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New York City (Credit Wikipedia Public
Domain)
New York City (officially The City of New
York) is the
most populous city in the
United States, with its
metropolitan area ranking among the
largest urban areas in the world. It has been the
largest city in the United States since 1790, and was the
country's first capital city and the site of
George Washington's
inauguration as the first president of the United
States. For more than a century, it has been one of the
world's major centers of
commerce and
finance. New York City is rated as an
alpha world city for its global influences in
media,
politics,
education,
entertainment,
arts and
fashion. The city is also a major center for foreign
affairs, hosting the headquarters of the
United Nations. New York City comprises five
boroughs, each of which is
coextensive with a county:
The Bronx,
Brooklyn,
Manhattan,
Queens and
Staten Island. With over 8.2 million residents within
an area of 322 square miles (830 km²), New York City is
the most densely populated major city in the United
States.[3][4][5]
Many of the city's neighborhoods and landmarks are
known around the world. The
Statue of Liberty greeted millions of
immigrants as they came to America in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, at
Ellis Island, a small part of which lies within the
city.
Wall Street, in
Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial
center since
World War II and is home to the
New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to
several of the
tallest buildings in the world, including the
Empire State Building and the twin towers of the
World Trade Center, which were destroyed in the
September 11, 2001 attacks.
New York is the birthplace of many cultural movements,
including the
Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art,
abstract expressionism (also known as the
New York School) in painting, and
hip hop,[6]
punk,[7]
salsa, and
Tin Pan Alley in music. In 2005, nearly 170 languages
were spoken in the city and 36% of its population was born
outside the United States.[8][9]
With its 24-hour
subway and constant bustling of traffic and people,
New York is known as "The City That Never Sleeps;" it was
first linked with "Gotham"
by
Washington Irving in 1807.[10]
History
The region was inhabited by about 5,000
Lenape
Native Americans at the time of its European discovery
in 1524[11]
by
Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the
service of the French crown, who called it "Nouvelle
Angoulême" (New
Angoulême).[12]
European settlement began with the founding of a
Dutch
fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam"
(New
Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614.
Dutch colonial Director-General
Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from
the Lenape in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders (legend, now
disproved, says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth
of glass beads).[13][14]
In 1664, the English conquered the city and renamed it
"New York" after the
English Duke of York and Albany.[15]
At the end of the
Second Anglo-Dutch War the Dutch gained control of
Run (a much more valuable asset at the time) in
exchange for the English controlling New Amsterdam (New
York) in North America. By 1700, the Lenape population was
diminished to 200.[16]
New York City grew in importance as a trading port
while under
British rule. In 1754,
Columbia University was founded under charter by
King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[17]
The city emerged as the theater for a series of major
battles known as the
New York Campaign during the
American Revolutionary War. The
Continental Congress met in New York City and in 1789
the first
President of the United States,
George Washington, was inaugurated at
Federal Hall on Wall Street.[18]
In the 19th century, the city was transformed by
immigration and development. A visionary development
proposal, the
Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded the city street
grid to encompass all of Manhattan, and the 1819 opening
of the
Erie Canal connected the Atlantic port to the vast
agricultural markets of the North American interior.[19]
By 1835, New York City had surpassed
Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.
Local politics fell under the domination of
Tammany Hall, a
political machine supported by Irish immigrants.[20]
Public-minded members of the old merchant aristocracy
lobbied for the establishment of
Central Park, which became the first landscaped park
in an American city in 1857. A significant free-black
population also existed in Manhattan, as well as in
Brooklyn. Slaves had been held in New York through 1827,
but during the 1830s New York became a center of
interracial abolitionist activism in the North.
