1 Курс Статья № 1 The History of New York

Although New York is not the capital of the United States (and not even of New York State), it is the biggest and most important city of the country. Situated at the mouth of the deep Hudson River, it has always been the gateway to the USA. But it is more than just a door: it is also a win­dow through which the life of the whole nation may be observed.

New York is many things to many people. It is the financial and media capital of the world. It is the headquarters of the United Nations. It is the centre of American cultural life. It is the national leader in fashion and enter­tainment.

The "Big Apple", as New York City is nicknamed, is a city unlike any other. It has everything for everyone. It offers the best, the biggest and the brightest of everything. It is a place of excitement, beauty... and contradic­tions. There is, for example, no canal on Canal Street, Battery Park is not a power station, and Times Square is a triangle. As they say, only in New York!

*****

The first European explorer who saw Manhattan Island was Giovanni da Verrazano, an Italian mer­chant who was in the service of the French king, Francis I. The date was April, 1524. Today a bridge which carries his name, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, is one of the city's most impres­sive sights. It is the longest suspension bridge in the world.

Other Europeans followed Verrazano, most notably Henry Hudson, an Englishman employed by the Dutch East India Company. The mighty Hudson River is named after the navigator who set foot on these shores in 1609.

Even in the days when America was known as the New World, it was a country with a reputa­tion for its spirit of enterprise and the ability of its people to make a good deal. In 1626 the Dutch Trade Company bought Manhattan Island from the local Indians for twenty four dollars. It was probably the most spectacular business deal of all times. (Today, $24 would not buy one square foot of office space in New York.)

Here the Dutch founded their colony and gave it the name New Amsterdam. Forty years later the English fleet under the Duke of York entered the harbour, captured the city without fir­ing a shot and renamed it New York.

During the War of Independence it was the scene of heavy lighting. The English held it until the end of the war in (783 when it became the first capital of the new republic - the United States of America. On April 30, 1789 George Washington, the first President of the US, stood on a bal­cony there and swore a solemn oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The city grew very quickly. Today's New York is the greatest contrast possible to the island settled by the Dutch in 1624. In 1811 a "city plan" was adopted under which straight lines cut through the woods and fields of Manhattan, flattening its hills, burying under the surface its countless little rivers. In a sense, New York is now one of the least historic cities of the world. Practically nothing has remained of Dutch New Amsterdam.