Chinese United Nations 1946 Un Negatives Delegate Mrs. New Very Rare Fantastic

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Seller: memorabilia111 ✉️ (808) 100%, Location: Ann Arbor, Michigan, US, Ships to: US & many other countries, Item: 176277816011 CHINESE UNITED NATIONS 1946 UN NEGATIVES DELEGATE MRS. NEW VERY RARE FANTASTIC. TWO 4X5 INCH NEGATIVES OF MRS. NEW CHINESE UNITED NATIONS UN DELEGATE FROM 1946 TAKEN BY FAMOUS PHOOGRAPHED RAY PLATNICK. ACCOMAPNIED WITH ORIGINAL NEGATIVE ENVELOPE AND PAPER DESCRIPTION Photographer Ray Platnick Date May 30th, 1946 duplicate Story Woman Chinese UN Delegate Names (L to R) in her apartment at 629 West 115th St., NYC sits hMs, New, chinese dalegate to UN subcommission. Photos FOr LOuiSE LEviTaS SUNDAY SEXION Raphael Platnick, known as Ray, was born in 1917, son of Samuel and Sarah (née Graubard) Platnick, and was the brother of Milton and Harriet. He was educated at Hempstead High School, Long Island and took up photography.


Raphael Platnick (March 30, 1917 – November 1986) was an American photojournalist and newspaper photographer. Contents 1 Biography 2 War photographer 3 News photographer 4 Style and legacy 5 References Biography Raphael Platnick, known as Ray, was born in 1917, son of Samuel and Sarah (née Graubard) Platnick, and was the brother of Milton and Harriet. He was educated at Hempstead High School, Long Island and took up photography. War photographer United States Marine Corps Private Theodore James Miller is hauled aboard the Coast Guard-crewed attack transport USS Arthur Middleton after an assault on Eniwetok, February 19, 1944. The uncropped negative shows two ratings lifting the exhausted, sea-sodden and soot-begrimed marine by both arms. During WW2, as Chief Photographer’s Mate Ray Platnick was one of the few Coast Guard combat photographers in the Pacific. He joined the first attackers on the beaches of Makin Island in August 1942 and in February 1944 scouted Japanese gun emplacements during the Battle of Eniwetok to warn Marines if they were occupied.[1] He photographed young marines, exhausted after two days and two nights of fighting, downing mugs of coffee.[2] A February 19, 1944 portrait attributed to him[3][4][5][6] and made during the Battle, of United States Marine Corps Private Theodore James Miller (later killed there on March 24, 1944) boarding the Coast Guard-manned attack transport USS Arthur Middleton presents a famous example of the traumatised expression of combat fatigue. In 1955 Edward Steichen selected Platnick's picture of a slain soldier on Eniwetok[7][8] for the world-touring Museum of Modern Art exhibition The Family of Man seen by 9 million visitors. The man rests face down with the back of his shirt ripped open,[9] having slid to the bottom of a trench atop which his rifle is planted, bayonet-first, into the sand. Accompanying the photograph were the printed words of Sophocles' rhetorical question; ‘Who is the slayer, who the victim? Speak!’.[10] Cropped and enlarged as a tall ‘exclamation-mark’ at 228.7 × 81.3 cm, the photograph stood by the entrance to a darkened room which housed a giant back-lit colour transparency (in the original in New York, replaced by a monochrome print at other venues) of the Ivy Mike hydrogen bomb test, also on Eniwetok Atoll.[11] News photographer Both before and after the war Platnick worked as a news photographer for PM, which had first appeared carrying headlines announcing the Nazi’s occupation of Paris, and was staunchly pro-labour. He reported for them on the 1941 Gimbel department store workers’ strike in which the protesters carried distinctive placards in the form of comic-strip frames, made up by the display department,[12] and also that year in an amusing series, he photographed Greenwich Village poets, including Diana Barrett Moulton, Maxwell Bodenheim and Joe Gould, in eccentric poses in front of their verses scrawled on the walls of the Village Arts Center at 1 Charles St.[13][14] He won the Grand Prize in the Spot News section of the New York Press Photographers’ Association 7th Annual Exhibition for What Makes Sammy Jump? showing news photographers leaping from the path of an enraged bull at the annual Madison Square Gardens Rodeo.[15] Still as a photographer for PM in 1946 he submitted Portrait of a Cop Killer to the Portraits and Personalities section of the New York Press Photographers’ 11th Annual Exhibit.[16] In the late 40s, Platnick compered a Saturday morning radio program Camera Column of the Air for Radio station WHLI in Hempstead, for which he interviewed professional and amateur photographers for a mostly amateur audience.[17] By 1949, after PM folded, he had moved to the New York Star.[18] His photographs were taken up by pictorial magazines; LIFE included one of his pictures in a story on the paucity of teachers’ salaries,[19] and in 1973 Ebony magazine re-used one of his 1940s photographs of Joe Lewis.[20] Style and legacy Platnick's approach and style was that of the 1940s press corps, pre-35mm, in his invariable use of on-camera flash on a 4”x5” Speed Graphic press camera or similar; the scene is harshly ‘filed’ with artificial light and available light is underexposed to help ‘cut-out’ the subject from any distractions of the background, an effect which would frequently be enhanced by the newspaper retouchers’ airbrushing, as in the case of his 1948 shot Lean Polenberg and Marie Duke issuing traffic summonses, New York, held by the International Center of Photography.[21] His use of instantaneous flash exposure caught fleeting expressions, often to amusing effect, animating what would otherwise be stilted and lifeless situations, as evident in his Jack Gilford at microphone of 1946[22] Platnick himself and his family were the subject of a photo story by Rae Russel in 1948, showing him with his cameras and in the darkroom.[23] As a consequence of the standardisation of press photographers’ technique and their similarity, Platnick’s photographs could be used to stand in for those of Weegee in The Public Eye, directed by Howard Franklin (October 1992) in which Joe Pesci plays a tough, live-by-his-wits news photographer in the early 1940s. The film is loosely modelled on Weegee, but the story is not, and several photographers' pictures, including Weegee’s, but also those of Lisette Model, Mickey Pallas, Wilbert H. Blanche, Irving Haberman, Roger Smith and Charles Steinheimer as well as Platnick’s are featured. Director Franklin says he was looking for "edgy, modern, high-contrast 40's" lighting and compositions with the “stark, rather lurid effects of flash, which pick out the central subject while everything around falls off rapidly into darkness”.[24] At the time of his death in November 1986 Platnick was residing in Merrick, Nassau County, New York. The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization aiming to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations.[2] It is the world's largest and most familiar international organization.[3] The UN is headquartered on international territory in New York City and has other main offices in Geneva, Nairobi, Vienna, and The Hague. The UN was established after World War II with the aim of preventing future wars, succeeding the ineffective League of Nations.[4] On 25 April 1945, 50 governments met in San Francisco for a conference and started drafting the UN Charter, which was adopted on 25 June 1945 and took effect on 24 October 1945, when the UN began operations. Pursuant to the Charter, the organization's objectives include maintaining international peace and security, protecting human rights, delivering humanitarian aid, promoting sustainable development, and upholding international law.[5] At its founding, the UN had 51 member states; with the addition of South Sudan in 2011, membership is now 193, representing almost all of the world's sovereign states.[6] The organization's mission to preserve world peace was complicated in its early decades by the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union and their respective allies. Its missions have consisted primarily of unarmed military observers and lightly armed troops with primarily monitoring, reporting and confidence-building roles.[7] UN membership grew significantly following widespread decolonization beginning in the 1960s. Since then, 80 former colonies have gained independence, including 11 trust territories that had been monitored by the Trusteeship Council.[8] By the 1970s, the UN's budget for economic and social development programmes far outstripped its spending on peacekeeping. After the end of the Cold War, the UN shifted and expanded its field operations, undertaking a wide variety of complex tasks.[9] The UN has six principal organs: the General Assembly; the Security Council; the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC); the Trusteeship Council; the International Court of Justice; and the UN Secretariat. The UN System includes a multitude of specialized agencies, funds and programmes such as the World Bank Group, the World Health Organization, the World Food Programme, UNESCO, and UNICEF. Additionally, non-governmental organizations may be granted consultative status with ECOSOC and other agencies to participate in the UN's work. The UN's chief administrative officer is the Secretary-General, currently Portuguese politician and diplomat António Guterres, who began his first five year-term on 1 January 2017 and was re-elected on 8 June 2021. The organization is financed by assessed and voluntary contributions from its member states. The UN, its officers, and its agencies have won many Nobel Peace Prizes, though other evaluations of its effectiveness have been mixed. Some commentators believe the organization to be an important force for peace and human development, while others have called it ineffective, biased, or corrupt. Contents 1 History 1.1 Background 1.2 Declarations by the Allies of World War II 1.3 Founding 1.4 Cold War Era 1.5 Post–Cold War 2 Structure 2.1 General Assembly 2.2 Security Council 2.3 UN Secretariat 2.4 International Court of Justice 2.5 Economic and Social Council 2.6 Specialized agencies 2.7 Other bodies 3 Membership 3.1 Group of 77 4 Objectives 4.1 Peacekeeping and security 4.2 Human rights 4.3 Economic development and humanitarian assistance 4.4 Other global issues 5 Funding 6 Evaluations, awards, and criticism 6.1 Evaluations 6.2 Awards 6.3 Criticism 7 Model United Nations 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 10.1 Citations 10.2 Bibliography 11 Further reading 12 External links 12.1 Official websites 12.2 Others History Main article: History of the United Nations Background In the century prior to the UN's creation, several international organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross were formed to ensure protection and assistance for victims of armed conflict and strife.[10] In 1914, a political assassination in Sarajevo set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I. As more and more young men were sent down into the trenches, influential voices in Britain and the United States began calling for the establishment of a permanent international body to maintain peace in the postwar world. President Woodrow Wilson became a vocal advocate of this concept, and in 1918, he included a sketch of the international body in his Fourteen Points to end the war. In November 1918, the Central Powers agreed to an armistice to halt the killing in World War I. Two months later, the Allies met to hammer out formal peace terms at the Paris Peace Conference. The League of Nations was approved, and in the summer of 1919 Wilson presented the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant of the League of Nations to the US Senate which refused to consent to the ratification. On 10 January 1920, the League of Nations formally came into being when the Covenant of the League of Nations, ratified by 42 nations in 1919, took effect.[11] The League Council acted as a type of executive body directing the Assembly's business. It began with four permanent members – Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan. Although the United States never joined the League, the country did support its economic and social missions through the work of private philanthropies and by sending representatives to committees. After some successes and some failures during the 1920s, the League proved ineffective in the 1930s. It failed to act against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria as in February 1933. Forty nations voted for Japan to withdraw from Manchuria but Japan voted against it and walked out of the League instead of withdrawing from Manchuria.[12] It also failed against the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, despite trying to talk to Benito Mussolini, but he used the time to send an army to Africa. The League had a plan for Mussolini to just take a part of Ethiopia, but he ignored the League and invaded Ethiopia. The League tried putting sanctions on Italy, but Italy had already conquered Ethiopia and the League had failed.[13] After Italy conquered Ethiopia, Italy and other nations left the league. But all of them realized that it had failed and they began to re-arm as fast as possible. During 1938, Britain and France tried negotiating directly with Hitler but this failed in 1939 when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia. When war broke out in 1939, the League closed down, and its headquarters in Geneva remained empty throughout the war.[14] Declarations by the Allies of World War II 1943 sketch by Franklin Roosevelt of the UN original three branches: The Four Policemen, an executive branch, and an international assembly of forty UN member states The first specific step towards the establishment of the United Nations was the Inter-Allied conference that led to the Declaration of St James's Palace on 12 June 1941.[15][16] The United Kingdom and the USSR agreed an alliance the following month with the Anglo-Soviet Agreement. By August 1941, American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had drafted the Atlantic Charter to define goals for the post-war world. At the subsequent meeting of the Inter-Allied Council in London on 24 September 1941, the eight governments in exile of countries under Axis occupation, together with the Soviet Union and representatives of the Free French Forces, unanimously adopted adherence to the common principles of policy set forth by Britain and United States.[17][18] President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met at the White House in December 1941 for the Arcadia Conference. Roosevelt coined the term United Nations to describe the Allied countries. He suggested it as an alternative to "Associated Powers", which the U.S. used in World War I (the U.S. was never formally a member of the Allies of World War I but entered the war in 1917 as a self-styled "Associated Power"). The British Prime Minister accepted it, noting its use by Lord Byron in the poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.[19][20] The text of the Declaration by United Nations was drafted on 29 December 1941, by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Roosevelt aide Harry Hopkins. It incorporated Soviet suggestions but included no role for France. One major change from the Atlantic Charter was the addition of a provision for religious freedom, which Stalin approved after Roosevelt insisted.[21][22] Roosevelt's idea of the "Four Powers", referring to the four major Allied countries, the United States, United Kingdom, Soviet Union, and Republic of China, emerged in the Declaration by United Nations.[23] On New Year's Day 1942, President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill, Maxim Litvinov, of the USSR, and T. V. Soong, of China, signed the "Declaration by United Nations",[24] and the next day the representatives of twenty-two other nations added their signatures. During the war, "the United Nations" became the official term for the Allies. To join, countries had to sign the Declaration and declare war on the Axis powers.[25] The Anglo-Soviet Treaty in 1942 formed a twenty-year political alliance between the British Empire and the Soviet Union. The October 1943 Moscow Conference resulted in the Moscow Declarations, including the Four Power Declaration on General Security which aimed for the creation "at the earliest possible date of a general international organization". This was the first public announcement that a new international organization was being contemplated to replace the League of Nations. The Tehran Conference followed shortly afterwards at which Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met and discussed the idea of a post-war international organization. Founding The UN in 1945: founding members in light blue, protectorates and territories of the founding members in dark blue The new international organization was formulated and negotiated among the delegations from the Allied Big Four at the Dumbarton Oaks Conference from 21 September to 7 October 1944. Representatives from the United States and the United Kingdom met first with those from the Soviet Union and, in the following week, with representatives from the Republic of China. They agreed on proposals for the aims, structure and functioning of the new international organization.[26][27][28] It took the conference at Yalta, plus further negotiations with Moscow, before all the issues were resolved.[29] By 1 March 1945, 21 additional states had signed the Declaration by United Nations.[30] After months of planning, the UN Conference on International Organization opened in San Francisco, 25 April 1945, attended by 50 governments and a number of non-governmental organizations.[31][32][33] The Big Four sponsoring countries invited other nations to take part and the heads of the delegations of the four chaired the plenary meetings.[34] Winston Churchill urged Roosevelt to restore France to its status of a major Power after the liberation of Paris in August 1944. The drafting of the Charter of the United Nations was completed over the following two months; it was signed on 26 June 1945 by the representatives of the 50 countries. The UN officially came into existence on 24 October 1945, upon ratification of the Charter by the five permanent members of the Security Council—the US, the UK, France, the Soviet Union and the Republic of China—and by a majority of the other 46 signatories.[35] The first meetings of the General Assembly, with 51 nations represented,[a] and the Security Council took place in London beginning in January 1946.[35] Debates began at once, covering topical issues such as the presence of Russian troops in Iranian Azerbaijan, British forces in Greece and within days the first veto was cast.[38] The General Assembly selected New York City as the site for the headquarters of the UN, construction began on 14 September 1948 and the facility was completed on 9 October 1952. Its site—like UN headquarters buildings in Geneva, Vienna, and Nairobi—is designated as international territory.[39] The Norwegian Foreign Minister, Trygve Lie, was elected as the first UN Secretary-General.[35] Cold War Era Dag Hammarskjöld was a particularly active Secretary-General from 1953 until his death in 1961. Though the UN's primary mandate was peacekeeping, the division between the US and USSR often paralysed the organization, generally allowing it to intervene only in conflicts distant from the Cold War.[40] Two notable exceptions were a Security Council resolution on 7 July 1950 authorizing a US-led coalition to repel the North Korean invasion of South Korea, passed in the absence of the USSR,[35][41] and the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement on 27 July 1953.[42] On 29 November 1947, the General Assembly approved a resolution to partition Palestine, approving the creation of the state of Israel.[43] Two years later, Ralph Bunche, a UN official, negotiated an armistice to the resulting conflict.[44] On 7 November 1956, the first UN peacekeeping force was established to end the Suez Crisis;[45] however, the UN was unable to intervene against the USSR's simultaneous invasion of Hungary following that country's revolution.[46] On 14 July 1960, the UN established United Nations Operation in the Congo (UNOC), the largest military force of its early decades, to bring order to the breakaway State of Katanga, restoring it to the control of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by 11 May 1964.[47] While traveling to meet rebel leader Moise Tshombe during the conflict, Dag Hammarskjöld, often named as one of the UN's most effective Secretaries-General,[48] died in a plane crash; months later he was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[49] In 1964, Hammarskjöld's successor, U Thant, deployed the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus, which would become one of the UN's longest-running peacekeeping missions.[50] With the spread of decolonization in the 1960s, the organization's membership saw an influx of newly independent nations. In 1960 alone, 17 new states joined the UN, 16 of them from Africa.[45] On 25 October 1971, with opposition from the United States, but with the support of many Third World nations, the mainland, communist People's Republic of China was given the Chinese seat on the Security Council in place of the Republic of China that occupied Taiwan; the vote was widely seen as a sign of waning US influence in the organization.[51] Third World nations organized into the Group of 77 coalition under the leadership of Algeria, which briefly became a dominant power at the UN.[52] On 10 November 1975, a bloc comprising the USSR and Third World nations passed a resolution, over the strenuous US and Israeli opposition, declaring Zionism to be racism; the resolution was repealed on 16 December 1991, shortly after the end of the Cold War.[53][54] With an increasing Third World presence and the failure of UN mediation in conflicts in the Middle East, Vietnam, and Kashmir, the UN increasingly shifted its attention to its ostensibly secondary goals of economic development and cultural exchange.[55] By the 1970s, the UN budget for social and economic development was far greater than its peacekeeping budget. Post–Cold War Kofi Annan, Secretary-General from 1997 to 2006 Flags of member nations at the United Nations Headquarters, seen in 2007 After the Cold War, the UN saw a radical expansion in its peacekeeping duties, taking on more missions in five years than it had in the previous four decades.[56] Between 1988 and 2000, the number of adopted Security Council resolutions more than doubled, and the peacekeeping budget increased more than tenfold.[57][58][59] The UN negotiated an end to the Salvadoran Civil War, launched a successful peacekeeping mission in Namibia, and oversaw democratic elections in post-apartheid South Africa and post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia.[60] In 1991, the UN authorized a US-led coalition that repulsed the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.[61] Brian Urquhart, Under-Secretary-General from 1971 to 1985, later described the hopes raised by these successes as a "false renaissance" for the organization, given the more troubled missions that followed.[62] Beginning in the last decades of the Cold War, American and European critics of the UN condemned the organization for perceived mismanagement and corruption.[63] In 1984, US President Ronald Reagan, withdrew his nation's funding from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) over allegations of mismanagement, followed by the UK and Singapore.[64][65] Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, initiated a reform of the Secretariat, reducing the size of the organization somewhat.[66][67] His successor, Kofi Annan (1997–2006), initiated further management reforms in the face of threats from the US to withhold its UN dues.[67] Though the UN Charter had been written primarily to prevent aggression by one nation against another, in the early 1990s the UN faced a number of simultaneous, serious crises within nations such as Somalia, Haiti, Mozambique, and the former Yugoslavia.[68] The UN mission in Somalia was widely viewed as a failure after the US withdrawal following casualties in the Battle of Mogadishu. The UN mission to Bosnia faced "worldwide ridicule" for its indecisive and confused mission in the face of ethnic cleansing.[69] In 1994, the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda failed to intervene in the Rwandan genocide amid indecision in the Security Council.[70] From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, international interventions authorized by the UN took a wider variety of forms. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 authorised the NATO-led Kosovo Force beginning in 1999. The UN mission (1999-2006) in the Sierra Leone Civil War was supplemented by a British military intervention. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was overseen by NATO.[71] In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq despite failing to pass a UN Security Council resolution for authorization, prompting a new round of questioning of the organization's effectiveness.[72] Under the eighth Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the UN intervened with peacekeepers in crises such as the War in Darfur in Sudan and the Kivu conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo and sent observers and chemical weapons inspectors to the Syrian Civil War.[73] In 2013, an internal review of UN actions in the final battles of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009 concluded that the organization had suffered "systemic failure".[74] In 2010, the organization suffered the worst loss of life in its history, when 101 personnel died in the Haiti earthquake.[75] Acting under United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 in 2011, NATO countries intervened in the Libyan Civil War. The Millennium Summit was held in 2000 to discuss the UN's role in the 21st century.[76] The three day meeting was the largest gathering of world leaders in history, and culminated in the adoption by all member states of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a commitment to achieve international development in areas such as poverty reduction, gender equality, and public health. Progress towards these goals, which were to be met by 2015, was ultimately uneven. The 2005 World Summit reaffirmed the UN's focus on promoting development, peacekeeping, human rights, and global security.[77] The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.[78] In addition to addressing global challenges, the UN has sought to improve its accountability and democratic legitimacy by engaging more with civil society and fostering a global constituency.[79] In an effort to enhance transparency, in 2016 the organization held its first public debate between candidates for Secretary-General.[80] On 1 January 2017, Portuguese diplomat António Guterres, who previously served as UN High Commissioner for Refugees, became the ninth Secretary-General. Guterres has highlighted several key goals for his administration, including an emphasis on diplomacy for preventing conflicts, more effective peacekeeping efforts, and streamlining the organization to be more responsive and versatile to global needs.[81] Structure Main article: United Nations System The United Nations is part of the broader UN system, which includes an extensive network of institutions and entities. Central to the organisation are five principal organs established by the UN Charter: the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the UN Secretariat.[82] A sixth principal organ, the Trusteeship Council, suspended operations on 1 November 1994, upon the independence of Palau, the last remaining UN trustee territory.[83] Four of the five principal organs are located at the main UN Headquarters in New York City, while the ICJ is seated in The Hague.[84] Most other major agencies are based in the UN offices at Geneva,[85] Vienna,[86] and Nairobi;[87] additional UN institutions are located throughout the world. The six official languages of the UN, used in intergovernmental meetings and documents, are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.[88] On the basis of the Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations, the UN and its agencies are immune from the laws of the countries where they operate, safeguarding the UN's impartiality with regard to host and member countries.[89] Below the six organs sit, in the words of the author Linda Fasulo, "an amazing collection of entities and organizations, some of which are actually older than the UN itself and operate with almost complete independence from it".[90] These include specialized agencies, research and training institutions, programs and funds, and other UN entities.[91] All organisations in the UN system obey the Noblemaire principle, which calls for salaries that will attract and retain citizens of countries where compensation is highest, and which ensures equal pay for work of equal value regardless of the employee's nationality.[92][93] In practice, the International Civil Service Commission, which governs the conditions of UN personnel, takes reference to the highest-paying national civil service.[94] Staff salaries are subject to an internal tax that is administered by the UN organizations.[92][95] Principal organs of the United Nations[96]vte UN General Assembly — Deliberative assembly of all UN member states — UN Secretariat — Administrative organ of the UN — International Court of Justice — Universal court for international law — UN General Assembly hall Headquarters of the UN in New York City International Court of Justice May resolve non-compulsory recommendations to states or suggestions to the Security Council (UNSC); Decides on the admission of new members, following proposal by the UNSC; Adopts the budget; Elects the non-permanent members of the UNSC; all members of ECOSOC; the UN Secretary General (following their proposal by the UNSC); and the fifteen judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Each country has one vote. Supports the other UN bodies administratively (for example, in the organization of conferences, the writing of reports and studies and the preparation of the budget); Its chairperson—the UN Secretary General—is elected by the General Assembly for a five-year mandate and is the UN's foremost representative. Decides disputes between states that recognize its jurisdiction; Issues legal opinions; Renders judgment by relative majority. Its fifteen judges are elected by the UN General Assembly for nine-year terms. UN Security Council — For international security issues — UN Economic and Social Council — For global economic and social affairs — UN Trusteeship Council — For administering trust territories (currently inactive) — UN security council UN Economic and Social Council UN Trusteeship Council Responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security; May adopt compulsory resolutions; Has fifteen members: five permanent members with veto power and ten elected members. Responsible for co-operation between states as regards economic and social matters; Co-ordinates co-operation between the UN's numerous specialized agencies; Has 54 members, elected by the General Assembly to serve staggered three-year mandates. Was originally designed to manage colonial possessions that were former League of Nations mandates; Has been inactive since 1994, when Palau, the last trust territory, attained independence. General Assembly Main article: United Nations General Assembly Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet general secretary, addressing the UN General Assembly in December 1988 The General Assembly is the main deliberative assembly of the UN. Composed of all UN member states, the assembly meets in regular yearly sessions, but emergency sessions can also be called.[97] The assembly is led by a president, elected from among the member states on a rotating regional basis, and 21 vice-presidents.[98] The first session convened 10 January 1946 in the Methodist Central Hall in London and included representatives of 51 nations.[35] When the General Assembly decides on important questions such as those on peace and security, admission of new members and budgetary matters, a two-thirds majority of those present and voting is required.[99][100] All other questions are decided by a majority vote. Each member country has one vote. Apart from the approval of budgetary matters, resolutions are not binding on the members. The Assembly may make recommendations on any matters within the scope of the UN, except matters of peace and security that are under consideration by the Security Council.[97] Draft resolutions can be forwarded to the General Assembly by its six main committees:[101] First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) Second Committee (Economic and Financial) Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural) Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) Sixth Committee (Legal) As well as by the following two committees: General Committee – a supervisory committee consisting of the assembly's president, vice-president, and committee heads Credentials Committee – responsible for determining the credentials of each member nation's UN representatives Security Council Main article: United Nations Security Council Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, demonstrates a vial with alleged Iraq chemical weapon probes to the UN Security Council on Iraq war hearings, 5 February 2003 The Security Council is charged with maintaining peace and security among countries. While other organs of the UN can only make "recommendations" to member states, the Security Council has the power to make binding decisions that member states have agreed to carry out, under the terms of Charter Article 25.[102] The decisions of the council are known as United Nations Security Council resolutions.[103] The Security Council is made up of fifteen member states, consisting of five permanent members—China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and ten non-permanent members elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly: Estonia (term ends 2021), India (2022), Indonesia (2022), Mexico (2022), Niger (2021), Norway (2022), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (2021), Tunisia (2021), and Vietnam (2021).[104] The five permanent members hold veto power over UN resolutions, allowing a permanent member to block adoption of a resolution, though not debate. The ten temporary seats are held for two-year terms, with five member states per year voted in by the General Assembly on a regional basis.[105] The presidency of the Security Council rotates alphabetically each month.[106] UN Secretariat Main articles: United Nations Secretariat and Secretary-General of the United Nations Current secretary-general, António Guterres The UN Secretariat carries out the day-to-day duties required to operate and maintain the UN system.[107] It is comprised of tens of thousands of international civil servants worldwide and headed by the Secretary-General, who is assisted by the Deputy Secretary-General.[108] The Secretariat's duties include providing information and facilities needed by UN bodies for their meetings; it also carries out tasks as directed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, and other UN bodies.[109] The Secretary-General acts as the de facto spokesperson and leader of the UN. The position is defined in the UN Charter as the organization's "chief administrative officer".[110] Article 99 of the charter states that the secretary-general can bring to the Security Council's attention "any matter which in his opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security", a phrase that Secretaries-General since Trygve Lie have interpreted as giving the position broad scope for action on the world stage.[111] The office has evolved into a dual role of an administrator of the UN organization and a diplomat and mediator addressing disputes between member states and finding consensus to global issues.