New York City |
New York City, specifically Manhattan, the most globally recognized of the city’s five boroughs, is the ultimate metropolis -
the constantly moving, throbbing financial center of America. It’s the global hub of business, where an address alone is synonymous
with an entire classification of international enterprise: Wall Street- finance; 7th Avenue - fashion; Madison Avenue - advertising; 5th Avenue - shopping; Broadway - theatre.
New York City is a sensual experience - a press of people, dizzying sights, and incessant sounds - taxis honking, subways clanking, street musicians entertaining. It’s a city that never sleeps, where revelers ending their night meet wholesalers beginning their day. Here, steel and glass skyscrapers compete to block out as much of the sky as they can and people stream from the underground subways, moving as one, shoulder to shoulder, as if with collective purpose, never glancing at each other, never sharing a word.
Despite its hard edge, fast pace, noise and congestion, New York is a magical city. It’s a city of riches - the best art, the best museums, the best restaurants, the best theater, the best shopping. Interwoven among these is an eclectic and unconventional street culture - subway art, street musicians, ethnic food sold from pushcarts - and yet to be discovered underground coffee shops, tucked away bookstores and galleries, intriguing shops, jazz clubs and Off-Off Broadway theaters.
While seemingly overwhelming, America’s most populated city is decidedly human. Surrounding superlative landmarks are neighborhoods with family-owned shops, diners and markets, which provide a way to truly engage with New York. Get to know the neighborhood around your hotel - find a place nearby for breakfast, go to a greenmarket, read a book in a bookstore alcove, stop by a jazz club.
Manhattan’s geography is simple, making it easier to navigate than it appears. Downtown is south; Midtown in the middle: Uptown north. At the lower tip of Downtown is Lower Manhattan, steeped in history. The port is there, as is South Street Seaport, Wall Street, the Stock Exchange and Ground Zero. Just a bit inland are Manhattan’s most colorful and ethnic neighborhoods: Chinatown, Little Italy, the Lower East Side and East Village, and also its trendiest: TriBeCa and SoHo, and Greenwich Village, still bohemian. Nudging on Midtown is Chelsea, with hundreds of galleries. Midtown is chock full of landmarks and activities: the Empire State Building, the Theatre District, the Garment District, Rockefeller Center, St. Patricks Cathedral, MoMa, Grand Central Station, to name but a few. The great green swath of Central Park centers Uptown, filled with shopping, restaurants and major museums in fashionable Upper East Side to the east. To the west, Lincoln Center, museums and more are in the Upper West Side. Everything in the city is accessible by a subway system that everyone rides and information on all places of interest always includes how to get there by subway. Once there, walk –everyone does.
New York is a city of immigrants - a rich and proud heritage symbolized by the Statue of Liberty in its harbor. The welcoming of immigrants began with the first Dutch settlers who established New Amsterdam in 1625, and encouraged other nationalities to join them. The 19th century brought waves of Irish fleeing the potato famine, Germans fleeing social unrest, and African Americans moving from the south in the Great Migration. The 20th century brought Italian peasants pushed off their land, Eastern Europeans fleeing oppression, and Puerto Ricans arriving in a Great Migration of their own. Today over one third of all New Yorkers were born outside the US, and over 100 million Americans claim an ancestor who first touched American soil on Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
From the beginning, ethnic groups have settled in enclaves - Lower East Side, Little Italy, Harlem, Chinatown, Little Germany, Spanish Harlem. Surrounded by the comfort of birth language, the aroma of familiar foods, the rituals of “old country” customs, immigrants became rooted in the city. They came with skills and ambition. They were craftsmen, cabinet makers, bakers, butchers, seamstresses and tailors. Some started businesses, many from pushcarts, others in small stores, markets, and specialty shops. Others worked in trades, in factories, on docks, in construction sites. Through their labor the city has thrived; through their contributions it has been enriched. Although constantly being transformed by changing demographics, economic pressures, gentrification, disasters and acts of terror, these urban villages have created a city with the richest cultural vitality and diversity in America.
New York is a city of commerce, where goods are made and goods are moved. Today, the activity of wholesalers creates an ambience found only in New York. Dawn brings the sound of trucks moving every conceivable item. In the Garment District, center of clothing manufacturing since the 19th century, fashion creations swing from rolling racks being pushed to and from the ateliers of big-name designers. Bookbinders, businesses, writers and artists find paper, paints and pens, binders, brushes and book cloth, pastels, portfolios and presentation boxes in the Printing District. Diamonds glitter in trays in shops, booths and stalls, most multi-generation family businesses, in the Diamond District. The Flower District, ablaze in a brilliant palette, bustles with the activity of choosing the perfect flower for photo shoots, hotel lobbies, restaurants, and theater sets. In the Bowery, crates of colorful china and gleaming utensils are stacked high in restaurant supply stores, and lighting of every shape casts a distinct glow in lighting showrooms. In the Meatpacking District, now Gransevoort Market, wholesale meat packers incongruously coexist with the hippest boutiques and restaurants.
It is through the Port of New York that people and goods have moved. The Dutch first saw the harbor as a conduit to Europe for the riches of this newly discovered land. With the opening of the Eric Canal in 1825, New York became the “mouth of the continent,” the flow-through point for the transatlantic passage of products from America’s heartland. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was the reigning seaport in America, in constant motion with gleaming cruise ships, functional cargo ships, sturdy tugboats, ferry boats and fishing vessels deftly performing a maritime dance. It was so important that it was said that “all streets lead to South Street,” two miles of piers and warehouses along the waterfront where sounds of clamorous cranes loading, the bellow of cruise ships leaving and longshoremen shouting were sounds synonymous to the city.
