1945 HOBBY SHOW Old Photo Negative by famous photographer for Sale (2024)

1945 HOBBY SHOW Old Photo Negative by famous photographer for Sale (1)


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1945 HOBBY SHOW Old Photo Negative by famous photographer:
$4998.00

authentic 4x5 original negatives as shown. This negative lot is from the PM New York City Daily News between 1940 - 1948by FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER IRVING HABERMANIrving Haberman (June 1, 1916 - March 25, 2003) was one of thepreeminent news photographers of the 20th century. Born in the Bronx, New York, he "shot 'em all" during an illustrious career that spanned nearly 50 years, including stops at the Brooklyn Eagle (1936-1939), PM (1941-1949) and CBS (1949-1985).

William Brian de Lacy Aherne (2 May 1902 – 10 February 1986) was an English actor of stage, screen, radio and television, who enjoyed a long and varied career in Britain and the US.
His first Broadway appearance in The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1931 teamed him with Katharine Cornell, with whom he appeared in many productions. In films, he played opposite Madeleine Carroll, Bette Davis, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and Carole Lombard, and was Oscar-nominated for his role as Emperor Maximilian in Juarez (1939). On TV, he appeared in one of the more memorable ‘’The Twilight Zone’’ episodes, “The Trouble With Templeton”, Wagon Train and Rawhide.Contents1Early life and career1.1Early life1.2English stage1.3English films2U.S. career2.1Broadway2.2Hollywood2.3Columbia2.4Postwar2.5Television2.6Final years2.7Radio career3Personal life and death4Recognition5Filmography6Awards and nominations7Footnotes8References9External linksEarly life and careerEarly lifeHe was born in King's Norton, Worcestershire, the second and younger son of the architect William de Lacy Aherne and his wife Louise (née Thomas). His elder brother Pat Aherne was also an actor.
Educated in Edgbaston, Birmingham, he carried out some early stage training at Italia Conti Academy in London, had some child roles, then completed his education at Malvern College.[1]
English stageHe first appeared on the stage in Birmingham with the Pilgrim Players (which developed into the Birmingham Repertory Theatre) on 5 April 1910 in Fifinella, and he made his first appearance on the London stage at the Garrick Theatre, 26 December 1913 in Where the Rainbow Ends, a play by Clifford Mills and John Ramsey, with music by Roger Quilter, which ran at various theatres for over 25 years.
He then studied with a view to becoming an architect, but, having had considerable amateur experience in Birmingham and with Liverpool's Green Room Club, he obtained an engagement under Robert Courtneidge, and appeared at London's Savoy Theatre, opening on 26 December 1923, as Jack O'Hara in a revival of Paddy the Next Best Thing, the play by W. Gayer-Mackay and Robert Ord (from the novel).[2]
He then toured with Violet Vanbrugh as Hugo in The Flame and appeared at the London Playhouse in May 1924 as Langford in Leon Gordon's White Cargo, in which he played all through 1924–1925.
English filmsAherne's first screen appearance was in The Eleventh Commandment in 1924. He made several appearances in productions at Cricklewood Studios by Stoll Pictures, then the largest British film company, including two directed by Sinclair Hill: The Squire of Long Hadley (1925) and A Woman Redeemed (1927).[3] He was also in King of the Castle (1925) and the comedy Safety First (1926).
In 1926. he accompanied Dion Boucicault Jr. to Australia, where he appeared in several plays by J.M. Barrie (as Valentine Brown in the comedy Quality Street, John Shand in the comedy What Every Woman Knows, Crichton in The Admirable Crichton, Simon and Harry in Mary Rose) and Willocks in Aren't We All?, another comedy by Frederick Lonsdale.[4][5]
Aherne reappeared in London at the Strand in March 1927, again as Langford, in White Cargo and continued on the London stage in a succession of plays until late 1930 when he went to the U.S.
His latter silents were two films Shooting Stars and Underground by director Anthony Asquith. Aherne made his sound debut in The W Plan (1930), directed by Victor Saville. He appeared opposite Madeleine Carroll in Madame Guillotine (1931).
U.S. careerBroadwayAherne made his first appearance on the New York City stage at the Empire Theatre on 9 February 1931, playing Robert Browning in Rudolf Besier's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street opposite Katharine Cornell. The play was a big success, running for 370 performances. Cornell and Aherne remained lifelong friends and he played in many of her productions.
Aherne returned to Broadway in 1932 for Lucrece, which starred Cornell. It only had a short run. He then went to Hollywood, where he made his American film debut in The Song of Songs (1933) with Marlene Dietrich.
He returned to England, where he starred in the film of Basil Dean's The Constant Nymph (1933).
In 1934, he was reunited with Cornell on Broadway in Romeo and Juliet, playing Mercutio; Cornell was Juliet, and Basil Rathbone was Romeo. In only ran 77 performances.
HollywoodIn Hollywood, Aherne supported Ann Harding in The Fountain (1934), released by RKO Pictures.
At Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Aherne co-starred with Helen Hayes in What Every Woman Knows (1934), and Joan Crawford in I Live My Life (1935), which was a big hit. In 1935, Aherne and Cornell revived The Barretts of Wimpole Street on Broadway for 24 performances.[6]
Aherne returned to RKO for Sylvia Scarlett (1935) with Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant, a notorious flop. His next Broadway appearance was Cornell's production of Saint Joan (1936), co-starring Maurice Evans. He returned to Hollywood for Beloved Enemy (1936) with Merle Oberon at Goldwyn Productions.[7]
In 1937, he appeared as Iago on Broadway in Othello.[8]
At Warner Bros., Aherne was top-billed in The Great Garrick (1937), directed by James Whale. He supported Constance Bennett in the hit comedy Merrily We Live (1938) for Hal Roach Studios, distributed by MGM. He was Oscar-nominated for his role as Emperor Maxmilian in Juarez (1939).[9]
Hal Roach gave Aherne the star role in Captain Fury (1939) as a bushranger in colonial Australia. He supported Carole Lombard in Vigil in the Night (1940) at RKO, then reunited with Madeleine Carroll in My Son, My Son! (1940) for Edward Small.
ColumbiaAherne was billed over Rita Hayworth in The Lady in Question (1940) at Columbia. He made Hired Wife (1940) at Universal with Rosalind Russell; for that studio, he did The Man Who Lost Himself (1941) with Kay Francis.
MGM put Aherne in support of Jeanette MacDonald for Smilin' Through (1941). He supported Claudette Colbert in Skylark (1941) at Paramount and Rosalind Russell in My Sister Eileen (1942) at Columbia. He stayed at that studio to support Loretta Young in A Night to Remember (1942) and was one of many stars in Forever and a Day (1943).
At Columbia, Aherne supported Merle Oberon in First Comes Courage (1943) and Rosalind Russell in The Beautiful Cheat (1943).
In 1943, he quit films to become a flight instructor for the air force in Arizona.[10] In November 1943, it was reported Columbia paid him $144,958 for the year, making him the second highest paid person at Columbia after Harry Cohn.[11]
He fell ill with influenza while touring army camps in 1944.[12]
PostwarIn 1945, he and Cornell returned to Broadway in a revival of The Barretts of Wimpole Street.[13] He stayed in New York to appear in The French Touch (1945–1946), directed by René Clair.
Aherne returned to movies with RKO's The Locket (1946), billed after Laraine Day. He was top-billed in Smart Woman (1948), co-starring producer Constance Bennett. He did Drums Along the Amazon (1948) for Republic.
Aherne was in a Broadway revival of She Stoops to Conquer (1949–1950).
TelevisionAherne made his television debut with "Dear Brutus" for The Ford Theatre Hour (1950), which he had performed on stage in Boston.[14] He followed it with "The Magnificent Gesture" for Armstrong Circle Theatre (1950),[15] "A Well-Remembered Voice" for Lux Video Theatre, "The Old Flame" for The Billy Rose Show (1951), "The Buccaneer" for Pulitzer Prize Playhouse (1951), and Betty Crocker Star Matinee (1952).
He and Cornell reunited on stage in The Constant Wife (1951–1952). then Aherne returned to Hollywood. He had supporting roles in I Confess (1953), directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and Titanic (1953) as Captain E.J. Smith.
Aherne did Escapade (1953) on Broadway and "Two for Tea" for Lux Video Theatre and "Element of Risk" and "Breakdown" for Robert Montgomery Presents (1953).
20th Century Fox asked Aherne back to Hollywood to play King Arthur in Prince Valiant (1954) and to play a supporting part in A Bullet Is Waiting (1954).
He did Quadrille (1954–1955) on Broadway with the Lunts, then "Now in Rehearsal" for the Eddie Cantor episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour (1955). Aherne did "The Martyr" for General Electric Theater (1955), "Reunion in Vienna" for Producers' Showcase (1955), and "The Round Dozen" and "Appearances and Reality" for The Star and the Story (1955).
Aherne went to MGM for The Swan (1956). On TV, he did "One Minute from Broadway" for Sneak Preview (1956), "Night Shriek" for Climax! (1956), "The Sacred Trust" and "The Lamp of Father Cataldo" for Crossroads (1956), "The Transfer" for The Errol Flynn Theatre (1956), "Safe Enough" for Studio 57 (1957), and "Story Without a Moral" for Goodyear Theatre (1959).
In 1957, he went on a national tour of My Fair Lady, playing Professor Henry Higgins. In 1960, he played the title role of The Trouble with Templeton on the television series The Twilight Zone.
Aherne was invited back to 20th Century Fox for a sizable supporting role in the big budget The Best of Everything (1959). Aherne's final Broadway appearance was in Dear Liar (1960) with Cornell, where he played George Bernard Shaw ("with great vivacity" according to The New York Times[16]) opposite Cornell's Mrs Patrick Campbell. He acted in the movie Susan Slade (1961). He did "The Bruce Saybrook Story" on Wagon Train (1961), and "The Gentleman's Gentleman" on Rawhide (1961). He also appeared as guest host on the TV panel show The Name's the Same.
Final yearsAherne's final film roles included Lancelot and Guinevere (1963) as King Arthur, The Waltz King (1964) for Disney (as Johann Strauss I), and The Cavern (1964).
He settled in Switzerland. He appeared in a play in England and agreed to return to Hollywood to play Rosalind Russell's love interest in Rosie! (1967).[17]
In 1970, he appeared as a mystery guest on What's My Line?.
Radio careerAherne co-starred in the "Florence Nightingale" episode of Theatre Guild on the Air 13 April 1952.[18] In 1945, he played sleuth Simon Templar in the mystery series The Saint
he also appeared in an episode of Burns and Allen titled "Brian Aherne's Shorts" on March 28, 1944.