[112] The Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly, after being recommended by the Security Council, where the permanent members have veto power. There are no specific criteria for the post, but over the years it has become accepted that the position shall be held for one or two terms of five years.[113] The current Secretary-General is António Guterres of Portugal, who replaced Ban Ki-moon in 2017. Secretaries-General of the United Nations[114] No. Name Country of origin Took office Left office Notes - Gladwyn Jebb  United Kingdom 24 October 1945 2 February 1946 Served as Acting Secretary-General until Lie's election 1 Trygve Lie  Norway 2 February 1946 10 November 1952 Resigned 2 Dag Hammarskjöld  Sweden 10 April 1953 18 September 1961 Died in office 3 U Thant  Burma 30 November 1961 31 December 1971 First non-European to hold office 4 Kurt Waldheim  Austria 1 January 1972 31 December 1981 5 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar  Peru 1 January 1982 31 December 1991 6 Boutros Boutros-Ghali  Egypt 1 January 1992 31 December 1996 Served for the shortest time 7 Kofi Annan  Ghana 1 January 1997 31 December 2006 8 Ban Ki-moon  South Korea 1 January 2007 31 December 2016 9 António Guterres  Portugal 1 January 2017 Incumbent International Court of Justice Main article: International Court of Justice The ICJ ruled that Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008 did not violate international law. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), sometimes known as the World Court,[115] is the primary judicial organ of the UN. It is the successor to the Permanent Court of International Justice and occupies that body's former headquarters in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands, making it the only principal organ not based in New York City. The ICJ's main function is adjudicating disputes among states; it has heard cases concerning war crimes, violations of state sovereignty, ethnic cleansing, and other issues.[116] The court can also be called upon by other UN organs to provide advisory opinions on matters of international law.[117] All UN member states are parties to the ICJ Statute, which forms an integral part of the UN Charter, and nonmembers may also become parties. The ICJ's rulings are binding upon parties and, along with its advisory opinions, serve as sources of international law.[118] The court is composed of 15 judges appointed to nine-year terms by the General Assembly; every sitting judge must be from a different nation.[117][119] Economic and Social Council Main article: United Nations Economic and Social Council The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assists the General Assembly in promoting international economic, social, and humanitarian co-operation and development.[120] It was established to serve as the UN's primary forum for global issues and is the largest and most complex UN body.[120] ECOSOC's functions include gathering data, conducting studies, advising member nations, and making recommendations.[121][122] Its work is carried out primarily by subsidiary bodies focused on a wide variety of topics; these include the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which advises UN agencies on issues relating to indigenous peoples; the United Nations Forum on Forests, which coordinates and promotes sustainable forest management; the United Nations Statistical Commission, which co-ordinates information-gathering efforts between agencies; and the Commission on Sustainable Development, which co-ordinates efforts between UN agencies and NGOs working towards sustainable development. ECOSOC may also grant consultative status to nongovernmental organizations;[121] as of April 2021, close to 5,600 organizations have this status.[123][124] Specialized agencies Main article: List of specialized agencies of the United Nations The UN Charter stipulates that each primary organ of the United Nations can establish various specialized agencies to fulfil its duties.[125] Specialized agencies are autonomous organizations working with the United Nations and each other through the co-ordinating machinery of the Economic and Social Council. Each was integrated into the UN system through an agreement with the UN under UN Charter article 57.[126] There are fifteen specialized agencies, which perform functions as diverse as facilitating international travel, preventing and address pandemics, and promoting economic development.[127][b] Specialized agencies of the United Nations No. Acronym Agency Headquarters Head Established in 1 FAO Food and Agriculture Organization Italy Rome, Italy China Qu Dongyu 1945 2 ICAO International Civil Aviation Organization Canada Montreal, Quebec, Canada Colombia Juan Carlos Salazar 1947 3 IFAD International Fund for Agricultural Development Italy Rome, Italy Togo Gilbert Houngbo 1977 4 ILO International Labour Organization Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland United Kingdom Guy Ryder 1946 (1919) 5 IMO International Maritime Organization United Kingdom London, United Kingdom South Korea Kitack Lim 1948 6 IMF International Monetary Fund United States Washington, D.C., United States Bulgaria Kristalina Georgieva 1945 (1944) 7 ITU International Telecommunication Union Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland China Houlin Zhao 1947 (1865) 8 UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization France Paris, France France Audrey Azoulay 1946 9 UNIDO United Nations Industrial Development Organization Austria Vienna, Austria China Li Yong 1967 10 UNWTO World Tourism Organization Spain Madrid, Spain Georgia (country) Zurab Pololikashvili 1974 11 UPU Universal Postal Union Switzerland Bern, Switzerland Japan Masahiko Metoki 1947 (1874) 12 WBG World Bank Group United States Washington, D.C., United States United States David Malpass (president) 1945 (1944) 13 WHO World Health Organization Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland Ethiopia Tedros Adhanom 1948 14 WIPO World Intellectual Property Organization Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland Singapore Daren Tang 1974 15 WMO World Meteorological Organization Switzerland Geneva, Switzerland Finland Petteri Taalas (secretary-general) Germany Gerhard Adrian (president) 1950 (1873) Other bodies The United Nations system includes a myriad of autonomous, separately-administered funds, programmes, research and training institutes, and other subsidiary bodies.[128] Each of these entities have their own area of work, governance structure, and budget; several, such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), operate independently of the UN but maintain formal partnership agreements. The UN performs much of its humanitarian work through these institutions, such as preventing famine and malnutrition (World Food Programme), protecting vulnerable and displaced people (UNHCR), and combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic (UNAIDS).[129] Membership Main article: Member states of the United Nations All the world's undisputed independent states, apart from Vatican City, are members of the United Nations.[6][c] South Sudan, which joined 14 July 2011, is the most recent addition, bringing a total of 193 UN member states.[130] The UN Charter outlines the rules for membership: 1. Membership in the United Nations is open to all other peace-loving states that accept the obligations contained in the present Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able and willing to carry out these obligations. 2. The admission of any such state to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. Chapter II, Article 4.[131] Under Sukarno, Indonesia became the first and only country to leave the United Nations. In addition, there are two non-member observer states of the United Nations General Assembly: the Holy See (which holds sovereignty over Vatican City) and the State of Palestine.[132] The Cook Islands and Niue, both states in free association with New Zealand, are full members of several UN specialized agencies and have had their "full treaty-making capacity" recognized by the Secretariat.[133] Indonesia is the first and the only nation to withdraw its membership from the United Nations, in protest to the election of Malaysia as a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 1965 during conflict between the two countries.[134] After forming CONEFO as a short-lived rival to the UN, Indonesia resumed its full membership in 1966. Group of 77 Main article: Group of 77 The Group of 77 (G77) at the UN is a loose coalition of developing nations, designed to promote its members' collective economic interests and create an enhanced joint negotiating capacity in the UN. Seventy-seven nations founded the organization, but by November 2013 the organization had since expanded to 133 member countries.[135] The group was founded 15 June 1964 by the "Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven Countries" issued at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The group held its first major meeting in Algiers in 1967, where it adopted the Charter of Algiers and established the basis for permanent institutional structures.[136] With the adoption of the New International Economic Order by developing countries in the 1970s, the work of the G77 spread throughout the UN system. Similar groupings of developing states also operate in other UN agencies, such as the Group of 24 (G-24), which operates in the IMF on monetary affairs. Objectives Peacekeeping and security Main articles: United Nations peacekeeping and List of United Nations peacekeeping missions The UN, after approval by the Security Council, sends peacekeepers to regions where armed conflict has recently ceased or paused to enforce the terms of peace agreements and to discourage combatants from resuming hostilities. Since the UN does not maintain its own military, peacekeeping forces are voluntarily provided by member states. These soldiers are sometimes nicknamed "Blue Helmets" for their distinctive gear.[137][138] Peacekeeping forces as a whole received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988.[139] A Nepalese soldier on a peacekeeping deployment providing security at a rice distribution site in Haiti during 2010 The UN has carried out 71 peacekeeping operations since 1947; as of April 2021, over 88,000 peacekeeping personnel from 121 nations were deployed on 12 missions, mostly in Africa.[140] The largest is the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), which has close to 19,200 uniformed personnel;[141] the smallest, the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), consists of 113 civilians and experts charged with monitoring the ceasefire in Jammu and Kashmir. UN peacekeepers with the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) have been stationed in the Middle East since 1948, the longest-running active peacekeeping mission.[142] A study by the RAND Corporation in 2005 found the UN to be successful in two out of three peacekeeping efforts. It compared efforts at nation-building by the UN to those of the United States, and found that seven out of eight UN cases are at peace, as compared with four out of eight U.S. cases at peace.[143] Also in 2005, the Human Security Report documented a decline in the number of wars, genocides, and human rights abuses since the end of the Cold War, and presented evidence, albeit circumstantial, that international activism—mostly spearheaded by the UN—has been the main cause of the decline in armed conflict in that period.[144] Situations in which the UN has not only acted to keep the peace but also intervened include the Korean War (1950–53) and the authorization of intervention in Iraq after the Gulf War (1990–91).[145] Further studies published between 2008 and 2021 determined UN peacekeeping operations to be more effective at ensuring long-lasting peace and minimizing civilian casualties.[146] The UN Buffer Zone in Cyprus was established in 1974 following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus. The UN has also drawn criticism for perceived failures. In many cases, member states have shown reluctance to achieve or enforce Security Council resolutions. Disagreements in the Security Council about military action and intervention are seen as having failed to prevent the Bangladesh genocide in 1971,[147] the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s,[148] and the Rwandan genocide in 1994.[149] Similarly, UN inaction is blamed for failing to either prevent the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 or complete the peacekeeping operations in 1992–93 during the Somali Civil War.[150] UN peacekeepers have also been accused of child rape, soliciting prostitutes, and sexual abuse during various peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,[151] Haiti,[152] Liberia,[153] Sudan and what is now South Sudan,[154] Burundi, and Ivory Coast.[155] Scientists cited UN peacekeepers from Nepal as the likely source of the 2010–13 Haiti cholera outbreak, which killed more than 8,000 Haitians following the 2010 Haiti earthquake.[156] In addition to peacekeeping, the UN is also active in encouraging disarmament. Regulation of armaments was included in the writing of the UN Charter in 1945 and was envisioned as a way of limiting the use of human and economic resources for their creation.[102] The advent of nuclear weapons came only weeks after the signing of the charter, resulting in the first resolution of the first General Assembly meeting calling for specific proposals for "the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction".[157] The UN has been involved with arms-limitation treaties, such as the Outer Space Treaty (1967), the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (1968), the Seabed Arms Control Treaty (1971), the Biological Weapons Convention (1972), the Chemical Weapons Convention (1992), and the Ottawa Treaty (1997), which prohibits landmines.[158] Three UN bodies oversee arms proliferation issues: the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization Preparatory Commission.[159] Additionally, many peacekeeping missions focus on disarmament: several operations in West Africa disarmed roughly 250,000 former combatants and secured tens of thousands of weapons and millions of munitions.[160] Human rights One of the UN's primary purposes is "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion", and member states pledge to undertake "joint and separate action" to protect these rights.[125][161] Eleanor Roosevelt with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1949 In 1948, the General Assembly adopted a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, drafted by a committee headed by American diplomat and activist Eleanor Roosevelt, and including the French lawyer René Cassin. The document proclaims basic civil, political, and economic rights common to all human beings, though its effectiveness towards achieving these ends has been disputed since its drafting.[162] The Declaration serves as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations" rather than a legally binding document, but it has become the basis of two binding treaties, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.[163] In practice, the UN is unable to take significant action against human rights abuses without a Security Council resolution, though it does substantial work in investigating and reporting abuses.[164] In 1979, the General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, followed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.[165] With the end of the Cold War, the push for human rights action took on new impetus.[166] The United Nations Commission on Human Rights was formed in 1993 to oversee human rights issues for the UN, following the recommendation of that year's World Conference on Human Rights. Jacques Fomerand, a scholar of the UN, describes this organization's mandate as "broad and vague", with only "meagre" resources to carry it out.[167] In 2006, it was replaced by a Human Rights Council consisting of 47 nations.[168] Also in 2006, the General Assembly passed a Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,[169] and in 2011 it passed its first resolution recognizing the rights of LGBT people.[170] Other UN bodies responsible for women's rights issues include United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, a commission of ECOSOC founded in 1946; the United Nations Development Fund for Women, created in 1976; and the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, founded in 1979.[171] The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, one of three bodies with a mandate to oversee issues related to indigenous peoples, held its first session in 2002.[172] Economic development and humanitarian assistance Millennium Development Goals[173] Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Achieve universal primary education Promote gender equality and empower women Reduce child mortality Improve maternal health Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases Ensure environmental sustainability Develop a global partnership for development Another primary purpose of the UN is "to achieve international cooperation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character".[161] Numerous bodies have been created to work towards this goal, primarily under the authority of the General Assembly and ECOSOC.[174] In 2000, the 192 UN member states agreed to achieve eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.[175] The Sustainable Development Goals were launched in 2015 to succeed the Millennium Development Goals.[78] The SDGs have an associated financing framework called the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. The UN Development Programme (UNDP), an organization for grant-based technical assistance founded in 1945, is one of the leading bodies in the field of international development. The organization also publishes the UN Human Development Index, a comparative measure ranking countries by poverty, literacy, education, life expectancy, and other factors.[176][177] The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), also founded in 1945, promotes agricultural development and food security.[178] UNICEF (the United Nations Children's Fund) was created in 1946 to aid European children after the Second World War and expanded its mission to provide aid around the world and to uphold the convention on the Rights of the Child.[179][180] Three former directors of the Global Smallpox Eradication Programme reading the news that smallpox has been globally eradicated in 1980 The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are independent, specialized agencies and observers within the UN framework, according to a 1947 agreement. They were initially formed separately from the UN through the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944.[181] The World Bank provides loans for international development, while the IMF promotes international economic co-operation and gives emergency loans to indebted countries.[182] In Jordan, UNHCR remains responsible for the Syrian refugees and the Zaatari refugee camp. The World Health Organization (WHO), which focuses on international health issues and disease eradication, is another of the UN's largest agencies. In 1980, the agency announced that the eradication of smallpox had been completed. In subsequent decades, WHO largely eradicated polio, river blindness, and leprosy.[183] The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), begun in 1996, co-ordinates the organization's response to the AIDS epidemic.[184] The UN Population Fund, which also dedicates part of its resources to combating HIV, is the world's largest source of funding for reproductive health and family planning services.[185] Along with the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the UN often takes a leading role in co-ordinating emergency relief.[186] The World Food Programme (WFP), created in 1961, provides food aid in response to famine, natural disasters, and armed conflict. The organization reports that it feeds an average of 90 million people in 80 nations each year.[186][187] The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), established in 1950, works to protect the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless people.[188] UNHCR and WFP programmes are funded by voluntary contributions from governments, corporations, and individuals, though the UNHCR's administrative costs are paid for by the UN's primary budget.[189] Other global issues Since the UN's creation, over 80 colonies have attained independence. The General Assembly adopted the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples in 1960 with no votes against but abstentions from all major colonial powers. The UN works towards decolonization through groups including the UN Committee on Decolonization, created in 1962.[190] The committee lists seventeen remaining "Non-Self-Governing Territories", the largest and most populous of which is Western Sahara.[191] Beginning with the formation of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in 1972, the UN has made environmental issues a prominent part of its agenda. A lack of success in the first two decades of UN work in this area led to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which sought to give new impetus to these efforts.[192] In 1988, the UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), another UN organization, established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which assesses and reports on research on global warming.[193] The UN-sponsored Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, set legally binding emissions reduction targets for ratifying states.[194] The UN also declares and co-ordinates international observances that bring awareness to issues of international interest or concern; examples include World Tuberculosis Day, Earth Day, and the International Year of Deserts and Desertification.[195] Funding Top 25 contributors to the United Nations budget for the period 2019–2021[196] Member state Contribution (% of UN budget)  United States 22.000  China 12.005  Japan 8.564  Germany 6.090  United Kingdom 4.567  France 4.427  Italy 3.307  Brazil 2.948  Canada 2.734  Russia 2.405  South Korea 2.267  Australia 2.210  Spain 2.146  Turkey 1.371  Netherlands 1.356  Mexico 1.292  Saudi Arabia 1.172   Switzerland 1.151  Argentina 0.915  Sweden 0.906  India 0.834  Belgium 0.821  Poland 0.802  Algeria 0.788  Norway 0.754 Other member states 12.168 The UN budget for 2020 was $3.1 billion,[197] not including additional resources donated by members, such as peacekeeping forces. The UN is financed from assessed and voluntary contributions from member states. The General Assembly approves the regular budget and determines the assessment for each member. This is broadly based on the relative capacity of each country to pay, as measured by its gross national income (GNI), with adjustments for external debt and low per capita income.[198] The Assembly has established the principle that the UN should not be unduly dependent on any one member to finance its operations. Thus, there is a "ceiling" rate, setting the maximum amount that any member can be assessed for the regular budget. In December 2000, the Assembly revised the scale of assessments in response to pressure from the United States. As part of that revision, the regular budget ceiling was reduced from 25% to 22%.[199] For the least developed countries (LDCs), a ceiling rate of 0.01% is applied.[198] In addition to the ceiling rates, the minimum amount assessed to any member nation (or "floor" rate) is set at 0.001% of the UN budget ($55,120 for the two year budget 2013–2014).[200] A large share of the UN's expenditure addresses its core mission of peace and security, and this budget is assessed separately from the main organizational budget.[201] The peacekeeping budget for the 2015–16 fiscal year was $8.27 billion, supporting 82,318 troops deployed in 15 missions around the world.[142] UN peace operations are funded by assessments, using a formula derived from the regular funding scale that includes a weighted surcharge for the five permanent Security Council members, who must approve all peacekeeping operations. This surcharge serves to offset discounted peacekeeping assessment rates for less developed countries. The largest contributors for the UN peacekeeping financial operations for the period 2019–2021 are : the United States (27.89%), China (15.21%), Japan (8.56%), Germany (6.09%), the United Kingdom (5.78%), France (5.61%), Italy (3.30%), and Russia (3.04%).[202] Special UN programmes not included in the regular budget, such as UNICEF and the World Food Programme, are financed by voluntary contributions from member governments, corporations, and private individuals.[203][204] Evaluations, awards, and criticism Main articles: Reform of the United Nations and Reform of the United Nations Security Council See also: Criticism of the United Nations The 2001 Nobel Peace Prize to the UN—diploma in the lobby of the UN Headquarters in New York City Evaluations In evaluating the UN as a whole, Jacques Fomerand writes that the "accomplishments of the United Nations in the last 60 years are impressive in their own terms. Progress in human development during the 20th century has been dramatic, and the UN and its agencies have certainly helped the world become a more hospitable and livable place for millions".[205] Evaluating the first 50 years of the UN's history, the author Stanley Meisler writes that "the United Nations never fulfilled the hopes of its founders, but it accomplished a great deal nevertheless", citing its role in decolonization and its many successful peacekeeping efforts.[206] British historian Paul Kennedy states that while the organization has suffered some major setbacks, "when all its aspects are considered, the UN has brought great benefits to our generation and ... will bring benefits to our children's and grandchildren's generations as well."[207] Former French President François Hollande stated in 2012 that "France trusts the United Nations. She knows that no state, no matter how powerful, can solve urgent problems, fight for development and bring an end to all crises ... France wants the UN to be the centre of global governance".[208] In his 1953 address to the United States Committee for United Nations Day, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed the view that, for all its flaws, "the United Nations represents man's best organized hope to substitute the conference table for the battlefield".[209] UN peacekeeping missions are assessed to be generally successful. An analysis of 47 peace operations by Virginia Page Fortna of Columbia University found that UN-led conflict resolution usually resulted in long-term peace.[210] Political scientists Hanne Fjelde, Lisa Hultman and Desiree Nilsson of Uppsala University studied twenty years of data on peacekeeping missions, including in Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Central African Republic, concluding that they were more effective at reducing civilian casualties than counterterrorism operations by nation states.[211] Georgetown University professor Lise Howard postulates that UN peacekeeping operations are more effective due to their emphasis on "verbal persuasion, financial inducements and coercion short of offensive military force, including surveillance and arrest", which are likelier to change the behavior of warring parties.[146] Awards A number of agencies and individuals associated with the UN have won the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their work. Two Secretaries-General, Dag Hammarskjöld, and Kofi Annan, were each awarded the prize (in 1961 and 2001, respectively), as were Ralph Bunche (1950), a UN negotiator, René Cassin (1968), a contributor to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (1945), the latter for his role in the organization's founding. Lester B. Pearson, the Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, was awarded the prize in 1957 for his role in organizing the UN's first peacekeeping force to resolve the Suez Crisis. UNICEF won the prize in 1965, the International Labour Organization in 1969, the UN Peacekeeping Forces in 1988, the International Atomic Energy Agency (which reports to the UN) in 2005, and the UN-supported Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in 2013. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees was awarded in 1954 and 1981, becoming one of only two recipients to win the prize twice. The UN as a whole was awarded the prize in 2001, sharing it with Annan.[212] In 2007, IPCC received the prize "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."[213] Criticism Role Marking of the UN's 70th anniversary – Budapest, 2015 In a sometimes-misquoted statement, U.S. President George W. Bush stated in February 2003—referring to UN uncertainty towards Iraqi provocations under the Saddam Hussein regime—that "free nations will not allow the UN to fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society."[214][215][216] In 2020, President Barack Obama in his memoir A Promised Land noted, “In the middle of the Cold War, the chances of reaching any consensus had been slim, which is why the U.N. had stood idle as Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary or U.S. planes dropped napalm on the Vietnamese countryside. Even after the Cold War, divisions within the Security Council continued to hamstring the U.N.’s ability to tackle problems. Its member states lacked either the means or the collective will to reconstruct failing states like Somalia, or prevent ethnic slaughter in places like Sri Lanka.”[217][218] Since its founding, there have been many calls for reform of the UN but little consensus on how to do so. Some want the UN to play a greater or more effective role in world affairs, while others want its role reduced to humanitarian work. Representation and structure Core features of the UN apparatus, such as the veto privileges of some nations in the Security Council, are often described as fundamentally undemocratic, contrary to the UN mission, and as a main cause of inaction on genocides and crimes against humanity.[219][220] Jacques Fomerand states the most enduring divide in views of the UN is "the North–South split" between richer Northern nations and developing Southern nations. Southern nations tend to favour a more empowered UN with a stronger General Assembly, allowing them a greater voice in world affairs, while Northern nations prefer an economically laissez-faire UN that focuses on transnational threats such as terrorism.[221] There have also been numerous calls for the UN Security Council's membership to be increased, for different ways of electing the UN's Secretary-General, and for a UN Parliamentary Assembly. Exclusion of countries After World War II, the French Committee of National Liberation was late to be recognized by the U.S. as the government of France, and so the country was initially excluded from the conferences that created the new organization. Future French president Charles de Gaulle criticized the UN, famously calling it a machin ("contraption"), and was not convinced that a global security alliance would help maintain world peace, preferring direct defence treaties between countries.[222] Since 1971, the Republic of China on Taiwan has been excluded from the UN and since then has always been rejected in new applications. Taiwanese citizens are also not allowed to enter the buildings of the United Nations with ROC passports. In this way, critics agree that the UN is failing its own development goals and guidelines. This criticism also brought pressure from the People's Republic of China, which regards the territories administered by the ROC as their own territory.[223][224] Independence Throughout the Cold War, both the US and USSR repeatedly accused the UN of favouring the other. In 1953, the USSR effectively forced the resignation of Trygve Lie, the Secretary-General, through its refusal to deal with him, while in the 1950s and 1960s, a popular US bumper sticker read, "You can't spell communism without U.N."[225] Bias Critics such as Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, Robert S. Wistrich, a British scholar, Alan Dershowitz, an American legal scholar, Mark Dreyfus, an Australian politician, and the Anti-Defamation League consider UN attention to Israel's treatment of Palestinians to be excessive.[226] In September 2015, Saudi Arabia's Faisal bin Hassan Trad was elected Chair of the UN Human Rights Council panel that appoints independent experts,[227] a move criticized by human rights groups.[228][229] Effectiveness The United States has preferred a feeble United Nations in major projects undertaken by the UN so as to forestall UN interference with, or resistance to, United States policies, according to international relations scholar Edward Luck, former director of the Center on International Organization of the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University. “The last thing the U.S. wants is an independent U.N. throwing its weight around," Luck said. Similarly, former US Ambassador to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan explained that “The Department of State desired that the United Nations prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook. The task was given to me, and I carried it forward with not inconsiderable success.”[230] In 1994, former Special Representative of the Secretary-General of the UN to Somalia Mohamed Sahnoun published "Somalia: The Missed Opportunities",[231] a book in which he analyses the reasons for the failure of the 1992 UN intervention in Somalia, showing that, between the start of the Somali civil war in 1988 and the fall of the Siad Barre regime in January 1991, the UN missed at least three opportunities to prevent major human tragedies; when the UN tried to provide humanitarian assistance, they were totally outperformed by NGOs, whose competence and dedication sharply contrasted with the UN's excessive caution and bureaucratic inefficiencies. If radical reform were not undertaken, warned Mohamed Sahnoun, then the UN would continue to respond to such crises with inept improvisation.[232] Inefficiency and corruption Critics have also accused the UN of bureaucratic inefficiency, waste, and corruption. In 1976, the General Assembly established the Joint Inspection Unit to seek out inefficiencies within the UN system. During the 1990s, the US withheld dues citing inefficiency and only started repayment on the condition that a major reforms initiative be introduced. In 1994, the Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was established by the General Assembly to serve as an efficiency watchdog.[233] In 2004, the UN faced accusations that its recently ended Oil-for-Food Programme — in which Iraq had been allowed to trade oil for basic needs to relieve the pressure of sanctions — had suffered from widespread corruption, including billions of dollars of kickbacks. An independent inquiry created by the UN found that many of its officials had been involved, as well as raising "significant" questions about the role of Kojo Annan, the son of Kofi Annan.[234] Model United Nations The United Nations has inspired the extracurricular activity Model United Nations (MUN). MUN is a simulation of United Nations activity based on the UN agenda and following UN procedure. MUN is usually attended by high school and university students who organize conferences to simulate the various UN committees to discuss important issues of the day.[235] Today, Model United Nations educates tens of thousands on United Nations activity around the world. Model United Nations has many famous and notable alumni, such as former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon.[236] See also icon Politics portal International relations List of country groupings List of current Permanent Representatives to the United Nations List of multilateral free-trade agreements United Nations in popular culture United Nations Memorial Cemetery United Nations television film series World Summit on the Information Society Spying on United Nations leaders by United States diplomats Notes  Poland had not been represented among the fifty nations at the San Francisco conference due to the reluctance of the Western superpowers to recognize its post-war communist government. However, the Charter was later amended to list Poland as a founding member, and Poland ratified the Charter on 16 October 1945.