Anger at military conscription during the
American Civil War (1861–1865) led to the
Draft Riots of 1863, one of the worst incidents of
civil unrest in American history.[21]
In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the
consolidation of Brooklyn (until then an independent
city), the County of New York (which then included parts
of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western
portion of the County of Queens.[22]
The opening of the
New York City Subway in 1904 helped bind the new city
together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century,
the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and
communication. However, this development did not come
without a price. In 1904, the steamship
General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing
1,021 people on board. In 1911, the
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst
industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers
and spurred the growth of the
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major
improvements in factory safety standards.[23]
In the 1920s, New York City was a major destination for
African Americans during the
Great Migration from the American South. By 1916, New
York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora
in North America. The
Harlem Renaissance flourished during the era of
Prohibition, coincident with a larger economic boom
that saw the skyline develop with the construction of
competing
skyscrapers. New York City became the most populous
city in the world in 1948, overtaking
London, which had reigned for over a century. The
difficult years of the
Great Depression saw the election of reformer
Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor and the fall of
Tammany Hall after eighty years of political
dominance.[24]
Returning
World War II veterans and
immigrants from Europe created a postwar economic boom
and the development of huge housing tracts in eastern
Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed and the
leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading
America's ascendance as the world's dominant economic
power, the
United Nations headquarters (completed in 1950)
emphasizing New York's political influence, and the rise
of
abstract expressionism in the city precipitating New
York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art
world.[25]
In the 1960s, New York suffered from economic problems,
rising crime rates and racial tension, which reached a
peak in the 1970s.
In the 1980s, a resurgence in the financial industry
improved the city's fiscal health. By the 1990s, racial
tensions had calmed, crime rates dropped dramatically, and
waves of new immigrants arrived from Asia and Latin
America. Important new sectors, such as
Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy and New
York's population reached an all-time high in the
2000 census.
The city was one of the sites of the
September 11, 2001 attacks, when nearly 3,000 people
died in the destruction of the
World Trade Center. The
Freedom Tower will be built on the site and is
scheduled for completion in 2012 at the latest.[26]
Climate
Although located at about the same latitude as the much
warmer European cities of
Naples and
Madrid, New York has a
humid continental climate (Köppen
climate classification) resulting from prevailing wind
patterns that bring cool air from the interior of the
North American continent.[34]
New York City has cold winters but the city's coastal
position keeps temperatures slightly warmer than inland
regions, helping to moderate the amount of snow which
averages 25 to 35 inches (63.5 to 88.9 cm) each year.[34]
New York City has a frost-free period lasting an average
of 199 days between seasonal freezes.[34]
Spring and autumn in New York City are erratic, and can
range from cold and snowy to hot and humid, although they
can also be cold or cool and rainy. Summer in New York
City is warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C)
or higher recorded on average 18 to 25 days each summer.[34]
Though not usually associated with
hurricanes, New York City is susceptible to them,
notably the
1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane which flooded
southern Manhattan, and the
New England Hurricane of 1938, which brushed the
eastern end of the city. The city's long-term climate
patterns have been affected by the
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year-long
warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences
the frequency and severity of coastal storms in the
region.[35]
Environment
-
Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in
United States and gasoline consumption in the city is at
the rate the national average was in the 1920s.[37]
New York City's dense population and low automobile
dependence help make New York among the most energy
efficient in the United States.[38]
The city's greenhouse gas emission levels are relatively
low when measured per capita, at 7.1 metric tons per
person, below the national average, 24.5.[39]
New Yorkers are collectively responsible for one percent
of the nation's total
greenhouse gas emissions[39]
though comprising 2.7% of the nation's population. The
average New Yorker consumes less than half the electricity
used by a resident of San Francisco and nearly one-quarter
the electricity consumed by a resident of
Dallas.[40]
In recent years the city has focused on reducing its
environmental impact. Large amounts of concentrated
pollution in New York City lead to high incidence of
asthma and other respiratory conditions among the
city's residents.[41]
The city government is required to purchase only the most
energy-efficient equipment for use in city offices and
public housing.[42]
New York has the largest clean air diesel-hybrid
and
compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country, and
some of the first hybrid taxis.[43]
The city government was a petitioner in the landmark
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency
Supreme Court case forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse
gases as pollutants. The city is also a leader in the
construction of energy-efficient
green office buildings, including the
Hearst Tower among others.[44]
New York City is supplied with drinking water by the
protected
Catskill Mountains
watershed.[45]
As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed
natural water filtration process, New York is one of only
five major cities in the United States with drinking water
pure enough not to require purification by
water treatment plants.[46]
Architecture
-
The building form most closely associated with New York
City is the
skyscraper that saw New York buildings shift from the
low-scale European tradition to the vertical rise of
business districts. New York City has about 4493
skyscrapers, more than any other city in the world.
