This Edition of TIMELINE presents «Discover NEW YORK CITY».
The City of New York is situated on the Timeline at the end of the nineteenth century.
Although founded in the early 1600s, modern New York City was consolidated and formed
in 1898.
To put this in perspective, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860 and World War
Two ended in 1945.
New York City, often called the Big Apple, is the largest city in the United States and
the center of global finance, communications, entertainment, and business.
New York is unusual among cities because of its high residential density, its extraordinarily
diverse population, its hundreds of tall office and apartment buildings, its thriving central
business district, its extensive public transportation system, and its more than 400 distinct neighborhoods.
The city's concert houses, museums, galleries, and theaters constitute an ensemble of cultural
richness rivaled by few cities.
The greater metropolitan region is an impressive urban agglomeration of almost 24 million people.
The population of New York City itself is over 8 million.
Each of its five boroughs is large enough to be an important city in its own right,
with populations exceeding those of many major North American cities.
New York is the most ethnically diverse city in the world.
Millions of immigrants entered the United States through Ellis Island in Upper New York
Bay.
A building complex on the Island served as a district headquarters for U.S. Immigration
and Naturalization Services until 1954.
New York City still contains 2 million foreign-born residents.
11 out of every 20 New Yorkers are immigrants or the children of immigrants.
These eclectic cultures from around the world are reflected in the street festivals and
ethnic celebrations that take place year-round.
Although many maps of New York exist, Timeline's choice is a simple map that is easy to comprehend,
and fun to replicate for school projects.
Now, let's explore each part of this map:
The city developed at the point where the Hudson River mingles with the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound.
The harbor consists of the Upper Bay, an arm of the Atlantic Ocean, and the various waterways
that border the city, including the East River, which is actually a salt water tidal strait.
New York's harbor is one of the largest and finest in the world and is ice-free in
all seasons.
Unlike most American cities, which make up only a part of a particular county, New York
City is made up of five separate counties, which are called boroughs.
Originally the city included only the borough of Manhattan, located on an island between
the Hudson and East rivers.
In 1898 a number of surrounding communities were consolidated and incorporated into the
city as the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island.
The Bronx is the only borough on the mainland.
Manhattan and Staten Island are surrounded by water, while Queens and Brooklyn are part
of Long Island.
QUEENS, named for Queen Catherine the wife of English King Charles II, is the largest
of the five boroughs.
Covering 109 square miles at the western end of Long Island, Queens is separated from Brooklyn
by Newtown Creek and from the rest of the city by the East River and Long Island Sound.
It stretches to the Atlantic Ocean on the south and borders Nassau County on the east.
It is overwhelmingly residential and probably the most ethnically diverse community in the
world.
Queens has 2 million residents and is second in population only to Brooklyn among the five
boroughs.
The neighborhoods of Queens have a strong sense of individual identity.
Some are heavily industrial and others are suburban-style enclaves of the well-to-do.
Major ethnic concentrations make up well-known neighborhoods such as Astoria, Woodside, Forest
Hills, Flushing, and Elmhurst.
Queens is the home of Shea Stadium, Aqueduct Racetrack, the National Tennis Center, and
both LaGuardia and JFK airports.
Queens hosted two successful World's Fairs in 1939 and 1964.
It has more than 6,400 acres of parkland, almost as much as the other four boroughs
combined, and it has 10 miles of beaches along the Atlantic Ocean.
Queens is also known for its numerous and enormous cemeteries.
For example, Calvary Cemetery is the burial site of 2.5 million persons, more than any
other burial ground in the United States.
BROOKLYN, a Dutch word, is the second largest and most populous of the five boroughs.
It is located on the southwestern tip of Long Island, west of Queens and situated across
the Upper Bay and the East River from Manhattan.
The borough is connected to Manhattan by the Brooklyn Bridge and has a land area of 70
square miles.
Brooklyn has 2.5 million residents, more than any other U.S. city, with the exception of
the entire city of New York and the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago.
Indeed, as a separate municipality before 1898, it was the third largest city in the
United States.
Brooklyn retains a strong separate identity.
It has an important central business district and dozens of varied and clearly identifiable
neighborhoods, including Bedford Stuyvesant, Williamsburgh, Crown Heights, and Borough
Park.
