFiorello H. La Guardia ultimately restored order in the borough on August 2 with the recruitment of several thousand officers and volunteer forces to contain the rioters. City units cleaned up and repaired buildings. The mayor also supplied food and goods afterward to compensate for the closed businesses.
The underlying causes of the riot stemmed from resentment among black residents of Harlem of the disparity between the vaunted values of American democracy and the social and economic conditions they were forced to live under, including brutality and discriminatory treatment by the mostly white city police force. They resented the segregation of black troops serving with the United States, and wartime shortages created more difficult conditions in Harlem housing and supplies. African Americans suffered discriminatory practices in civil and private employment, and city services, which created tension as they tried to improve their lives. Bandy symbolized the Black soldiers who were segregated in the Army, even as the United States promoted the national fight for 'freedom.' Collins represented the white discrimination and suppression black residents had to deal with on a daily basis. The riot became a subject of art and literature: it inspired the "theatrical climax" of Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, winner of the 1953 National Book Award, it frames the events recounted in James Baldwin's memoirs Notes of a Native Son, and it appears in artist William Johnson's painting Moon Over Harlem. Read more...
DJ Kool Herc in New York, 2006
Clive Campbell (born April 16, 1955), better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican–AmericanDJ who is credited with helping originate hip hop music in the Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s through his "Back to School Jam", hosted on August 11, 1973, at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. After his younger sister, Cindy Campbell, became inspired to earn extra cash for back-to-school clothes, she decided to have her older brother, then 16 years old, play music for the neighborhood in their apartment building. Known as the "Founder of Hip-Hop" and "Father of Hip-Hop", Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown as an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s.
Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break. This breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed the basis of hip hop music. Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping.
He called the dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or simply b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was quickly taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years. Read more...
Gerald Samuel Lesser (August 22, 1926 – September 23, 2010) was an American psychologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. Lesser was one of the chief advisers to the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, later known as the Sesame Workshop) in the development and content of the educational programming included in the children's television program Sesame Street. At Harvard, he was chair of the university's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing, and studied the effects of media on young children. In 1974, he wrote Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street, which chronicled how Sesame Street was developed and put on the air. Lesser developed many of the research methods the CTW used throughout its history and for other TV shows. In 1968, before the debut of Sesame Street, he led a series of content seminars, an important part of the "CTW Model", which incorporated educational pedagogy and research into TV scripts and was used to develop other educational programs and organizations all over the world. He died in 2010, at the age of eighty-four, and was survived by his wife, a daughter, a son, and a grandchild. Read more...
Born to a coal mining family in West Virginia, Charlton enlisted in the Army out of high school in 1946. He was transferred to the segregated24th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division, fighting in the Korean War. During a battle for Hill 543 near the village of Chipo-ri, Charlton took command of his platoon after its commanding officer was injured, leading it on three successive assaults of the hill. Charlton continued to lead the attack until the Chinese position was destroyed, at the cost of his life. For these actions, Charlton was awarded the medal. Read more...
The Bronx has a land area of 42 square miles (109 km2) and a population of 1,471,160 in 2017. Of the five boroughs, it has the fourth-largest area, fourth-highest population, and third-highest population density. It is the only borough predominantly on the U.S. mainland. Read more...
Queens is a borough of New York City, coterminous with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. It is the largest borough geographically and is adjacent to the borough of Brooklyn at the southwestern end of Long Island. To its east is Nassau County. Queens also shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. The borough of Queens is the second largest in population (after Brooklyn), with an estimated 2,358,582 residents in 2017, approximately 48 percent of them foreign-born. Queens County also is the second most populous county in the U.S. state of New York, behind Brooklyn, which is coterminous with Kings County. Queens is the fourth most densely populated county among New York City's boroughs, as well as in the United States. If each of New York City's boroughs were an independent city, Queens would be the nation's fourth most populous, after Los Angeles, Chicago, and Brooklyn. Queens is the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.
The North Shore of Staten Island with the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge in the distance.
Staten Island (/ˌstætənˈaɪlənd/) is a borough of New York City, coterminous with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the southwest portion of the city, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With an estimated population of 476,179 in 2018, Staten Island is the least populated of the boroughs but is the third-largest in land area at 58.5 sq mi (152 km2). The borough also contains the southern-most point in the state, South Point.
The borough was referred to as the Borough of Richmond until 1975. Staten Island has sometimes been called "the forgotten borough" by inhabitants who feel neglected by the city government. Read more...
With a land area of 70.82 square miles (183.4 km2) and water area of 26 square miles (67 km2), Kings County is New York state's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs. Today, if each borough were ranked as a city, Brooklyn would rank as the third-most populous in the U.S., after Los Angeles and Chicago. Read more...
Manhattan (/mænˈhætən,mən-/), often referred to as the City, is the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City, and coextensive with the County of New York, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Manhattan serves as the city's economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers; several small adjacent islands; and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, that was connected using landfill to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each aligned with the borough's long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan.
Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, and the borough hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, and Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Many multinationalmedia conglomerates are based in Manhattan, and the borough has been the for numerous books, films, and television shows. Manhattan real estate has since become among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013; median residential property sale prices in Manhattan approximated US$1,600 per square foot ($17,000/m2) as of 2018, with Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commanding the highest retail rents in the world, at US$3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) per year in 2017. Read more...
... that the namesake of Betsy Head Park left half her estate to the New York City parks system and only $5 to her daughter?
... that upon its completion one hundred years ago this month, the Brooklyn Army Terminal was the world's largest concrete building complex?
... that peregrine falcons live at the top of New York City's Throgs Neck Bridge?
... that "Irish villagers" and "girls in clinging lace costumes" could once be seen along the boardwalk of Bergen Beach, a residential neighborhood in New York City?
New York-Presbyterian Hospital, white complex at center, the largest hospital and largest private employer in New York City and one of the world's busiest.
United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the original World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
Times Square is the hub of the Broadway theaterdistrict and a media center. It also has one of the highest annual attendance rates of any tourist attraction in the world, estimated at 50 million.
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