Text 8.
New York.
New York attracts people from all over the world. If you look at the newspapers that people around you are reading, you will see that one person is reading a newspaper in Spanish, another in Arabic, still others in Chinese, French, Russian, Italian, and so on. New York was always a city of immigrants. It still is.
New York, one of the largest and most exciting cities in the world, is situated in the mouth of the Hudson River, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean, and consists of five parts, called boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island. But it is of course its central part, the borough of Manhattan, that most people think of when they think of New York.
Manhattan is an island 13 miles long and 2 miles wide. It is the centre of American finance, advertising, art, theatre, publishing, fashion – everything else.
Manhattan is divided into the East Side and the West Side. The dividing line is Fifth Avenue. All streets that cross Fifth Avenue are also divided into two parts, that is they have, for example, West 5th Street and East 5th Street, West 11th Street and East 11th Street, and so on. The part of, say, 26th Street that goes west of Fifth Avenue is called West 26th Street, the part going east of Fifth Avenue – East 26th Street.
Manhattan is also divided into Lower (Downtown) Manhattan, Midtown, and Upper (Uptown) Manhattan. The numbers of the streets begin in Lower (Downtown) Manhattan and get higher as you go north. Lower (Downtown) Manhattan is the southern part of the island, nearest the Atlantic Ocean, up to 14th Street. Midtown is the area between 14th Street and Central Park. Upper (Uptown) Manhattan is the remaining, northern part of the island.
Lower (Downtown) Manhattan.
The first Europeans to settle in Manhattan were the Dutch. To protect themselves from possible attacks, they built a strong wooden wall. This wall, which is now destroyed, gave its name to a street in Lower Manhattan, and the street, in its turn, became a synonym of American capitalism. Of course, this street is Wall Street.
It is easy to see why Wall Street is a synonym of capitalism. Both the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange are located in the Wall Street area, as well as many banks and offices of many large corporations. The twin towers of the World Trade Centre, which rose up to 1,350 feet above the city, were also here. They were destroyed by two airplanes piloted by terrorists on the 11th of September 2001.
Originally, the Lower east Side was an elegant district. When New York was the capital of the United States, President George Washington lived in the Lower East Side.
By the mid-1800s the Lower East Side had greatly changed. It had become an area in which immigrants settled. First there were many Irish, then came many Jews from Eastern Europe. In recent years many Jews have moved to other places, and a new immigrant group has settled here – Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics.
Near the Lower East Side there is another area that also attracted immigrants. It is Little Italy, which is famous for its food. Italians settled Little Italy at the same time that Jews settled the Lower East Side. Like the Jews, many Italians have now moved to other places. Little Italy has become smaller. But the Italian restaurants and cafes remain popular with tourists and Italians alike.
Close to Little Italy yet another immigrant area is situated – Chinatown. Today Chinatown is the only immigrant community in Manhattan that is still growing. Chinatown has seven newspapers of its own. Its 200 restaurants serve traditional Chinese food.
Greenwich Village, an area situated in Lower West Side, is mostly a residential area. Its elegant-looking houses in narrow tree-lined streets look very picturesque and charming. In the early 1900s this charm attracted bohemians – writers and artists. The rents were cheap, and for many years Greenwich Village was a place for people with different and creative ideas. It had an active nightlife with plenty of bars, restaurants and clubs. The artists, writers and political radicals spent hours and hours in the cafes.
Today rents in Greenwich Village are far from cheap, and not many artists can afford them. Greenwich Village is visited by many tourists, and some New Yorkers complain that Greenwich Village is no longer “authentic”. But in fact, the Village has preserved many of its authentic elements: in Washington Square, its centre, you can see street performers, jazz bands, police, drug dealers, joggers, and roller skaters.
Midtown.
Many of New York offices and jobs are concentrated in Midtown, as well as many of its famous skyscrapers.
The first skyscraper in New York was built in 1902. It was twenty storeys high.
The first building boom for skyscrapers came in the late 1920s. These skyscrapers were built in art deco style and were abundantly and richly decorated. The most beautiful and famous of the art deco skyscrapers of that time are the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, the third tallest building in the world. A visitor can go to the top of the Empire State Building and admire the view of Manhattan. The Empire State Building has become a symbol of New York.
Rockefeller Centre, which was built in the 1930s, is the world largest privately owned business and entertainment centre. Today it consists of nineteen buildings, which include offices, shops, and various places of entertainment.
In the 1950s there was a second building boom, which introduced a new style – buildings of steel and glass. The United Nations Secretariat building was the first steel-and-glass skyscraper. The new style became very popular, and today there are a lot of steel-and-glass skyscrapers in Manhattan.
Times Square got its name from the New York Times, the most popular newspaper in America, which has its main office there. The New York Times is regarded as one of the best newspapers in the country. New York’s other main newspapers are the New York Daily News, the New York Post and the New York Newsday.
The Theatre District begins at Times Square and occupies an area in or near Broadway between the 40s and 50s Streets. Most Broadway theatres are located in this area. Broadway has long been the centre of theatre life in the United States. Many plays which are first staged in other cities hope to finally come to Broadway.
Upper (Uptown) Manhattan.
Practically the whole of the Manhattan area is a sea of concrete. Luckily for New Yorkers, there is one exception: Central Park.
This huge park in the middle of the city was designed in the 1850s by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted wanted to build a large beautiful park where a lot of New Yorkers, “rich and poor, young and old”, could rest and enjoy nature.
You can take a ride through Central Park in a little carriage pulled by a horse, or rent a bicycle. There are many attractions in the park: a zoo, a skating-rink, an old-fashioned carousel, a lake with boats, and an outdoor theatre.
After Central park was opened in 1876, some wealthy New Yorkers soon built mansions along Fifth Avenue on Central Park’s eastern side. The family of Vanderbilts had as many as eleven mansions on Fifth Avenue along Central Park.
Now many of these mansions hold art collections. There are so many museums in this part of Fifth Avenue, that it is called “Museum Mile”. One of the museums is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with huge collection of art from all over the world. It is one of the most important museums in the United States.
The street on the western side of Central Park has large and unusual-looking apartment buildings. When the first of these buildings was being built, people were surprised. They were sure that people who had much money would not want to live in an apartment house, especially so far from the centre of the city (and people with little money could not afford living there because the apartments were very large and rich, so the rent was very high). Indeed, people said, the place was so far from the centre, that it was the same as building these apartment houses in the Dakotas. The builder liked the comparison, and called his building the Dakota. Surprisingly, when the building was finished, very soon every apartment was occupied. The apartments were very good, and the place with the view on Central Park attracted people. Some very famous people have lived in the Dakota, among them the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein and on of the famous Beatles musicians John Lennon, who was killed right outside the building on December 8, 1980.
Harlem.
Housing construction began in Harlem after 1900. But at first very few people needed new apartments in Manhattan, and the new buildings remained empty. Then a black man gave an idea to the building owners: why not rent the apartments to the black families who wanted to move from the old, half-ruined apartments in which they lived in downtown Manhattan? The idea worked, and in this way Harlem became an area mostly inhabited by black population.
Soon many people began saying that in Harlem blacks had better opportunities for housing and education. Many blacks moved to Harlem, not only from downtown Manhattan, but also from the south of the United States and even from the islands of the Caribbean.
The 1920s were the time of Harlem flourishing. Famous jazz musicians regularly performed in Harlem, Duke Ellington among them.
The depression of the 1930s hit Harlem hard. With a bad economy and continued discrimination, many blacks were unable to earn a living. The area became poorer, and many middle-class blacks left. Harlem has never really recovered economically. Yet it has kept its special atmosphere and remains a centre of black culture.