Personal life and deathBetween 1939 and 1945, Aherne was married to actress Joan Fontaine; the marriage ended in divorce.[19] He married Eleanor de Liagre Labrot in 1946, and their union lasted until his death in 1986.
Aherne published his autobiography A Proper Job in 1969 as well as A Dreadful Man (1979), a biography of his close friend George Sanders.
Aherne was a pilot and charter member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.[20]
Aherne died of heart failure in Venice, Florida at the age of 83 on 10 February 1986. He was cremated at Sarasota Crematory.[21]
RecognitionHe was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1772 Vine TitleRoleNotes1924The Eleventh CommandmentNorman Barchester1925The Squire of Long HadleyJim LuttrellKing of the CastleColin O'Farrell1926Safety FirstHippocrates Rayne1927A Woman RedeemedGeoffrey Maynefleet1928Shooting StarsJulian GordonUndergroundBill1930The W PlanColonel Duncan Grant1931Madame GuillotineLouis Dubois1933The Song of SongsRichard WaldowThe Constant NymphLewis Dodd1934The FountainLewis AllisonWhat Every Woman KnowsJohn Shand1935I Live My LifeTerence "Terry" O'NeillSylvia ScarlettMichael Fane1936Beloved EnemyDennis Riordan1937The Great GarrickDavid Garrick1938Merrily We LiveE. Wade Rawlins1939JuarezMaximilian I of Mexiconominated for Best Actor in a Supporting RoleCaptain FuryCaptain Michael Fury1940Vigil in the NightDr. Robert S. PrescottMy Son, My Son!William EssexThe Lady in QuestionAndre MorestanHired WifeStephen Dexter1941The Man Who Lost HimselfJohn Evans / Malcolm ScottSmilin' ThroughSir John CarteretSkylarkJim Blake1942My Sister EileenRobert BakerA Night To RememberJeff Troy1943Forever and a DayJim TrimbleFirst Comes CourageCaptain Allan LowellWhat a Woman!Henry Pepper1946The LocketDr. Harry Blair1948Smart WomanRobert LarrimoreAngel on the AmazonAnthony RidgewayAlternative titles: Drums Along the AmazonThe Jungle Wilderness1953I ConfessChief Prosecutor Willy RobertsonTitanicCaptain Edward John Smith1954Prince ValiantKing ArthurA Bullet Is WaitingDavid Canham1956The SwanFather Carl Hyacinth1959The Best of EverythingFred Shalimar1961Susan SladeStanton Corbett1963Lancelot and GuinevereKing ArthurAlternative title: Sword of Lancelot1964The CavernGen. Braithwaite1967Rosie!Oliver Stevenson(final film role)TelevisionYearTitleRoleNotes1950Armstrong Circle Theatre1950–1953Robert Montgomery PresentsPhillip Armstrong3 episodes1951Pulitzer Prize Playhouse1 episode1951–1953Lux Video TheatreMr. Don/Reggie2 episodes1955General Electric TheaterColonel Tafferty1 episodeProducers' ShowcaseRudolf Maximilian1 episode1955–1956CrossroadsFather Cataldo3 episodes1956Climax!David1 episodeCavalcade of AmericaJohn Kirk1 episode1959Goodyear TheatreJames Rupert/James Spencer1 episode1960The Twilight ZoneBooth Templeton1 episode1961RawhideWoolsey1 episode1961Wagon TrainLord Bruce Saybrook1 episode1963The Wonderful World of DisneyJohann Strauss Sr.2 episodesAwards and nominationsYearAwardCategoryNominated workResult194012th Academy AwardsBest Supporting ActorJuarezNominated
Brian Aherne, who epitomized the debonair, self-assured British gentlemen in more than three dozen films while simultaneously establishing himself as a viable stage presence, died Monday in a hospital in Venice, Fla.
His wife, Eleanor, said by telephone from their home in Boca Grande that Aherne had been taken to the hospital last week. “His heart just gradually gave out,” she said. He was 83.
Retired from the stage and screen for nearly 20 years, Aherne in his prime played opposite some of the most glamorous actresses of the century—Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Cornell, Helen Hayes, Katharine Hepburn, Madeleine Carroll and Bette Davis. In most of those appearances he was the impeccably mannered and meticulously groomed consort to their more tempestuous characters.
It was not altogether an act.
Brian De Lacy Aherne was born into the comfortable upper middle-class that dominated Great Britain at the turn of the century. His father was a successful architect and his mother a frustrated actress who imbued her three children with a dramatic spark. Brother Patrick and sister Elena were to have their own theatrical careers but none to match Brian’s, who broke into things theatrical as a boy doing pantomimes on neighborhood stages at Christmastime. A fellow performer was Noel Coward.
Young Aherne attended Malvern College, where he studied architecture, but he forsook school in 1923 to play in “Paddy, the Next Best Thing,” a regional play. He then moved onto the British silent screen in “The Eleventh Commandment,” “The Constant Nymph” and others, while touring Australia in stage performances of “What Every Woman Knows” and “Aren’t We All.”
In 1931 he came to Broadway to portray Robert Browning opposite Cornell in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.” A New York Times critic hailed his performance as “all strength, kindness and sincerity.”
He was lured from the touring company of “Barretts” to appear on screen opposite Dietrich in “Song of Songs” in 1933, launching a film career that was to end in 1967 in “Rosie” with Rosalind Russell. In between were “Beloved Enemy,” “Juarez” (as the Emperor Maximilian, his only Academy Award nomination); “My Son, My Son!,” “Skylark,” “My Sister Eileen,” “Forever and a Day” and “The Swan,” among others.
During World War II he toured American military camps and then went overseas for the American Theater Wing to recreate his role of Browning. After the war (and a brief Broadway run in “The French Touch”) he returned to Hollywood for “The Locket” but by 1949 was back on Broadway as Young Marlow in “She Stoops to Conquer.” Next was a revival of the W. Somerset Maugham comedy “The Constant Wife” where his performance opposite Cornell brought him praise as “an actor of distinction.”
In 1939 he had married actress Joan Fontaine but they were divorced in 1945. Two years later he wed Eleanor Labrout and they settled into what she remembered Monday as a “quiet, gracious life together.”
He was to make a few more films and two distinctive stage appearances--one as George Bernard Shaw opposite Cornell in “Dear Liar” and the second in the touring company of “My Fair Lady” as Henry Higgins.
The Ahernes lived alternately at a beach house in Santa Monica they purchased from Cary Grant and Barbara Hutton, a villa in Switzerland they found with actor George Sanders, a lifelong friend Aherne wrote of in a biography he titled “A Dreadful Man” in 1979, and finally the home his wife bought for them in Florida.
He also published a popular autobiography “A Proper Job” in 1969. The title, he said, was facetious. It came from his lack of faith in acting as a serious career.
“Never was all that impressed with the glamour of it,” he allowed.
Katharine Cornell (February 16, 1893 – June 9, 1974) was an American stage actress, writer, theater owner and producer. She was born in Berlin to American parents and raised in Buffalo, New York.
Dubbed "The First Lady of the Theatre" by critic Alexander Woollcott,[2] Cornell was the first performer to receive the Drama League Award, for Romeo and Juliet in 1935.[3] Cornell is noted for her major Broadway roles in serious dramas, often directed by her husband, Guthrie McClintic. The couple formed C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company that gave them complete artistic freedom in choosing and producing plays. Their production company gave first or prominent Broadway roles to some of the more notable actors of the 20th century, including many British Shakespearean actors.
Cornell is regarded as one of the great actresses of the American theatre.[2] Her most famous role was that of English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the 1931 Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Other appearances on Broadway included in W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter (1927), Sidney Howard's The Alien Corn (1933), Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (1934), Maxwell Anderson's The Wingless Victory (1936), S. N. Behrman's No Time for Comedy (1939), a Tony Award-winning Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra (1947), and a revival of Maugham's The Constant Wife (1951).[4]
Cornell was noted for spurning screen roles, unlike other actresses of her day. She appeared in only one Hollywood film, the World War II morale booster Stage Door Canteen, in which she played herself. She did appear in television adaptations of The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Robert E. Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night. She also narrated the documentary Helen Keller in Her Story, which won an Oscar.
Primarily regarded as a tragedienne, Cornell was admired for her refined, romantic presence. One reviewer observed, "Hers is not a robust romanticism, however. It tends toward dark but delicate tints, and the emotion she conveys most aptly is that of an aspiring girlishness which has always been subject to theatrical influences of a special sort."[5] Her appearances in comedy were infrequent, and praised more widely for their warmth than their wit. When she played in The Constant Wife, critic Brooks Atkinson concluded that she had changed a "hard and metallic" comedy into a romantic drama.[6]
Cornell died on June 9, 1974, in Tisbury, Massachusetts (on Martha's Vineyard), aged 81, and is buried at Tisbury Village Cemetery, Tisbury, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.[7]Contents1Family and childhood2Early career3Stardom4The Barretts of Wimpole Street5The 1933 tour6Broadway successes and maturation of style6.1Romeo and Juliet6.2The Barretts revived6.3St. Joan6.4The Wingless Victory6.5No Time for Comedy6.6The Doctor's Dilemma7The war years7.1The Three Sisters7.2Wartime service8Post-war changes8.1Candida, revived8.2Shakespeare and Anouilh8.3Postwar theatre8.4Radio8.5Retirement9On acting and the theatre10Legacy10.1Theatres and research centers10.1.1The Paley Center for Media10.2Awards and honors10.3Biographies10.4Subject of artworks10.5The Katharine Cornell Foundation10.6Cultural references11References12External linksFamily and childhood
Katharine Cornell at age twoCornell was born into a prominent, wealthy Buffalo, New York society family. Her great-grandfather, Samuel Garretson Cornell, a descendant of pioneer ancestor Thomas Cornell, came to Buffalo in the 1850s, and founded Cornell Lead Works. One of his grandsons, Peter, married Alice Gardner Plimpton. The young couple lived in Berlin when Peter was studying medicine at the University of Berlin. Their first child, Katharine, was born there. Six months later, the family returned to Buffalo, where they lived at 174 Mariner Street.[8] As a child, Katharine had a troubled relationship with her parents, due in part to her mother's alcoholism. She play-acted in her backyard with imaginary friends. Soon, she was performing in school pageants and plays, and she watched family productions in her grandfather's attic theater, still standing at 484 Delaware Avenue.[9] Cornell played at the Buffalo Studio Club parlor theater, located at 508 Franklin Street.[10] She loved athletics and was a runner-up for city championship at tennis, and an amateur swimming champion.[11] She attended the University of Buffalo (later the State University of New York at Buffalo).[citation needed]. In 1913, she joined The Garret Club, a woman's only private club in Buffalo, and participated in club theatricals.[12]
After Cornell had become famous, she often brought her productions to her native Buffalo. Although she never returned to Buffalo to live, her enthusiasm for the city and its inhabitants was well known. Biographer Tad Mosel wrote: "To show her affection for her hometown, she always walked slowly when she left her hotel, turning her head to smile on everyone on the street, missing no one, so they could feel close to her and be able to say when they got home that night, 'Katharine Cornell smiled directly at me.'" For the rest of her career, on opening Broadway nights, she was greeted backstage by family and friends from Buffalo.[13] Many of her productions were performed at the Erlanger Theater on Delaware Avenue,[14] across from the Statler Hotel. The Erlanger was demolished in 2007.[14]
Early career
Cornell as Jo March in the 1919 London stage production of Little Women
Cornell and Allan Pollock in the Broadway production of A Bill of Divorcement (1921)In 1915, Cornell's mother died, leaving her enough money to be independent. The young woman moved to New York City to pursue her acting career. There she joined the Washington Square Players[15][16] and was hailed as one of the most promising actresses of the season. After just two seasons, she joined Jessie Bonstelle's company,[17] a leading New York repertory ("stock") company that divided its summers between Detroit and Buffalo.[18][19] Now aged 25, Cornell was consistently receiving glowing reviews.