As other American ports gained prominence, the economic tide changed. Skyscrapers housing headquarters for global enterprise began to
overshadow the port activity. Today, luxury cruise ships still dock, ferries still move people, and container ships still arrive, but
the activity is diminished. The port’s heralded past is now celebrated in the Maritime Museum in South Street Seaport, a center for
waterfront shopping and dining, with great views of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor.
Culture dominates the landscape. The giants of the art world are here - the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the biggest museum in the Western Hemisphere; the Guggenheim, as famous for its Frank Lloyd Wright architecture as it is for its art; the Whitney, exhibiting the best of 20th century American art; the Frick, with a remarkable painting collection – clustered along Museum Mile on the Upper East Side. MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art is centrally located near Rockefeller Center in Midtown, and many more are in various parts of the city. The center of the gallery world is Chelsea, where loft galleries in this once industrial area provide dramatic space for an eclectic range of work.
On the Upper West Side, multiple concert halls and theaters form the 16 acre Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Opera divas take the stage at the Metropolitan Opera House, also the venue for the American Ballet Theatre. The New York City Ballet and the New York City Opera perform at the New York State Theatre. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra brings audiences to their feet in Avery Fisher Hall. In Midtown, avant garde dance companies perform under the distinctive dome of City Center. The venerable Carnegie Hall, renown for acoustical perfection since 1890, has been the venue of many world premiers, and in Radio City Music Hall the famous Rockettes have been entertaining with precision since 1932. A play is not a success until it makes it on Broadway, and those which succeed draw theater-goers for years.
New York is where music is made, were music is played. Musicians and songwriters have been drawn to the city since the late 19th century, coming first to Tin Pan Alley, a sheet music publishing center in Lower Manhattan, hoping to get their tunes published. The center of jazz, the truly American music with roots in New Orleans, moved to New York City in the 1920s, and the legends of jazz performed in popular clubs: Lennox Lounge and the fabled Cotton Club in Harlem; the iconic Village Vanguard, Birdland and Blue Note in Greenwich Village. Today the sounds of jazz still come from intimate clubs and jazz greats also jam in the Wynton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center on newly chic Columbus Circle. New York is headquarters for three of the four largest recording companies and the largest Hip hop labels in the world were founded here. In close proximity to the making of music, record stores carry every new and used recording every made.
New York is the hub for the written word, the center of the book publishing business in the United States, headquarters of Simon & Schuster, Random House, HarperCollins and for the publishers of the glossiest magazines in the world. Writers have long been attracted to the city, seeking out the companionship of kindred spirits in the bohemian atmosphere of Greenwich Village. Wonderful bookstores are found everywhere, some with rare books and first editions, some dark and cozy, others busy and bright. The television industry is huge - ABC and MTV broadcast from Times Square; NBC from Rockefeller Plaza, a favorite place for tourists hoping to be spotted by friends back home. Fox News, HBO, Comedy Central and late night shows originate from here, and the film industry, centered in trendy TriBeCa, is second only to Hollywood.
New York is a foodie’s town, a gastronomic paradise, where competition is stiff, hot spots come and go, while others stick around, never changing. Some restaurants are glitzy and glam and some of the best food is found in tucked away alcoves, some subterranean. In New York extraordinary chefs compete in upscale places, “small plates” are big business, afternoon tea is served in grand hotels, neighborhood diners offer good food and good company, and every imaginable ethnic flavor is easy to find. Jewish delis serve mounds of pastrami, Harlem beckons with soul food, and the tastiest morsels come from streetside pushcarts. Throughout the city, hot dogs rule, bagels compete, Jewish pickles are best full sour, and the best pizza is New York style. It’s a city in which 42 greenmarkets, where everything is fresh-grown and homemade, thrive in the midst of urban concrete. In the largest, Union Square, neighborhood housewives compete with famous chefs searching for the perfectly ripe.
There is an allure to New York shopping. Shop early, shop late, shop all night; find anything and everything, in shops from high end to bargain basement. The selection of merchandise is dizzying: clothing, shoes, handbags, millinery, cutlery, records, wine, books, chocolates, gadgets, fabric, jewels, art, luggage, decorative pieces for the home. In glamorous boutiques items are shown singularly, like works of art. In multi-level department stores elevators open to floor after floor of beautifully displayed merchandise. Shopping in bargain basements is a local sport, and in neighborhood storefronts, many family-owned, merchandise is stuffed helter-skelter or crammed tightly on racks.
New York is exhilarating. It’s a place not just to visit, but to participate. View the city from the Statue of Liberty or the Brooklyn
Bridge. Look up as the Macy’s 4th of July fireworks light up the awesome skyline; cheer for the giant balloons as they maneuver the
urban canyons in the Macys Thanksgiving Parade. Look out over Gotham from the 86th floor of the Empire State Building; contemplate
Ground Zero. Ice-skate at Rockefeller Plaza; enjoy the serenity of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral; take a carriage ride through Central
Park. Glow in neon color along the Great White Way; take in the action in Times Square; spot an idol at the MTV studios; be part of a
late night TV show audience. Trace your genealogy at Ellis Island; shop at Barney’s; find a bargain at designer sample sale; browse
through books at the Gotham Book Mart. Get lost in the Met, admire subway art, see a play on Broadway or Off, experience Shakespeare in
Central Park, tip a street musician. Experience the ultimate in fine dining, travel the world through your palette, savor a warm bagel
fresh from the oven, line up with New Yorkers at a pushcart for a falafel sandwich.
New York - the experience is endless.
Trust us, we've been there!
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