Unit 1 town

Text: New York

Lead in: Before reading the text answer the following questions:

1. Which is your home town?

2. What is it famous for?

3. Where will you take a visitor to show your home town?

4. What is the difference between a town and a city?

5. What world-famous cities do you know?

6. Where would you like to live and work?

New York

New York attracts people from all over. Get on a subway in New York and observe the people reading newspapers. One person is reading a newspaper in Spanish, another in Chinese, yet another in Arabic, Russian, Italian, Yiddish and French. New York was always a city of immigrants. It still is. Situated at the mouth of the Hudson River, New York City consists of five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island (Richmond). Manhattan is an island just 13 miles long and 2 miles wide. It covers an area of about 54 square miles but it is the center of American finance, advertising, art, theater, fashion – and much more. New York is the leading textile center of the country and the chief seat of the garment and printing industries.

The borough of Manhattan is what most people think of when they read about New York, one of the most exciting cities in the world. Manhattan is divided into the East Side, West Side, Downtown, Midtown and Uptown. Many of New York’s offices are in Midtown. So are many of its famous skyscrapers. The most beautiful and famous are the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building built in the late 1920s. Rockefeller Center, built in the 1930s, is the world’s largest privately owned business and entertainment center. When you are in Midtown, you can look at more than architecture. Fifth Avenue has stores that are among the world’s most expensive – Cartier, Gucci, Tiffany’s and so on. They are great for window shopping.

The New York Stock exchange and the American Stock Exchange are both in Wall Street. There is also the Federal Reserve Bank of New York there, a branch of the national bank of the US – the only branch that buys and sells government securities.

The value of land in Manhattan has turned the island into a sea of concrete. Fortunately for New York’s residents, there is one major exception: Central Park, which was opened in 1876. Wealthy citizens soon built mansions along Fifth avenue. On the park’s east side, where 81^st Street crosses Fifth Avenue the building of Metropolitan Museum of Art is situated.

It is the largest art museum in the US. Its magnificent collection of European and American paintings contains works of many great masters of art world. The second best known is the Museum of Modern Art famous for its wonderful collections of modern art and photography. The Guggenheim Museum of Modern Art contains an impressive number of masterpieces by impressionists and abstractionists.

The Bronx is more a residential rather than an industrial borough. Queens is both residential and industrial. Staten Island is a borough of piers and warehouses. Brooklyn is mainly a residential area, it alone houses so many people that if it were a separate city, it would be the fourth largest in the US! The Brooklyn Navy Yard is the largest shipbuilding center in the world.

There are a lot of colleges and universities in New York, among them such giants as Columbia University, the State University of New York, the City University of New York and many others.

New York is a big modern city with a heavy traffic. One way streets speed traffic east and west and elevated high-ways carry cars and trucks north and south along the broad avenues.

(From Spotlight on the USA)

Notes

1. immigrant – a person coming into a country from abroad to make his home there; ant. emigrant – a person who leaves his own country in order to go and live in another

2. Downtown AmE – the business center of a town or city; Uptown AmE – northern areas of a city or town where people live, not the business center

3. the Empire State Building – the highest building in the world, it is 1, 250 feet high and has 102 stories

4. Rockefeller Center* - fifteen skyscrapers, housing several large corporations such as the International Associated Press, Time and Life magazines, National and American Broadcasting systems, etc.

5. Stock Exchange also Stock market – a place where stocks, bonds and shares are bought and sold

6. one-way street – a street where only one-way traffic is allowed. In New York even numbered streets are one-way going East; odd numbered streets are going West

7. elevated highway – a highway raised above the ground to avoid traffic jams at street crossing

* Note the difference in spelling

BrE	AmE
centre theatre harbour humour honour	center theater harbor humor honor