Cornell joined various theater companies, including the Bonstelle, that toured around the East Coast. In 1919, she went with the Bonstelle company to London to play Jo March in Marian de Forest's stage adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women. Although the critics disparaged the play itself, they specifically noted Cornell as the one bright spot of the evening. The paper The Englishwomen wrote of Cornell: "London is unanimous in its praise, and London will flock to see her." Upon her return to New York, she met Guthrie McClintic, a young theater director. She made her Broadway debut in the play Nice People by Rachel Crothers, in a small part alongside Tallulah Bankhead.
Cornell's first major Broadway role was that of Sydney Fairfield in Clemence Dane's A Bill of Divorcement (1921). The New York Times wrote of her performance, "[she] has the central and significant role of the play and ... gives therein a performance of memorable understanding and beauty."[citation needed] It played for 173 performances, well enough to be considered a hit. Afterward, Cornell played in a succession of now-forgotten plays.
She married McClintic on September 8, 1921, in her aunt's summer home in Cobourg, Ontario, Canada. Cornell's family had often summered there among other wealthy Americans.[20] The couple eventually bought a townhouse at 23 Beekman Place in Manhattan.[21][22] It is generally acknowledged that Cornell was a lesbian, and that McClintic was gay, and their union was a lavender marriage.[23] She was a member of the "sewing circles" in New York, and had relationships with Nancy Hamilton,[24] Tallulah Bankhead, Mercedes de Acosta, and others.[25]
Stardom
Cornell photographed by Carl Van Vechten (1933)In 1924, Cornell and McClintic were part of The Actor's Theatre, a successor to the Washington Square Players. This was a group of actors that sought to be a democracy without any stars. As their first production, they selected Candida by George Bernard Shaw. At the time, the play was considered perfect for the group, as none of the characters was considered to outshine the others, because Shaw intended the play to be about ideas. Although the leading protagonist is Candida, she does not really come into her own until the third act. But, Cornell essentially re-envisioned the play. She made Candida the core of the play, a view adopted by directors and critics ever since. Reviews were ecstatic and audiences responded in kind. The Actor's Theatre changed its plans and decided that Cornell's name must appear above the play's title in all future productions of the troupe. Another acting troupe, the Theatre Guild, controlled the rights to all Shaw's plays, and thereafter allowed only Cornell to play the role of Candida so long as she was alive, a role which she reprised several more times in her career. Shaw later wrote her a note stating that she had created "an ideal British Candida in my imagination."[26]
Cornell's next role was to play Iris March in The Green Hat (1925), a romance by Michael Arlen. The play had themes of syphilis and loose morals, and Iris March was a strong sexual creature. Leslie Howard played the role of Napier. While the play was still in Chicago, it became an international hit, known all over the US and Europe. Ashton Stevens, senior drama critic in Chicago, wrote that The Green Hat "should die at every performance of its melodramatics, its rouge and rhinestones, its preposterous third act.... Already, I am beginning to forget its imperfections and remember only its charms." Its chief charm, he conceded, was Cornell, who sent "tiny bells up and down my unpurchasable vertebrae." Most other critics panned the play itself, but nonetheless found it irresistible because of Cornell's ability to mesmerise, despite the garish dialogue. Critic George Jean Nathan wrote that the play was "superbly acted in its leading role by that one young woman who stands head and shoulders above all the other young women of the American theater, Miss Katharine Cornell."[citation needed]Cornell with Burton McEvilly in the Broadway production of The Letter (1927)The play had 231 performances in New York before going to Boston and then a cross-country tour. The play's success spawned a fashion in green hats of the type worn by Cornell in the play. Later, Tallulah Bankhead played the role of Iris March in a less successful London production, and Greta Garbo played the role in a 1928 film adaptation, A Woman of Affairs.
She starred in 1927 in The Letter, by W. Somerset Maugham, as Leslie Crosbie, a woman who kills her lover. Maugham himself suggested Cornell for the part. Although the critics were not too excited about the play, Cornell by then had developed a loyal following. The opening night was such a sensation that the New York Sun wrote that the sidewalks were packed with people after the performance straining to catch a glimpse of her.Cornell in the Broadway production of The Age of Innocence (1928)In 1928, Cornell played the lead role of the countess Ellen Olenska in a dramatized version of Edith Wharton's novel The Age of Innocence. Her performance received only positive reviews. After this success, Cornell was offered the lead in The Dishonored Lady. It was originally intended for Ethel Barrymore, who failed to accept the role. The play is a lurid melodrama about true-life murder in Glasgow, Scotland. Walter Winchell wrote, "Never in the history of the theatre has an actress of such distinction permitted such an exciting scene. She [Cornell] actually permits a man to crack her a powerful wallop in the face!"[citation needed] One critic complained about the "fifth rate claptrap" of a play, and chastised Cornell for selecting such lowbrow theater as a waste of her talents.
Vogue wrote that Cornell does these types of plays because "she prefers... to be blunt, trash of a violent kind." Biographer and playwright Tad Mosel counters that although this is meant as a reproof, when stripped of its condescension,
"it is a simple statement of the truth. There was a part of her that indeed preferred trash of a violent kind. Her integrity as an artist was the only defense such a preference needed. Every performance had to be as much a revelation of herself as it was an interpretation of a role, and therefore her choice of roles and the way she played them offer great insights into her nature, greater perhaps than can be inferred from her gracious, smiling, always agreeable, and increasingly guarded behavior offstage. One must look at her performances as one looks at the output of a writer or a painter."[20]
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
Cornell as Elizabeth Barrett in the original Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1931)Katharine Cornell is perhaps best known in her role as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in Rudolf Besier's play The Barretts of Wimpole Street. The play is based on the life of the poet's family; the Barretts lived on Wimpole Street in London. The play opens with Elizabeth, the oldest child of a large and loving family. Their widowed father has become embittered and determined that none of his children should marry, lest they become slaves to the "brutal tyranny of passion" and "the lowest urge of the body." As the play progresses, his smothering concern for his family and particularly for Elizabeth, who is an invalid, takes on a sinister character. Poet Robert Browning has read some of Elizabeth's poetry and comes to meet her, and they immediately are attracted to each other. When he leaves, Elizabeth struggles to her feet to watch him disappear down the lane. Elizabeth and Robert later elope, against her father's strict orders, and when he finds that she has married without his permission or knowledge, he orders that her beloved dog, Flush, be killed. But her sister had ensured that this cocker spaniel join the couple in their escape.[27]
The play has several difficulties. The lead role of Elizabeth has to be played initially as submissive to her father, yet as the center of attention throughout. Although the ending is happy for Elizabeth and Robert, the rest of the family remains under the domination of the father, who is deranged in his obsession. Elizabeth must be played for the first half lying still on a sofa wearing heavy Victorian costume, and covered with a blanket, as befitting an invalid. Many, including Lionel Barrymore, who was asked to play the part of the father, thought it was too melodramatic and past its time. The play was turned down by 27 New York producers before McClintic read it and found it so moving, he cried whenever he read it.
When McClintic was in London, he was able to secure Brian Aherne to play the part of Robert Browning. Afterwards, McClintic immediately went to a London jewelry store and bought a necklace, two bracelets and a garnet ring, all at least 100 years old. For every single performance that Cornell gave as Elizabeth Barrett, she wore this jewelry in the last act, when she leaves the family home for the last time. Katharine Hepburn was selected for the part of Henrietta, but since she was going to play in a summer stock company a few months later, she could not be signed to a contract. Casting the dog was troublesome because it had to lie still in its basket on stage for a great length of time, and then exit when called. McClintic selected an eight-month-old cocker spaniel, which played the role for the full run and many others afterward, to tremendous applause.
McClintic directed the three-hour play with a meticulous attention to period detail. Cornell was listed as the producer, although it was produced by C. & M.C. Productions, Inc., a company wholly owned by both McClintic and Cornell. The play opened first in Cleveland, then played in Buffalo before reaching New York in January 1931.
Brooks Atkinson wrote of opening night:
"After a long succession of meretricious plays it introduces us to Katharine Cornell as an actress of the first order. Here the disciplined fury that she has been squandering on catch-penny plays becomes the vibrant beauty of finely wrought character.... By the crescendo of her playing, by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights, she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records. Her acting is quite as remarkable for the carefulness of its design as for the fire of her presence.... The Barretts of Wimpole Street is a triumph for Miss Cornell and the splendid company with which she has surrounded herself."
[citation needed]
All other critics were uniform in praise of her acting: using adjectives such as superb, eloquent, exalted, dark, rhythmic, luminous, haunting, lyric, ravishing. Dorothy Parker, known for her caustic wit and unsentimental reviews, wrote that although she did not think it a good play, she "paid it the tribute of tears." Further, "Miss Katharine Cornell is a completely lovely Elizabeth Barrett.... It is little wonder that Miss Cornell is so worshipped; she has romance, or, if you like better the word of the daily-paper critics, she has glamour."[citation needed] The play ran for 370 performances. When it was announced that it was closing, the remaining performances sold out and hundreds were turned away.
