New York City
In the first half of the XX century, the city became the world’s industrial, commercial and communicational center. In 1904, the first underground transit company, Inter-borough Rapid Transit, started its operation. In 1930s, the skyline of New York City rose significantly when several of the tallest skyscrapers of the world were built here.
After the WWII, New York became the undisputed world’s number one city. Placing the United Nations Headquarters in New York symbolized the unique political significance of the city.
At the same time, some part of the residents of the city moved into suburbs, which resulted in a slow reduction of the city’s population. Later changes in New York’s industry and commerce and the growth of crime in 1970s, plunged the city into a social and economic crisis.
The first thing that struck us about New York was her “voice:” heart-rending screams of sirens from police cars, disturbed dogs’ barking and awakening jingle of bronze bells on fire-fighters vehicles, unceasing roar of engines, rustling of tires, shouts and whistles from doormen of numerous hotels calling for cabs. (See “18000 kilometers across the United States,” by A. Ovdenko, 1972. page 3).
1980s were a period of moderate growth, which issued in a big boom of the 1990s. Lifting up of racial strains, considerable drop on the number of crimes, growth of immigration helped to renew the city and the population of New York for the first time in its history exceeded 8 million residents. In the end of the 1990s, the city benefited a lot from the success of financial services during the “dotcom” boom. It became one of the factors causing the growth of prices for the real estate in the city.
September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks affected Washington as well, but New York suffered the most when the World Trade Center was hit and thick caustic smoke continued to rise from its debris for several more months after the fall of the Twin Towers and a fire. Despite this, the cleaning of the epicenter of the explosion was finished faster than expected, and since that time the city’s spirit sprang up and new plans for developing the destroyed territory were proposed. The Tower of Freedom, which is expected to rise on the spot of the World Trade Center, should become one of the tallest sky-scrapers in the world (1776 feet or 532.8 meters) by the time of its tentative completion in 2012.
New York, beyond any doubt, is the cultural and media center. Here the headquarters of major TV companies of the United States are located – CBS, NBC and BBC, more than one hundred registered radio stations are on air, broadcasting at AM and FM frequencies, most popular magazines are published (Newsweek, Time, Fortune) and newspapers with world-wide reputation: New York Times, Daily News, New York Post and the mouthpiece of American Business – Wall Street Journal, which has the highest circulation in the United States. Newspapers in more than forty languages are published here.
The media daily carry around the news about the endless succession of events in multifaceted and bubbling cultural life of New York: about the new shows of the world famous Broadway, which has 38 theatrical stages and which is an unrivalled theater fashion headliner in the whole country; about the achievements of national and foreign cinematograph, samples of which are shown in more than 400 cinema theaters, ranging from giant Radio City Music Hall with the capacity of 6,200 seats to real tiny movie halls; about concert programs and celebrities’ appearances, extravaganza shows and other kinds of spectacular events including those in the world-wide known Metropolitan Opera and concert halls of Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall, noted for its fascinating acoustics, and New York City Center.
New York is one of the cities that are mentioned in literature most often.
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