Surrounded mostly by water, the city's residential density
and high real estate values in commercial districts saw
the city amass the largest collection of individual,
free-standing office and
residential towers in the world.[47]
New York has architecturally significant buildings in a
wide range of styles. These include the
Woolworth Building (1913), an early
gothic revival skyscraper built with massively scaled
gothic detailing able to be read from street level several
hundred feet below. The
1916 Zoning Resolution required
setback in new buildings, and restricted towers to a
percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the
streets below.[48]
The
Art Deco design of the
Chrysler Building (1930), with its tapered top and
steel spire, reflected the zoning requirements. The
building is considered by many historians and architects
to be New York's finest building, with its distinctive
ornamentation such as replicas at the corners of the 61st
floor of the 1928 Chrysler eagle hood ornaments and
V-shaped lighting inserts capped by a steel spire at the
tower's crown.[49]
A highly influential example of the
international style in the United States is the
Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its facade
using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's
structure. The
Condé Nast Building (2000) is an important example of
green design in American skyscrapers.[44]
The character of New York's large residential districts
is often defined by the elegant
brownstone
rowhouses,
townhouses, and shabby
tenements that were built during a period of rapid
expansion from 1870 to 1930.[50]
Stone and brick became the city's building materials of
choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was
limited in the aftermath of the
Great Fire of 1835.[51]
Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own
limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building
stone from a far-flung network of quarries and its stone
buildings have a variety of textures and hues.[52]
A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is
the presence of wooden roof-mounted
water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their
installation on buildings higher than six stories to
prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at
lower elevations, which could burst municipal water pipes.[53]
Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in
outlying areas, including
Jackson Heights in Queens, which became more
accessible with expansion of the subway.[54]
Parks
New York City has over 28,000 acres (113 km²) of
municipal parkland and 14 miles (22 km) of public beaches.[56]
This parkland is augmented by thousands of acres of
Gateway National Recreation Area, part of the
National Park system, that lie within city boundaries.
The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, the only wildlife refuge
in the National Park System, alone is over 9,000 acres
(36 km²) of marsh islands and water taking up most of
Jamaica Bay and included. Manhattan's
Central Park, designed by
Frederick Law Olmsted and
Calvert Vaux, is the most visited city park in the
United States with 30 million visitors each year — 10
million more than Lincoln Park in Chicago, which is 2nd.[55]
Prospect Park in Brooklyn, also designed by Olmsted
and Vaux, has a 90 acre (36 hectare)
meadow.[57]
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, the city's
third largest, was the setting for the
1939 World's Fair and
1964 World's Fair.
Boroughs
-
New York City is comprised of five
boroughs, an unusual form of government used to
administer the five constituent counties that make up the
city.[58]
Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct
neighborhoods, many with a definable history and
character to call their own. If the boroughs were each
independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn,
Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten
most populous cities in the United States.
-
The Bronx (pop. 1,373,659)[59]
is New York City's northernmost borough, the site of
Yankee Stadium, home of the
New York Yankees, and home to the largest
cooperatively owned housing complex in the United
States,
Co-op City.[60]
Except for a small piece of Manhattan known as
Marble Hill, the Bronx is the only section of the
city that is part of the United States mainland. It is
home to the
Bronx Zoo, the largest metropolitan zoo in the
United States, which spans 265 acres (107.2 hectares)
and is home to over 6,000 animals.[61]
The Bronx is the birthplace of
rap and
hip hop culture.[6]
The five boroughs:
Manhattan,
Brooklyn,
Queens,
The Bronx,
Staten Island
-
Brooklyn (pop. 2,528,050)[59]
is the city's most populous borough and was an
independent city until 1898. Brooklyn is known for its
cultural, social and ethnic diversity, an independent
art scene,
distinct neighborhoods and a unique architectural
heritage. It is also the only borough outside of
Manhattan with a distinct downtown area. The borough
features a long beachfront and
Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the
earliest amusement grounds in the country.[62]
-
Manhattan (pop. 1,620,867)[59]
is the most densely populated borough and home to most
of the city's
skyscrapers, as well as
Central Park. The borough is the financial center of
the city and contains the headquarters of many major
corporations, the
United Nations, as well as a number of important
universities, and many cultural attractions, including
numerous museums, the
Broadway theatre district,
Greenwich Village, and
Madison Square Garden. Manhattan is loosely divided
into
Lower,
Midtown, and
Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by
Central Park into the
Upper East Side and the
Upper West Side, and above the park is
Harlem.
