Island FeverNew York, New York—a city so great they named it twice.
The borough of Manhattan in New York has an allure unmatched in the world. Every nationality—and, luckily, their respective cuisine—is represented here. And for every individual with a foreign passport, there is an extended family from distant shores aching to know what is so great about New York City. That’s going to be a very long list, so here we just give you the highlights of a city that offers the best of, well, everything. From shopping, theatre, history and culture, to cuisine, finance, rampant nightlife and an adrenaline rush unique to any major metropolis, New York has been the ultimate destination for hundreds of years.
Quintessentially American with all its vim, virtue and vice, New York is also within striking range of Atlantic City, the US’s second city of gambling. So if Las Vegas is just out of range for your standard two-week holiday, combining New York and Atlantic City, just across in New Jersey, is the perfect, well-rounded trip to experience the dynamism of Manhattan and the thrill of a bustling casino city.
With a population of over 1.5 million living in a land area of 23 square miles, Manhattan is the most densely populated county in the United States. Break it down and that equates to about 67,000 people per square mile—that’s a lot of neighbourly love going around. But that’s what defines the City—a massive clustering of intimate neighbourhoods, not a sprawling, impersonal concrete jungle. From Harlem in the north to downtown in the south; Hell’s Kitchen in the west and East Village and everything in between, Manhattan is a constantly evolving model of extremes that even native New Yorkers can’t completely wrap their heads around. Considering all it has to offer, it’s arguably the centre of the world. That might be a topic for a heated debate, but all bias aside, if you haven’t been yet, you don’t know what you’re missing.
The name Manhattan comes from the word Manna-hata and has been translated as “island of many hills” from the Lenape language, a language from the Algonquian language family. But The Encyclopedia of New York City offers other derivations, including from Munsee language words manahachtanienk (“place of general inebriation”), manahatouh (“place where timber is procured for bows and arrows”), or menatay (“island”).
The area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape people. But it wasn’t until the voyage of Englishman Henry Hudson when the area was mapped. Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in September 1609, and continued up the river that would eventually bear his name, the Hudson River. Back then, of course, Manhattan was actually called New Amsterdam and a citadel built for the protection of new arrivals in 1625 is recognised as the birth date of New York City. Then in 1626, Peter Minuit, director general of New Amsterdam, acquired Manhattan from the natives in exchange for trade goods, said to be worth $24—that’s £12, or about eight hours worth of rent nowadays in a one-bedroom flat in midtown.
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony and it was granted self-government in 1652. Then in 1664, it was provisionally ceded to the English and renamed to New York after the English Duke of York and Albany.
Flash forward a few hundred years, through the American Revolution, industrial revolution, gangland revolution, waves of immigration, prohibition, the Great Depression, mob rule and September 11, 2001, and you arrive at present-day Manhattan with its toughened exterior but a sensitive soul that embraces and endures everything, and has done so throughout the ages.
Today, with the help of the city’s massive subway system—the largest in the world by track mileage and the largest by number of stations—everything is within easy reach, and very affordable at $2 a ticket. And as Manhattan isn’t broken down into zones, you can span the entire island for less than a slice of pizza—and it’s air conditioned, making those sweltering summers more bearable.
If the subway isn’t your thing, Manhattan is a spectacular walking city provided you have some comfortable shoes. There are guided tours in historically rich areas, or if you want to brave it alone, the Lower East Side, Soho, Midtown, and the upper East and West sides all have endless detours to take advantage of, from museums, restaurants, clubs, bars, wonderful architecture and under-the-radar goldmines. Of course, Central Park is the main oasis if you feel like the hustle gets to be too much for your bustle. Apart from some rooftops jutting into the sky, being in the park remarkably provides a sense of calm while the world accelerates at a breakneck pace just beyond. The 843-acre park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary and broad grassy areas, as well as playgrounds for children. The six-mile road circling the park acts as its own freeway with joggers, bicyclists, skateboarders and inline skaters, especially on weekends and evenings after 7pm, when automobile traffic is banned.
While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The park’s construction in the 1850s was one of the era’s most massive projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create a typically English-style pastoral landscape.
Of course, back out among all the skyscrapers and frenetic living, you might find yourself on the set of the next Woody Allen movie or top television program. Friends, CSI: New York, Seinfeld, NYPD Blue, Law & Order, Will & Grace, Gossip Girl and Sex and the City were, or still are, filmed all around the City.