The play's success engendered a revival of Robert Browning's poetry, and cocker spaniels became the popular dog that year. Irving Thalberg wanted Cornell to play her part in an MGM adaptation, offering that if she was not completely satisfied with the result, the film would be destroyed.[28] She refused. The movie that was released had most of the original cast, and Thalberg's wife, actress Norma Shearer, played the part of Elizabeth.[29]
Cornell refused to act in movies because she had seen audiences laugh at the acting of old movies and did not want that to happen to her. According to biographer Tad Mosel,
"she did not feel that she was acting for historians or nostalgia fans of the future but for audiences of the here and now, people who came into the theatre tonight, sat in their seats and waited for the curtain to go up. Not only were they the ones she wanted to reach, but she wanted to be there when they responded, she did not want to be off in another part of the world while they gazed at a second-hand image on a screen. In fact, she was not sure she could give them anything to respond to without the inducement of their presence." Moreover, the largeness of her facial structure—her bone structure—were so explicit that they could be seen to the last row, but "might have been less than an asset on the screen where the camera enlarges and exaggerates. Her voice and gestures were eloquent theatre props that might have been too much for the screen, necessitating adjustments so basic that she could not make them. And beyond physical equipment ... it is possible that the quality she had as an individual, the unique something about her that transcended technique and craft and fifth-rate writing might not have transcended cameras; it would not have come through to an audience without her physical presence."
[citation needed]
But other sources say that Hollywood secured Broadway plays for its own actors under contract and that Cornell was never considered for the roles she originated on stage. Additionally, Cornell had apparently written to film director George Cukor, suggesting that she would consider a film if he would direct her. Nothing came of this effort.[30]
She turned down many movie roles that earned Academy Awards wins and nominations for the actresses who did play those parts, from Olan in The Good Earth, to Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Additionally, many of her roles in hit plays were successfully played by other great actresses, or were adapted as movies. As audiences were deserting live theater for the movies, Cornell became even more determined to stay in the theater in order to help keep it vibrant.
The 1933 tour
Cornell on the cover of Time (December 26, 1932)After Barretts closed, Cornell played leading parts in two plays, Lucrece and Alien Corn.[31] A considerable portion of her role in Lucrece was played in pantomime. Her success in Lucrece landed her on the cover of Time on December 26, 1932.[32] In the article, she is quoted as saying, "To act, you have to burst out spontaneously and feel constantly and deeply. So if you're too accustomed to using your head instead of your feelings you won't be able to call on your feelings when you want them. I tell young women not to come on the stage, unless there is nothing else they can be happy in."[33]
Her next production was Romeo and Juliet, with McClintic directing. Basil Rathbone was Romeo, and Cornell played Juliet. It was the first time she had performed in any Shakespearean play though Rathbone was more experienced having played leading roles in England at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre and the Royal Court.[34] Shakespeare was not fashionable in the US at that time, and his plays were rarely presented in live theater. The last had been Hamlet with John Barrymore twelve years earlier. The play opened in Buffalo and had a difficult time. Her friend, modern dance pioneer Martha Graham, choreographed the dance sequences. In Buffalo, Graham thought Juliet's costume was all wrong. She bought some soft white nun's veiling, from which she fashioned a flowing robe.
The play was incorporated into a seven-month country-wide tour that rotated three plays: Romeo and Juliet, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Candida. Planned during the height of the Great Depression, many theater experts and actors advised against such an ambitious tour. This was the first time anyone had tried to take a legitimate Broadway show on an all-country tour, let alone three. They toured to such cities as Milwaukee, Seattle, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, San Antonio, New Orleans, Houston, Savannah, and up the east coast to New England.[citation needed]
As movies had taken over from live theater to a large degree, there were major areas of the U.S. closed off to the tour. Many stops at smaller cities had not seen live theater since the First World War, or ever. But box office records were set in most cities and towns. In New Orleans, women rioted when they found out that tickets has been sold out. Variety reported that the tour gave 225 performances and played to 500,000 people. People in less urban areas traveled from two days away to see a performance, and the presenting towns gained a small but welcome swell in revenues from restaurants and hotels as a result. The most famous story to arise out of the tour came when the troupe was to play Barretts on Christmas night in Seattle, McClintic's hometown. They planned to arrive in the morning, and as it normally takes six hours to set up the stage, do lighting and blocking checks and distribute costumes, they figured there would be plenty of time.[citation needed]
However, it had been raining for 23 days, and roads and railroads were being washed out. The train moved very slowly, often stopping. The theater management telegraphed that the venue was completely sold out for the evening performance and wanted regular updates to assure the public that the production was on its way. The troupe kept up the telegrams, but eventually these lines gave out. By that evening, the troupe was still far from the city and gave up hope of doing any performance that night. The train finally arrived in Seattle at 11:30 pm. There was a lively crowd waiting for them at the train station, and the manager of the Metropolitan Theatre came up to Cornell and informed her that the audience was still waiting. McClintic asked, "how many?" "The entire house," was the reply, "Twelve hundred people." Cornell was shocked and asked, "Do you mean they want a performance at this hour?" "They're expecting it," the manager replied.[35]
All 55 members of the cast and crew drove to the theater. Sets and props had to be protected in the downpour. As soon as the troupe arrived, the audience streamed back into their seats. Cornell decided that the audience could watch the sets for "Barretts" be unpacked and set up, and so raised the curtain. The stage hands, sound checks, and electricians worked to accomplish in one hour what normally took six. By 1 am, they were ready to begin the play. Biographer Tad Mosel writes: "The audience had paid the actors the supreme compliment of having the faith to wait for them, and the actors responded with the kind of performance actors wish they could give every day of their lives. When the final curtain fell at 4 am, they received more curtain calls than they ever had."[35]
Ray Henderson, the troupe's publicist and manager, managed to get this story published the next day in every newspaper in America. Alexander Woollcott established a radio tradition on his program, The Town Crier. For years afterward, every Christmas, Woollcott told the story of the Seattle audience that waited until 1 am for to see Katharine Cornell "emerge from the flood" and give the performance of her life.[20]
Broadway successes and maturation of styleRomeo and JulietAlthough they had toured with this play, Cornell and McClintic decided to open Romeo and Juliet in New York with a completely new production. McClintic started over, with just a handful of the actors from the tour. Orson Welles was kept, but played Tybalt instead of Mercutio, making his Broadway debut. Basil Rathbone played Romeo, while Brian Aherne took the part of Mercutio, and Edith Evans played the Nurse. McClintic's idea was to keep the play "light, gay, hot sun, spacious" with no hint of the doom that concluded the play. Also, he coached Cornell to read for meaning, sense and emotion, in place of the poetics of iambic pentameter.
This was a great break with past productions, which up until then had relied upon Victorian prudery and notions of how a classic play should be performed. McClintic reinstated the Prologue and believed that all twenty-three scenes were necessary, cutting only the comedy of the musicians and servants. For the first time, the carnal desires, the youthful romanticism, and the earthiness of language were given equal importance.
The production opened in December 1934, and, as usual, the reviews were glowing. Burns Mantle called Cornell "the greatest Juliet of her time." Taking note of the freshness of approach, Richard Lockridge of the New York Sun wrote that Cornell played Juliet as "an eager child, rushing toward love with arms stretched out." Cornell herself said that her biggest secret of acting is to do away with all excesses and embellishments, to bring an interpretation to its utmost simplicity. Margot Stevenson from the original cast later said that Cornell was "just this big Italian girl in love!" Stark Young said in The New Republic: She makes you believe in love, that Juliet loves, and that the diapason and poetry of love are the reward for its torment. Of various [other] Juliets this must have been one of the last things to be said."
John Mason Brown wrote in the New York Post: "It is not often in our lifetime that we are privileged to enjoy the pleasant sensation of feeling that the present and the future have met for a few triumphant hours.... Yet it was this very sensation—this uncommon sensation of having the present and future meet; eye-witnessing the kind of event to which we will be looking back with pride in the years to come—that forced its warming way, I suspect, into the consciousness of many of us last night as we sat spellbound. Miss Cornell's Juliet is luscious and charming. It finds her at her mellowest and most glamorous. It burns with the intensity Miss Cornell brings to all her acting. It moves gracefully and lightly; it is endlessly haunting in its pictorial qualities; and reveals a Miss Cornell who equals the beauty of the lyric lines she speaks with a new-found lyric beauty of her own voice.... To add that it is by all odds the most lovely and enchanting Juliet our present-day theatre has seen is only to toss it the kind of superlative it honestly deserves." Later, the same critic determined that this role was a turning point in her career, as it meant that she could finally leave the "trifling scripts" of her earlier career and could meet the challenging demands of the greatest classic roles.[20]
The Barretts revivedRomeo and Juliet closed on February 23, 1935, and two nights later, the production company revived The Barretts of Wimpole Street, with Burgess Meredith in his first prominent Broadway role. Critics found that this new production had grown richer and more satisfying, but it closed three weeks later because other plays were contracted.
The next play, also starring Meredith, was Flowers of the Forest, an anti-war play by John van Druten that lasted only 40 performances and counts among Cornell's greatest failures.[20]
St. Joan
Program describing Cornell's appearance in Saint Joan in Cleveland starting on February 20, 1936, a couple of weeks before she opened in New York.For the next season, Cornell and her husband decided to do St. Joan by George Bernard Shaw. McClintic cast Maurice Evans as the Dauphin, Brian Aherne as Warwick, Tyrone Power as Bertrand de Poulengey, and Arthur Byron as the Inquisitor. The play opened on March 9, 1936, and Burns Mantle wrote that the triumph belonged to two maids, "the Maid of Domrémy, France, and the Maid of Buffalo, N.Y." John Anderson of the New York Journal wrote, "Before there is any haggling, let it be said that it is Shaw's greatest play and that Miss Cornell is superb in it. She is beautiful to look at and her performance is enkindled by the spiritual exaltation of a transcendent heroine."
It was in this play that Cornell's real artistry became apparent. Audience members talked of having been "changed" by her performance, and "mesmerized." Writer S.N. Behrman said "it was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to." Another said that she was like "radium, flashing its healing rays," while others used an older phrase, "magnetic influence."
The play closed in the spring of 1936 only because the production company had already contracted to produce Maxwell Anderson's The Wingless Victory. Saint Joan finished with a seven-week tour of five major cities.
Flush, the spaniel that played the part of Flush in Barretts, died in July 1937. He had played his role 709 times, and traveled over 25,000 miles on tours, never getting drunk or arriving late. At his death, the Associated Press sent the story out over its entire network worldwide.
The Wingless Victory
Jo Mielziner portrait of Cornell in The Wingless Victory, on the cover of Stage magazine (January 1937)In Maxwell Anderson's The Wingless Victory, McClintic decided to avoid the so-called "star entrance," where the audience expects the star of the play to enter grandly to general applause. Instead, he had another character take the star entrance, and only then was it revealed that Cornell was onstage. The effect was startling. Opened in 1936, the play received mixed reviews, and many bad ones, but Cornell was nonetheless respected for taking any role and twisting it to make it her own. Gently disparaging the play itself, Brooks Atkinson wrote that Cornell is "Our Queen of tragedy, a thoughtful actress and a great one."[36]
Alternating with Victory, Cornell revived Candida with Mildred Natwick as Prossy. After their conclusion, she took a year off and wrote her memoir (with the help of Ruth Woodbury Sedgewick) entitled I Wanted to Be an Actress. It was published by Random House in 1939.
