New york city travel guide,new york travel

New York City Travel Guide
The problem with visiting New York is knowing where to begin, but even if you don't immediately rush off to view the world-famous sights and icons of this most dynamic of cities, just being there is enough. The wonder of New York is in the energy and the diversity that emanates from its densely packed, multi-cultural population. The city vibrates with colliding cultures, languages and nuances; here high-life and low-life rub shoulders, and whoever you are and whatever your taste, there will be something to amuse and stimulate you 24-hours a day.
Whether lolling on a bench in leafy Central Park, watching the world go by from a French bistro in Soho, gazing up at 'Lady Liberty' from the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, most visitors will feel they've done it all before, simply because New York is so familiar to anyone who has ever seen a movie or watched television. There is something special however in actually seeing the familiar landmarks and experiencing the pulse of the clich?d, but true, 'city that never sleeps'.

New York City Travel Guide:Central Park
In 1857, the City owned about 770 acres between Fifth and Eighth avenues, from 59th to 106th Street (within the next five years to be extended to 110th Street), sparsely settled by squatters, and supporting such unsavory enterprises as slaughterhouses and associated glue works. The City employed some 500 laborers under the direction of the Chief Engineer, Egbert L. Viele, and a rather nebulous plan was being followed in the attempt to convert a dismal and barren region with outcroppings of jagged rocks into a verdant retreat. This situation looked rather hopeless when Frederick Law Olmsted, who bad been a successful scientific farmer, a topographical engineer, and had an inherent interest in landscaping, applied for the position of Superintendent. After some vicissitudes he was given the assignment, mostly because the name of Washington Irving (an invited consultant to the Board of Commissioners of Central Park) appeared among his papers. Olmsted's duties were to act as executive officer for the Engineer with respect to the laborers, and to have charge of the police force in the park. Obviously his powers respecting the design were limited.
Early in 1858 the Board of Commissioners launched a competition for an articulated plan for improving Central Park, offering premiums of $2,000, $1,000, $750 and $500 for the first four prizes. Calvert Vaux, a British architect, who had come to the United States in 1850 to work with Downing, proposed to Olmsted that they collaborate on a design. Olmsted at first refused on the basis that it would be showing insubordination to his superior, but when he learned that Viele did not care, he accepted. Their entry, entered anonymously under the name Greensward, was the last of 34 designs to reach the judges. It was awarded first place on 28 April 1858. During the following month Olmsted was given the title Architect-in-Chief of Central Park, and Vaux was appointed Consulting Architect.

New York City Travel Guide:Liberty Island
The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886. The people of France gave the Statue to the people of the United States over one hundred years ago in recognition of the friendship established during the American Revolution. French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was commissioned to design a sculpture with the year 1876 in mind for completion, to commemorate the centennial of the American Declaration of Independence.
The Statue was a joint effort between America and France. It was agreed that the French were responsible for the Statue and its assembly in the United States, and the United States was responsible for building the pedestal. France raised the funds to build the statue, but the United States found it difficult to pay for the pedestal. Tabloid newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer used his publication to help raise donations to build it. He collected change from schoolchildren and accused the city's richest residents of being cheap and unpatriotic. Pulitzer raised over $102,000 in five months, enough to finance the 154-foot-high concrete-and-granite pedestal.

New York City is made up of five boroughs - Staten Island, The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan, but many visitors never leave Manhattan. There is a lot packed into this tiny area: the 24-hour pasta restaurants of Little Italy and the bustling sidewalks of Chinatown, the jazz clubs of Greenwich Village and the theatres of Broadway; and of course the iconic sights of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and Times Square.
New York has been described as the best three-day city in the world, and that's about right. After a frenzy of museums, galleries, bars and clubs, some visitors are ready for a break. Fortunately there's a lot of choice, from the National Parks of Upstate New York, to the beaches of Long Island or simply the leafy oasis of Central Park. Whatever you're after, New York is ready and waiting to bewitch, bother and bewilder.