Brooklyn is the home of such major cultural institutions as the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn
Academy of Music, and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.
Coney Island is well known for its beaches and amusement parks.
STATEN ISLAND is the third largest and least populous of the five boroughs.
It is located at the juncture of Upper & Lower New York Bay.
The island is physically closer to the state of New Jersey, to which it is connected by
four bridges, than to the rest of New York City, to which it is connected only by the
Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the world-famous Staten Island Ferry.
Staten Island encompasses 59 square miles.
The southernmost of the five boroughs, it has 400,000 inhabitants, or about 5 percent
of the population of the entire city.
Staten Island has dozens of distinct neighborhoods, and it has the highest proportion of single-family
housing and owner-occupied housing in the city, including many homes dating from the
17th and 18th centuries.
The BRONX, another Dutch word, is the fourth largest and the northernmost of the five boroughs,
and the only one on the American mainland.
Even so, it is surrounded by water on three sides: Long Island Sound on the east, the
Harlem and East rivers on the south, and Hudson River on the west.
Encompassing 42 square miles, it has 1.3 million inhabitants.
Largely residential, the Bronx includes dozens of vibrant neighborhoods.
Parts of the Bronx, however, fell victim to decay and abandonment in the 1970s, when the
population of the borough fell by 20 percent.
Since then, the process has reversed with rehabilitation of most devastated areas.
The borough's many attractions include the world-famous Bronx Zoo, Yankee Stadium, and
the New York Botanical Garden.
MANHATTAN, a Native American word, is the smallest of the five boroughs with a land
area of 28 square miles.
The borough consists principally of the island of Manhattan, but also includes Governors
Island, Randalls Island, Wards Island, Roosevelt Island, U Thant Island, and Marble Hill, a
small enclave on the edge of the Bronx mainland.
Manhattan's population peaked in 1910 with 2.3 million people, after which it began a
slow decline to 1.4 million in 1980.
Since then, the population has again begun to increase, now at more than 1.6 million.
Its residents inhabit diverse and colorful neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village, SoHo,
TriBeCa, and Harlem, as well as, many famous avenues, streets and green spaces, like the
iconic Central Park.
Home of the United Nations, Manhattan is the glittering heart of the metropolis and is
the site of virtually all of the hundreds of skyscrapers that are the symbol of the
city.
Among the most famous skyscrapers are the Chrysler Building completed in 1930 and the
Empire State Building finished one year later.
Notable religious structures include Saint Patrick's Cathedral, the seat of the Roman
Catholic archdiocese of New York, and the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the largest
Gothic-style cathedral in the world.
Other noteworthy buildings and landmarks include the city's first skyscraper, the Flatiron
Building; Wall Street's Stock Exchange building, Federal Hall, the Statue of Liberty, and Grant's
Tomb, where repose President Ulysses S. Grant and his wife.
Because of its huge size, its concentrated wealth, and its mixture of people from around
the world, New York City offers its residents and visitors a staggering array of cultural
riches.
The city is the world's leading center for performing arts.
Manhattan is the center of New York's cultural life.
Numerous stage & movie theaters are located around Broadway and Times Square in Midtown.
Manhattan is also home to prominent music & dance organizations, such as the New York
City Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera Association, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society
of New York, American Ballet Theatre, & the New York City Ballet.
The city's impressive museums contain a wide range of artistic and historical subjects.
More than 100 institutions of higher education operate in New York City, including some of
the nation's more prestigious centers of learning.
Columbia University is the oldest, wealthiest, and most famous of New York's institutions
of higher education.
Other leading educational institutions include New York University, the nation's largest
private university; Fordham University, an important Catholic institution; Yeshiva University,
the nation's first major college expressly for the education of Orthodox Jews; and the
Julliard School, which is widely regarded as the most distinguished musical and performing
arts institution in the nation.
21st century New York continues to grow and transform itself.
The World Trade Center Site is home to the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, while
the futuristic angular Freedom Tower, the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere,
now reigns above this beautiful metropolis.
This concludes our fascinating journey of discovery to New York City.
We hope you have enjoyed this presentation and look forward to meeting you again soon…
along the TIMELINE.
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