-
Queens (pop. 2,270,338)[59]
is geographically the largest borough and the most
ethnically diverse county in the United States,[63]
and may overtake Brooklyn as the city's most populous
borough due to its growth. Historically a collection of
small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, today the
borough is largely residential and middle class. It is
the only large county in the United States where the
median income among black
African Americans, approximately $52,000 a year, is
higher than that of
White Americans.[64]
Queens is the site of
Shea Stadium, the home of the
New York Mets, and annually hosts the U.S. Open
tennis tournament. Additionally, it is home to New York
City's two major airports,
LaGuardia Airport and
John F. Kennedy International Airport.
-
Staten Island (pop. 481,613)[59]
is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs.
Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan via the
free
Staten Island Ferry. The Staten Island Ferry is one
of the most popular tourist attractions in New York City
as it provides unsurpassed views of the
Statue of Liberty,
Ellis Island, and lower Manhattan. Located in
central Staten Island, the 25 km² Greenbelt has some
35 miles (56 km) of walking trails and one of the last
undisturbed forests in the city. Designated in 1984 to
protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt
encompasses seven city parks. The F.D.R. Boardwalk along
South Beach is two and one-half miles long, which is the
fourth largest in the world. The Staten Island dump,
will reopen as the largest park in the city.
Economy
-
New York City is a global hub of international business
and commerce and is one of three "command centers" for the
world economy (along with
London and
Tokyo).[65]
The city is a major center for finance, insurance, real
estate, media and the arts in the United States. The New
York
metropolitan area had an estimated
gross metropolitan product of $952.6 billion in 2005,
the largest regional economy in the United States.[66]
The city's economy accounts for the majority of the
economic activity in the states of New York and New
Jersey.[66]
Many major corporations are headquartered in New York
City, including 44
Fortune 500 companies.[67]
New York is also unique among American cities for its
large number of foreign corporations. One out of ten
private sector jobs in the city is with a foreign company.[68]
New York City is home to some of the nation's — and the
world's — most valuable real estate. 450
Park Avenue was sold on
July 2,
2007 for $510 million, about $1,589 per square foot
($17,104/m²), breaking the barely month-old record for an
American office building of $1,476 per square foot
($15,887/m²) set in the June 2007 sale of 660 Madison
Avenue.[69]
The
New York Stock Exchange, located on
Wall Street, and the
NASDAQ are the world's first and second largest stock
exchanges, respectively, when measured by average daily
trading volume and overall market capitalization.[70]
Financial services account for more than 35% of the city's
employment income.[71]
Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the
total value of all New York City property was $802.4
billion in 2006.[72]
The
Time Warner Center is the property with the
highest-listed market value in the city, at $1.1 billion
in 2006.[72]
The city's television and film industry is the second
largest in the country after
Hollywood.[73]
Creative industries such as new media, advertising,
fashion, design and architecture account for a growing
share of employment, with New York City possessing a
strong competitive advantage in these industries.[74]
High-tech industries like bioscience, software
development, game design, and internet services are also
growing, bolstered by the city's position at the terminus
of several
transatlantic fiber optic trunk lines.[75]
Other important sectors include medical research and
technology, non-profit institutions, and universities.
Times Square has been dubbed as the "Crossroads
of the World."