[36][37]  Some sources identify seventeen specialized agencies, taking into account the three specialized agencies that make up the World Bank Group, which is now treated as one organization: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the International Development Association (IDA), and the International Finance Corporation (IFC).  For details on Vatican City's status, see Holy See and the United Nations. Manhattan (/mænˈhætən, mən-/), known regionally as The City,[1] is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. It is the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, and coextensive with New York County, 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,[8] and historical birthplace.[9] The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers along with several small adjacent islands, including Roosevelt, U Thant, and Randalls and Wards Islands. Manhattan additionally contains Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem Ship Canal and later connected using landfill to the Bronx. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each cutting across 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,[10][11][12][13] is considered a safe haven for global real estate investors,[14] and hosts the United Nations headquarters.[15] 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,[16][17][18][19] and Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.[20][21] Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, and the borough has been the setting for numerous books, films, and television shows. Manhattan real estate is among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013;[9][22] median residential property sale prices in Manhattan approximated US$1,600 per square foot ($17,000/m2) as of 2018,[23] 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.[24] Manhattan 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 territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664[25] and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[26] New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790.[27] The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America by ship in the late 19th century[28] and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace.[29] Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898. New York County is the smallest county by land area in the contiguous United States, the second-smallest American county overall (larger only than Kalawao County, Hawaii), as well as the most densely populated U.S. county.[30] Its density makes it one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2020 census population of 1,694,251 living in a land area of 22.83 square miles (59.13 km2),[31][32][6] or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154/km2), higher than the density of any individual U.S. city.[33] On business days, the influx of commuters increases this number to over 3.9 million,[34] or more than 170,000 people per square mile (65,600/km2). Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York City's five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and is the smallest borough in terms of land area.[35] If each borough were ranked as a city, Manhattan would rank as the sixth-most populous in the U.S. Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan are well known, as New York City received a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017,[36] and Manhattan hosts three of the world's 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal.[37] The Empire State Building has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures.[38] The borough hosts many prominent bridges, including the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg, Queensboro, Triborough, and George Washington Bridges; tunnels such as the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels; skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and One World Trade Center;[39] and parks, such as Central Park. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[40] and the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.[41][42] The City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan,[9] and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government.[43] Numerous colleges and universities are located in Manhattan,[44] including Columbia University, New York University, Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 40 in the world.[45][46] Contents 1 Etymology 2 History 2.1 Native American settlement 2.2 Colonial era 2.3 American Revolution and the early United States 2.4 19th century 2.5 20th century 2.6 21st century 3 Geography 3.1 Components 3.1.1 Manhattan Island 3.1.2 Marble Hill 3.1.3 Smaller islands 3.2 Geology 3.2.1 Bedrock 3.2.2 Updated seismic analysis 3.3 Locations 3.3.1 Adjacent counties 3.3.2 National protected areas 3.3.3 Neighborhoods 3.4 Climate 3.5 Boroughscape 4 Demographics 4.1 Religion 4.2 Languages 5 Landmarks and architecture 5.1 Architectural history 5.2 Parkland 6 Economy 6.1 Financial sector 6.2 Corporate sector 6.3 Tech and biotech 6.4 Tourism 6.5 Real estate 6.6 Media 6.6.1 News 6.6.2 Television, radio, film 7 Education 8 Culture and contemporary life 9 Sports 10 Government 10.1 Politics 10.1.1 Representatives in the U.S. Congress 10.2 Federal offices 10.3 Crime and public safety 11 Housing 12 Infrastructure 12.1 Transportation 12.1.1 Public transportation 12.1.2 Major highways 12.1.3 Taxis 12.1.4 Bicycles 12.1.5 Streets and roads 12.1.6 River crossings 12.1.7 Heliports 12.2 Utilities 12.3 Health care 12.4 Water purity and availability 12.5 Address algorithm 13 See also 14 Notes 15 References 15.1 Citations 15.2 Sources 16 Further reading 17 External links 17.1 Local government and services 17.2 Maps Etymology The name Manhattan derives from the Munsee Lenape language term manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means "bow", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at its southern end that was considered ideal for the making of bows.[47] It was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht Halve Maen (Half Moon).[48] A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). Alternative etymologies in folklore include "island of many hills",[49] "the island where we all became intoxicated" and simply "island", as well as a phrase descriptive of the whirlpool at Hell Gate.[50] It is thought that Manhattoe originally only referred to a location at the southern tip of Manhattan, and ultimately came to signify the entire island to the Dutch through pars pro toto.[citation needed] History See also: History of New York City Native American settlement Manhattan is historically part of the Lenapehoking, the area inhabited by the Munsee Lenape[51] and Wappinger tribes. History of New York City Lenape and New Netherland, to 1664 New Amsterdam British and Revolution, 1665–1783 Federal and early American, 1784–1854 Tammany and Consolidation, 1855–1897 (Civil War, 1861–1865) Early 20th century, 1898–1945 Post–World War II, 1946–1977 Modern and post-9/11, 1978–present See also Transportation Timelines: NYC • Bronx • Brooklyn • Queens • Staten Island Category vte Colonial era Main articles: New Netherland, New Amsterdam, and Province of New York Peter Minuit, early 1600s Pieter Schaghen's 1626 letter saying Manhattan was purchased for 60 guilders. The Castello Plan showing the Dutch city of New Amsterdam in 1660, at the southern tip of Manhattan In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City. He entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York Harbor New Angoulême, in reference to the family name of King Francis I that was derived from Angoulême in France; he sailed far enough into the harbor to sight the Hudson River, which he referred to in his report to the French king as a "very big river"; and he named the Bay of Santa Margarita – what is now Upper New York Bay – after Marguerite de Navarre, the elder sister of the king.[52][53] It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped.[54] Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present-day Albany.[55] A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam), in what is now Lower Manhattan.[56][57] The 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City.[58] According to a letter by Pieter Janszoon Schagen, Peter Minuit and Walloon colonists of the West India Company acquired the island of Manhattan on May 24, 1626, from unnamed native people, who are believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Manhattoe, in exchange for traded goods worth 60 guilders,[59] often said to be worth US$24. The figure of 60 guilders comes from a letter by a representative of the Dutch Estates General and member of the board of the Dutch West India Company, Pieter Janszoon Schagen, to the Estates General in November 1626.[60] In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 (or 60 guilders) to US$24 (he arrived at $24 = Fl 60/2.5, because the US dollar was erroneously equated with the Dutch rijksdaalder having a standard value of 2.5 guilders).[61] "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York.[62] Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006 and $963 in 2020, according to the Institute for Social History of Amsterdam.[63] Based on the price of silver, "The Straight Dope" newspaper column calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992.[64] Historians James and Michelle Nevius revisited the issue in 2014, suggesting that using the prices of beer and brandy as monetary equivalencies, the price Minuit paid would have the purchasing power of somewhere between $2,600 and $15,600 in current dollars.[65] According to the writer Nathaniel Benchley, Minuit conducted the transaction with Seyseys, chief of the Canarsee, who were willing to accept valuable merchandise in exchange for the island that was mostly controlled by the Weckquaesgeeks, a band of the Wappinger.[66] In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony.[67] New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653.[68] In 1674, the English bought New Netherland, after Holland lost rentable sugar business in Brazil, and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II.[69] The Dutch, under Director General Stuyvesant, successfully negotiated with the English to produce 24 articles of provisional transfer, which sought to retain for the extant citizens of New Netherland their previously attained liberties (including freedom of religion) under their new English rulers.[70][57] The Dutch Republic re-captured the city in August 1673, renaming it "New Orange". New Netherland was ultimately ceded to the English in November 1674 through the Treaty of Westminster.[71] Washington's statue in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where in 1789 he was sworn in as first U.S. president[72] American Revolution and the early United States Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British military and political center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war.[73] The military center for the colonists was established in New Jersey.[74][75] British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city.[76] From January 11, 1785, to the fall of 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789, to August 12, 1790, at Federal Hall.[77] Federal Hall was also the site where the United States Supreme Court met for the first time,[78] the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified,[79] and where the Northwest Ordinance was adopted, establishing measures for adding new states to the Union.[80] 19th century New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada.[81][82] By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.[83] The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan. Manhattan in 1873. The Brooklyn Bridge was under construction from 1870 until 1883 Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped public park in an American city.[84][85] New York City played a complex role in the American Civil War. The city's strong commercial ties to the southern United States existed for many reasons, including the industrial power of the Hudson River, which allowed trade with stops such as the West Point Foundry, one of the great manufacturing operations in the early United States; and the city's Atlantic Ocean ports, rendering New York City the American powerhouse in terms of industrial trade between the northern and southern United States. Anger arose about conscription, with resentment at those who could afford to pay $300 to avoid service leading to resentment against Lincoln's war policies and fomenting paranoia about free Blacks taking the poor immigrants' jobs,[86] culminating in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863. These intense war-time riots are counted among the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history, with an estimated 119 participants and passersby massacred.[87] The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and Manhattan became the first stop for millions seeking a new life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France.[88][89] New York's growing immigrant population, which had earlier consisted mainly of German and Irish immigrants, began in the late 1800s to include waves of impoverished Italians and Central and Eastern European Jews flowing in en masse. This new European immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city became a hotbed of revolution (including anarchists and communists among others), syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization. In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a road connection to Brooklyn, across the East River. In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County from Westchester County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed.[90] In 1898, when New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City of Greater New York", Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York State Legislature created Bronx County and New York County was reduced to its present boundaries.[91] The "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", commonly known as the Viele Map, was created by Egbert Ludovicus Viele in 1865 20th century Further information: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and Stonewall riots Manhattan's Little Italy, Lower East Side, circa 1900 The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did additional bridges to Brooklyn. In the 1920s Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century.[92] Manhattan's majority white ethnic group declined from 98.7% in 1900 to 58.3% by 1990.[93] Manhattan personified, early 20th century On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers. The disaster eventually led to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations.[94] The period between the World Wars saw the election of reformist mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after 80 years of political dominance.[95] As the city's demographics stabilized, labor unionization brought new protections and affluence to the working class, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under La Guardia. Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the 30 Rockefeller Plaza.[96] V-J Day in Times Square in Times Square, 1945 Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom, which led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, the largest being Peter Cooper Village-Stuyvesant Town, which opened in 1947.[97] In 1951–1952, the United Nations relocated to a new headquarters the East Side of Manhattan.[98][99] The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[100][101] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[102][103] In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[104] While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through the decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[105] The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and Manhattan reclaimed its role at the center of the worldwide financial industry. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter. The organizations Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) were founded to advocate on behalf of those stricken with the disease. By the 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Murder rates that had reached 2,245 in 1990 plummeted to 537 by 2008, and the crack epidemic and its associated drug-related violence came under greater control.[106] The outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market.[107] Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in Manhattan's economy. The newly completed Singer Building towering above the city, 1909 The newly completed Singer Building towering above the city, 1909   A construction worker atop the Empire State Building as it was being built in 1930; to the right is the Chrysler Building. A construction worker atop the Empire State Building as it was being built in 1930; to the right is the Chrysler Building.   The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern gay rights movement.[100][108][109] The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern gay rights movement.[100][108][109]   United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the first World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the first World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. 21st century Further information: September 11 attacks Flooding on Avenue C caused by Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012[110] On September 11, 2001, two of four hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center, and the towers subsequently collapsed. 7 World Trade Center collapsed due to fires and structural damage caused by heavy debris falling from the collapse of the Twin Towers. The other buildings within the World Trade Center complex were damaged beyond repair and soon after demolished. The collapse of the Twin Towers caused extensive damage to other surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 people, in addition to those on the planes. Since 2001, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored, although there has been controversy surrounding the rebuilding. Many rescue workers and residents of the area developed several life-threatening illnesses that have led to some of their subsequent deaths.[111] A memorial at the site was opened to the public on September 11, 2011, and the museum opened in 2014. In 2014, the new One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) and formerly known as the Freedom Tower, became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere,[112] while other skyscrapers were under construction at the site. The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[113] On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction in the borough, ravaging portions of Lower Manhattan with record-high storm surge from New York Harbor,[114] severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents[115] and leading to gasoline shortages[116] and disruption of mass transit systems.[117][118][119][120] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the borough and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[121] Around 15 percent of the borough is considered to be in flood-risk zones.[122] On October 31, 2017, a terrorist took a rental pickup truck and deliberately drove down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring a dozen others before crashing into a school bus.[123] Geography See also: Geography of New York City Satellite image of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north, the East River to the east, and New York Harbor to the south, with rectangular Central Park prominently visible. Roosevelt Island, in the East River, belongs to Manhattan. Location of Manhattan (red) within New York City (remainder yellow) Components The borough consists of Manhattan Island, Marble Hill, and several small islands, including Randalls Island and Wards Island, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor.[124] According to the United States Census Bureau, New York County has a total area of 33.6 square miles (87 km2), of which 22.8 square miles (59 km2) is land and 10.8 square miles (28 km2) (32%) is water.[3] The northern segment of Upper Manhattan represents a geographic panhandle. Manhattan Island is 22.7 square miles (59 km2) in area, 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide, at its widest (near 14th Street).[125] Icebergs are often compared in size to the area of Manhattan.[126][127][128] Manhattan Island Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Downtown (Lower Manhattan), Midtown (Midtown Manhattan), and Uptown (Upper Manhattan), with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan lengthwise into its East Side and West Side. Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from the Bronx and the mainland United States. Early in the 19th century, landfill was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street.[129] When building the World Trade Center in 1968, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m3) of material was excavated from the site.[130] Rather than dumping the spoil at sea or in landfills, the fill material was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City.[131] The result was a 700-foot (210-m) extension into the river, running six blocks or 1,484 feet (452 m), covering 92 acres (37 ha), providing a 1.2-mile (1.9 km) riverfront esplanade and over 30 acres (12 ha) of parks;[132] Hudson River Park was subsequently opened in stages beginning in 1998.[133] Little Island opened on the Hudson River in May 2021, connected to the western termini of 13th and 14th Streets by footbridges.[134] Marble Hill One neighborhood of New York County, Marble Hill, is contiguous with the U.S. mainland. Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan as an island between the Bronx and the remainder of Manhattan.[135] Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from the Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.[136] Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times, and much of the natural variation in its topography has been evened out.[49] Smaller islands See also: List of smaller islands in New York City Within New York Harbor, there are three smaller islands: Ellis Island, shared with New Jersey Governors Island Liberty Island Other smaller islands, in the East River, include (from north to south): Randalls and Wards Islands, joined by landfill Mill Rock Roosevelt Island U Thant Island (legally Belmont Island) Geology Bedrock Manhattan schist outcropping in Central Park The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as Manhattan schist[137] of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region. It is a strong, competent metamorphic rock that was created when Pangaea formed. It is well suited for the foundations of tall buildings. In Central Park, outcrops of Manhattan schist occur and Rat Rock is one rather large example.[138][139][140] Geologically, a predominant feature of the substrata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near Midtown Manhattan, dips down lower between 29th Street and Canal Street, then rises toward the surface again in Lower Manhattan. It has been widely believed that the depth to bedrock was the primary underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial District areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas.[141][142] However, research has shown that economic factors played a bigger part in the locations of these skyscrapers.[143][144][145] Updated seismic analysis According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in Manhattan than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based upon a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near New York City, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures from an earthquake in the vicinity of the city.[146] Locations A tall green statue on an island in a harbor. Liberty Island is an exclave of Manhattan, of New York City, and of New York State, that is surrounded by New Jersey waters Adjacent counties Bergen County, New Jersey—west and northwest Hudson County, New Jersey—west and southwest Bronx County (The Bronx)—north and northeast Queens County (Queens)—east Kings County (Brooklyn)—south and southeast Richmond County (Staten Island)—southwest National protected areas African Burial Ground National Monument Castle Clinton National Monument Federal Hall National Memorial General Grant National Memorial Governors Island National Monument Hamilton Grange National Memorial Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site Statue of Liberty National Monument (part) Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site Neighborhoods Main articles: Neighborhoods in New York City and List of Manhattan neighborhoods Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), or the far more recent vintages NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly").[147][148] and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park").[149][150][151] Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.[152] Alphabet City comprises Avenues A, B, C, and D, to which its name refers. Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen, alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton). The Empire State Building in the foreground looking southward from the top of Rockefeller Center, with One World Trade Center in the background, at sunset. The Midtown South Community Council acts as a civic caretaker for much of the neighborhood between the skyscrapers of Midtown and Lower Manhattan. Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, which is mixed use, are known for upscale shopping as well as residential use. Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the Bohemian subculture.[153] Chelsea is one of several Manhattan neighborhoods with large gay populations and has become a center of both the international art industry and New York's nightlife.[154] Washington Heights is a primary destination for immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Chinatown has the highest concentration of people of Chinese descent outside of Asia.[155][156] Koreatown is roughly bounded by 6th and Madison Avenues,[157][158][159] between 31st and 33rd Streets, where Hangul signage is ubiquitous. Rose Hill features a growing number of Indian restaurants and spice shops along a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th Streets which has become known as Curry Hill.[160] Since 2010, a Little Australia has emerged and is growing in Nolita, Lower Manhattan.[161] In Manhattan, uptown means north (more precisely north-northeast, which is the direction the island and its street grid system are oriented) and downtown means south (south-southwest).[162] This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term uptown also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 72nd Street and downtown to the southern portion below 14th Street,[163] with Midtown covering the area in between, though definitions can be rather fluid depending on the situation. Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street); street addresses start at Fifth Avenue and increase heading away from Fifth Avenue, at a rate of 100 per block on most streets.[163] South of Waverly Place, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. Although the grid does start with 1st Street, just north of Houston Street (the southernmost street divided in west and east portions; pronounced HOW-stin), the grid does not fully take hold until north of 14th Street, where nearly all east–west streets are numerically identified, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island. Streets in Midtown are usually one-way, with the few exceptions generally being the busiest cross-town thoroughfares (14th, 23rd, 34th, and 42nd Streets, for example), which are bidirectional across the width of Manhattan Island. The rule of thumb is that odd-numbered streets run west, while even-numbered streets run east.[125] Climate Central Park in autumn Under the Köppen climate classification, using the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm, New York City features both a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and a humid continental climate (Dfa);[164] it is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with a humid subtropical climate. The city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually.[165] The city lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone.[166] Winters are cold and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachians keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 32.6 °F (0.3 °C);[167] temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[167][168] and reach 60 °F (16 °C) several days in the coldest winter month.[167] Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically warm to hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 76.5 °F (24.7 °C) in July.[167] Nighttime conditions are often exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, while daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer[169] and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C). Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936.[169] Summer evening temperatures are elevated by the urban heat island effect, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow.[170] Manhattan receives 49.9 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010 has been 25.8 inches (66 cm); this varies considerably from year to year.[169] vte Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals,[b] extremes 1869–present[c] Sea temperature data for New York Boroughscape Ten-mile Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken February 21, 2018, from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey. Riverside ChurchTime Warner Center220 Central Park SouthCentral Park TowerOne57432 Park Avenue53W53Chrysler BuildingBank of America TowerConde Nast BuildingThe New York Times BuildingEmpire State BuildingManhattan Westa: 55 Hudson Yards, b: 35 Hudson Yards, c: 10 Hudson Yards, d: 15 Hudson Yards56 Leonard Street8 Spruce StreetWoolworth Building70 Pine Street30 Park Place40 Wall StreetThree World Trade CenterFour World Trade CenterOne World Trade Center Demographics Main article: Demographics of Manhattan See also: Demographics of New York City Racial composition 2020[174] 2010[175] 2000[176] 1990[177] 1950[177] 1900[177] White 50.0% 57.4% 54.3% 58.3% 79.4% 97.8%  —Non-Hispanic 46.8% 48% 45.7% 48.9% n/a n/a Black or African American 13.5% 15.6% 17.3% 22.0% 19.6% 2.0% Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 23.8% 25.4% 27.1% 26.0% n/a n/a Asian 13.1% 11.3% 9.4% 7.4% 0.8% 0.3% In 2020, 1,694,251 people lived in Manhattan. At the 2010 U.S. census, there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% since 2000. Since 2010, Manhattan's population was estimated by the U.S. Census Bureau to have increased 2.7% to 1,628,706 as of 2018, representing 19.5% of New York City's population of 8,336,817 and 8.4% of New York State's population of 19,745,289.[31][178] As of the 2017 census estimates, the population density of New York County was around 72,918 people per square mile (28,154/km²), the highest population density of any county in the United States.[31] In 1910, at the height of European immigration to New York, Manhattan's population density reached a peak of 101,548 people per square mile (39,208/km²).[31][178] Historical population Year Pop. ±% 1656 1,000 —     1698 4,937 +393.7% 1712 5,841 +18.3% 1723 7,248 +24.1% 1731 8,622 +19.0% 1746 11,717 +35.9% 1756 13,040 +11.3% 1771 21,863 +67.7% 1786 23,614 +8.0% 1790 33,131 +40.3% 1800 60,489 +82.6% 1810 96,373 +59.3% 1820 123,706 +28.4% 1830 202,589 +63.8% 1840 312,710 +54.4% 1850 515,547 +64.9% 1860 813,669 +57.8% 1870 942,292 +15.8% 1880 1,164,674 +23.6% 1890 1,441,216 +23.7% 1900 1,850,093 +28.4% 1910 2,331,542 +26.0% 1920 2,284,103 −2.0% 1930 1,867,312 −18.2% 1940 1,889,924 +1.2% 1950 1,960,101 +3.7% 1960 1,698,281 −13.4% 1970 1,539,233 −9.4% 1980 1,428,285 −7.2% 1990 1,487,536 +4.1% 2000 1,537,195 +3.3% 2010 1,585,873 +3.2% 2020 1,694,251 +6.8% Sources:[31][179][180][6] New York City's five boroughsvte Jurisdiction Population GDP † Land area Density of population Borough County Census (2020) billions (2012 US$) square miles square km persons / mi2 persons / km2 The Bronx Bronx 1,472,654 $ 36.938 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482 Brooklyn Kings 2,736,074 $ 86.151 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227 Manhattan New York 1,694,263 '$' 610.386 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872 Queens Queens 2,405,464 $ 82.328 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542 Staten Island Richmond 495,747 $ 14.270 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327 City of New York 8,804,190 $  830.072 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234 State of New York 20,215,751 $ 1,724.759 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166 † GDP = Gross Domestic Product    Sources:[181][182][183][184] and see individual borough articles Manhattan is one of the highest-income places in the United States with a population greater than one million. As of 2012, Manhattan's cost of living was the highest in the United States.[185] Manhattan is also the United States county with the highest per capita income, being the sole county whose per capita income exceeded $100,000 in 2010.[186] However, from 2011–2015 Census data of New York County, the per capita income was recorded in 2015 dollars as $64,993, with the median household income at $72,871, and poverty at 17.6%.[187] In 2012, The New York Times reported that inequality was higher than in most developing countries, stating, "The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites made more than 40 times what the lowest fifth reported, a widening gap (it was 38 times, the year before) surpassed by only a few developing countries".[188] Religion In 2010 statistics, the largest religious group in Manhattan was the Archdiocese of New York, with 323,325 Catholics worshipping at 109 parishes, followed by 64,000 Orthodox Jews with 77 congregations, an estimated 42,545 Muslims with 21 congregations, 42,502 non-denominational adherents with 54 congregations, 26,178 TEC Episcopalians with 46 congregations, 25,048 ABC-USA Baptists with 41 congregations, 24,536 Reform Jews with 10 congregations, 23,982 Mahayana Buddhists with 35 congregations, 10,503 PC-USA Presbyterians with 30 congregations, and 10,268 RCA Presbyterians with 10 congregations. Altogether, 44.0% of the population was claimed as members by religious congregations, although members of historically African-American denominations were underrepresented due to incomplete information.[189] In 2014, Manhattan had 703 religious organizations, the seventeenth most out of all US counties.[190] Languages As of 2010, 59.98% (902,267) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 23.07% (347,033) spoke Spanish, 5.33% (80,240) Chinese, 2.03% (30,567) French, 0.78% (11,776) Japanese, 0.77% (11,517) Russian, 0.72% (10,788) Korean, 0.70% (10,496) German, 0.66% (9,868) Italian, 0.64% (9,555) Hebrew, and 0.48% (7,158) spoke African languages at home. In total, 40.02% (602,058) of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke a language other than English at home.[191] As of 2015, 60.0% (927,650) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 22.63% (350,112) spoke Spanish, 5.37% (83,013) Chinese, 2.21% (34,246) French, 0.85% (13,138) Korean, 0.72% (11,135) Russian, and 0.70% (10,766) Japanese. In total, 40.0% of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke a language other than English at home.