No Time for Comedy
Cornell and Laurence Olivier in No Time for Comedy, on the cover of Stage (April 15, 1939)
Cornell and Guthrie McClintic in the library of their home at 23 Beekman Place (1933)Cornell's assistant Gertrude Macy produced a musical revue One for the Money which starred unknown actors who later achieved fame, including Gene Kelly, Alfred Drake, Keenan Wynn and Nancy Hamilton. Immediately after that closed, Cornell starred in her second comedy, No Time for Comedy by S. N. Behrman. McClintic cast the young Laurence Olivier in the leading role of Gaylord.[37] During rehearsals, Cornell had a difficult time with the comedic timing, and someone shook their head and said, "Poor old Kit!" Olivier shot back, "Poor old Kit is the most successful woman in the American theater! The richest, the most beautiful, the most sought after, the most distinguished, the most loved — Poor old Kit indeed!"[20]
In his memoir, Behrman wrote, "Miss Cornell had less [exhibitionism] than any actress or actor I have ever known. Her position in the theatre transcended technique.... It was something essential in herself, as a person, that the audiences sensed and reached out to.... The whole stage and the other actors took light from the radiance of her personality."[38]
The play opened on April 17, 1939, and became the third-biggest money-maker for Cornell, and the second production to gross over a million dollars. With a few cast changes, including that of Olivier, the play went on a nationwide tour.
The Doctor's DilemmaCornell next played in Shaw's play, The Doctor's Dilemma, and Raymond Massey starred opposite her. Her production company was running so smoothly that Massey said, "Whatever anyone tells you, Kit ran her own show. They will say everything was managed by those people around her, but it is absolutely not true. She knew everything that was going on and she made all the decisions. At the end of the day you could find her poring over the box office receipts. She was a shrewd and intelligent businesswoman."
The play opened in 1941 in San Francisco, just one week before Pearl Harbor, and was the only show not cancelled, despite numerous blackouts. Given the distraction of the war, the play was not well received. Gregory Peck was part of the tour as "the secretary."
The war yearsShortly after the U.S. entered World War II, Cornell decided upon a revival of Candida to benefit the Army Emergency Fund and the Navy Relief Society. Of her five productions of this play, this fourth one is remembered for the star-studded cast of Raymond Massey, Burgess Meredith, Mildred Natwick and Dudley Digges. Cornell was able to convince all actors, Shaw, the theater hands and the Schubert organization to donate their labor, services and venue so that almost all proceeds went directly to the fund.
The Three SistersA year later, Ruth Gordon urged McClintic to produce Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. Judith Anderson played Olga, Gertrude Musgrove was selected for Irina, while Cornell had the role of Masha. Others included theater legend Edmund Gwenn, Dennis King and Kirk Douglas in his Broadway debut. The play opened in Washington in December 1942, and was not expected to be much of a financial success. The opening was attended by Eleanor Roosevelt and the Soviet ambassador. It played for 122 performances in New York before going on the road, exceeding the low expectations. It had the longest run of any Chekhov play in the U.S. and the longest run of this particular play anywhere up to that point.
Cornell is said to have played Masha with a nobility of spirit without ostentation, and that she found the wit in her role. Time Magazine wrote, in anticipation of its opening, "Not for nothing is Katharine Cornell the top-ranking actress in the U.S. theater as well as a successful producer as well as the wife of able Director Guthrie McClintic. Over the years Cornell has performed many near-miracles. She has made the yearning soul as good box office as the fiery body. She has made an invalid lady on a couch the essence of glamor. She has turned Shakespeare and Shaw into rousing hits. And when, next week, she brings her revival of Chekhov's 'The Three Sisters' to Broadway, it will boast a dream production by anybody's reckoning — the most glittering cast the theater has seen, commercially, in this generation."[39]
Wartime service
Cornell, Aline MacMahon and Dorothy Fields serve soldiers played by Lon McCallister and Michael Harrison in Stage Door Canteen (1943)Cornell's only film role was speaking a few lines from Romeo and Juliet in the movie, Stage Door Canteen (1943),[40] which starred many of Broadway's best actors, under the auspices of the American Theatre Wing for War Relief. This organization was created by playwright Rachel Crothers, and created the Stage Door Canteen to entertain troops during the war. Cornell donated time to work at the Canteen cleaning tables.[41]
General George C. Marshall asked Cornell to do a play to entertain the troops in Europe.[42] Cornell decided to take The Barretts of Wimpole Street to the troops in Europe as a touring production with the USO and the Special Services Division. However, the USO and the Division stated that no G.I. would sit for a three-hour costume drama about two middle-aged Victorian poets. They suggested an alternate, some sort of "ribald farce" in case Barretts proved a failure. Cornell prepared Blithe Spirit, but nonetheless insisted upon Barretts, saying that if she was going to entertain the soldiers, she must take them her very best, and her very best was Barretts. The Army then asked that they cut the love scenes, as the play was far too long at three hours, wanted someone to "explain" the play to the men beforehand, and prepared her for what they saw as rude, tasteless and ignorant troops. The entire company, backed by Cornell and McClintic, resisted all entreaties and played their roles with every degree of authenticity as the Broadway original.
At the first production, the army's fears seemed to be validated. At the start of the play, which takes place in damp, chilly London, the doctor advises that Elizabeth go to Italy for rest. The audience, G.I.s fighting in war-torn Italy, exploded in laughter, hooting, yelling and stamping. According to actress Margalo Gillmore, "It was true, then, we thought, they would go on laughing and it would never stop and the Barretts would go under a tidal wave of derision. But we were wrong. Kit and Guthrie were holding the laugh, just as if they had heard it a hundred times, not showing any alarm, not even seeming to wait for it, but handling it, controlling it, ready to take over at the first sign of its getting out of hand. It rose and fell and before it could rise again, Kit spoke."
The play continued, and outbreaks of an occasional catcall, guffaw or heckling were quickly shushed by others. Gillmore continues: "Kit had a shining light in her. With that strange sixth sense of the actor that functions unexplainably in complete independence of lines spoken and emotions projected, she had been aware of the gradual change out front from a dubious indifference to the complete absorption of interest. At first they hung back, keeping themselves separate from us, a little self-consciously, a little defiantly, and then line by line, scene by scene, she had felt them relax and respond and give themselves up to the play and the story, til at last they were that magic indivisible thing, an audience. 'We must never forget this, never,' said Kit. 'We've seen an audience born.'"
The tour opened in Santa Maria, a small town 15 miles north of Naples, in 1944. G.I.s lined up three hours ahead of time and profusely thanked the cast afterwards. Brian Aherne wrote that after one show in Italy, the manager overheard a tough burly paratrooper say to his buddy, "Well, what I tell ya? Told ya it would be better than going to a cat house."[42] Convinced of its success, the Army brass sanctioned two more weeks. The company eventually played for six months, from August 1944 to January 1945, throughout Italy, including stops in Rome, Florence and Siena. From there, the company was transferred under the aegis of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and played in France, including Dijon, Marseilles and Versailles. In Paris, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas wanted to see the play, but found that performances were strictly limited to enlisted personnel. They were nonetheless given disguises and were able to see the play. Additionally, the cast made a point of visiting hospitals every day throughout the entire tour.[43]
Now aged 51, Cornell was then told by the Army that she had done enough for the effort and to remain in Paris. Her response was to be taken as close to the front as possible. The company performed in Maastricht and Heerlen in the Netherlands, just eight miles from the front. The tour concluded in London amid exploding German V-2 bombs.
Upon her return to New York, Cornell found mail piled up from the G.I.s who had seen the show. They thanked her for "the most nerve-soothing remedy for a weary G.I.," for having brought "yearned-for femininity," reminding them that, unlike other USO shows, "a woman is not all leg," and for "the awakening of something that I thought died with the passing of routine military life in the foreign service."
Long after the tour was finished, Cornell continued to receive letters, not just from servicemen who had seen the show, but from wives, mothers and even school teachers from the home front. Their letters say that the first letter they received from their boy came after he had seen her show, or it was the first time they had heard from them in two years. Fellow actors reported that G.I.s in the South Pacific were heard to talk about the show.
After the war, Cornell co-chaired the Community Players, a successor to the American Theatre Wing, to assist war veterans and their families on their return home.
Cornell was featured for the second time on the cover of Time magazine on December 21, 1942, with Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon.[44]
Post-war changesCandida, revivedAfter the war, American theater was experiencing a change in style with the new generation. Cornell revived Candida for the fifth and last time in April 1946, with Marlon Brando playing the role of the young Marchbanks. Whereas Cornell represented an older, exuberant romantic style, Brando heralded the newer style of Method Acting, with its reliance upon psychological insights and personal experience. Although reviews were as good as ever, audiences and some critics had difficulty with the play itself, as the Edwardian drama had little relevance to post-war American life.
Now in her mid-50s, appropriate roles became harder to find. The plays that had earned her such an exceptional reputation—young Elizabeth Barrett, Juliet, St. Joan, various sexually charged women—were no longer playable by her. The newer roles were simply not her style.
Shakespeare and AnouilhIn 1946, Cornell chose Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, which opened at the Hanna Theater in Cleveland, a difficult role for which she was ideally suited. Critic Ward Morrison praised Cornell's "beauty and power and grandeur and I do not hesitate to proclaim it one of the finest achievements of her career." Again, Cornell's presence insured that this play had its longest run ever, at 251 performances.
She followed that with Jean Anouilh's adaptation of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Sir Cedric Hardwicke played King Creon, and Marlon Brando was cast as The Messenger. After the opening, Cornell's friend Helen Keller told her, "This play is a parable of humanity. It has no time or space." One critic said, "if the world and the theatre had more courageous spirits like [Cornell], our cumulative dreams would be greater, our thoughts, nobler."
Alternating with Antony, Cornell produced another revival of Barretts of Wimpole Street, for an eight-week tour to the West Coast, with Tony Randall in both plays, and Maureen Stapleton as Iras in Antony.[45] Other cast members included Eli Wallach, Joseph Wiseman, Douglas Watson, Charles Nolte, and Charlton Heston.
Postwar theatreFinding good roles became increasingly a concern. Kate O'Brien dramatized her historical novel For One Sweet Grape into That Lady, set in the Spain of Philip II. A swashbuckling romance, the play was not well received. In 1951, Cornell played the lead in Somerset Maugham's comedy, The Constant Wife for a summer festival in Colorado. The play, starring her longtime favorite Brian Aherne, was produced again in New York and grossed more money for the production company than any other play.
