Midtown.

Many of New York offices and jobs are concentrated in Midtown, as well as many of its famous skyscrapers.

The first skyscraper in New York was built in 1902. It was twenty storeys high.

The first building boom for skyscrapers came in the late 1920s. These skyscrapers were built in art deco style and were abundantly and richly decorated. The most beautiful and famous of the art deco skyscrapers of that time are the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, the third tallest building in the world. A visitor can go to the top of the Empire State Building and admire the view of Manhattan. The Empire State Building has become a symbol of New York.

Rockefeller Centre, which was built in the 1930s, is the world largest privately owned business and entertainment centre. Today it consists of nineteen buildings, which include offices, shops, and various places of entertainment.

In the 1950s there was a second building boom, which introduced a new style – buildings of steel and glass. The United Nations Secretariat building was the first steel-and-glass skyscraper. The new style became very popular, and today there are a lot of steel-and-glass skyscrapers in Manhattan.

Times Square got its name from the New York Times, the most popular newspaper in America, which has its main office there. The New York Times is regarded as one of the best newspapers in the country. New York’s other main newspapers are the New York Daily News, the New York Post and the New York Newsday.

The Theatre District begins at Times Square and occupies an area in or near Broadway between the 40s and 50s Streets. Most Broadway theatres are located in this area. Broadway has long been the centre of theatre life in the United States. Many plays which are first staged in other cities hope to finally come to Broadway.

Upper (Uptown) Manhattan.

Practically the whole of the Manhattan area is a sea of concrete. Luckily for New Yorkers, there is one exception: Central Park.

This huge park in the middle of the city was designed in the 1850s by the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Olmsted wanted to build a large beautiful park where a lot of New Yorkers, “rich and poor, young and old”, could rest and enjoy nature.

You can take a ride through Central Park in a little carriage pulled by a horse, or rent a bicycle. There are many attractions in the park: a zoo, a skating-rink, an old-fashioned carousel, a lake with boats, and an outdoor theatre.

After Central park was opened in 1876, some wealthy New Yorkers soon built mansions along Fifth Avenue on Central Park’s eastern side. The family of Vanderbilts had as many as eleven mansions on Fifth Avenue along Central Park.

Now many of these mansions hold art collections. There are so many museums in this part of Fifth Avenue, that it is called “Museum Mile”. One of the museums is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with huge collection of art from all over the world. It is one of the most important museums in the United States.

The street on the western side of Central Park has large and unusual-looking apartment buildings. When the first of these buildings was being built, people were surprised. They were sure that people who had much money would not want to live in an apartment house, especially so far from the centre of the city (and people with little money could not afford living there because the apartments were very large and rich, so the rent was very high). Indeed, people said, the place was so far from the centre, that it was the same as building these apartment houses in the Dakotas. The builder liked the comparison, and called his building the Dakota. Surprisingly, when the building was finished, very soon every apartment was occupied. The apartments were very good, and the place with the view on Central Park attracted people. Some very famous people have lived in the Dakota, among them the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein and on of the famous Beatles musicians John Lennon, who was killed right outside the building on December 8, 1980.