[192] Landmarks and architecture Main article: Architecture of New York City See also: List of skyscrapers in New York City The Estonian House, the main center of Estonian culture amongst Estonian Americans Points of interest on Manhattan Island include the American Museum of Natural History; the Battery; Broadway and the Theater District; Bryant Park; Central Park, Chinatown; the Chrysler Building; Columbia University; Curry Hill; the Empire State Building; Flatiron Building; the Financial District (including the New York Stock Exchange Building; Wall Street; and the South Street Seaport); Grand Central Terminal; Greenwich Village (including New York University; Washington Square Arch; and Stonewall Inn); Harlem and Spanish Harlem; the High Line; Koreatown; Lincoln Center; Little Australia; Little Italy; Madison Square Garden; Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art); Penn Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal; Rockefeller Center (including Radio City Music Hall); Times Square; and the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Museum and One World Trade Center). There are also numerous iconic bridges across rivers that connect to Manhattan Island, as well as an emerging number of supertall skyscrapers. The Statue of Liberty rests on a pedestal on Liberty Island, an exclave of Manhattan, and part of Ellis Island is also an exclave of Manhattan. The borough has many energy-efficient, environmentally friendly office buildings, such as the Hearst Tower, the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center,[193] and the Bank of America Tower—the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.[194][195] Architectural history A. T. Stewart in 1870, 9th Street, Manhattan Many tall buildings have setbacks on their facade due to the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This is exemplified at Park Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan. The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From 1890 to 1973, the title of world's tallest building resided continually in Manhattan (with a gap between 1894 and 1908, when the title was held by Philadelphia City Hall), with eight different buildings holding the title.[196] The New York World Building on Park Row, was the first to take the title in 1890, standing 309 feet (94 m) until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge.[197] The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing 391 feet (119 m) high, became the world's tallest office building when it opened in 1899.[198] The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine manufacturer, stood 612 feet (187 m) high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished.[199] The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 700 feet (210 m) at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice.[200] The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at 792 feet (241 m).[201] Structures such as the Equitable Building of 1915, which rises vertically forty stories from the sidewalk, prompted the passage of the 1916 Zoning Resolution, requiring new buildings to contain setbacks withdrawing progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order to preserve a view of the sky at street level.[202] The Roaring Twenties saw a race to the sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown.[203] At 927 feet (283 m), 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in only eleven months as the headquarters of the Bank of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title.[204] At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed plans to build the structure's trademark 185-foot (56 m) spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to 1,046 feet (319 m) and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929.[205] Both buildings were soon surpassed with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower reaching 1,250 feet (380 m) at the top of the building. The 203-foot (62 m) high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m).[206][207] The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 m), the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972 until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears Tower, located in Chicago).[208] One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.[209] In 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex. Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead & White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City.[210] Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. The loss of Penn Station—called "an act of irresponsible public vandalism" by historian Lewis Mumford—led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage".[211] The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including over 1,000 in New York City.[212] In 2017, a multibillion-dollar rebuilding plan was unveiled to restore the historic grandeur of Penn Station, in the process of upgrading the landmark's status as a critical transportation hub.[213] Parkland Parkland composes 17.8% of the borough, covering a total of 2,686 acres (10.87 km2). The 843-acre (3.41 km2) Central Park, the largest park comprising 30% of Manhattan's parkland, is bordered on the north by West 110th Street (Central Park North), on the west by Eighth Avenue (Central Park West), on the south by West 59th Street (Central Park South), and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and several lawns and sporting areas, as well as 21 playgrounds and a 6-mile (9.7 km) road from which automobile traffic is banned.[214] While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped, and the construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects, with some 20,000 workers crafting the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create.[215] The remaining 70% of Manhattan's parkland includes 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts, and many other amenities.[216] The next-largest park in Manhattan is the Hudson River Park, stretches 4.5 miles (7.2 km) on the Hudson River and comprises 550 acres (220 ha).[217] Other major parks include:[218] Bowling Green Bryant Park City Hall Park DeWitt Clinton Park East River Greenway Fort Tryon Park Fort Washington Park Harlem River Park Holcombe Rucker Park Imagination Playground Inwood Hill Park Isham Park J. Hood Wright Park Jackie Robinson Park Madison Square Park Marcus Garvey Park Morningside Park Randall's Island Park Riverside Park Sara D. Roosevelt Park Seward Park St. Nicholas Park Stuyvesant Square The Battery The High Line Thomas Jefferson Park Tompkins Square Park Union Square Park Washington Square Park Economy Main article: Economy of New York City The New York Stock Exchange, by a significant margin the world's largest stock exchange per market capitalization of its listed companies,[219][220] at US$23.1 trillion as of April 2018.[221] Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.3 million workers in 2007 drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost two-thirds of all jobs in New York City.[222] In the first quarter of 2014, the average weekly wage in Manhattan (New York County) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[223] Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions, with manufacturing nearly extinct. Manhattan also has the highest per capita income of any county in the United States. In 2010, Manhattan's daytime population was swelling to 3.94 million, with commuters adding a net 1.48 million people to the population, along with visitors, tourists, and commuting students. The commuter influx of 1.61 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any county or city in the country,[224] and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.[225] Financial sector Main article: Wall Street The Financial District of Lower Manhattan, seen from Brooklyn Manhattan's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), at 11 Wall Street, and the Nasdaq, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall share trading value and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013.[21] The NYSE American (formerly the American Stock Exchange, AMEX), New York Board of Trade, and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) are also located downtown. Financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency have emerged as more recent constituents of the financial sector as well as the tech sector. Corporate sector New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the United States, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan.[226] Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2018,[227] making it the largest office market in the United States,[228] while Midtown Manhattan, with 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2018,[227] is the largest central business district in the world.[229] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as "Madison Avenue". Tech and biotech Further information: Tech companies in Manhattan, Biotech companies in Manhattan, Silicon Alley, and Tech:NYC The Flatiron District is the center and birthplace of Silicon Alley[230] Silicon Alley, centered in Manhattan, has evolved into a metonym for the sphere encompassing the New York City metropolitan region's high tech industries,[231] including the Internet, new media, telecommunications, digital media, software development, biotechnology, game design, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency blockchain technology, and other fields within information technology that are supported by the area's entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. As of 2014, New York City hosted 300,000 employees in the tech sector.[232][233] In 2015, Silicon Alley generated over US$7.3 billion in venture capital investment,[234] most based in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn, Queens, and elsewhere in the region. High technology startup companies and employment are growing in Manhattan and across New York City, bolstered by the city's emergence as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship,[234] social tolerance,[235] and environmental sustainability,[236][237] as well as New York's position as the leading Internet hub and telecommunications center in North America, including its vicinity to several transatlantic fiber optic trunk lines, the city's intellectual capital, and its extensive outdoor wireless connectivity.[238] Verizon Communications, headquartered at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, was at the final stages in 2014 of completing a US$3 billion fiberoptic telecommunications upgrade throughout New York City.[239] As of October 2014, New York City hosted 300,000 employees in the tech sector,[233] with a significant proportion in Manhattan. The technology sector has been expanding across Manhattan since 2010.[240] The biotechnology sector is also growing in Manhattan based upon the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than US$30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions. The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed a minimum of US$100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[241] In 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a US$2 billion graduate school of applied sciences on Roosevelt Island, Manhattan, with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[242][243] Tourism Main article: Tourism in New York City Times Square is the hub of the Broadway theater district and a major cultural venue in Manhattan, it also has one of the highest annual attendance rates of any tourist attraction in the world, estimated at 50 million[37] Tourism is vital to Manhattan's economy, and the landmarks of Manhattan are the focus of New York City's tourists, enumerating an eighth consecutive annual record of approximately 62.8 million visitors in 2017.[36] According to The Broadway League, shows on Broadway sold approximately US$1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an increase of 11.4% from US$1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season; attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.[244] As of June 2016, Manhattan had nearly 91,500 hotel rooms, a 26% increase from 2010.[245] Real estate Real estate is a major force in Manhattan's economy. Manhattan has perennially been home to some of the nation's, as well as the world's, most valuable real estate, including the Time Warner Center, which had the highest-listed market value in the city in 2006 at US$1.1 billion,[246] to be subsequently surpassed in October 2014 by the Waldorf Astoria New York, which became the most expensive hotel ever sold after being purchased by the Anbang Insurance Group, based in China, for US$1.95 billion.[247] When 450 Park Avenue was sold on July 2, 2007, for US$510 million, about US$1,589 per square foot (US$17,104/m²), it broke the barely month-old record for an American office building of US$1,476 per square foot (US$15,887/m²) based on the sale of 660 Madison Avenue.[248] In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten zip codes in the United States by median housing price.[249] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States occurred in Manhattan, at a selling price of US$238 million, for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park,[250] while Central Park Tower, topped out at 1,550 feet (472 m) in 2019, is the world's tallest residential building, followed globally in height by 111 West 57th Street and 432 Park Avenue, both also located in Midtown Manhattan. Manhattan had approximately 520 million square feet (48.1 million m²) of office space in 2013,[251] making it the largest office market in the United States.[252] Midtown Manhattan is the largest central business district in the nation based on office space,[253] while Lower Manhattan is the third-largest (after Chicago's Loop).[254][255] As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the median value of homes in Manhattan was $1,306,208. It ranked second among US counties for highest median home value at the time, second to Nantucket.[256] Media Main articles: Media in New York City and New Yorkers in journalism Manhattan has been described as the media capital of the world.[257][258] An integral component of this status is the significant array of media outlets and their journalists who report about international, American, business, entertainment, and New York metropolitan area-related matters from Manhattan. News The New York Times headquarters, 620 Eighth Avenue Manhattan is served by the major New York City daily news publications, including The New York Times, which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's "newspaper of record";[259] the New York Daily News; and the New York Post, which are all headquartered in the borough. The nation's largest newspaper by circulation, The Wall Street Journal, is also based in Manhattan. Other daily newspapers include AM New York and The Villager. The New York Amsterdam News, based in Harlem, is one of the leading Black-owned weekly newspapers in the United States. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[260] Television, radio, film See also: List of films set in New York City and List of television shows set in New York City The television industry developed in Manhattan and is a significant employer in the borough's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox, as well as Univision, are all headquartered in Manhattan, as are many cable channels, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, and Comedy Central. In 1971, WLIB became New York City's first Black-owned radio station and began broadcasts geared toward the African-American community in 1949. WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States. WNYC, comprising an AM and FM signal, has the largest public radio audience in the nation and is the most-listened to commercial or non-commercial radio station in Manhattan.[261] WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States. The oldest public-access television cable TV channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971, offers eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming.[262] NY1, Time Warner Cable's local news channel, is known for its beat coverage of City Hall and state politics. Education See also: Education in New York City, List of high schools in New York City, and List of colleges and universities in New York City Butler Library at Columbia University, with its notable architectural design[263] Education in Manhattan is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are operated by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States. Charter schools include Success Academy Harlem 1 through 5, Success Academy Upper West, and Public Prep. Some notable New York City public high schools are located in Manhattan, including Beacon High School, Stuyvesant High School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, High School of Fashion Industries, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC Lab School, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Hunter College High School, and High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College. Bard High School Early College, a hybrid school created by Bard College, serves students from around the city. Many private preparatory schools are also situated in Manhattan, including the Upper East Side's Brearley School, Dalton School, Browning School, Spence School, Chapin School, Nightingale-Bamford School, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Hewitt School, Saint David's School, Loyola School, and Regis High School. The Upper West Side is home to the Collegiate School and Trinity School. The borough is also home to Manhattan Country School, Trevor Day School, and the United Nations International School. Stuyvesant High School, in Tribeca[264] Based on data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey, 59.9% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree.[265] As of 2005, about 60% of residents were college graduates and some 25% had earned advanced degrees, giving Manhattan one of the nation's densest concentrations of highly educated people.[266] Manhattan has various colleges and universities, including Columbia University (and its affiliate Barnard College), Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, New York Institute of Technology, New York University (NYU), The Juilliard School, Pace University, Berkeley College, The New School, Yeshiva University, and a campus of Fordham University. Other schools include Bank Street College of Education, Boricua College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan College of New York, Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, Touro College, and Union Theological Seminary. Several other private institutions maintain a Manhattan presence, among them Mercy College, St. John's University, The College of New Rochelle, The King's College, and Pratt Institute. Cornell Tech is developing on Roosevelt Island. New York Public Library Main Branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue The City University of New York (CUNY), the municipal college system of New York City, is the largest urban university system in the United States, serving more than 226,000 degree students and a roughly equal number of adult, continuing and professional education students.[267] A third of college graduates in New York City graduate from CUNY, with the institution enrolling about half of all college students in New York City. CUNY senior colleges located in Manhattan include: Baruch College, City College of New York, Hunter College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the CUNY Graduate Center (graduate studies and doctorate granting institution). The only CUNY community college located in Manhattan is the Borough of Manhattan Community College. The State University of New York is represented by the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York State College of Optometry, and Stony Brook University – Manhattan. Manhattan is a world center for training and education in medicine and the life sciences.[268] The city as a whole receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities,[269] the bulk of which goes to Manhattan's research institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medical College, and New York University School of Medicine. Manhattan is served by the New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country.[270] The five units of the Central Library—Mid-Manhattan Library, 53rd Street Library, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, and the Science, Industry and Business Library—are all located in Manhattan.[271] More than 35 other branch libraries are located in the borough.[272] Culture and contemporary life See also: Culture of New York City Further information: Broadway theatre, LGBT culture in New York City, Stonewall Riots, NYC Pride March, List of LGBT people from New York City, List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City, Music of New York City, New York Fashion Week, and Met Gala Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; regionally, residents within the New York City metropolitan area, including natives of New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan, will often describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the City".[273] Journalist Walt Whitman characterized the streets of Manhattan as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[274] Manhattan has been the scene of many important American cultural movements. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched upon Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of women's liberation, reflecting the alliance of labor and suffrage movements.[275] The Metropolitan Museum of Art The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States and introduced writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Manhattan's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the American pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. The downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s included artist Andy Warhol and clubs like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54, where he socialized. Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats, almost all in and around Times Square.[276] Off-Broadway theatres feature productions in venues with 100–500 seats.[277] Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to 12 influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan. Manhattan is also home to some of the most extensive art collections in the world, both contemporary and classical art, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum. The Upper East Side has many art galleries,[278][279] and the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea is known for its more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from both upcoming and established artists.[280][281] Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in Manhattan.[282][283] The Empire State Building displays the colors of the Rainbow Flag as an LGBT icon, top. The annual NYC Pride March in June (seen here in 2018) is the world’s largest LGBT event, imaged below.[284][285] Manhattan is the center of LGBT culture in New York City. The borough is widely acclaimed as the cradle of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, with its inception at the June 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan – widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[101][286][287] and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.[102][288] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre"—[289] radiating from this central hub, as LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[290] Multiple gay villages have developed, spanning the length of the borough from the Lower East Side, East Village, and Greenwich Village, through Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen, uptown to Morningside Heights. The annual NYC Pride March (or gay pride parade) traverses southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village; the Manhattan parade rivals the Sao Paulo Gay Pride Parade as the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[285][284] Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, produced by Heritage of Pride. The events were in partnership with the I ❤ NY program's LGBT division, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan.[291] Clockwise, from upper left: the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade;[292] the annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the annual Philippine Independence Day Parade; and the ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts The borough has a place in several American idioms. The phrase New York minute is meant to convey an extremely short time such as an instant,[293] sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible," referring to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan.[294][295] The expression "melting pot" was first popularly coined to describe the densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side in Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, which was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set by Zangwill in New York City in 1908.[296] The iconic Flatiron Building is said to have been the source of the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building.[297] The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stablehands to refer to New York City's horse racetracks and named his racing column "Around The Big Apple". Jazz musicians adopted the term to refer to the city as the world's jazz capital, and a 1970s ad campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau helped popularize the term.[298] Manhattan, Kansas, a city of 53,000 people,[299] was named by New York investors after the borough and is nicknamed the "little apple".[300] Manhattan is well known for its street parades, which celebrate a broad array of themes, including holidays, nationalities, human rights, and major league sports team championship victories. The majority of higher profile parades in New York City are held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[292] beginning alongside Central Park and processing southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[301] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[292] Other notable parades including the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the New York City Pride Parade in June, the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other heroic accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. New York Fashion Week, held at various locations in Manhattan, is a high-profile semiannual event featuring models displaying the latest wardrobes created by prominent fashion designers worldwide in advance of these fashions proceeding to the retail marketplace. Sports Madison Square Garden is home to the Rangers and Knicks, and hosts some Liberty games The Skating Pond in Central Park, 1862 Manhattan is home to the NBA's New York Knicks and the NHL's New York Rangers, both of which play their home games at Madison Square Garden, the only major professional sports arena in the borough. The Garden was also home to the WNBA's New York Liberty through the 2017 season, but that team's primary home is now the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The New York Jets proposed a West Side Stadium for their home field, but the proposal was eventually defeated in June 2005, and they now play at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.[302] While Manhattan does not currently have a professional baseball franchise, three of the four Major League Baseball teams to play in New York City played in Manhattan. The original New York Giants baseball team played in the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue from their inception in 1883—except for 1889, when they split their time between Jersey City, New Jersey and Staten Island, and when they played in Hilltop Park in 1911—until they headed to California with the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season.[303] The New York Yankees began their franchise as the Highlanders, named for Hilltop Park, where they played from their creation in 1903 until 1912. The team moved to the Polo Grounds with the 1913 season, where they were officially christened the New York Yankees, remaining there until they moved across the Harlem River in 1923 to Yankee Stadium.[304] The New York Mets played in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons, before Shea Stadium was completed in 1964.[305] After the Mets departed, the Polo Grounds was demolished in April 1964, replaced by public housing.[306][307] The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[308] The New York Knicks started play in 1946 as one of the National Basketball Association's original teams, playing their first home games at the 69th Regiment Armory, before making Madison Square Garden their permanent home.[309] The New York Liberty of the WNBA shared the Garden with the Knicks from their creation in 1997 as one of the league's original eight teams through the 2017 season,[310] after which the team moved nearly all of its home schedule to White Plains in Westchester County.[311] Rucker Park in Harlem is a playground court, famed for its streetball style of play, where many NBA athletes have played in the summer league.[312] Although both of New York City's football teams play today across the Hudson River in MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, both teams started out playing in the Polo Grounds. The New York Giants played side-by-side with their baseball namesakes from the time they entered the National Football League in 1925, until crossing over to Yankee Stadium in 1956.[313] The New York Jets, originally known as the Titans of New York, started out in 1960 at the Polo Grounds, staying there for four seasons before joining the Mets in Queens at Shea Stadium in 1964.[314] The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League have played in the various locations of Madison Square Garden since the team's founding in the 1926–1927 season. The Rangers were predated by the New York Americans, who started play in the Garden the previous season, lasting until the team folded after the 1941–1942 NHL season, a season it played in the Garden as the Brooklyn Americans.[315] The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League played their home games at Downing Stadium for two seasons, starting in 1974. The playing pitch and facilities at Downing Stadium were in unsatisfactory condition, however, and as the team's popularity grew they too left for Yankee Stadium, and then Giants Stadium. The stadium was demolished in 2002 to make way for the $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, which includes an Olympic-standard 400-meter running track and, as part of Pelé's and the Cosmos' legacy, includes a FIFA-approved floodlit soccer stadium that hosts matches between the 48 youth teams of a Manhattan soccer club.[316][317] Government Main article: Government of New York City Manhattan Municipal Building Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter, which has provided for a strong mayor–council system since its revision in 1989.[318] The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Manhattan. The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.[319] Since 1990, the largely powerless Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Manhattan's current Borough President is Mark Levine, elected as a Democrat in November 2021. Levine replaced Gale Brewer, who went on to represent the sixth district of the New York City Council. Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, is the District Attorney of New York County. Manhattan has ten City Council members, the third largest contingent among the five boroughs. It also has twelve administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents. As the host of the United Nations, the borough is home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates.[320] It is also the home of New York City Hall, the seat of New York City government housing the Mayor of New York City and the New York City Council. The mayor's staff and thirteen municipal agencies are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, completed in 1914, one of the largest governmental buildings in the world.[321] United States presidential election results for New York County, New York[322][323][324]  Politics See also: Community boards of Manhattan James Farley Post Office The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Registered Republicans are a minority in the borough, constituting 9.88% of the electorate as of April 2016. Registered Republicans are more than 20% of the electorate only in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Financial District as of 2016. Democrats accounted for 68.41% of those registered to vote, while 17.94% of voters were unaffiliated.[325][326] No Republican has won the presidential election in Manhattan since 1924, when Calvin Coolidge won a plurality of the New York County vote over Democrat John W. Davis, 41.20%–39.55%. Warren G. Harding was the most recent Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the Manhattan vote, with 59.22% of the 1920 vote.[citation needed] In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 82.1% of the vote in Manhattan and Republican George W. Bush received 16.7%.[327] The borough is the most important source of funding for presidential campaigns in the United States; in 2004, it was home to six of the top seven ZIP codes in the nation for political contributions.[328] The top ZIP code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the United States presidential election for all presidential candidates, including both Kerry and Bush during the 2004 election.[329] Representatives in the U.S. Congress In 2018, four Democrats represented Manhattan in the United States House of Representatives.[330] Nydia Velázquez (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 7th congressional district, which includes the Lower East Side and Alphabet City. The district also covers central and western Brooklyn and a small part of Queens.[330][331][332] Jerry Nadler (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 10th congressional district, which includes the West Side neighborhoods of Battery Park City, Chelsea, Chinatown, the Financial District, Greenwich Village, Hell's Kitchen, SoHo, Tribeca, and the Upper West Side. The district also covers southwestern Brooklyn.[330][333][334] Carolyn Maloney (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 12th congressional district, which includes the East Side neighborhoods of Gramercy Park, Kips Bay, Midtown Manhattan, Murray Hill, Roosevelt Island, Turtle Bay, Upper East Side, and most of the Lower East Side and the East Village. The district also covers western Queens.[330][335][336] Adriano Espaillat (first elected in 2016) represents New York's 13th congressional district, which includes the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem, Harlem, Inwood, Marble Hill, Washington Heights, and portions of Morningside Heights, as well as part of the northwest Bronx.[330][337][338] Federal offices The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Manhattan. The James Farley Post Office at 421 Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, between 31st Street and 33rd Street, is New York City's main post office.[339] Both the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit are located in Lower Manhattan's Foley Square, and the U.S. Attorney and other federal offices and agencies maintain locations in that area. Crime and public safety Main article: Crime in New York City A slum tour through the Five Points in an 1885 sketch Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States became a magnet for immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their home countries. After arriving in New York, many new arrivals ended up living in squalor in the slums of the Five Points neighborhood, an area between Broadway and the Bowery, northeast of New York City Hall. By the 1820s, the area was home to many gambling dens and brothels, and was known as a dangerous place to go. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the horrendous living conditions he had seen.[340] The area was so notorious that it even caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who visited the area before his Cooper Union speech in 1860.[341] The predominantly Irish Five Points Gang was one of the country's first major organized crime entities. As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang.[342] The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period.[343] From 1920–1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.[343] New York City as a whole experienced a sharp increase in crime during the post war period.[344] The murder rate in Manhattan hit an all time high of 42 murders per 100,000 residents in 1979.[345] Manhattan retained the highest murder rate in the city until 1985 when it was surpassed by the Bronx. Most serious violent crime has been historically concentrated in Upper Manhattan and the Lower East Side, though robbery in particular was a major quality of life concern throughout the borough. Through the 1990s and 2000s, crime in Manhattan plummeted in all categories versus historic highs.[citation needed] Today crime rates in most of Lower Manhattan, Midtown, the Upper East Side, and the Upper West Side are consistent with other major city centers in the United States. However, crime rates remain high in the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem, Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, and NYCHA developments across the borough despite significant reductions. In more recent years[clarification needed] there has been an increase in violent crime, particularly in Upper Manhattan and NYCHA developments.[346][347][348] Housing During Manhattan's early history, wood construction and poor access to water supplies left the city vulnerable to fires. In 1776, shortly after the Continental Army evacuated Manhattan and left it to the British, a massive fire broke out destroying one-third of the city and some 500 houses.[349] Tenement houses in 1936 The rise of immigration near the turn of the 20th century left major portions of Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, densely packed with recent arrivals, crammed into unhealthy and unsanitary housing. Tenements were usually five stories high, constructed on the then-typical 25 by 100 feet (7.6 by 30.5 m) lots, with "cockroach landlords" exploiting the new immigrants.[350][351] By 1929, stricter fire codes and the increased use of elevators in residential buildings, were the impetus behind a new housing code that effectively ended the tenement as a form of new construction, though many tenement buildings survive today on the East Side of the borough.[351] Conversely, there were also areas with luxury apartment developments, the first of which was the Dakota on the Upper West Side.[352] At the time of its construction, London Terrace in Chelsea was the largest apartment building in the world Manhattan offers a wide array of public and private housing options. There were 852,575 housing units in 2013[31] at an average density of 37,345 per square mile (14,419/km²). As of 2003, only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind the Bronx.[353] Although the city of New York has the highest average cost for rent in the United States, it simultaneously hosts a higher average of income per capita. Because of this, rent is a lower percentage of annual income than in several other American cities.[354] Manhattan's real estate market for luxury housing continues to be among the most expensive in the world,[355] and Manhattan residential property continues to have the highest sale price per square foot in the United States.[23] Manhattan's apartments cost $1,773 per square foot ($19,080/m2), compared to San Francisco housing at $1,185 per square foot ($12,760/m2), Boston housing at $751 per square foot ($8,080/m2), and Los Angeles housing at $451 per square foot ($4,850/m2).[356] Infrastructure Transportation See also: Transportation in New York City Public transportation Grand Central Terminal is a National Historic Landmark. Ferries departing Battery Park City and helicopters flying above Manhattan The Staten Island Ferry, seen from the Battery, crosses Upper New York Bay, providing free public transportation between Staten Island and Manhattan. Manhattan is unique in the U.S. for intense use of public transportation and lack of private car ownership. While 88% of Americans nationwide drive to their jobs, with only 5% using public transport, mass transit is the dominant form of travel for residents of Manhattan, with 72% of borough residents using public transport to get to work, while only 18% drove.[357][358] According to the 2000 United States Census, 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.[359] In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a congestion pricing system to regulate entering Manhattan south of 60th Street. The state legislature rejected the proposal in June 2008.[360] The New York City Subway, the largest subway system in the world by number of stations, is the primary means of travel within the city, linking every borough except Staten Island. There are 151 subway stations in Manhattan, out of the 472 stations.[361] A second subway, the PATH system, connects six stations in Manhattan to northern New Jersey. Passengers pay fares with pay-per-ride MetroCards, which are valid on all city buses and subways, as well as on PATH trains.[362][363] There are 7-day and 30-day MetroCards that allow unlimited trips on all subways (except PATH) and MTA bus routes (except for express buses).[364] The PATH QuickCard is being phased out, having been replaced by the SmartLink. The MTA is testing "smart card" payment systems to replace the MetroCard.[365] Commuter rail services operating to and from Manhattan are the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which connects Manhattan and other New York City boroughs to Long Island; the Metro-North Railroad, which connects Manhattan to Upstate New York and Southwestern Connecticut; and NJ Transit trains, which run to various points in New Jersey. The US$11.1 billion East Side Access project, which will bring LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal, is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2022; this project will create a new train tunnel beneath the East River, connecting the East Side of Manhattan with Long Island City, Queens.[366][367] Four multi-billion-dollar projects were completed in the mid-2010s: the $1.4 billion Fulton Center in November 2014,[368] the $2.4 billion 7 Subway Extension in September 2015,[369] the $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub in March 2016,[370][371] and Phase 1 of the $4.5 billion Second Avenue Subway in January 2017.[372][373] MTA New York City Transit offers a wide variety of local buses within Manhattan under the brand New York City Bus. An extensive network of express bus routes serves commuters and other travelers heading into Manhattan.[374] The bus system served 784 million passengers citywide in 2011, placing the bus system's ridership as the highest in the nation, and more than double the ridership of the second-place Los Angeles system.[375] The Roosevelt Island Tramway, one of two commuter cable car systems in North America, whisks commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in less than five minutes, and has been serving the island since 1978. (The other system in North America is the Portland Aerial Tram.)[376][377] The Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, annually carries over 21 million passengers on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) run between Manhattan and Staten Island. Each weekday, five vessels transport about 65,000 passengers on 109 boat trips.[378][379] The ferry has been fare-free since 1997, when the then-50-cent fare was eliminated.[380] In February 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city government would begin NYC Ferry to extend ferry transportation to traditionally underserved communities in the city.[381][382] The first routes of NYC Ferry opened in 2017.[383][384] All of the system's routes have termini in Manhattan, and the Lower East Side and Soundview routes also have intermediate stops on the East River.[385] The metro region's commuter rail lines converge at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, on the west and east sides of Midtown Manhattan, respectively. They are the two busiest rail stations in the United States. About one-third of users of mass transit and two-thirds of railway passengers in the country live in New York and its suburbs.[386] Amtrak provides inter-city passenger rail service from Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York and New England; cross-Canadian border service to Toronto and Montreal; and destinations in the Southern and Midwestern United States. Major highways  I-78  I-95  I-278  I-478  I-495  US 9  NY 9A  NY 495 Taxis Main article: Taxicabs of New York City New York's iconic yellow taxicabs, which number 13,087 city-wide and must have the requisite medallion authorizing the pick up of street hails, are ubiquitous in the borough.[387] Various private vehicle for hire companies provide significant competition for taxicab drivers in Manhattan.[388] Bicycles Main article: Cycling in New York City Manhattan also has tens of thousands of bicycle commuters. Streets and roads The Brooklyn Bridge to the right and the Manhattan Bridge towards the left, are two of the three bridges that connect Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn over the East River. Eighth Avenue, looking northward ("Uptown"), in the rain; most streets and avenues in Manhattan's grid plan incorporate a one-way traffic configuration Tourists looking westward at sunset to observe the July 12, 2016 Manhattanhenge See also: List of numbered streets in Manhattan and List of eponymous streets in New York City The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each 100 feet (30 m) wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue on the west side. There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village. The numbered streets in Manhattan run east–west, and are generally 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. The typical block in Manhattan is 250 by 600 feet (76 by 183 m). According to the original Commissioner's Plan, there were 155 numbered crosstown streets,[389] but later the grid was extended up to the northernmost corner of Manhattan, where the last numbered street is 220th Street. Moreover, the numbering system continues even in the Bronx, north of Manhattan, despite the fact that the grid plan is not as regular in that borough, whose last numbered street is 263rd Street.[390] Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 57th and 125th Streets,[391] which became some of the borough's most significant transportation and shopping venues. Broadway is the most notable of many exceptions to the grid, starting at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan and continuing north into the Bronx at Manhattan's northern tip. In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Union Square (Park Avenue South/Fourth Avenue and 14th Street), Madison Square (Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street), Herald Square (Sixth Avenue and 34th Street), Times Square (Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street), and Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue/Central Park West and 59th Street). "Crosstown traffic" refers primarily to vehicular traffic between Manhattan's East Side and West Side. The trip is notoriously frustrating for drivers because of heavy congestion on narrow local streets laid out by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, absence of express roads other than the Trans-Manhattan Expressway at the far north end of Manhattan Island; and restricted to very limited crosstown automobile travel within Central Park. Proposals in the mid-1900s to build express roads through the city's densest neighborhoods, namely the Mid-Manhattan Expressway and Lower Manhattan Expressway, did not go forward. Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present, significantly shaping traffic patterns in Manhattan.[392] Another consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge).[393] On separate occasions in late May and early July, the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level.[393][394] A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December. The FDR Drive and Harlem River Drive, both designed by controversial New York master planner Robert Moses,[395] comprise a single, long limited-access parkway skirting the east side of Manhattan along the East River and Harlem River south of Dyckman Street. The Henry Hudson Parkway is the corresponding parkway on the West Side north of 57th Street. River crossings Ferry service departing Battery Park City towards New Jersey, see from Paulus Hook Being primarily an island, Manhattan is linked to New York City's outer boroughs by numerous bridges, of various sizes. Manhattan has fixed highway connections with New Jersey to its west by way of the George Washington Bridge, the Holland Tunnel, and the Lincoln Tunnel, and to three of the four other New York City boroughs—the Bronx to the northeast, and Brooklyn and Queens (both on Long Island) to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough, Staten Island, is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. The ferry terminal is located near Battery Park at Manhattan's southern tip. It is also possible to travel on land to Staten Island by way of Brooklyn, via the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge. The George Washington Bridge, the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge,[396][397] connects Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan, to Bergen County, in New Jersey. There are numerous bridges to the Bronx across the Harlem River, and five (listed north to south)—the Triborough (known officially as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), Ed Koch Queensboro (also known as the 59th Street Bridge), Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges—that cross the East River to connect Manhattan to Long Island. Several tunnels also link Manhattan Island to New York City's outer boroughs and New Jersey. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[398] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sail through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the world's first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel.[399] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940;[400] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[401] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn. Several ferry services operate between New Jersey and Manhattan.[402] These ferries mainly serve midtown (at W. 39th St.), Battery Park City (WFC at Brookfield Place), and Wall Street (Pier 11). Heliports Manhattan has three public heliports: the East 34th Street Heliport (also known as the Atlantic Metroport) at East 34th Street, owned by New York City and run by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC); the Port Authority Downtown Manhattan/Wall Street Heliport, owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and run by the NYCEDC; and the West 30th Street Heliport, a privately owned heliport owned by the Hudson River Park Trust.[403] US Helicopter offered regularly scheduled helicopter service connecting the Downtown Manhattan Heliport with John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, before going out of business in 2009.[404] Utilities Gas and electric service is provided by Consolidated Edison to all of Manhattan. Con Edison's electric business traces its roots back to Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned electric utility. The company started service on September 4, 1882, using one generator to provide 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers with 800 light bulbs, in a one-square-mile area of Lower Manhattan from his Pearl Street Station.[405] Con Edison operates the world's largest district steam system, which consists of 105 miles (169 km) of steam pipes, providing steam for heating, hot water, and air conditioning[406] by some 1,800 Manhattan customers.[407] Cable service is provided by Time Warner Cable and telephone service is provided by Verizon Communications, although AT&T is available as well. Manhattan witnessed the doubling of the natural gas supply delivered to the borough when a new gas pipeline opened on November 1, 2013.[408] The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal.[409] The bulk of the city's trash ultimately is disposed at mega-dumps in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio (via transfer stations in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens) since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.[410] A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities. Like New York City, New Jersey and much of Greater New York relies on exporting its trash to far-flung areas. New York City has the largest clean-air diesel-hybrid and compressed natural gas bus fleet, which also operates in Manhattan, in the country. It also has some of the first hybrid taxis, most of which operate in Manhattan.[411] Health care Main article: List of hospitals in New York City § Manhattan There are many hospitals in Manhattan, including two of the 25 largest in the United States (as of 2017):[412] Bellevue Hospital Lenox Hill Hospital Lower Manhattan Hospital Metropolitan Hospital Center Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital Mount Sinai Hospital NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem NYU Langone Medical Center Water purity and availability Main articles: Food and water in New York City and New York City water supply system New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[413] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.[414] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a US$3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[415] Manhattan, surrounded by two brackish rivers, had a limited supply of fresh water. To satisfy its growing population, the City of New York acquired land in adjacent Westchester County and constructed the old Croton Aqueduct system there, which went into service in 1842 and was superseded by the new Croton Aqueduct, which opened in 1890. This, however, was interrupted in 2008 for the ongoing construction of a US$3.2 billion water purification plant that can supply an estimated 290 million gallons daily when completed, representing an almost 20% addition to the city's availability of water, with this addition going to Manhattan and the Bronx.[416] Water comes to Manhattan through the tunnels 1 and 2, completed in 1917 and 1935, and in future through Tunnel No. 3, begun in 1970.[417] Address algorithm Main article: Manhattan address algorithm The address algorithm of Manhattan refers to the formulas used to estimate the closest east–west cross street for building numbers on north–south avenues. It is commonly noted in telephone directories, New York City travel guides, and MTA Manhattan bus maps. See also flag New York City portal flag New York (state) portal History of New York City List of Manhattan neighborhoods List of people from Manhattan Manhattanhenge Manhattanization Manhattoe National Register of Historic Places listings in Manhattan Sawing-off of Manhattan Island Timeline of New York City Notes  Area codes 718, 347, and 929 are used in Marble Hill.  Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1991 to 2020.  Official weather observations for Central Park were conducted at the Arsenal at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street from 1869 to 1919, and at Belvedere Castle since 1919.[171]
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).[1] The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. The photographs in the FSA/Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937–1942), and the Office of War Information (1942–1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and nongovernmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.[2] In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA-OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. Color transparencies also made by the FSA/OWI are available in a separate section of the catalog: FSA/OWI Color Photographs.[2] The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming. Reactionary critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an alleged experiment in collectivizing agriculture—that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. After the Conservative coalition took control of Congress, it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and that program continues to operate in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration. Origins Walker Evans portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (1936) Arthur Rothstein photograph "Dust Bowl Cimarron County, Oklahoma" of a farmer and two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936) Dorothea Lange photograph of an Arkansas squatter of three years near Bakersfield, California (1935) The projects that were combined in 1935 to form the Resettlement Administration (RA) started in 1933 as an assortment of programs tried out by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The RA was headed by Rexford Tugwell, an economic advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[3] However, Tugwell's goal moving 650,000 people into 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2) of exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress.[3] This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive powerful farm proprietors of their tenant workforce.[3] The RA was thus left with only enough resources to relocate a few thousand people from 9 million acres (36,000 km2) and build several greenbelt cities,[3] which planners admired as models for a cooperative future that never arrived.[3] The main focus of the RA was to now build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-stricken Dust Bowl of the Southwest.[3] This move was resisted by a large share of Californians, who did not want destitute migrants to settle in their midst.[3] The RA managed to construct 95 camps that gave migrants unaccustomed clean quarters with running water and other amenities,[3] but the 75,000 people who had the benefit of these camps were a small share of those in need and could only stay temporarily.[3] After facing enormous criticism for his poor management of the RA, Tugwell resigned in 1936.[3] On January 1, 1937,[4] with hopes of making the RA more effective, the RA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530.[4] On July 22, 1937,[5] Congress passed the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[5] This law authorized a modest credit program to assist tenant farmers to purchase land,[5] and it was the culmination of a long effort to secure legislation for their benefit.[5] Following the passage of the act, Congress passed the Farm Security Act into law. The Farm Security Act officially transformed the RA into the Farm Security Administration (FSA).[3] The FSA expanded through funds given by the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[3] Relief work One of the activities performed by the RA and FSA was the buying out of small farms that were not economically viable, and the setting up of 34 subsistence homestead communities, in which groups of farmers lived together under the guidance of government experts and worked a common area. They were not allowed to purchase their farms for fear that they would fall back into inefficient practices not guided by RA and FSA experts.[6] The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains displaced thousands of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and laborers, many of whom (known as "Okies" or "Arkies") moved on to California. The FSA operated camps for them, such as Weedpatch Camp as depicted in The Grapes of Wrath. The RA and the FSA gave educational aid to 455,000 farm families during the period 1936-1943. In June, 1936, Roosevelt wrote: "You are right about the farmers who suffer through their own fault... I wish you would have a talk with Tugwell about what he is doing to educate this type of farmer to become self-sustaining. During the past year, his organization has made 104,000 farm families practically self-sustaining by supervision and education along practical lines. That is a pretty good record!"[7] The FSA's primary mission was not to aid farm production or prices. Roosevelt's agricultural policy had, in fact, been to try to decrease agricultural production to increase prices. When production was discouraged, though, the tenant farmers and small holders suffered most by not being able to ship enough to market to pay rents. Many renters wanted money to buy farms, but the Agriculture Department realized there already were too many farmers, and did not have a program for farm purchases. Instead, they used education to help the poor stretch their money further. Congress, however, demanded that the FSA help tenant farmers purchase farms, and purchase loans of $191 million were made, which were eventually repaid. A much larger program was $778 million in loans (at effective rates of about 1% interest) to 950,000 tenant farmers. The goal was to make the farmer more efficient so the loans were used for new machinery, trucks, or animals, or to repay old debts. At all times, the borrower was closely advised by a government agent. Family needs were on the agenda, as the FSA set up a health insurance program and taught farm wives how to cook and raise children. Upward of a third of the amount was never repaid, as the tenants moved to much better opportunities in the cities.[8] The FSA was also one of the authorities administering relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. Between 1938 and 1945, under the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, it oversaw the purchase of 590 farms with the intent of distributing land to working and middle-class Puerto Ricans.[9] Modernization The FSA resettlement communities appear in the literature as efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of southern sharecroppers and tenants, but those evicted to make way for the new settlers are virtually invisible in the historic record. The resettlement projects were part of larger efforts to modernize rural America. The removal of former tenants and their replacement by FSA clients in the lower Mississippi alluvial plain—the Delta—reveals core elements of New Deal modernizing policies. The key concepts that guided the FSA's tenant removals were: the definition of rural poverty as rooted in the problem of tenancy; the belief that economic success entailed particular cultural practices and social forms; and the commitment by those with political power to gain local support. These assumptions undergirded acceptance of racial segregation and the criteria used to select new settlers. Alternatives could only become visible through political or legal action—capacities sharecroppers seldom had. In succeeding decades, though, these modernizing assumptions created conditions for Delta African Americans on resettlement projects to challenge white supremacy.[10] FSA and its contribution to society The documentary photography genre describes photographs that would work as a time capsule for evidence in the future or a certain method that a person can use for a frame of reference. Facts presented in a photograph can speak for themselves after the viewer gets time to analyze it. The motto of the FSA was simply, as Beaumont Newhall insists, "not to inform us, but to move us."[citation needed] Those photographers wanted the government to move and give a hand to the people, as they were completely neglected and overlooked, thus they decided to start taking photographs in a style that we today call "documentary photography." The FSA photography has been influential due to its realist point of view, and because it works as a frame of reference and an educational tool from which later generations could learn. Society has benefited and will benefit from it for more years to come, as this photography can unveil the ambiguous and question the conditions that are taking place.[11] Photography program The RA and FSA are well known for the influence of their photography program, 1935–1944. Photographers and writers were hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. The Information Division (ID) of the FSA was responsible for providing educational materials and press information to the public. Under Roy Stryker, the ID of the FSA adopted a goal of "introducing America to Americans." Many of the most famous Depression-era photographers were fostered by the FSA project. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks were three of the most famous FSA alumni.[12] The FSA was also cited in Gordon Parks' autobiographical novel, A Choice of Weapons. The FSA's photography was one of the first large-scale visual documentations of the lives of African-Americans.[13] These images were widely disseminated through the Twelve Million Black Voices collection, published in October 1941, which combined FSA photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam and text by author and poet Richard Wright. Photographers Fifteen photographers (ordered by year of hire) would produce the bulk of work on this project. Their diverse, visual documentation elevated government's mission from the "relocation" tactics of a Resettlement Administration to strategic solutions which would depend on America recognizing rural and already poor Americans, facing death by depression and dust. FSA photographers: Arthur Rothstein (1935), Theodor Jung (1935), Ben Shahn (1935), Walker Evans (1935), Dorothea Lange (1935), Carl Mydans (1935), Russell Lee (1936), Marion Post Wolcott (1936), John Vachon (1936, photo assignments began in 1938), Jack Delano (1940), John Collier (1941), Marjory Collins (1941), Louise Rosskam (1941), Gordon Parks (1942) and Esther Bubley (1942). With America's entry into World War II, FSA would focus on a different kind of relocation as orders were issued for internment of Japanese Americans. FSA photographers would be transferred to the Office of War Information during the last years of the war and completely disbanded at the war's end. Photographers like Howard R. Hollem, Alfred T. Palmer, Arthur Siegel and OWI's Chief of Photographers John Rous were working in OWI before FSA's reorganization there. As a result of both teams coming under one unit name, these other individuals are sometimes associated with RA-FSA's pre-war images of American life. Though collectively credited with thousands of Library of Congress images, military ordered, positive-spin assignments like these four received starting in 1942, should be separately considered from pre-war, depression triggered imagery. FSA photographers were able to take time to study local circumstances and discuss editorial approaches with each other before capturing that first image. Each one talented in her or his own right, equal credit belongs to Roy Stryker who recognized, hired and empowered that talent. John Collier Jr. John Collier Jr.   Jack Delano Jack Delano   Walker Evans Walker Evans   Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange   Russell Lee Russell Lee   Carl Mydans Carl Mydans   Gordon Parks Gordon Parks   Arthur Rothstein Arthur Rothstein   John Vachon John Vachon   Marion Post Wolcott Marion Post Wolcott These 15 photographers, some shown above, all played a significant role, not only in producing images for this project, but also in molding the resulting images in the final project through conversations held between the group members. The photographers produced images that breathed a humanistic social visual catalyst of the sort found in novels, theatrical productions, and music of the time. Their images are now regarded as a "national treasure" in the United States, which is why this project is regarded as a work of art.[14] Photograph of Chicago's rail yards by Jack Delano, circa 1943 Together with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (not a government project) and documentary prose (for example Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the FSA photography project is most responsible for creating the image of the Depression in the United States. Many of the images appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under instruction from Washington, DC, as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to portray. Stryker's agenda focused on his faith in social engineering, the poor conditions among tenant cotton farmers, and the very poor conditions among migrant farm workers; above all, he was committed to social reform through New Deal intervention in people's lives. Stryker demanded photographs that "related people to the land and vice versa" because these photographs reinforced the RA's position that poverty could be controlled by "changing land practices." Though Stryker did not dictate to his photographers how they should compose the shots, he did send them lists of desirable themes, for example, "church", "court day", and "barns". Stryker sought photographs of migratory workers that would tell a story about how they lived day-to-day. He asked Dorothea Lange to emphasize cooking, sleeping, praying, and socializing.[15] RA-FSA made 250,000 images of rural poverty. Fewer than half of those images survive and are housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The library has placed all 164,000 developed negatives online.[16] From these, some 77,000 different finished photographic prints were originally made for the press, plus 644 color images, from 1600 negatives. Documentary films The RA also funded two documentary films by Pare Lorentz: The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the creation of the Dust Bowl, and The River, about the importance of the Mississippi River. The films were deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. World War II activities During World War II, the FSA was assigned to work under the purview of the Wartime Civil Control Administration, a subagency of the War Relocation Authority. These agencies were responsible for relocating Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to Internment camps. The FSA controlled the agricultural part of the evacuation. Starting in March 1942 they were responsible for transferring the farms owned and operated by Japanese Americans to alternate operators. They were given the dual mandate of ensuring fair compensation for Japanese Americans, and for maintaining correct use of the agricultural land. During this period, Lawrence Hewes Jr was the regional director and in charge of these activities.[17] Reformers ousted; Farmers Home Administration After the war started and millions of factory jobs in the cities were unfilled, no need for FSA remained.[citation needed] In late 1942, Roosevelt moved the housing programs to the National Housing Agency, and in 1943, Congress greatly reduced FSA's activities. The photographic unit was subsumed by the Office of War Information for one year, then disbanded. Finally in 1946, all the social reformers had left and FSA was replaced by a new agency, the Farmers Home Administration, which had the goal of helping finance farm purchases by tenants—and especially by war veterans—with no personal oversight by experts. It became part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960s, with a greatly expanded budget to facilitate loans to low-income rural families and cooperatives, injecting $4.2 billion into rural America.[18] The Great Depression The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, the effects of a declining economy were not felt until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future and a reduction in living standards for most ordinary Americans. The market crash highlighted a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits for industrial firms, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth.[19] New York, often called New York City[a] or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. NYC is more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is at the southern tip of New York State and is situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county. The five boroughs, which were created in 1898 when local governments were consolidated into a single municipality, are: Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County).[11] New York City is a global city and a cultural, financial, high-tech,[12] entertainment, glamour,[13] and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and scientific output in life sciences,[14][15] research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy,[16][17] and it is sometimes described as the world's most important city[18] and the capital of the world.[19][20] The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City is one of the world's most populous megacities.[21] The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,[22] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City enforces a right-to-shelter law guaranteeing shelter to anyone who needs shelter, regardless of their immigration status;[23] and the city is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.[24] It is the most visited U.S. city by international visitors.[25] Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City That Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system in the world with 472 passenger rail stations, and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.[26] New York City traces its origins to Fort Amsterdam and a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[27] The city was temporarily regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange; the city has been named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790,[28] and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. via Ellis Island by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace.[29] Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's leading financial and fintech center[30][31] and the most economically powerful city in the world,[32] and is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization of their listed companies, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.[33][34] As of 2021, the New York metropolitan area is the second largest metropolitan economy in the world with a gross metropolitan product of almost $2.0 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were its own country, it would have the tenth-largest economy in the world. New York City is an established safe haven for global investors.[35] As of 2023, New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live.[36] New York City is home to the highest number of billionaires,[37][38] individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million),[39] and millionaires of any city in the world.[40] Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten-most visited tourist attractions in 2023.[41] A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District,[42] one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections[43] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[44] Many of the city's landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world, and the city's fast pace led to the phrase New York minute. The Empire State Building is a global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures.[45] New York's residential and commercial real estate markets are the most expensive in the world.[46] The city features over 120 colleges and universities, including some of the world's top universities.[47] Its public urban university system, the City University of New York, is the largest in the nation.[48] In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship,[49] and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.[50] The New York Times has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media's newspaper of record. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the historic epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture in the city[51] and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement worldwide.[52][53] New York City is the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world's art auctions; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is both the largest and one of the world's most-visited art museums and hosts the globally focused Met Gala fashion event annually.[54][55] Etymology See also: Nicknames of New York City In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York (later King James II of England).[56] James's elder brother, King Charles II, appointed the Duke as proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when England seized it from Dutch control.[57] History Main article: History of New York City For a chronological guide, see Timeline of New York City. Further information: History of Manhattan, Timeline of Brooklyn, Timeline of Queens, Timeline of the Bronx, and Timeline of Staten Island Early history Main article: History of New York City (prehistory–1664) Lenape sites in Lower Manhattan In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.[58] The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown.[59] He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême).[60] A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River').[61] In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company.[62] He proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Hudson's first mate described the harbor as "a very good Harbour for all windes" and the river as "a mile broad" and "full of fish".[63] Hudson claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland ('New Netherland'). The first non–Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Juan Rodriguez, a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street in Upper Manhattan, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.[64][65][importance?] Dutch rule Main articles: New Amsterdam, Fort Amsterdam, and New Netherland The Castello Plan, a 1660 map of New Amsterdam (the top right corner is roughly north) in Lower Manhattan New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New York A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States,[66] with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.[67][68] The colony of New Amsterdam was centered on what would ultimately become Lower Manhattan. Its area extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and British raids.[69] In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, acting as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band,[70] for "the value of 60 guilders"[71] (about $900 in 2018).[72] A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.[73][74] Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly.[27] To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (patroons, or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swaths of land, along with local political autonomy and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.[75] Since 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).[27][76] In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000.[77][78] Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony; however, he earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups (including Quakers, Jews, and Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship.[79] The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.[80] English rule Main articles: Province of New York and History of New York City (1665–1783) The Fall of New Amsterdam by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, part of the Conquest of New Netherland Fort George and New York with British Navy ships of the line c. 1731 Slave being burned at the stake after the 1741 slave revolt[81] In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed.[79][80] The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom.[82] In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the victorious Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname (on the northern South American coast) they had gained from the English; and in return, the English kept New Amsterdam. The fledgling settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII).[83] After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 150 miles (240 km) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title.[84] The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the Treaty of Breda, which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War.[85][repetition] On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Anthony Colve of the Dutch navy seized New York from the English at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III, the Prince of Orange.[86] The Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.[87][88] Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670.[89] By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200.[90] New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population in 1702 alone.[91][92] In the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York.[93] It became a center of slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730.[94] Most cases were that of domestic slavery; others were hired out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 of graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.[95] The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish freedom of the press in North America.[96] In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[97] American Revolution Further information: American Revolution The Battle of Long Island, one of the largest battles of the American Revolutionary War, which took place in Brooklyn on August 27, 1776 The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.[98] The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn.[99] After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia.[100] They resettled other freedmen in England and the Caribbean.[importance?] The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war[citation needed] took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.[101] Post-revolutionary period and early 19th century Main article: History of New York City (1784–1854) First inauguration of George Washington in 1789 In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States.[102] As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted several events of national scope in 1789—the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time; and the United States Bill of Rights was drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[102] In 1790, for the first time, New York City, surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of that year, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia.[103][104] Over the nineteenth century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million.[105] Under New York State's abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties.[106][107] Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential United States founders as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children.[108] It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School.[importance?] New York city's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 by 1840, 16,000 of whom were Black.[109][110] A painting of a snowy city street with horse-drawn sleds and a 19th-century fire truck under blue sky Broadway, which follows the Native American Wecquaesgeek Trail through Manhattan, in 1840.[111] In the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively.[112] The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.[113] Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants.[114] Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city.[citation needed] The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing upward of one-quarter of the city's population.[115] There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.[116][117] American Civil War Main articles: New York City in the American Civil War and History of New York City (1855–1897) Depiction of lynching during the New York City draft riots in 1863 Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called on the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on.[108] Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to hire a substitute, led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.[108] The draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, with more than 200 children escaping harm due to efforts of the New York Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants.[116] At least 120 people were killed.[118] Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865. The White working class had established dominance.[116][118] Violence by longshoremen against Black men was especially fierce in the docks area.[116] It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.[119] Early 20th century Main articles: History of New York City (1898–1945) and History of New York City (1946–1977) Manhattan's Little Italy in the Lower East Side, c. 1900 In 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate 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.[120] The opening of the subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together.[121] Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.[122] In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board.[123] In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, killed 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.[124] New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890.[125] New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had become home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America.[126] The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition.[127] The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline. A man working on a steel girder high about a city skyline. A construction worker atop the Empire State Building during its construction in 1930. The Chrysler Building is visible behind him. New York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history.[128] The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.[129] Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.[130] A two-story building with brick on the first floor, with two arched doorways, and gray stucco on the second floor off of which hang numerous rainbow flags. Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.[131][132][133] The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.[134] They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[131][135][136][137] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[138][139] Wayne R. Dynes, author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, wrote that drag queens were the only "transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality during the period of the Stonewall riots and thereafter.[140] Late 20th century to present Main articles: History of New York City (1978–present) and September 11 attacks In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[141] While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[142] By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy.[143] New York City's population reached all-time highs in the 2000, 2010, and 2020 US censuses. The World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan, during the September 11 attacks in 2001 New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.[144] Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. The North Tower became, and remains, the tallest building to ever be destroyed.[145] The area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure.[146] The World Trade Center PATH station, which had opened on July 19, 1909, as the Hudson Terminal,[importance?] was destroyed in the attacks. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003.[importance?] An 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) permanent rail station designed by Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub, was completed in 2016.[147] The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere[148] and the seventh-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m) in reference to the year of U.S. independence.[149][150][151] The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[152] Manhattan in the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the worst to strike the city since 1700.[153] New York City was heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Sandy's impacts included the flooding of the New York City Subway system, of many suburban communities, and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days. Numerous homes and businesses were destroyed by fire, including over 100 homes in Breezy Point, Queens.[excessive detail?] Large parts of the city and surrounding areas lost electricity for several days. Several thousand people in Midtown Manhattan were evacuated for six days due to a crane collapse at Extell's One57.[excessive detail?] Bellevue Hospital Center and a few other large hospitals were closed and evacuated.[excessive detail?] Flooding at 140 West Street and another exchange disrupted voice and data communication in Lower Manhattan.[excessive detail?] At least 43 people died in New York City as a result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas.[154] In March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed in Manhattan.[155] The city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China to become the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, before the infection became widespread across the world and the rest of the nation. As of March 2021, New York City had recorded over 30,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications. Geography Main articles: Geography of New York City and Geography of New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary Aerial view of the New York City metropolitan area with Manhattan at its center New York City is situated in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island. During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet.[156] The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[157] The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary.[158] The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely freshwater river in the city.[159][importance?] The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.[160] Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.[161] The city's total area is 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2); 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km2) of the city is land and 165.841 sq mi (429.53 km2) of this is water.[162][163] The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine.[164] The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.[165] Boroughs Main articles: Boroughs of New York City and Neighborhoods in New York City A map showing five boroughs in different colors.   1. Manhattan   2. Brooklyn   3. Queens   4. The Bronx   5. Staten Island New York City's five boroughsvte Jurisdiction Population Land area Density of population GDP † Borough County Census (2020) square miles square km people/ sq. mile people/ sq. km billions (2012 US$) 2 The Bronx Bronx 1,472,654 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482 $38.726 Brooklyn Kings 2,736,074 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227 $92.300 Manhattan New York 1,694,251 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872 $651.619 Queens Queens 2,405,464 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542 $88.578 Staten Island Richmond 495,747 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327 $14.806 City of New York 8,804,190 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234 $885.958 State of New York 20,215,751 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166 $1,514.779 † GDP = Gross Domestic Product    Sources:[166][167][168][169] and see individual borough articles. New York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the Five Boroughs.[170] Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character.[citation needed] 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 (Staten Island would be ranked 37th as of 2020); these same boroughs are coterminous with the four most densely populated counties in the United States: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Bronx, and Queens. Manhattan Lower and Midtown Manhattan photographed by a SkySat satellite in August 2017 Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as The City.[171] Manhattan's population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km2) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[172] Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough of Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.[173][174] Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River and the East River, and its southern tip, at the confluence of the two rivers on the site of today's Financial District in Lower Manhattan, represents the historical birthplace of New York City itself.[175][176] Several small islands also compose part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randalls and Wards Islands, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into the 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, bordering the Bronx (Bronx County). Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century until the Great Migration. It was the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The borough of Manhattan also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill, which is contiguous with the Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the Outer Boroughs. Brooklyn Downtown Brooklyn seen from Lower Manhattan Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the Outer Boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the U.S.[177] Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.[178] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[179][180] and of postmodern art and design.[180][181] Queens The growing skyline of Long Island City in Queens,[182] facing the East River Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,[183] and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.[184][185] Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Downtown Flushing has become one of the busiest central core neighborhoods in the outer boroughs.[citation needed] Queens is the site of the Citi Field baseball stadium, home of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are in Queens. The Bronx The Yankee Stadium in the Bronx The Bronx (Bronx County) is both New York City's northernmost borough, and the only one that is mostly on the mainland. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively-owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.[186] It is home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo,[187] which spans 265 acres (1.07 km2) and houses more than 6,000 animals.[188] The Bronx is the birthplace of hip hop music and its associated culture.[189] Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190] Staten Island St. George, Staten Island Staten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. It is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2,500 acres (10 km2), including 28 miles (45 km) of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.[191] Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks. Architecture Further information: Architecture of New York City; List of buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City; List of tallest buildings in New York City; and List of hotels in New York City The Empire State Building has setbacks, Art Deco details, and a spire. It was the world's tallest building from 1931 to 1970. The Chrysler Building, built in 1930, is in the Art Deco style, with ornamental hubcaps and a spire. Landmark 19th-century rowhouses, including brownstones, on tree-lined Kent Street in the Greenpoint Historic District, Brooklyn Modernist and Gothic Revival architecture in Midtown Manhattan New York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the Dutch Colonial Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost.[192] Manhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is universally recognized, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2019, New York City had 6,455 high-rise buildings, the third most in the world after Hong Kong and Seoul.[193] Of these, as of 2011,[needs update] 550 completed structures were at least 330 feet (100 m) high, with more than fifty completed skyscrapers taller than 656 feet (200 m). These include the Woolworth Building, an early example of Gothic Revival architecture in skyscraper design; completed in 1913, for 17 years it was the world's tallest building.[194] The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setbacks in new buildings and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[195] The Art Deco style of the Chrysler Building (1930) and Empire State Building (1931), with their tapered tops and steel spires, reflected the zoning requirements.[citation needed] The buildings have distinctive ornamentation, such as the eagles at the corners of the 61st floor on the Chrysler Building, and are considered some of the finest examples of the Art Deco style.[196] A highly influential example of the International Style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its façade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prominent example of green design in American skyscrapers[197] and has received an award from the American Institute of Architects and AIA New York State for its design.[citation needed] The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.[198] In contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.[199][200][201] 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.[202] A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the roof-mounted wooden water tower. 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 break municipal water pipes.[203] Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, such as Jackson Heights.[204] According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in New York City than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based on a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near the city, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures.[205] Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet of office space as of 2022;[repetition] the COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid work model have prompted consideration of commercial-to-residential conversion within Midtown Manhattan.[206] Ten mile (16km) Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken in February 2018 from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey Riverside ChurchDeutsche Bank Center220 Central Park SouthCentral Park TowerOne57432 Park Avenue53W53Chrysler BuildingBank of America Tower4 Times SquareThe New York Times BuildingEmpire State BuildingManhattan Westa: 55 Hudson Yards, 14b: 35 Hudson Yards, 14c: 10 Hudson Yards, 14d: 15 Hudson Yards56 Leonard Street8 Spruce StreetWoolworth Building70 Pine StreetFour Seasons Downtown40 Wall Street3 World Trade Center4 World Trade CenterOne World Trade Center Climate Main article: Climate of New York City New York City Climate chart (explanation) J F M A M J J A S O N D   3.6  4028   3.2  4230   4.3  5036   4.1  6246   4  7155   4.5  8064   4.6  8570   4.6  8369   4.3  7662   4.4  6551   3.6  5442   4.4  4434 █ Average max. and min. temperatures in °F █ Precipitation totals in inches Metric conversion Deep snow in Brooklyn during the Blizzard of 2006 Under the Köppen climate classification, New York City has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west are in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates (Dfa).[207][208] Annually, the city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine.[209] Winters are chilly and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow sea breezes offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachian Mountains keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 33.3 °F (0.7 °C).[210] Temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[211] yet can also reach 60 °F (16 °C) for several days even in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from cool to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 77.5 °F (25.3 °C) in July.[210] Nighttime temperatures are often enhanced due to the urban heat island effect. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C), although this is a rare achievement, last occurring on July 18, 2012.[212] Similarly, readings of 0 °F (−18 °C) are extremely rare, last occurring on February 14, 2016.[213] Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936;[210] the coldest recorded wind chill was −37 °F (−38 °C) on the same day as the all-time record low.[214] The record cold daily maximum was 2 °F (−17 °C) on December 30, 1917, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum was 87 °F (31 °C), on July 2, 1903.[212] The average water temperature of the nearby Atlantic Ocean ranges from 39.7 °F (4.3 °C) in February to 74.1 °F (23.4 °C) in August.[215] The city receives 49.5 inches (1,260 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1991 and 2020 was 29.8 inches (76 cm); this varies considerably between years. Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area.[216] Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs.[217] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[154] vte Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals,[b] extremes 1869–present[c] Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Record high °F (°C) 72 (22) 78 (26) 86 (30) 96 (36) 99 (37) 101 (38) 106 (41) 104 (40) 102 (39) 94 (34) 84 (29) 75 (24) 106 (41) Mean maximum °F (°C) 60.4 (15.8) 60.7 (15.9) 70.3 (21.3) 82.9 (28.3) 88.5 (31.4) 92.1 (33.4) 95.7 (35.4) 93.4 (34.1) 89.0 (31.7) 79.7 (26.5) 70.7 (21.5) 62.9 (17.2) 97.0 (36.1) Average high °F (°C) 39.5 (4.2) 42.2 (5.7) 49.9 (9.9) 61.8 (16.6) 71.4 (21.9) 79.7 (26.5) 84.9 (29.4) 83.3 (28.5) 76.2 (24.6) 64.5 (18.1) 54.0 (12.2) 44.3 (6.8) 62.6 (17.0) Daily mean °F (°C) 33.7 (0.9) 35.9 (2.2) 42.8 (6.0) 53.7 (12.1) 63.2 (17.3) 72.0 (22.2) 77.5 (25.3) 76.1 (24.5) 69.2 (20.7) 57.9 (14.4) 48.0 (8.9) 39.1 (3.9) 55.8 (13.2) Average low °F (°C) 27.9 (−2.3) 29.5 (−1.4) 35.8 (2.1) 45.5 (7.5) 55.0 (12.8) 64.4 (18.0) 70.1 (21.2) 68.9 (20.5) 62.3 (16.8) 51.4 (10.8) 42.0 (5.6) 33.8 (1.0) 48.9 (9.4) Mean minimum °F (°C) 9.8 (−12.3) 12.7 (−10.7) 19.7 (−6.8) 32.8 (0.4) 43.9 (6.6) 52.7 (11.5) 61.8 (16.6) 60.3 (15.7) 50.2 (10.1) 38.4 (3.6) 27.7 (−2.4) 18.0 (−7.8) 7.7 (−13.5) Record low °F (°C) −6 (−21) −15 (−26) 3 (−16) 12 (−11) 32 (0) 44 (7) 52 (11) 50 (10) 39 (4) 28 (−2) 5 (−15) −13 (−25) −15 (−26) Average precipitation inches (mm) 3.64 (92) 3.19 (81) 4.29 (109) 4.09 (104) 3.96 (101) 4.54 (115) 4.60 (117) 4.56 (116) 4.31 (109) 4.38 (111) 3.58 (91) 4.38 (111) 49.52 (1,258) Average snowfall inches (cm) 8.8 (22) 10.1 (26) 5.0 (13) 0.4 (1.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.0 (0.0) 0.1 (0.25) 0.5 (1.3) 4.9 (12) 29.8 (76) Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in) 10.8 10.0 11.1 11.4 11.5 11.2 10.5 10.0 8.8 9.5 9.2 11.4 125.4 Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 in) 3.7 3.2 2.0 0.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.2 2.1 11.4 Average relative humidity (%) 61.5 60.2 58.5 55.3 62.7 65.2 64.2 66.0 67.8 65.6 64.6 64.1 63.0 Average dew point °F (°C) 18.0 (−7.8) 19.0 (−7.2) 25.9 (−3.4) 34.0 (1.1) 47.3 (8.5) 57.4 (14.1) 61.9 (16.6) 62.1 (16.7) 55.6 (13.1) 44.1 (6.7) 34.0 (1.1) 24.6 (−4.1) 40.3 (4.6) Mean monthly sunshine hours 162.7 163.1 212.5 225.6 256.6 257.3 268.2 268.2 219.3 211.2 151.0 139.0 2,534.7 Percent possible sunshine 54 55 57 57 57 57 59 63 59 61 51 48 57 Average ultraviolet index 2 3 4 6 7 8 8 8 6 4 2 1 5 Source 1: NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990; dew point 1965–1984)[212][219][209] Source 2: Weather Atlas[220] See Climate of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs. Sea temperature data for New York[220] Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year Average sea temperature °F (°C) 41.7 (5.4) 39.7 (4.3) 40.2 (4.5) 45.1 (7.3) 52.5 (11.4) 64.5 (18.1) 72.1 (22.3) 74.1 (23.4) 70.1 (21.2) 63.0 (17.2) 54.3 (12.4) 47.2 (8.4) 55.4 (13.0) Parks Main article: List of New York City parks Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, with the Unisphere at center, was used in both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs. The city of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In its 2018 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the ninth-best park system among the fifty most populous U.S. cities.[221] ParkScore ranks urban park systems by a formula that analyzes median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents.[importance?] In 2021, the New York City Council banned the use of synthetic pesticides by city agencies and instead required organic lawn management. The effort was started by teacher Paula Rogovin's kindergarten class at P.S. 290.[222][importance?] National parks Main article: National Park Service The Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a global symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty, freedom, and opportunity[29] Gateway National Recreation Area contains over 26,000 acres (110 km2), most of it in New York City.[223] In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over 9,000 acres (36 km2) of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, it includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park. The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Stonewall National Monument; Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark. State parks Main article: New York state parks Marsha P. Johnson State Park There are seven state parks within the confines of New York City. They include: The Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve, a natural area that includes extensive riding trails. Riverbank State Park, a 28-acre (11 ha) facility[224] Marsha P. Johnson State Park, a state park in Brooklyn and Manhattan that borders the East River renamed in honor of Marsha P. Johnson[225] City parks See also: New York City Department of Parks and Recreation The Pond and Midtown Manhattan as seen from Gapstow Bridge in Central Park The Boathouse on the Lullwater in Prospect Park, Brooklyn New York City has over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of municipal parkland and 14 miles (23 km) of public beaches.[226] The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190][227] Central Park, an 843-acre (3.41 km2)[190] park in middle-upper Manhattan, is the most visited urban park in the United States and one of the most filmed and visited locations in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.[228] The park has a wide range of attractions; there are several lakes and ponds, two ice-skating rinks, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, and the 106-acre (0.43 km2) Jackie Onassis Reservoir.[229] Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, and the historic Carousel. On October 23, 2012, hedge fund manager John A. Paulson announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest ever monetary donation to New York City's park system.[230] Washington Square Park is a prominent landmark in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park is an iconic symbol of both New York University and Greenwich Village. Prospect Park in Brooklyn has a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, a lake, and extensive woodlands. Within the park is the historic Battle Pass, prominent in the Battle of Long Island.[231] Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, with its 897 acres (363 ha) making it the city's fourth largest park,[232] was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and the 1964 World's Fair[233] and is host to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the annual U.S. Open Tennis Championships tournament.[234] Over a fifth of the Bronx's area, 7,000 acres (28 km2), is dedicated to open space and parks, including Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York Botanical Gardens.