In 1953, Cornell found a suitable role in The Prescott Proposals, about a United States Delegate to the United Nations. Christopher Fry wrote a verse drama The Dark is Light Enough, set 1848 Austria. The cast included Tyrone Power, who played the love interest, Lorne Greene, and Marian Winters. (Christopher Plummer was Power's understudy. In his memoir, Plummer states that Cornell was "the last of the great actress-managers," and that she was his "sponsor.")[46] In 1957, Cornell staged There Shall Be No Night, the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Robert E. Sherwood, adapted to the events of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. This play was adapted for TV and broadcast on NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame with Charles Boyer, Bradford Dillman and Ray Walston. Another play by Fry, The Firstborn, was set in Biblical Egypt, with Anthony Quayle playing Moses. Leonard Bernstein, recently appointed musical director of the New York Philharmonic, wrote two songs for the production. The play toured in Tel Aviv in 1958. She continued with several other forgettable plays, and her last production was Dear Liar by Jerome Kilty, which opened and closed in 1960.[47]
Although Cornell was constantly performing, she took a three-year absence from 1955 to 1958 while she recovered from a lung operation. Additionally, with the exception of The Constant Wife, box office receipts were lagging even when she received excellent reviews. Tours continued to sell out, but even those began to fail as the decade bore on. By the end of the 1950s, the C. & M.C production company was finished. She did find time in 1954 to be narrator for the film The Unconquered, the life story of her friend Helen Keller.
Starting in the 1940s, however, she began to collect tributes from various theatrical organization and colleges and universities, which bestowed her with honorary degrees and awards.
RadioCornell made her radio debut May 6, 1951, on Theatre Guild on the Air. The program featured the first broadcast of George Bernard Shaw's Candida.[48][49] On April 13, 1952, she appeared in Florence Nightingale, also on The Theatre Guild on the Air.[50]
RetirementMcClintic died on October 29, 1961 of a lung haemorrhage, shortly after the couple had celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. As he had always directed Cornell in every production since their marriage, she decided to retire from the stage altogether. She sold her residences and bought a house on East 51st Street in Manhattan, next door to Brian Aherne and down the street from Margalo Gillmore. Since all three were cast members of Barretts, East 51st Street became known as Wimpole Street. Cornell also bought an old building on Martha's Vineyard known as The Barn and made additions to it, and restored the 300-year-old Association Hall on the island.
For her 80th birthday party in 1973, an assistant put together a tape of birthday greetings from Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson, among many other actors whom she had known. The tape runs for seven and half hours. She died of pneumonia on June 9, 1974 at The Barn in Tisbury, Massachusetts.
On acting and the theatreCornell served on the Board of Directors of The Rehearsal Club. The club was a place for young actresses to stay while they looked for work, and offered support for their careers. Occasionally, she could be seen serving food to the women, and McClintic often found minor roles in his productions for them.
In her memoir, Cornell states: "I do think that the rapid success achieved by some people in pictures has seriously hurt the chances of a lot of young men and women who are studying for the stage. The success stories that we read in the Hollywood magazines make it all sound too easy. A youngster was a chauffeur yesterday and today he owns four swimming pools! It doesn't work that way on the stage... Some young actresses haven't been inclined to listen to me when I told that there was no royal road to success on the stage.
"Getting started in the theatre still has a great element of luck in it, of course. Some producer must see the right person at just the right time. To get that kind of break, a girl has got to keep pounding away and tramp the streets from one manager's office to another, no matter how discouraging it may be. At the same time, she must remember that when the break does come, she must have the equipment necessary to capitalise on it. I get the impression that most of the young girls who come to me for parts simply haven't worked hard enough. In New York they have every chance in the world to round out their education in their spare time. At the galleries along 57th Street they can see the best pictures in all the world. They can hear the finest music. They can get the best books in inexpensive editions. Best of all, they can listen to the finest actors and actresses of the day. When they tell me that they can't afford to go to the theatre very often, I usually find they think it beneath their dignity to sit in the top balcony!
"I think the most important thing for young actresses to do is to learn to use their voices properly. I always found that reading French aloud helped me tremendously. I think that French makes you use your mouth more than any other language I know. I still occasionally read some French book aloud to myself before a performance."[51]
LegacyKatharine Cornell was one of the most respected, versatile stage actresses of the early-mid 20th century, moving easily from comedy to melodrama, and from classics to contemporary plays.[52] She was a particularly accomplished interpreter of romantic and character roles.
Theatres and research centersThe Tisbury Town Hall on Martha's Vineyard houses a theatre on its second floor. Originally known as Association Hall, it was renamed "The Katharine Cornell Theater" in her honor and later, her memory. A donation from her estate provided the funds for renovation (lighting, heating, elevator) as well as decoration of four large murals depicting Vineyard life and legend by local artist Stan Murphy. The Katharine Cornell Theater is a popular venue for plays, music, movies and more. Her gravesite and memorial are located next door to the Theater.
There is another theater space at the State University of New York at Buffalo named in her honor.[53] Many student productions are presented there year-round.
The Katharine Cornell-Guthrie McClintic Special Collections Reading Room was dedicated in April 1974 at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The Billy Rose Theatre Division at the library holds extensive archival and special collections materials related to Cornell and McClintic.
Smith College has a collection of Cornell's papers dating from 1938 to 1960,[54] plus additional materials in the papers of Nancy Hamilton.[55]
The New York Public Library contains correspondence between Russian dance critic Igor Stupnikov and Cornell's assistants Nancy Hamilton and Gertrude Macy in the Billy Rose Theater Archive.
Cornell donated some of her costumes designed by famed Russian fashion designer Valentina to the Museum of the City of New York.[56] They include costumes for her roles in Cleopatra and Antigone.
Cornell and Quayle also recorded for LP a scene from Barretts, and Cornell recited a selection of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett from Sonnets from the Portuguese.[57] Cornell's short scene in Stage Door Canteen can be viewed on YouTube. In it, she recites some lines from Romeo and Juliet. Video on YouTube
The Paley Center for Media
Cornell's TV debut in the Producers' Showcase production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1956)The Paley Center for Media has a collection of Cornell's television appearances:
On April 2, 1956, NBC TV broadcast of a production of Barretts with Anthony Quayle as Robert Browning.[58] She was featured in Hallmark Hall of Fame's production of Robert E. Sherwood's play, There Shall Be No Night, which was broadcast on NBC on March 17, 1957.[59]
On January 6, 1957, Dave Garroway interviewed Cornell for Wide Wide World: A Woman's Story.[60]
She appeared on TV as herself for an NBC Symphony Orchestra broadcast on March 22, 1952[61] She was also interviewed three times for the radio program Stage Struck, hosted by Mike Wallace.[62][63][64]
Awards and honorsKatharine Cornell was one of three actresses awarded in the first Tony awards (1937, award year 1948), her award was received for her performance in Antony and Cleopatra. She was also honored with the first New York Drama League Award in 1935 for her performance as Juliet.[citation needed] In March 1937, The Chi Omega sorority's National Achievement Award was given to her by Eleanor Roosevelt at a White House reception.
Cornell was awarded a medal "for good speech on the stage" by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received a citation as Woman of the Year by the American Friends of the Hebrew University in 1959. After her role in St. Joan, she was awarded honorary degrees from the University of Wisconsin, Elmira College[65] Smith College, the University of Pennsylvania, and Hobart. Clark University, Ithaca College and Princeton awarded degrees in the 1940s, and Baylor University, Middlebury College and Kenyon College awarded theirs in the 1950s.
On January 10, 1974, she received the American National Theater and Academy's National Artist Award for "her incomparable acting ability" and for "having elevated the theater throughout the world."[66] In 1935, when the University of Buffalo was still a private institution, she was awarded the Chancellor's Medal of the University. The Artvoice, a weekly arts newspaper in Cornell's native Buffalo, each year awards the Katharine Cornell Award to a visiting artist for outstanding contribution to the Buffalo theatrical community.
The townhouse at 23 Beekman Place that Cornell and her husband lived in for many years has a historical marker in honor of their importance to New York City.[citation needed]
Katharine Cornell was one of the original members elected into the American Theatre Hall of Fame upon its establishment in 1972.[67]
BiographiesKatharine Cornell I Wanted to Be an Actress, 1939 by Random House.Guthrie McClintic Me & Kit, 1955 by the Atlantic Monthly Press/Little Brown Company.Lucille M. Pederson Katharine Cornell: A Bio-bibliography, 1994 by the Greenwood Press ISBN 9780313277184Gladys Malvern Curtain Up! The Story of Katharine Cornell, 1943 by Julian Messner, Inc., and includes a foreword by Cornell.[68]Igor Stupnikov Ketrin Kornell, 1973 by Leningrad, Iskusstvo, Lening [69]Inspired by The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Virginia Woolf wrote Flush: A Biography, 1933, by Harcourt, Bracea part-fiction, part-biography of the original dog owned by Elizabeth Barrett [70]Subject of artworks
Bronze bust of Katharine Cornell by Anna Glenny (1930), in the collection of the Albright–Knox Art GalleryThe Smithsonian Institution holds a bronze bust of Cornell from 1961 by artist Malvina Hoffman.[71][72] It has a pastel portrait by William Cotton from 1933.[73]
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, has a 1926 full-length portrait of Cornell by artist Eugene Speicher in her role as Candida.[74] The gallery also possesses a 1930 life mask by Karl Illava, an undated drawing of her as Elizabeth Barrett by Louis Lupas, and two sculptures by Anna Glenny Dunbar from 1930.[75]
The Armstrong Browning Library at Baylor University has a portrait of Cornell[76] in her role as Elizabeth Barrett painted by Alexander Clayton on display. The actress donated the portrait and several items related to Barretts to the library.[citation needed]
The State University of New York at Buffalo holds a portrait of Cornell painted by surrealist Salvador Dalí dated 1951.[77]
Cartoonist Alex Gard created a caricature of Cornell for Sardi's, the famed New York restaurant. It is currently[when?] housed in the Billy Rose Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library.
Although Cornell is buried in Tisbury, Massachusetts, there is a cenotaph in her memory in the George W. Tifft plot at Forest Lawn Cemetery in her native Buffalo.[citation needed]
The Katharine Cornell FoundationThe Katharine Cornell Foundation was funded with profits from Barretts. The foundation was dissolved in 1963, distributing its assets to the Museum of Modern Art (to honor her close friend from Buffalo, A. Conger Goodyear,[78] who was a founder of MoMA and its first president), Cornell University's theater department, and the Actor's Fund of America.