Manufacturing accounts for a large but declining share
of employment. Garments, chemicals, metal products,
processed foods, and furniture are some of the principal
products.[76]
The food-processing industry is the most stable major
manufacturing sector in the city.[77]
Food making is a $5 billion industry that employs more
than 19,000 residents, many of them immigrants who speak
little English. Chocolate is New York City's leading
specialty-food export, with $234 million worth of exports
each year.[77]
Tourism is important to New York City, with about 40
million foreign and American tourists visiting each year.[78]
Major destinations include the
Empire State Building,
Ellis Island, Broadway theatre productions, museums
such as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other tourist
attractions including
Central Park,
Washington Square Park,
Rockefeller Center,
Times Square, the
Bronx Zoo,
New York Botanical Garden, luxury shopping along
Fifth and
Madison Avenues, and events such as the
Halloween Parade in
Greenwich Village, the
Tribeca Film Festival, and free performances in
Central Park at Summerstage. The Statue of Liberty is a
major tourist attraction and one of the most recognizable
icons of the United States.[79]
Many of the city's ethnic enclaves, such as
Jackson Heights,
Flushing, and
Brighton Beach are major shopping destinations for
first and second generation Americans up and down the East
Coast.
Government
-
The
Manhattan Municipal Building, a 40-story
building built to accommodate increased governmental
space demands after the 1898 consolidation of New
York City.
Since its consolidation in 1898, New York City has been
a
metropolitan municipality with a "strong"
mayor-council form of government. The government of
New York is more centralized than that of most other U.S.
cities. In New York City, the central government is
responsible for public education, correctional
institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational
facilities, sanitation, water supply and welfare services.
The
mayor and
councillors are elected to four-year terms. The
New York City Council is a
unicameral body consisting of 51 Council members whose
districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.[96]
The mayor and councilors are limited to two four-year
terms.
The mayor is
Michael Bloomberg, a former Democrat and current
independent elected as a
Republican in 2001 and re-elected in 2005 with 59% of
the vote.[97]
He is known for taking control of the city's education
system from the state, rezoning and economic development,
sound fiscal management, and aggressive public health
policy. In his second term he has made school reform,
poverty reduction, and strict gun control central
priorities of his administration.[98]
Together with
Boston mayor
Thomas Menino, in 2006 he founded the
Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, an organization
with the goal of "making the public safer by getting
illegal
guns off the streets."[99]
The
Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices.
66% of registered voters in the city are Democrats.[100]
New York City has not been won by a Republican in a
statewide or presidential election since 1924.
Party platforms center on affordable housing,
education and economic development, and labor politics are
of importance in the city.
New York is the most important source of political
fundraising in the United States, as four of the top five
zip codes in the nation for political contributions
are in Manhattan. The top zip code, 10021 on the
Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004
presidential campaigns of both
George W. Bush and
John Kerry.[101]
The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the
national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in
services for every $1 it sends to the federal government
in
taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more than it
receives back). The city also sends an additional $11
billion more each year to the state of New York than it
receives back.[102]
Located near City Hall are the courthouse for the
United States District Court for the Southern District of
New York and
United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit,
and the
Jacob K. Javits Federal Building. Manhattan also hosts
the
NY Appellate Division, First Department. Brooklyn
hosts the
United States District Court for the Eastern District of
New York, and
NY Appellate Division, Second Department. As with any
county, each Borough has a branch of the
New York Supreme Court and other New York State
courts. As the host of the
United Nations, New York City is home to the world's
largest international
consular corps, comprising 122 consulates, consulates
general and honorary consulate offices.[103]
Crime
-
Crime rates spiked in the 1980s and early 1990s as the
crack epidemic hit the city, but by the 1990s and
early 21st century crime rates had greatly subsided and
since the year 2005 the city had the lowest crime rate of
the 25 largest U.S cities. By 2002 New York City had about
the same crime rate as
Provo, Utah and was ranked 197th in overall crime
among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than
100,000. Violent crime in New York City decreased more
than 75% from 1993 to 2005 and continued decreasing during
periods when the nation as a whole saw increases.[104]
In 2005 the
homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1963.[105]
In 2007 New York City recorded fewer than 500
homicides for the first time ever since crime
statistics were first published in 1963.
Sociologists and criminologists have not reached
consensus on what explains the dramatic decrease in the
city's crime rate. Some attribute the phenomenon to new
tactics used by the
New York City Police Department, including its use of
CompStat and the
broken windows theory. Others cite the end of the
crack epidemic and demographic changes.[106]
Organized crime has long been associated with New York
City, beginning with the
Forty Thieves and the
Roach Guards in the
Five Points in the 1820s. The 20th century saw a rise
in the
Mafia dominated by the
Five Families.