[235] In Staten Island, the Conference House Park contains the historic Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution which was conducted in September 1775, attended by Benjamin Franklin representing the Americans and Lord Howe representing the British Crown.[236] The historic Burial Ridge, the largest Native American burial ground within New York City, is within the park.[237] Military installations Brooklyn is home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within New York City,[238] aside from Coast Guard operations. The facility was established in 1825 on the site of a battery used during the American Revolution, and it is one of America's longest serving military forts.[239] Today, Fort Hamilton serves as the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the New York City Recruiting Battalion. It also houses the 1179th Transportation Brigade, the 722nd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, and a military entrance processing station. Other formerly active military reservations still used for National Guard and military training or reserve operations in the city include Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Fort Totten in Queens.[citation needed] Demographics Historical population Year Pop. ±% 1698 4,937 —     1712 5,840 +18.3% 1723 7,248 +24.1% 1737 10,664 +47.1% 1746 11,717 +9.9% 1756 13,046 +11.3% 1771 21,863 +67.6% 1790 49,401 +126.0% 1800 79,216 +60.4% 1810 119,734 +51.1% 1820 152,056 +27.0% 1830 242,278 +59.3% 1840 391,114 +61.4% 1850 696,115 +78.0% 1860 1,174,779 +68.8% 1870 1,478,103 +25.8% 1880 1,911,698 +29.3% 1890 2,507,414 +31.2% 1900 3,437,202 +37.1% 1910 4,766,883 +38.7% 1920 5,620,048 +17.9% 1930 6,930,446 +23.3% 1940 7,454,995 +7.6% 1950 7,891,957 +5.9% 1960 7,781,984 −1.4% 1970 7,894,862 +1.5% 1980 7,071,639 −10.4% 1990 7,322,564 +3.5% 2000 8,008,278 +9.4% 2010 8,175,133 +2.1% 2020 8,804,190 +7.7% Note: Census figures (1790–2010) cover the present area of all five boroughs, before and after the 1898 consolidation. For New York City itself before annexing part of the Bronx in 1874, see Manhattan#Demographics.[240] Source: U.S. Decennial Census;[241] 1698–1771[242] 1790–1890[240][243] 1900–1990[244] 2000–2010[245][246][247] 2010–2020[248] Main articles: Demographics of New York City and Demographic history of New York City New York City is the most populous city in the United States,[249] with 8,804,190 residents incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 United States census.[248][250][251] More than twice as many people live in New York City as compared to Los Angeles, the second-most populous U.S. city.[249] New York City gained more residents between 2010 and 2020 (629,000) than any other U.S. city, and a greater amount than the total sum of the gains over the same decade of the next four largest U.S. cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, Arizona) combined.[252][253] New York City comprises about 44% of the state's population,[254] and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area.[255] The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,538, or 58.4%) were living on Long Island, in Brooklyn, or in Queens.[256] The New York City metropolitan statistical area, has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami.[257] In 2020, the city had an estimated population density of 29,302.37 inhabitants per square mile (11,313.71/km2), rendering it the nation's most densely populated of all municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. Geographically co-extensive with New York County, the borough of Manhattan's 2017 population density of 72,918 inhabitants per square mile (28,154/km2) makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[258][259][260][repetition] The next three densest counties in the United States are also New York boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens respectively.[261][repetition] Race and ethnicity Main article: New York City ethnic enclaves Historical demographics 2020[262] 2010[263] 1990[264] 1970[264] 1940[264] Map of racial distribution in New York, 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Other (yellow) The city's population in 2020 was 30.9% White (non-Hispanic), 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American (non-Hispanic), 15.6% Asian, and 0.2% Native American (non-Hispanic).[265] A total of 3.4% of the non-Hispanic population identified with more than one race. Throughout its history, New York has been a major port of entry for immigrants into the United States. More than 12 million European immigrants were received at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.[266] The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. By 1900, Germans were the largest immigrant group, followed by the Irish, Jews, and Italians.[267] In 1940, Whites represented 92% of the city's population at 6.6 million.[264][268] Approximately 37% of the city's population is foreign born, and more than half of all children are born to mothers who are immigrants as of 2013.[269][270] In New York, no single country or region of origin dominates.[269] The ten largest sources of foreign-born individuals in the city as of 2011 were the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago,[271] while the Bangladeshi-born immigrant population has become one of the fastest growing in the city, counting over 74,000 by 2011.[24][272] Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 census, number more than one million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles.[273] New York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper.[274] The New York City borough of Queens is home to the state's largest Asian American population and the largest Andean (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian) populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area in the world.[275][185] Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Venezuela have arrived in New York City since 2022.[276] Chinatown, Manhattan Little Italy, Manhattan Koreatown, Manhattan Little Manila, Queens Little Russia, Brooklyn Little India, Queens The Chinese population is the fastest-growing nationality in New York State. Multiple satellites of the original Manhattan's Chinatown—home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[277] as well as in Brooklyn, and around Flushing, Queens, are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves—while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County[278] on Long Island,[279] as the New York metropolitan region and New York State have become the top destinations for new Chinese immigrants, respectively, and large-scale Chinese immigration continues into New York City and surrounding areas,[257][280][281][282][283][284] with the largest metropolitan Chinese diaspora outside Asia,[24][285] including an estimated 812,410 individuals in 2015.[286] In 2012, 6.3% of New York City was of Chinese ethnicity, with nearly three-fourths living in either Queens or Brooklyn.[287] A community numbering 20,000 Korean-Chinese (Chaoxianzu or Joseonjok) is centered in Flushing, Queens, while New York City is home to the largest Tibetan population outside China, India, and Nepal, also centered in Queens.[288] Koreans made up 1.2% of the city's population, and Japanese 0.3%. Filipinos were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group at 0.8%, followed by Vietnamese, who made up 0.2% of New York City's population in 2010. Indians are the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.4% of the city's population, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis at 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.[289] Queens is the preferred borough of settlement for Asian Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Malaysians,[290][257] and other Southeast Asians;[291] while Brooklyn is receiving large numbers of both West Indian and Asian Indian immigrants, and Manhattan is the favored destination for Japanese.[citation needed] New York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city. At 2.7 million in 2012, New York's non-Hispanic White population is larger than the non-Hispanic White populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston combined.[292] The non-Hispanic White population has begun to increase since 2010.[293][needs update] The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse. According to 2012 census estimates, there were roughly 560,000 Italian Americans, 385,000 Irish Americans, 253,000 German Americans, 223,000 Russian Americans, 201,000 Polish Americans, and 137,000 English Americans. Additionally, Greek and French Americans numbered 65,000 each, with those of Hungarian descent estimated at 60,000 people. Ukrainian and Scottish Americans numbered 55,000 and 35,000, respectively. People identifying ancestry from Spain numbered 30,838 total in 2010,[294] and Belarusians numbered about 55,000 as of 2010.[295] People of Norwegian and Swedish descent both stood at about 20,000 each, while people of Czech, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent all numbered between 12,000 and 14,000.[296] Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City,[297] with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic White population, enumerating over 30,000, and including more than half of all Central Asian immigrants to the United States,[298] most settling in Queens or Brooklyn. Albanian Americans are most highly concentrated in the Bronx,[299] while Astoria, Queens is the epicenter of American Greek culture as well as the Cypriot community.[citation needed] New York is home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world, numbering 1.6 million in 2022, more than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined.[300] In the borough of Brooklyn, an estimated 1 in 4 residents is Jewish.[301] The city's Jewish communities are derived from many diverse sects, predominantly from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and including a rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish population, the largest outside Israel.[288] The metropolitan area is home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least 20 Little India enclaves, and 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns;[246] the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American,[280] Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American[280] and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering 4.8 million;[294] and includes multiple established Chinatowns within New York City alone.[302] Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela are the top source countries from South America for immigrants to the New York City region; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.[303] Amidst a resurgence of Puerto Rican migration to New York City, this population had increased to approximately 1.3 million in the metropolitan area as of 2013.[citation needed] Since 2010, Little Australia has emerged and is growing rapidly, representing the Australasian presence in Nolita, Manhattan.[304][305][306][307] In 2011, there were an estimated 20,000 Australian residents of New York City, nearly quadruple the 5,537 in 2005.[308][309] Qantas Airways of Australia and Air New Zealand have been planning for long-haul flights from New York to Sydney and Auckland, which would both rank among the longest non-stop flights in the world.[310] A Little Sri Lanka has developed in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.[311] Le Petit Sénégal, or Little Senegal, is based in Harlem. Richmond Hill, Queens is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community,[312] as well as Punjab Avenue (ਪੰਜਾਬ ਐਵੇਨਿਊ), or Little Punjab, for its high concentration of Punjabi people. Little Poland is expanding rapidly in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.[citation needed] Sexual orientation and gender identity Main articles: LGBT culture in New York City, Same-sex marriage in New York, Stonewall riots, and NYC Pride March Further information: New York City Drag March, Queens Liberation Front, Queens Pride Parade, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, List of LGBT people from New York City, and List of largest LGBT events Caribbean NYC-LGBTQ Equality Project The NYC Dyke March, the world's largest celebration of lesbian pride and culture[313] NYC Pride March in Manhattan, the world's largest[314][315] The Multicultural Festival at the 2018 Queens Pride Parade New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBTQ populations and the most prominent.[51] The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual people, the largest in the United States.[316][317] Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in New York since the New York v. Onofre case in 1980 which invalidated the state's sodomy law.[318] Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011, and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011.[319] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre".[320] LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[321] LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."[322] The annual New York City Pride March proceeds southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[323][314] The annual Queens Pride Parade is held in Jackson Heights and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.[324] Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan alone.[325] New York City is home to the largest transgender population in the world, estimated at more than 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan and Queens; however, until the June 1969 Stonewall riots, this community had felt marginalized and neglected by the gay community.[324][140] Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender-rights demonstration in LGBTQ history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 participants.[326][327] Religion Religious affiliation (2014)[328][329] Christian   59% Catholic   33% Protestant   23% Other Christian   3% Unaffiliated   22% Jewish   8% Muslim   7% Hindu   2% Buddhist   1% Other faiths   1% Religious affiliations in New York City The landmark Neo-Gothic Roman Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral, Midtown Manhattan Central Synagogue, a notable Reform synagogue located at 652 Lexington Avenue The Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Upper Manhattan, the first mosque built in New York City Ganesh Temple in Flushing, Queens, the oldest Hindu temple in the U.S. Christianity Further information: St. Patrick's Cathedral (Midtown Manhattan), Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and Christmas in New York Largely as a result of Western European missionary work and colonialism, Christianity is the largest religion (59% adherent) in New York City,[328] which is home to the highest number of churches of any city in the world.[19] Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination (33%), followed by Protestantism (23%), and other Christian denominations (3%). The Roman Catholic population are primarily served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Brooklyn. Eastern Catholics are divided into numerous jurisdictions throughout the city. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest branch of Protestantism in the city (9%), followed by Mainline Protestantism (8%), while the converse is usually true for other cities and metropolitan areas.[329] In Evangelicalism, Baptists are the largest group; in Mainline Protestantism, Reformed Protestants compose the largest subset. The majority of historically African American churches are affiliated with the National Baptist Convention (USA) and Progressive National Baptist Convention. The Church of God in Christ is one of the largest predominantly Black Pentecostal denominations in the area. Approximately 1% of the population is Mormon. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and other Orthodox Christians (mainstream and independent) were the largest Eastern Christian groups. The American Orthodox Catholic Church (initially led by Aftimios Ofiesh) was founded in New York City in 1927.[citation needed] Judaism Main articles: Judaism in New York City, History of the Jews in New York, and Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam Judaism, the second-largest religion practiced in New York City, with approximately 1.6 million adherents as of 2022, represents the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, greater than the combined totals of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[330][331] Nearly half of the city's Jews live in Brooklyn, which is one-quarter Jewish.[332][333] The ethno-religious population makes up 18.4% of the city and its religious demographic makes up 8%.[334] The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company.[335][importance?] Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.[336][relevant?] In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism.[337] Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. 770 Eastern Parkway is the headquarters of the international Chabad Lubavitch movement, and is considered an icon, while Congregation Emanu-El of New York in Manhattan is the largest Reform synagogue in the world.[citation needed] Islam Main article: Islam in New York City Islam ranks as the third largest religion in New York City, following Christianity and Judaism, with estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers of Islam, including 10% of the city's public school children.[338] 22.3% of American Muslims live in New York City, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere[339]—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.[340] Powers Street Mosque in Brooklyn is one of the oldest continuously operating mosques in the U.S., and represents the first Islamic organization in both the city and the state of New York.[341][342] Hinduism and other religious affiliations Further information: Hindu Temple Society of North America Following these three largest religious groups in New York City are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and a variety of other religions. As of 2023, 24% of Greater New Yorkers identified with no organized religious affiliation, including 4% Atheist.[343] Wealth and income disparity New York City, like other large cities, has a high degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2017.[344] In the first quarter of 2014,[needs update] the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[345] In 2022, New York City was home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, with a total of 107.[37] New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.[346] New York City is one of the relatively few American cities levying an income tax (about 3%) on its residents.[347][348][349] As of 2018, there were 78,676 homeless people in New York City.[350] Economy Main article: Economy of New York City Further information: Economy of Long Island and Economy of New York Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district[351] see caption The Financial District of Lower Manhattan New York City is a global hub of business and commerce and an established safe haven for global investors,[35] and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[352] New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care and life sciences,[15] medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal, and accelerating ahead of California seaports in monthly cargo volumes in 2023.[353][354][355] Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City,[356] as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists.[357][358] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as Madison Avenue.[359] The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages.[360] The non-profit Partnership for New York City is the city's pre-eminent private business association, comprising approximately 330 corporate leaders.[citation needed] The fashion industry is based in Midtown Manhattan and is represented by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CDFA), headquartered in Lower Manhattan. Significant economic sectors include non-profit institutions, and universities. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. particularly in smaller operations.[citation needed] The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the industry, although revival efforts were underway,[361] and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as Seventh Avenue.[362] Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with up to $234 million worth of exports each year.[363] Godiva, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, is headquartered in Manhattan,[364] and an unofficial chocolate district in Brooklyn is home to several chocolate makers and retailers.[365] Food processing is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents.[citation needed] In 2017, there were 205,592 employer firms in New York City.[263] Of those firms, 64,514 were owned by minorities, while veterans owned 5,506 of those firms, statistics pertinent to the increasing participation of U.S. firms in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.[263] Midtown Manhattan in panorama from Weehawken, New Jersey, pictured in September 2021 Wall Street Main article: Wall Street A large flag is stretched over Roman style columns on the front of a large building. The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies[366][367] New York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. The city's securities industry continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and is an important economic engine.[citation needed] Many large financial companies are headquartered in New York City, and the city is home to a burgeoning number of financial startup companies. Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange, at 11 Wall Street, and the Nasdaq, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013.[366][367] Investment banking fees on Wall Street totaled approximately $40 billion in 2012,[368][needs update] while in 2013, senior New York City bank officers who manage risk and compliance functions earned as much as $324,000 annually.[369][importance?] In fiscal year 2013–14, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.[370] New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S. economy.[371]: 31–32 [372] New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment managers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers.[371]: 34–35  New York is the principal commercial banking center of the United States.[373] Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are based in the city. Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2018,[374] making it the largest office market in the United States,[375] while Midtown Manhattan, with 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2018,[374] is the largest central business district in the world.[376] Tech and biotech Further information: Tech:NYC, Tech companies in New York City, Biotech companies in New York City, and Silicon Alley View from the Empire State Building looking southward (downtown) at the central Flatiron District, the cradle of Silicon Alley, initially metonymous for the New York metropolitan region's high tech sector Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island New York is a top-tier global technology hub.[12][377] Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries,[378] is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in scope since at least 2003, when tech business appeared in more places in Manhattan and in other boroughs, and not much silicon was involved.[378][379] New York City's current tech sphere encompasses the array of applications involving universal applications of artificial intelligence,[380][381] broadband internet,[382] new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. Technology-driven startup companies and entrepreneurial employment are growing in New York City and the region. The technology sector has been claiming a greater share of New York City's economy since 2010.[383] Tech:NYC, founded in 2016, is a non-profit organization which represents New York City's technology industry with government, civic institutions, in business, and in the media, and whose primary goals are to further augment New York's substantial tech talent base and to advocate for policies that will nurture tech companies to grow in the city.[384] The biotechnology sector is growing in New York City, based on the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a $2 billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[385][386] By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than $30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions.[excessive detail?] The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed[needs update] a minimum of $100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[387] Real estate Apple Store at Fifth Avenue, one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world.[388][389] The total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$1.479 trillion for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of 6.1% from the previous year and up 38% from the $1.072 trillion assessed for 2017; of the total market value for 2024, single family homes accounted for $765 billion (51.7%), co-ops, condos and apartment buildings totaled $351 billion (23.7%) and commercial properties were valued at $317 billion (21.4%).[390][391] In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten ZIP codes in the United States by median housing price.[392] Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commands the highest retail rents in the world, at $3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) in 2017.[393] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States achieved completion in Manhattan, at a selling price of $238 million, for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.[394] In 2022, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$3,600.00, one of the world's highest. New York City real estate is a safe haven for global investors.[35] Tourism Main article: Tourism in New York City Times Square, the hub of the theater district and a global media center, is one of the world's leading tourist attractions with 50 million tourists annually.[43] The I Love New York logo designed by Milton Glaser in 1977 Tourism is a vital industry for New York City, and NYC & Company represents the city's official bureau of tourism. New York has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, reflecting over 60 million visitors to the city per year, the world's busiest tourist destination.[19] Approximately 12 million visitors to New York City have been from outside the United States, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. Multiple sources have called New York the most photographed city in the world.[395][396][397] I Love New York (stylized I ❤ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,[398] and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo, owned by New York State Empire State Development,[399] appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the city and state, some licensed, many not.[citation needed] The song is the state song of New York. The majority of the most high-profile tourist destinations to the city are situated in Manhattan. These include Times Square; Broadway theater productions; the Empire State Building; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; the United Nations headquarters; the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and One World Trade Center); the art museums along Museum Mile; green spaces such as Central Park, Washington Square Park, the High Line, and the medieval gardens of The Cloisters; the Stonewall Inn; Rockefeller Center; ethnic enclaves including the Manhattan Chinatown, Koreatown, Curry Hill, Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy, and Little Australia; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Brooklyn Bridge (shared with Brooklyn); the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree; the St. Patrick's Day Parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at SummerStage.[citation needed] Points of interest have developed in the city outside Manhattan and have made the outer boroughs tourist destinations in their own right. These include numerous ethnic enclaves; the Unisphere, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and Downtown Flushing in Queens;[citation needed] Downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn;[citation needed] the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx;[citation needed] and the Staten Island Ferry. Media and entertainment Main article: Media in New York City Further information: New Yorkers in journalism Rockefeller Center, one of Manhattan's leading media and entertainment hubs Times Square Studios on Times Square is sometimes called the "Crossroads of the World". New York City has been described as the entertainment[19][400][401] and digital media capital of the world.[402] The city is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there.[403] As of 2019, New York City was the second-largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals. The filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly $9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015.[404] By volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production—one-third of all American independent films are produced there.[405][406] The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is based in New York.[407][importance?] In the first five months of 2014,[needs update] location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013,[408] with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013–2014 cycle.[409] New York City is the center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is the largest media market in North America.[410] Some of the city's media conglomerates and institutions include Warner Bros. Discovery, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corp, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, Fox Corporation, and Paramount Global. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.[411] Two of the top three record labels' headquarters are in New York: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group has offices in New York.[importance?] New media enterprises are contributing an increasingly important component to the city's central role in the media sphere.[citation needed] More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city,[406] and the publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[412] Two of the three national daily newspapers with the largest circulations in the United States are published in New York: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYT). Nicknamed "the Grey Lady",[importance?] the NYT has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record.[413] Tabloid newspapers in the city include the New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson,[414] and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[415] At the local news end of the media spectrum, Patch Media is headquartered in Manhattan. New York City has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[416] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[417] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent[citation needed] African American newspaper. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[418] The television and radio industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy.[citation needed] The three major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Many cable networks are based in the city as well, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Food Network, AMC, and Comedy Central. News 12 Networks operated News 12 The Bronx and News 12 Brooklyn. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.[citation needed] New York is a major center for non-commercial educational media. NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City,[419] and has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[420] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[421] Education Main article: Education in New York City Butler Library at Columbia University The Washington Square Arch, an unofficial icon of both New York University and the Greenwich Village neighborhood that surrounds it[422] Fordham University's Keating Hall in the Bronx New York City has the largest educational system of any city in the world.[19] The city's educational infrastructure spans primary education, secondary education, higher education, and research. Primary and secondary education The New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in approximately 1,800 separate primary and secondary schools, including charter schools, as of the 2017–2018 school year.[423] The city's public school system includes nine specialized high schools to serve academically and artistically gifted students. The city government pays the Pelham Public Schools to educate a very small, detached section of the Bronx.[424][importance?] The New York City Charter School Center assists the setup of new charter schools.[425] There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools in the city.[426] Higher education and research More than a million students, the highest number of any city in the United States,[427] are enrolled in New York City's more than 120 higher education institutions, with more than half a million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone as of 2020, including both degree and professional programs.[428] According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any global city.[429] The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation,[citation needed] comprising 25 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system includes campuses in New York City, including SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY Maritime College, and SUNY College of Optometry. New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, and Yeshiva University; several of these universities are ranked among the top universities in the world,[430][431] while some of the world's most prestigious institutions like Princeton University and Yale University remain in the New York metropolitan area. The city hosts other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as Pace University, St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, Adelphi University - Brooklyn, Mercy College (New York), The College of Mount Saint Vincent, Parsons School of Design, The New School, Pratt Institute, New York Film Academy, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Wagner College. Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. In 2019, the New York metropolitan area ranked first on the list of cities and metropolitan areas by share of published articles in life sciences.[14] New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, and in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City.[432] There are 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions as of 2004.[433] 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, being joined by the Cornell University/Technion-Israel Institute of Technology venture on Roosevelt Island. The graduates of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx earned the highest average annual salary of any university graduates in the United States, $144,000 as of 2017.[434][importance?] Human resources Public health Main articles: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene New York-Presbyterian Hospital, affiliated with Columbia University and Cornell University, is the largest hospital and largest private employer in New York City and one of the world's busiest hospitals.[435] The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) operates the public hospitals and outpatient clinics as a public benefit corporation. As of 2021, HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States with $10.9 billion in annual revenues,[436] HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States[repetition] serving 1.4 million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents.[437] HHC was created in 1969 by the New York State Legislature as a public benefit corporation (Chapter 1016 of the Laws 1969).[438][importance?] HHC operates 11 acute care hospitals, five nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the poor and working class. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of the New York area's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance and is the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers.[439][third-party source needed] HHC's facilities annually provide millions of New Yorkers services interpreted in more than 190 languages.[440] The most well-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the President of the United States and other world leaders if they become sick or injured while in New York City.[441] The president of HHC is Ramanathan Raju, MD, a surgeon and former CEO of the Cook County health system in Illinois.[442][importance?] In August 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation outlawing pharmacies from selling cigarettes once their existing licenses to do so expired, beginning in 2018.[443][needs update] New York City enforces a right-to-shelter law guaranteeing shelter to anyone who needs it, regardless of their immigration, socioeconomic, or housing status, which entails providing adequate shelter and food.[23] Public safety Police and law enforcement Main articles: New York City Police Department and Law enforcement in New York City Further information: Police surveillance in New York City and Crime in New York City The New York Police Department (NYPD), the largest police force in the United States NYPD police officers in Brooklyn The New York Police Department (NYPD) is the largest police force in the United States by a significant margin, with more than 35,000 sworn officers.[444] Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, New York's Finest. Crime overall has trended downward in New York City since the 1990s.[445] In 2012, the NYPD came under scrutiny for its stop-and-frisk program,[446][447][448] which has undergone several policy revisions since then.[citation needed] In 2014, New York City had the third-lowest murder rate among the largest U.S. cities,[449] having become significantly safer after a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s.[450] 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.[451] By 2002, New York City was ranked 197th in crime among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000.[451] In 1992, the city recorded 2,245 murders.[452] In 2005, the homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1966,[453] and in 2009, the city recorded fewer than 461 homicides for the first time ever since crime statistics were first published in 1963.[452] New York City has stricter gun laws than most other cities in the U.S.—a license to own any firearm is required in New York City, and the NY SAFE Act of 2013 banned assault weapons—and New York State had the fifth lowest gun death rate of the states in 2020.[454] New York City recorded 491 murders in 2021.[455] Organized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1820s, followed by the Tongs in the same neighborhood, which ultimately evolved into Chinatown, Manhattan. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades.[456] The Mafia and gang presence has declined in the city in the 21st century.[457][458] Firefighting Main article: New York City Fire Department The Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the largest municipal fire department in the United States The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services for the five boroughs of New York City. The FDNY is the largest municipal fire department in the United States and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department.[citation needed] The FDNY employs approximately 11,080 uniformed firefighters and more than 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics.[citation needed] The FDNY's motto is New York's Bravest. The fire department faces multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, the FDNY responds to fires that occur in the New York City Subway.[459] Secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires, also present challenges. The FDNY is headquartered at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn,[460] and the FDNY Fire Academy is on the Randalls Island.[461] There are three Bureau of Fire Communications alarm offices which receive and dispatch alarms to appropriate units. One office, at 11 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, houses Manhattan/Citywide, Brooklyn, and Staten Island Fire Communications; the Bronx and Queens offices are in separate buildings.[importance?] Public library system The Stephen A. Schwarzman Headquarters Building of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street The New York Public Library (NYPL) has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States.[462] Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library (QPL), the nation's second-largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) serves Brooklyn.[462] Culture Main article: Culture of New York City Further information: LGBT culture in New York City, Music of New York City, List of nightclubs in New York City, List of LGBT people from New York City, List of people from New York City, New York Fashion Week, and Met Gala (from right to left) The John Golden Theatre, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, and Booth Theatre on West 45th Street in Manhattan's Theater District New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world.[463][464][465][466] In describing New York, author Tom Wolfe said, "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather."[467] The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art;[468][469] abstract expressionism (known as the New York School) in painting; and hip-hop,[189][470] punk,[471] hardcore,[472] salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz,[473] and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.[474][475] New York has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.[citation needed] The city is frequently the setting for novels, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.[476][477] New York has frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor.[478] One of the most common traits attributed to New York City is its fast pace,[479][480][481] which spawned the term New York minute.[482] Journalist Walt Whitman characterized New York's streets as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[481] New York City's residents are prominently known for their resilience historically, and more recently related to their management of the impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.[483][484][485] New York was voted the world's most resilient city in 2021 and 2022 per Time Out's global poll of urban residents.[484] Arts Carnegie Hall New York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries.[486] The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.[486] Wealthy business magnates in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which have become internationally renowned. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions,[citation needed] and in the 1880s, New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition.[citation needed] New York City itself is the subject or background of many plays and musicals. Performing arts Main articles: Broadway theatre and Music of New York City The Lincoln Center houses internationally renowned performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Juilliard School. Broadway theatre is one of the premier forms of English-language theatre in the world, named after Broadway, the major thoroughfare that crosses Times Square,[487] sometimes referred to as "The Great White Way".[488][489][490] Forty-one venues in Midtown Manhattan's Theatre District, each with at least 500 seats, are classified as Broadway theatres. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an 11.4% increase from $1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season. Attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.[491] Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan.[citation needed] Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents free music concerts in Central Park.[492] Visual arts Main article: List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City The Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of Museum Mile, is one of the largest museums in the world.[493] New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites. Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,[494] in the upper portion of Carnegie Hill.[495] Nine museums occupy the length of this section of Fifth Avenue, making it one of the densest displays of culture in the world.[496] Its art museums include the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, and The Africa Center. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation.[497] Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in New York City.[498][499] Cuisine Main articles: Cuisine of New York City, List of restaurants in New York City, and List of Michelin starred restaurants in New York City People crowd around white tents in the foreground next to a red brick wall with arched windows. Above and to the left is a towering stone bridge. Smorgasburg, which opened in 2011 as an open-air food market, is part of the Brooklyn Flea.[500] New York City's food culture includes an array of international cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Central and Eastern European immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from those regions, brought bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, knishes, and delicatessens (delis) to the city. Italian immigrants brought New York-style pizza and Italian cuisine into the city, while Jewish immigrants and Irish immigrants brought pastrami[501] and corned beef,[502] respectively. Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses are ubiquitous throughout the city. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs[503] examples of modern New York street food. The city is home to "nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world", according to Michelin.[504] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's restaurants based on inspection results.[505] As of 2019, there were 27,043 restaurants in the city, up from 24,865 in 2017.[506] The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park attracts more than ten thousand people nightly to sample food from more than 85 countries.[507] Parades The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade[508] The annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the world's largest Halloween parade[509] New York City is well known for its street parades, the majority held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[508] beginning alongside Central Park[importance?] and proceeding southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[510] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[508] Other notable parades including the annual New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the NYC LGBT Pride March in June, the LGBT-inspired Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan. Accent and dialect Main articles: New York City English and New York accent The New York area is home to a distinctive regional accent and speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It has been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[511] The traditional New York area speech pattern is known for its rapid delivery, and its accent is characterized as non-rhotic so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, therefore the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk".[512] The classic version of the New York City dialect is centered on middle- and working-class New Yorkers. The influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect,[512] and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent.[512] Sports Main article: Sports in the New York metropolitan area See also: Traditional games of New York City Three runners in a race down a street where onlookers are cheering behind barriers. The New York Marathon, held annually in November, is the largest marathon in the world.[513] A tennis stadium pack with fans watching a grass court. The U.S. Open Tennis Championships are held every August and September in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens. A baseball stadium from behind home plate in the evening. Citi Field, also in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, has been home to the New York Mets since 2009. Yankee Stadium in The Bronx is home to the New York Yankees and New York City FC. Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan is home to the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and St. John's Red Storm. Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association and the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association UBS Arena, home of the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL) New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,[514] Major League Baseball,[515] the National Basketball Association,[516] the National Hockey League,[517] and Major League Soccer.[518] The New York metropolitan area hosts the most sports teams in the first four major North American professional sports leagues with nine, one more than Los Angeles, and has 11 top-level professional sports teams if Major League Soccer is included, one more than Los Angeles. Participation in professional sports in the city predates all professional leagues, as the New York Mutuals became one of the first professional baseball teams in 1869, two years before the organization of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the first professional league, of which the Mutuals were founding members. The city has played host to more than 40 major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are in the New York metropolitan area.[519] Madison Square Garden, its predecessor, the original Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, are sporting venues in New York City, the latter two having been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps. New York was the first of eight American cities to have won titles in all four major leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA), having done so following the Knicks' 1970 title. In 1972, it became the first city to win titles in five sports when the Cosmos won the NASL final.[citation needed] American football The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,[520] which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.[521] Baseball New York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball".[522] There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas to host two Major League Baseball teams, the others being Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and until the Athletics depart Oakland, California, the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in 2000. No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in 1906, St. Louis in 1944, and the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989).[citation needed] The city's two Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field in Queens,[523] and the New York Yankees, who play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. These teams compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has come to be called the Subway Series.[repetition] The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,[524] while the Mets have won the World Series twice.[525] The city was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,[526] and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.[527] There is one Minor League Baseball team in the city, the Mets-affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones,[528] and the city gained a club in the independent Atlantic League when the Staten Island FerryHawks began play in 2022.[529] Basketball The city's National Basketball Association teams are the Brooklyn Nets (previously known as the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets as they moved around the metropolitan area[importance?]) and the New York Knicks, while the New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association team. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[530] The city is well known for its links to basketball, which is played in nearly every park in the city by local youth, many of whom have gone on to play for major college programs and in the NBA.[citation needed] Ice hockey The metropolitan area is home to three National Hockey League teams. The New York Rangers, the traditional representative of the city itself and one of the league's Original Six, play at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The New York Islanders, traditionally representing Nassau and Suffolk Counties of Long Island, play in UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, and played in Brooklyn's Barclays Center from 2015 to 2020. The New Jersey Devils play at Prudential Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey and traditionally represent the counties of neighboring New Jersey which are coextensive with the boundaries of the New York metropolitan area and media market. Soccer Main article: Soccer in the New York metropolitan area In soccer, New York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium[531] and the New York Red Bulls, who play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.[532] NJ/NY Gotham FC plays their home games in Red Bull Arena, representing the metropolitan area in the National Women's Soccer League. Historically, the city is known for the New York Cosmos, the highly successful former professional soccer team which was the American home of Pelé.[citation needed] A new version of the New York Cosmos was formed in 2010, and most recently played in the third-division National Independent Soccer Association before going on hiatus in January 2021. New York was a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup[533] and will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.[534] Tennis and other The annual United States Open Tennis Championships is one of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens.[535] The New York City Marathon, which courses through all five boroughs, is the world's largest running marathon,[513] with 51,394 finishers in 2016[536] and 98,247 applicants for the 2017 race.[513][needs update] The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.[537][failed verification] The city is considered the host of the Belmont Stakes, the last, longest and oldest of horse racing's Triple Crown races, held just over the city's border at Belmont Park. The city hosted the 1932 U.S. Open golf tournament and the 1930 and 1939 PGA Championships, and has hosted both events several times, most notably[citation needed] for nearby Winged Foot Golf Club. The Gaelic games are played in Riverdale, Bronx at Gaelic Park, home to the New York GAA, the only North American team to compete at the senior inter-county level.[citation needed] International events New York City hosted the 1984 Summer Paralympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. New York City's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was one of five finalists, but lost out to London.[538][importance?] Environment Main article: Environmental issues in New York City Two yellow taxis on a narrow street lined with shops. As of 2012, New York City had about 6,000 hybrid taxis in service, the largest number of any city in North America.[539] Environmental issues in New York City are affected by the city's size, density, abundant public transportation infrastructure, and its location at the mouth of the Hudson River. For example, it is one of the country's biggest sources of pollution and has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions rate and electricity usage. Governors Island is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center to make New York City the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[540] Environmental impact reduction Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the Sunset Park As an oceanic port city, New York City is vulnerable to the long-term manifestations of global warming and rising seas. Climate change has spawned the development of a significant climate resiliency and environmental sustainability economy in the city. Governors Island is slated to host a US$1 billion research and education center intended to establish New York's role as the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[541] New York City has focused on reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint.[542] Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in the United States. Also, by 2010, the city had 3,715 hybrid taxis and other clean diesel vehicles, representing around 28% of New York's taxi fleet in service, the most of any city in North America.[543] New York City is the host of Climate Week NYC, the largest Climate Week to take place globally and regarded as major annual climate summit.[citation needed] New York's high rate of public transit use, more than 200,000 daily cyclists as of 2014,[544] and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States.[545] Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally the rate for metro regions is about 8%.[546] In both its 2011 and 2015 rankings, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States,[547][548][549] and in 2018, Stacker ranked New York the most walkable U.S. city.[550] Citibank sponsored public bicycles for the city's bike-share project, which became known as Citi Bike, in 2013.[551] New York City's numerical "in-season cycling indicator" of bicycling in the city had hit an all-time high of 437 when measured in 2014.[552] 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.[citation needed] The city is a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green office buildings, including the Hearst Tower among others.[197] Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2014 and 2050 to reduce the city's contributions to climate change, beginning with a comprehensive "Green Buildings" plan.[542] Water purity and availability Main articles: Food and water in New York City and New York City water supply system Ridgewood Reservoir on the border between the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, within what is now Highland Park The New York City drinking water supply is extracted from the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[553] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification through water treatment plants.[554] The city's municipal water system is the largest in the United States, moving over one billion gallons of water per day;[555] a leak in the Delaware aqueduct results in some 20 million gallons a day being lost under the Hudson River.[556] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a $3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[557] The ongoing expansion of New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city's history,[558] with segments serving Manhattan and the Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020.[559][needs update] In 2018, New York City announced a $1 billion investment to protect the integrity of its water system and to maintain the purity of its unfiltered water supply.[555] Air quality According to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,[560] the annual average concentration in New York City's air of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) was 7.0 micrograms per cubic meter, or 3.0 micrograms within the recommended limit of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5.[561] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in partnership with Queens College, conducts the New York Community Air Survey to measure pollutants at about 150 locations.[562] Environmental revitalization Newtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) a long estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, is designated a Superfund site for environmental clean-up and remediation of the waterway's recreational and economic resources for many communities.[563] One of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey, it had been one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the country,[564] containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million US gallons (110,000 m3) of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City's sewer system,[564] and other accumulation. Government and politics Main articles: Government of New York City, Politics of New York City, and Elections in New York City Government New York City Hall is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions.[citation needed] New York County Courthouse houses the New York Supreme Court and other governmental offices. New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a Strong mayor–council form of government[565] since its consolidation in 1898. The city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services. The City Council is a unicameral body of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.[566] Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit,[567] which is reset after a four-year break. The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and the City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.[568][569] Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System. Uniquely among major American cities,[citation needed] New York is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square near City Hall in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are based in New York, also on Foley Square in Manhattan. Politics Eric Adams, the current Mayor of New York City The present mayor is Eric Adams. He was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote, and assumed office on January 1, 2022. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of April 2016, 69% of registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10% are Republicans.[570] New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential election since President Calvin Coolidge won the five boroughs in 1924. A Republican candidate for statewide office has not won all five boroughs of the city since it was incorporated in 1898. In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of any party to receive more than 80% of the overall vote in New York City, sweeping all five boroughs.[importance?] Party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development, and labor politics are of importance in the city.[citation needed] Thirteen out of 26 U.S. congressional districts in the state of New York include portions of New York City.[571] New York City is the most important geographical source of political fundraising in the United States. At least four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions were in Manhattan for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. The top ZIP Code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry.[572][excessive detail?] 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). City residents and businesses also sent an additional $4.1 billion in the 2009–2010 fiscal year to the state of New York than the city received in return.[573] Transportation Main article: Transportation in New York City Rapid transit Port Authority Bus Terminal, the world's busiest bus station, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street[574] Mass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the United States, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City metropolitan area.[575][576] Buses New York City's public bus fleet runs 24/7 and is the largest in North America.[577] The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the main intercity bus terminal of the city, serves 7,000 buses and 200,000 commuters daily, making it the busiest bus station in the world.[574] Rail Main article: New York City Subway A row of yellow taxis in front of a multi-story ornate stone building with three huge arched windows. New York City is home to the two busiest train stations in the U.S., Grand Central Terminal (pictured) and Penn Station. The front end of a subway train, with a red E on a LED display on the top. To the right of the train is a platform with a group of people waiting for their train. The New York City Subway, the world's largest rapid transit system by number of stations The New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with 472, and by length of routes. Nearly all of New York's subway system is open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to systems in most cities.[578] The New York City Subway is the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere,[579] with 1.70 billion passenger rides in 2019,[580] while Grand Central Terminal, referred to as "Grand Central Station", is the world's largest railway station by number of train platforms.[581] Public transport is widely used in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit.[582] This is in contrast to the rest of the United States, where 91% of commuters travel in automobiles to their workplace.[583] According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in the New York City area spend an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities.[584] New York is the only U.S. city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car.[585] Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19 billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans.[586] New York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America.[575] The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines.[575] For 24 hours a day, the elevated AirTrain system in Queens connects JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road; a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.[587][588] For inter-city rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, and long-distance train service to other North American cities.[589] The Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day. The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH train) links Midtown and Lower Manhattan to northeastern New Jersey. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day; meaning three of the six rapid transit systems in the world which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York (the others are a portion of the Chicago "L", the PATCO Speedline serving Philadelphia, and the Copenhagen Metro).[590][591] Multibillion-dollar heavy rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway.[592] Air Main article: Aviation in the New York metropolitan area John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens New York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air transportation corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area include John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport; 130.5 million travelers used these three airports in 2016.[593] JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2012; as of 2011, JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.[594] Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.[595] Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities[needs update].[596] Other commercial airports in or serving the New York metropolitan area include Long Island MacArthur Airport, Trenton–Mercer Airport and Westchester County Airport. The primary general aviation airport serving the area is Teterboro Airport. Ferries, taxis and trams Main articles: Staten Island Ferry, NYC Ferry, Taxis of New York City, and Roosevelt Island Tramway The Staten Island Ferry shuttles commuters between Manhattan and Staten Island. The Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry route, carrying more than 23 million passengers from July 2015 through June 2016 on a 5.2-mile (8.4 km) route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24/7.[597][598] Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area. NYC Ferry, a NYCEDC initiative with routes planned to travel to all five boroughs, was launched in 2017.[599] Other features of the city's transportation infrastructure encompass 13,587 yellow taxicabs;[600] other vehicle for hire companies;[601][602] and the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that transports commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Island. Cycling network Main article: Cycling in New York City Citi Bike bike share service, which started in May 2013 New York City has mixed cycling conditions that include urban density, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and many pedestrians. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; recreational cycling clubs; and an increasing number of commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2017 there were approximately 450,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 in 2005.[603] As of 2017, New York City had 1,333 miles (2,145 km) of bike lanes, compared to 513 miles (826 km) in 2006.[603] As of 2019, there are 126 miles (203 km) of segregated or "protected" bike lanes citywide.[604] Streets and highways Further information: Commissioners' Plan of 1811 The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 put in place the rectangular grid plan of the streets of Manhattan Streets are also a defining feature of the city. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 greatly influenced its physical development. Several streets and avenues, including Broadway,[605] Wall Street,[606] Madison Avenue,[359] and Seventh Avenue are used as metonyms for national industries: theater, finance, advertising, and fashion, respectively. New York City has an extensive web of freeways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other and to North Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is common for motorists to be stranded for hours in traffic congestion that are a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour.[607][608] Congestion pricing in New York City will go into effect in 2022 at the earliest[needs update].[609][610][611] Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present.[612] River crossings Further information: List of bridges and tunnels in New York City Manhattan and Staten Island are primarily coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are at the west end of the larger Long Island, and the Bronx is on New York State's mainland. Manhattan Island is linked to New York City's outer boroughs and to New Jersey by an extensive network of bridges and tunnels. Bridges The George Washington Bridge, across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[613][614] The 14-lane George Washington Bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[613][614] The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest.[615][616] The Brooklyn Bridge, with its stone neo-Gothic suspension towers, is an icon of the city itself; opened in 1883, it was the first steel-wire suspension bridge and was the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1903.[617][618] The Queensboro Bridge "was the longest cantilever span in North America" from 1909 to 1917.[619] The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, "is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges", and its design "served as the model for the major long-span suspension bridges" of the early 20th century.[620] The Throgs Neck Bridge and Whitestone Bridge connect Queens and the Bronx, while the Triborough Bridge connects the three boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx. Tunnels Lincoln Tunnel The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[621] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.[622][623] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.[624] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (officially known as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District in Lower Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn.
  • Type: Photograph
  • Year of Production: 1946

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