Cultural referencesCornell is featured in a play by Buffalo-born playwright A. R. Gurney entitled The Grand Manner.[79] The play is about his encounter with Cornell as a young man when she was in the production of Antony and Cleopatra. The play ran during summer 2010 at Lincoln Center and starred Kate Burton as Cornell.[80] In Buffalo, the play was produced by the Kavinoky Theatre in May 2011.[81]
Cornell is referenced as a plot point in the comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. The character Bert Jefferson writes a play, and his girlfriend Maggie Cutler, convinced the play would be a hit on Broadway, gives the play to another character in the hopes that Katharine Cornell will produce it.[82]
Katharine Cornell, one of the great actresses of the American theater, died of pneumonia early yesterday at her home in Vineyard Haven, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard. She was 81 years old.
A memorial service is being planned for next week in Vineyard Haven's Association Hall, the 300-year-old former Town Hall that Miss Cornell helped restore. Her body will be cremated in Boston tomorrow.
"The First Lady of the Theater" was Alexander Woollcott's phrase for Katharine Cornell. Uttered with that critic's usual hyperbole, the description was nonetheless apt, for Miss Cornell was indisputably a reigning Broadway star of the second quarter of the century, an actress without peer in emotional, romantic roles, and one, moreover, who took her plays to the byways and crossroads of America, thereby helping to shape the country's cultural tastes.
With Helen Hayes and Lynn Fontanne, her contemporaries and rivals, Miss Cornell epitomized the artistry of acting. She represented the theater of quality in such dramas as "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," "Romeo and Juliet" and "Candida"--her three greatest triumphs. More than triumphs of winning and holding audiences, of exciting them and dazzling them and illuminating them.
One of Miss Cornell's strengths as an artist was her ability to create character. Many of the plays she appeared in were weak or flawed--"The Green Hat," for example--but she could transform the material and create the illusion that the viewer was witnessing a memorable play. Part of this was her acting genius and part her looks. Her face, with its high cheekbones, was somewhat Oriental in cast; her hair was dark brown (almost black) and her prominent eyebrows curved down toward her cheeks. It was a mobile and expressive face, one that captivated, among others, Bernard Shaw.
"I don't think I was ever so astonished by a picture as I was by your photograph," the British playwright wrote. "Your success as Candida, and something blonde and expansive about your name, had created an ideal suburban British Candida in my imagination.
"Fancy my feelings on seeing in your photograph a gorgeous dark lady from the cradle of the human race--wherever that was--Ceylon, Sumatra, Hilo, or the southernmost corner of the Garden of Eden!"
A Director's Comments
Miss Cornell's professional and private life was bound up with Guthrie McClintic. When she made her Broadway debut in 1921 in "Nice People," Mr. McClintic, then a young casting director, saw her and wrote in his notebook, "Interesting. Monotonous. Watch."
Not only did he observe her but also by early fall he had married her. The union was a championship that lasted for 40 years until Mr. McClintic's death in 1961. In that time he directed her plays and helped to mold her abundant talents. At his death she left the stage, for she felt that acting without him would be too difficult.
"If not for Guthrie, I think I would have continued just drifting," Miss Cornell remarked many years later. "He wanted to be an actor and my career was a sublimation of his desire, because he could pour his talents through me and that was a great advantage to me.
"I continued in the theater buoyed up mostly by his enthusiasm for it. He was one of those people who fascinated you always. You were never bored; sometimes upset, but never bored."
As well as heartening critical successes, the actress had a number of discomforting failures-- among them Jean Anouilh's "Antigone," Christopher Fry's "The First Born" and S. N. Behrman's "No Time for Comedy." Her feel for comedy was limited, and she had an unhappy tendency to throw away laughs, in the critic John Mason Brown's phrase, "as profligately as Madame Ranevsky threw away money."
Lusty or romantic women were more to Miss Cornell's aptitude. Her first starring role was Iris March, the lost but sexually hearty heroine of Michael Arlen's "The Green Hat," which was produced in 1925. For several years she was the femme fatale in such melodramas as "The Letter" and "Dishonored Lady."
Formed Producing Unit
In the thirties, however, she all but dropped that role for straight romance, a step that coincided with the establishment of her producing association, called Katharine Cornell Presents. Its first play, in 1931, was Rudolf Besier's "The Barretts of Wimpole Street," the courtship and elopement of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Revived five times, it fixed Miss Cornell in theatergoers' minds as a romantic actress.
Describing the play and Miss Cornell's impact at the time, Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times drama critic, wrote on opening night:
"[The play] introduces us to Katharine Cornell as an actress of the first order. Here the disciplined fury she has been squandering on catch-penny plays becomes the vibrant beauty of finely wrought character.
"By the crescendo of her playing, by the wild sensitivity that lurks behind her ardent gestures and her piercing stares across the footlights she charges the drama with a meaning beyond the facts it records. Her acting is quite as remarkable for the carefulness of its design as for the fire of her presence."
"The Barretts" ran for a year on Broadway, and then Miss Cornell shepherded her company on a 20,853-mile tour of the United States, a daring venture in the Depression. They performed repertory in 77 cities and towns--places like Thomasville, Ga.; Amarillo, Tex., and Portland, Me. The plays, in addition to "The Barretts," were "Candida" and "Romeo and Juliet."
"We opened up the road," Miss Cornell said. "We made 'The Barretts' and 'Candida' pay for Shakespeare. 'The Barretts' never played to an empty house--the receipts would be something like $33,000, then about $28,000 for 'Candida' and for 'Juliet' about $18,000 to $19,000, so that we came back having more than broken even. We really felt prideful.
"We continued like that for many years, alternatively New York with the road, paying for ourselves with Sidney Howard's 'Alien Corn,' Shaw's 'St. Joan' and 'The Doctor's Dilemma' and some of the others--until later on, when costs got too high with 'Anthony and Cleopatra,' we had to call in angels."
The Audience Waited
Miss Cornell's hold on her audiences was astonishing. One Christmas Day the troupe was on its way from Montana to Seattle for a week's engagement opening that evening. Floods delayed the train, and at curtain time the actors were far from Seattle and resigned to missing the performance--and their pay for it.
The train finally arrived at 11:15, and the group discovered that the audience was still waiting. The curtain rose at 1:05, and Mr. Woollcott, who was present, described the experience:
"The excitement, the heady compliment paid by the audience in having waited at all, acted like wine on the spirits of the troupe and they gave the kind of performance one hopes for on great occasions and never gets."
The actress's skill on the stage was all the more remarkable because she was usually nervous and fidgety before she went on. "I was nervous from the very beginning and it got worse as the years went on," she once confessed, adding:
"I was conscientious and wanted to do more, always, than I was able. I don't think, when I was playing, that I was ever happy--beginning at 4 o'clock any afternoon."
Born in Berlin
Katharine Cornell's bent for acting was familial, since both her grandfather and her father were both actors manque. She was the only child of Dr. Peter C. and Alice Cornell, and she was born in Berlin, where her father was studying surgery. The precise date was a mystery. For years she said it was Feb. 16, 1898; but when she was in her 70's she offered the year as 1893, explaining:
"When an actress is younger she likes to lower her age, but when she is older she likes to add to her years."
In any event, Katharine had an early exposure to the theater in Buffalo, where the family lived for many years and where her father quit medicine to manage a playhouse. "I drifted into acting," she once remarked. "My grandfather had a house in Buffalo in which there was a stage and his friends met every two weeks or so to put on plays.
"So it was natural for met to put on plays too when I went to boarding school. I put on everything in the drama--I was indiscriminate. I put on Yeats and Shaw and Lady Gregory."
Her first professional opportunity came when the director of the Washington Square Players visited her school in Mamaroneck, N.Y., to do a play. Recalling the occasion, Miss Cornell said:
"[Eddie Goodman] told me to come and see him if I ever wanted a job. When I did, he gave me a part in 'Bushido,' a No drama they were putting on. All I got to say was 'My son, my son'; it was a very exciting moment when they told me I could have the part. That was in 1917.
"I sort of slid from one thing to another after that. I was with the Jessie Bonstelle Stock Company in Detroit and Buffalo for three seasons--10 performances and a new play every week. She was an amazing woman who did a great deal for me."
One of the things Miss Bonstelle did for Miss Cornell was to take her to London as Jo in "Little Women." She was seen there by, among others, two Scottish women who urged her upon Allen Pollock, a producer, who was searching for an actress for Clemence Dane's "A Bill of Divorcement," to be presented in New York. She got the part of an ingenue, and she had a personal triumph when the play opened in 1921. It ran for two seasons.
After appearing in some indifferent dramas, she did the title role in "Candida" in 1924 to critical raves. One of them read:
"The tenderness, the poetry, the supreme womanliness of Katharine Cornell's impersonation of the title part puts this actress a notch ahead of anything she has yet attempted. It is an impersonation touched by the wand of genius."
Then there was "The Green Hat" and assured stardom status that pulled through such dubious dramas as "Dishonored Lady" and "The Age of Innocence" in the late twenties. Whatever the role, Miss Cornell declined to have retrospective regrets.
"The audience may not have felt it was right and the author may have felt a little upset, but every part I've played I've twisted around in my mind until I've made it into something of my own," she said. "Looking back over it, I didn't deliberately sit down and plan like that, but it does read like it."
Most of her plays were chosen by her husband, "who gave me the confidence needed." "Guthrie persuaded me to do Shakespeare and I was very frightened of Shakespeare, she remarked, adding:
"There are some plays we never got around to doing. Shaw's 'Heartbreak House,' for example, but I simply could not find my way through to Mrs. Hushye. I couldn't connect with her. We kept around any number of versions of 'The Cherry Orchard' and never did anything about that either."
She did one Chekhov play, however, "The Three Sisters," in which she brought together Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, Alexander Knox and Edmund Gwenn. It ran for 230 performances in the season of 1942-43. Indeed, Miss Cornell was generous in selecting her supporting casts, which over the years included Marlon Brando, Brian Aherne, Charles Boyer, Grace George, Tyrone Power, Gregory Peck, Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier.
Diminished Dazzle
In the fifties, toward the end of her career, Miss Cornell seemed to many observers to have a diminished dazzle. "The Dark Is Light Enough," "The First Born" and "Dear Liar" did not draw the oohs and aahs of her previous plays.
The actress was reluctant to appear on radio or television. She did act for them, but they were not her media.
For years Miss Cornell and her husband lived in a house on Beekman Place. Then in 1951 they moved to Sneden's Landing, N.Y., and after Mr. McClintic's death she gave up that house for a summer place on Martha's Vineyard and a small house in New York.
For her acting and her contributions to the stage, the actress received dozens of awards and honorary degrees. A room at the New York Public Library's theater collection at Lincoln Center was dedicated to her and her husband. And she was given the National Artists Award of the American National Theater and Academy, a gold medal, on which ironically, her first name was spelled "Katherine."