New York City Travel Guide:The precinct was rectangular, measuring 1/2 mile east to west and about 2 1/2 miles north to south. In the exact middle was a rectangular reservoir about a third of the width of the park and extending on a latitude with 79th to 86th Street. Directly above it was a much larger irregular new reservoir, that spanned four-fifths the breadth of the park, leaving only narrow passages to either side. Provision had to be made for commercial traffic crosswise through the tract, which problem was solved by the introduction of four transverse roads, that were sunken, and the drives above furnished with overpasses thickly planted to conceal the lower roadways. The northernmost transverse road skirted the upper tip of the new reservoir. The second ran between the new and old, and the third crossed immediately to the south. The largest uninterrupted section of the park interlay the third and fourth transverse roads, roughly between 65th and 79th streets. Just east of an imaginary center line here and running obliquely was a formal promenade called the Mall. Its northern extremity was the Plaza, where monumental stairs descended to the Terrace featuring the Bethesda Fountain. Central Lake and the hilly Ramble were beyond. The Mall was oriented toward Vista Rock, the focal point of the park and on which stood a wooden lookout, replaced in 1869 by the small stone Romanesque-manner castle called the Belvedere. The open field west of the Mall was originally called the Parade Ground, and by the late 1860's had become known as the Green. Containing about 15 acres, this was the largest meadow in Central Park until the old reservoir was emptied in 1929 and made into the Great Lawn in 1935. The Mineral Spring Pavilion, near Eighth Avenue and 70th Street, and the hexagonal Music Stand, on the Mall near the Plaza, had cusped arches supported on slender colonnettes, and flaring, complex roofs, reminiscent of Saracenic architecture. Below the fourth transverse road were the Play Ground to the west and the Pond in the southeast corner. Facing the Pond, and accessible to the south transverse road for supplies, stood the Dairy, a stone and wooden gothic chalet designed by Vaux. Its porch was hit by a truck and subsequently removed about 1950. A preexisting building, still intact, is the Arsenal, at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street, erected in 1847, converted into the Museum of Natural History about 1870, and remodeled for Department of Parks offices in 1923. The main entrance to Central Park is at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, originally planned with a small plaza. The other three corners were indented by circles in the 1860's. The various parts of the layout were woven together by freeflowing drives and bridle paths, meandering walks shaded by clumps of trees, providing scale in opposition to the open grasslands beyond, and leading to picturesque wooded promontories, such as the Ramble. The creation of a landscape garden in the middle of the nineteenth century is related to the taste for landscape paintings of the same period, exemplified in the work of the Hudson River School of artists, composed of such men as Thomas Doughty, Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, George Inness, Frederick E. Church, and the Hart brothers, James M. and William. Olmsted's park meadows are equivalents to canvases by Inness, and his rambles to those of Durand.

<http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/northamerica/grandcentralterminal02.shtml>The Grand Central Terminal was built in 1913, in the golden age of railways and way before airline travel overtook railways as the main means of transportation. Although unfortunately the outside of the station was completely covered when I last visited, the grandness of the design can still be appreciated from hints sticking through the scaffolding. It overpowers you once you step inside. This railway station is in fact so big that there are actually tours to give visitors a guided impression of its grandeur.

<http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/northamerica/grandcentralterminal03.shtml>While the concourses, the lower levels, the entrances are all impressive in themselves, the real heart of the building is the main hall. This is the pulsating centre of Grand Central Terminal. It is here that you will see passengers waiting in line to buy their tickets, consulting the information signs for departure times, waving goodbye to loved ones, hurrying to their trains on tracks that are largely hidden behind doors. It is also here that you will feel small when you look up at the blue-greenish ceiling, representing an evening sky with gilded stars and constellations. The literal centre pieces of the hall is the four-sided clock above the information booth, a landmark in itself and an easy meeting point.

New York City Travel Guide:The Statue became a symbol of hope and possibility for thousands of immigrants who were coming from all over the world to Ellis Island. More than 22 million passengers and members of ships' crews entered the United States through Ellis Island, which is directly across from Liberty Island in the lower New York Harbor. Ellis Island was incorporated as part of the Statue of Liberty National Monument on May 11, 1965. In 1903 when there was an extraordinary flood of immigrants to the United States, a poem by Emma Lazarus, entitled "The New Colossus," was added to the pedestal. It reads, "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" (Emma Lazarus, 1883)
According to most historical sources, Bartholdi based Liberty's face on his mother, Charlotte. The tablet in Liberty's left hand is inscribed with July 4, 1776, the date that America declared independence from the British. Interestingly enough, it is the only distinctly American detail that Bartholdi put on the statue. In earlier versions, she was holding a broken chain, possibly referring to the end of slavery in the United States after the Civil War. Bartholdi enlisted the help of Alexandre Gustav Eiffel, the designer of the Parisian landmark the Eiffel Tower, to help keep the large copper statue standing without losing its shape. Eiffel devised the idea of an iron inner framework with bars conforming to Liberty's feminine shape.
Unfortunately, only the grounds of Liberty Island are open for visitation. The monument, museum, crown, and all monument observation decks have been closed since September 11, 2001, and are closed indefinitely to visitation-for security reasons-until further notice.