Gangs including the
Black Spades also grew in the late 20th century.[107]
Education
-
The city's public school system, managed by the
New York City Department of Education, is the largest
in the United States. About 1.1 million students are
taught in more than 1,200 separate primary and secondary
schools.[108]
There are approximately 900 additional privately run
secular and religious schools in the city, including some
of the most prestigious private schools in the United
States.[109]
Though it is not often thought of as a
college town, there are about 594,000 university
students in New York City, the highest number of any city
in the United States.[110]
In 2005, three out of five Manhattan residents were
college graduates and one out of four had advanced
degrees, forming one of the highest concentrations of
highly educated people in any American city.[111]
Public postsecondary education is provided by the
City University of New York, the nation's
third-largest public university system, and the
Fashion Institute of Technology, part of the
State University of New York. New York City is also
home to such notable private universities as
Barnard College,
Columbia University,
Cooper Union,
Fordham University,
New York University,
The New School, and
Yeshiva University. The city has dozens of other
smaller private colleges and universities, including many
religious and special-purpose institutions, such as
St. John's University,The
Juilliard School and
The School of Visual Arts.
Much of the scientific research in the city is done in
medicine and the life sciences. New York City has the most
post-graduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in
the United States, 40,000 licensed physicians, and 127
Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions.[112]
The city receives the second-highest amount of annual
funding from the
National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities.[113]
Major biomedical research institutions include
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center,
Rockefeller University,
SUNY Downstate Medical Center,
Albert Einstein College of Medicine,
Mount Sinai School of Medicine and
Weill Cornell Medical College.
The
New York Public Library, which has the largest
collection of any public library system in the country,
serves Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island.[114]
Queens is served by the
Queens Borough Public Library, which is the nation's
second largest public library system, and
Brooklyn Public Library serves Brooklyn.[114]
The New York Public Library has several research
libraries, including the
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
New York City also features many of the most elite and
exclusive private schools in the country. These schools
include
Brearley School,
Dalton School,
Spence School,
The Chapin School,
Nightingale-Bamford School,
Convent of the Sacred Heart on the
Upper East Side of
Manhattan;
Collegiate School and
Trinity School on the
Upper West Side of Manhattan;
Horace Mann School,
Ethical Culture Fieldston School, and
Riverdale Country School in
Riverdale, Bronx; and
Saint Ann's School in
Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn. Renowned public secondary
schools include
Hunter College High School (often considered one of
the best public high schools in the United States),
Stuyvesant High School (often considered one of the
best public high schools in the United States),
The Bronx High School of Science,
Brooklyn Technical High School,
Bard High School Early College,
Townsend Harris High School, and
LaGuardia High School.
Transportation
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New York City is home to the two busiest rail
stations in the U.S., including
Grand Central Terminal (seen here).
Public transit is overwhelmingly the dominant form of
travel for New Yorkers.[115]
About one in every three users of mass transit in the
United States and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders
live in New York and its suburbs.[116][117]
This is in contrast to the rest of the country, where
about 90% of commuters drive automobiles to their
workplace.[115]
New York is the only city in the United States where more
than half of all
households do not own a car (in Manhattan, more than
75% of residents do not own a car; nationally, the
percentage is 8%).[115]
According the US Census Bureau, New York City residents
spend an average of about one full week a year getting to
work (an average of 38.4 minutes per day), making it the
longest commute time in the nation among large cities.[118]
The
New York City Subway is the largest
rapid transit system in the world when measured by the
number of stations in operation, with 468. It is the
third-largest when measured by annual ridership (1.5
billion passenger trips in 2006).[116]
New York's subway is also remarkable because nearly all of
the system remains open 24 hours per day (though in some
cases with significant differences in routings from the
daytime network), in contrast to the overnight shutdown
common to systems in most cities, including
London,
Paris,
Washington, D.C., and
Tokyo. The transportation system in New York City is
extensive and complex. It includes the longest
suspension bridge< |
New
York is perhaps the most famous city in the world and we at All
American Transport are proud to call ourselves New Yorkers and
service this great city and the Tri-State Area in general. On this
page we would like to share some information about New York and
it's deep rooted American History. 