Not to be overlooked, the theatre district around Broadway at Times Square is one of the most renowned centres for theatre in the world. Even Off-Broadway shows have stature much of the rest of the worlds’ thespians aspire to. Plays and musicals of every description, from The Producers to Death of a Salesman, are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres. For a little more culture, just up Broadway at 66th is Lincoln Center, home to the Metropolitan Opera or the Met, one of the world’s most prestigious opera houses.
With so much stimulation around, at all times whether you like it or not, Manhattan has also given rise to some powerfully influential art movements. Andy Warhol immediately comes to mind but no list is complete without Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. And a city with such artistic magnitude has to match its own talent with houses to store some of the world’s greatest art. So no trip to New York is complete without clocking a few miles in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim.
A natural melding of music and art just discussed is the distinct New York creation of modern jazz. The Be Bop revolution of the late 40s was born in New York—Midtown, to be precise—and leading that charge were household names like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis. If you open a window on a hot summer’s evening, you can still hear those horns reverberating against the colossal buildings as the city’s din echoes far below.
You’ll most likely fly into JFK, Newark or La Guardia airports, but if you want to experience a real tangible arrival to the City, rent a car and cross the George Washington Bridge or Holland Tunnel or Lincoln Tunnel from New Jersey to the west. Of course, if you want a healthy dose of gaming added to your itinerary, going to New Jersey is a foregone conclusion as Atlantic City is only a two-hour drive. If driving isn’t your thing (being on the “wrong” side of the road if you’re used to the British approach), you can always hop on a bus, or charter a helicopter or private jet. You are only limited by your own imagination—and pocketbook—but understand that everything you could think of can be accommodated. You’d be hard pressed to faze a New Yorker.
Track Record
In 2006, the board of New Jersey Transit approved a three-year trial of express train service between New York Penn Station, at 34th Street, and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal. The estimated travel time will be 2.5 hours with very few stops along the way. It’s all part of the Casinos’ multi-million dollar investments in Atlantic City and most of the funding for the new transit line will be provided by Harrah’s Entertainment (owners of both Harrah’s Atlantic City and Caesars Atlantic City) and the Borgata.
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 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 popularise the term.
KNOW YOUR...Manhattan Neighbourhoods
Manhattan’s colourful neighbourhoods are not named with any rhyme or reason. Some are merely geographical (the Upper East Side, Lower East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Chinatown). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for “TRIangle BElow CAnal Street”) or SoHo (“SOuth of HOuston”), or the far more recent vintage NoLIta (“NOrth of Little ITaly”). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.
SoHo is known for upscale shopping while others such as Greenwich Village are instantly associated with Bohemian subculture. Chelsea is a predominantly gay neighbourhood and a centre of art industry and nightlife. Washington Heights is a vibrant neighbourhood of immigrants from the Dominican Republic while Manhattan’s Chinatown speaks for itself. The Upper West Side is often characterised as more intellectual and creative, with Columbia University at 116th Street, in contrast to the old money and conservative ideals of the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in the United States.
Manhattan also has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown. “Uptown” usually refers to anything north of 59th Street, or the southern end of Central Park. “Downtown” defines the island south of 14th Street, with Midtown covering the area in between. Naturally drawn to any debate, New Yorkers will draw boundaries differently and these should in no way be construed as final. For rough reference though, these will help you get your bearings.
KNOW YOUR...Manhattan Skyscrapers
Manhattan defines the “vertical city”. Its skyscrapers, which embody the distinctive skyline, have been instantly recognisable since the end of the 19th century.
From 1890–1973, the world’s tallest building was in Manhattan, with nine different buildings holding the title. The New York World Building on Park Row was the first to take the title, standing 91 metres until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing 119 metres took the title in 1899. The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the sewing machine manufacturer, stood 187 metres until 1967. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 213 metres at the foot of Madison Avenue, took the title in 1909. The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, surpassed in 1913, skyscraping at 241 metres.
As the Roaring Twenties kicked off, three buildings in the span of a year raced to the sky. As the stock market rocketed just before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown. At 282 metres, 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in an astonishing 11 months, seemed to have secured the title. At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed plans to build the structure’s trademark 56 metre spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to 319 metres, making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929. Both buildings, however, were soon surpassed with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower soaring 381 metres. The pinnacle was later added, bringing the total height of the building to 443 metres.
The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, once iconic symbols of the City, stood at 417 metres and 415 metres. The 110-story buildings were the world’s tallest from 1972 until they were surpassed by the construction of the Sears Tower in Chicago in 1974. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, which reduced them to rubble, their replacement, The Freedom Tower, is poised to be the world’s tallest. Construction is currently under way and is slated to open in 2011. |