The citation was less in error, for it lauded her "incomparable acting ability and her theatrical genius" and said that she had "elevated the theater throughout the world."
rving Haberman, formerly of Mt. Vernon and Scarborough. Passed away March 25, 2003 in Pembroke Pines, FL. Beloved husband of the late Beulah Workman Haberman. Devoted father to Sandra Haberman Irwin and David; Judith Haberman Tarter and Alan, loving brother of Henry Haberman, adored grandfather of Dr. Meredith Irwin, Jamie Irwin, Michael Tarter, Barbara Tarter Hirsch and Michael. Irving worked at The Brooklyn Eagle, PM, The New York Star and CBS (1949-1986). He was the only photographer at the wedding of Frank Sinatra to Ava Gardner and on the set of the Kennedy-Nixon debates. In 1968, he was the official campaign photographer for Richard Nixon and in 1969 "The New York Press Photographer of the Year". He received "The Lifetime Achievement Award" from The New York Press Photographers Association in 1991. His book, "EYES ON AN ERA: FOUR DECADES OF PHOTOJOURNALISM," was published by Rizzoli in 1995. After a private service, Shiva will be observed at the Tarter home, 12 Wampus Lakes Drive, Armonk, N.Y, on Saturday evening and Sunday.

The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).[1]
The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. The photographs in the FSA/Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937–1942), and the Office of War Information (1942–1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and nongovernmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.[2]
In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA-OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. Color transparencies also made by the FSA/OWI are available in a separate section of the catalog: FSA/OWI Color Photographs.[2]
The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming.
Reactionary critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an alleged experiment in collectivizing agriculture—that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. After the Conservative coalition took control of Congress, it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and that program continues to operate in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.
Origins
Walker Evans portrait of Allie Mae Burroughs (1936)
Arthur Rothstein photograph "Dust Bowl Cimarron County, Oklahoma" of a farmer and two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936)
Dorothea Lange photograph of an Arkansas squatter of three years near Bakersfield, California (1935)The projects that were combined in 1935 to form the Resettlement Administration (RA) started in 1933 as an assortment of programs tried out by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The RA was headed by Rexford Tugwell, an economic advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[3] However, Tugwell's goal moving 650,000 people into 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2) of exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress.[3] This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive powerful farm proprietors of their tenant workforce.[3] The RA was thus left with only enough resources to relocate a few thousand people from 9 million acres (36,000 km2) and build several greenbelt cities,[3] which planners admired as models for a cooperative future that never arrived.[3]
The main focus of the RA was to now build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-stricken Dust Bowl of the Southwest.[3] This move was resisted by a large share of Californians, who did not want destitute migrants to settle in their midst.[3] The RA managed to construct 95 camps that gave migrants unaccustomed clean quarters with running water and other amenities,[3] but the 75,000 people who had the benefit of these camps were a small share of those in need and could only stay temporarily.[3] After facing enormous criticism for his poor management of the RA, Tugwell resigned in 1936.[3] On January 1, 1937,[4] with hopes of making the RA more effective, the RA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530.[4]
On July 22, 1937,[5] Congress passed the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[5] This law authorized a modest credit program to assist tenant farmers to purchase land,[5] and it was the culmination of a long effort to secure legislation for their benefit.[5] Following the passage of the act, Congress passed the Farm Security Act into law. The Farm Security Act officially transformed the RA into the Farm Security Administration (FSA).[3] The FSA expanded through funds given by the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[3]
Relief workOne of the activities performed by the RA and FSA was the buying out of small farms that were not economically viable, and the setting up of 34 subsistence homestead communities, in which groups of farmers lived together under the guidance of government experts and worked a common area. They were not allowed to purchase their farms for fear that they would fall back into inefficient practices not guided by RA and FSA experts.[6]
The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains displaced thousands of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and laborers, many of whom (known as "Okies" or "Arkies") moved on to California. The FSA operated camps for them, such as Weedpatch Camp as depicted in The Grapes of Wrath.
The RA and the FSA gave educational aid to 455,000 farm families during the period 1936-1943. In June, 1936, Roosevelt wrote: "You are right about the farmers who suffer through their own fault... I wish you would have a talk with Tugwell about what he is doing to educate this type of farmer to become self-sustaining. During the past year, his organization has made 104,000 farm families practically self-sustaining by supervision and education along practical lines. That is a pretty good record!"[7]
The FSA's primary mission was not to aid farm production or prices. Roosevelt's agricultural policy had, in fact, been to try to decrease agricultural production to increase prices. When production was discouraged, though, the tenant farmers and small holders suffered most by not being able to ship enough to market to pay rents. Many renters wanted money to buy farms, but the Agriculture Department realized there already were too many farmers, and did not have a program for farm purchases. Instead, they used education to help the poor stretch their money further. Congress, however, demanded that the FSA help tenant farmers purchase farms, and purchase loans of $191 million were made, which were eventually repaid. A much larger program was $778 million in loans (at effective rates of about 1% interest) to 950,000 tenant farmers. The goal was to make the farmer more efficient so the loans were used for new machinery, trucks, or animals, or to repay old debts. At all times, the borrower was closely advised by a government agent. Family needs were on the agenda, as the FSA set up a health insurance program and taught farm wives how to cook and raise children. Upward of a third of the amount was never repaid, as the tenants moved to much better opportunities in the cities.[8]
The FSA was also one of the authorities administering relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. Between 1938 and 1945, under the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, it oversaw the purchase of 590 farms with the intent of distributing land to working and middle-class Puerto Ricans.[9]
ModernizationThe FSA resettlement communities appear in the literature as efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of southern sharecroppers and tenants, but those evicted to make way for the new settlers are virtually invisible in the historic record. The resettlement projects were part of larger efforts to modernize rural America. The removal of former tenants and their replacement by FSA clients in the lower Mississippi alluvial plain—the Delta—reveals core elements of New Deal modernizing policies. The key concepts that guided the FSA's tenant removals were: the definition of rural poverty as rooted in the problem of tenancy; the belief that economic success entailed particular cultural practices and social forms; and the commitment by those with political power to gain local support. These assumptions undergirded acceptance of racial segregation and the criteria used to select new settlers. Alternatives could only become visible through political or legal action—capacities sharecroppers seldom had. In succeeding decades, though, these modernizing assumptions created conditions for Delta African Americans on resettlement projects to challenge white supremacy.[10]
FSA and its contribution to societyThe documentary photography genre describes photographs that would work as a time capsule for evidence in the future or a certain method that a person can use for a frame of reference. Facts presented in a photograph can speak for themselves after the viewer gets time to analyze it. The motto of the FSA was simply, as Beaumont Newhall insists, "not to inform us, but to move us."[citation needed] Those photographers wanted the government to move and give a hand to the people, as they were completely neglected and overlooked, thus they decided to start taking photographs in a style that we today call "documentary photography." The FSA photography has been influential due to its realist point of view, and because it works as a frame of reference and an educational tool from which later generations could learn. Society has benefited and will benefit from it for more years to come, as this photography can unveil the ambiguous and question the conditions that are taking place.[11]
Photography programThe RA and FSA are well known for the influence of their photography program, 1935–1944. Photographers and writers were hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. The Information Division (ID) of the FSA was responsible for providing educational materials and press information to the public. Under Roy Stryker, the ID of the FSA adopted a goal of "introducing America to Americans." Many of the most famous Depression-era photographers were fostered by the FSA project. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks were three of the most famous FSA alumni.[12] The FSA was also cited in Gordon Parks' autobiographical novel, A Choice of Weapons.
The FSA's photography was one of the first large-scale visual documentations of the lives of African-Americans.[13] These images were widely disseminated through the Twelve Million Black Voices collection, published in October 1941, which combined FSA photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam and text by author and poet Richard Wright.
PhotographersFifteen photographers (ordered by year of hire) would produce the bulk of work on this project. Their diverse, visual documentation elevated government's mission from the "relocation" tactics of a Resettlement Administration to strategic solutions which would depend on America recognizing rural and already poor Americans, facing death by depression and dust. FSA photographers: Arthur Rothstein (1935), Theodor Jung (1935), Ben Shahn (1935), Walker Evans (1935), Dorothea Lange (1935), Carl Mydans (1935), Russell Lee (1936), Marion Post Wolcott (1936), John Vachon (1936, photo assignments began in 1938), Jack Delano (1940), John Collier (1941), Marjory Collins (1941), Louise Rosskam (1941), Gordon Parks (1942) and Esther Bubley (1942).
With America's entry into World War II, FSA would focus on a different kind of relocation as orders were issued for internment of Japanese Americans. FSA photographers would be transferred to the Office of War Information during the last years of the war and completely disbanded at the war's end. Photographers like Howard R. Hollem, Alfred T. Palmer, Arthur Siegel and OWI's Chief of Photographers John Rous were working in OWI before FSA's reorganization there. As a result of both teams coming under one unit name, these other individuals are sometimes associated with RA-FSA's pre-war images of American life. Though collectively credited with thousands of Library of Congress images, military ordered, positive-spin assignments like these four received starting in 1942, should be separately considered from pre-war, depression triggered imagery. FSA photographers were able to take time to study local circumstances and discuss editorial approaches with each other before capturing that first image. Each one talented in her or his own right, equal credit belongs to Roy Stryker who recognized, hired and empowered that talent.
John Collier Jr.John Collier Jr.
Jack DelanoJack Delano
Walker EvansWalker Evans
Dorothea LangeDorothea Lange
Russell LeeRussell Lee
Carl MydansCarl Mydans
Gordon ParksGordon Parks
Arthur RothsteinArthur Rothstein
John VachonJohn Vachon
Marion Post WolcottMarion Post Wolcott
These 15 photographers, some shown above, all played a significant role, not only in producing images for this project, but also in molding the resulting images in the final project through conversations held between the group members. The photographers produced images that breathed a humanistic social visual catalyst of the sort found in novels, theatrical productions, and music of the time. Their images are now regarded as a "national treasure" in the United States, which is why this project is regarded as a work of art.[14]Photograph of Chicago's rail yards by Jack Delano, circa 1943Together with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (not a government project) and documentary prose (for example Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the FSA photography project is most responsible for creating the image of the Depression in the United States. Many of the images appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under instruction from Washington, DC, as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to portray. Stryker's agenda focused on his faith in social engineering, the poor conditions among tenant cotton farmers, and the very poor conditions among migrant farm workers; above all, he was committed to social reform through New Deal intervention in people's lives. Stryker demanded photographs that "related people to the land and vice versa" because these photographs reinforced the RA's position that poverty could be controlled by "changing land practices." Though Stryker did not dictate to his photographers how they should compose the shots, he did send them lists of desirable themes, for example, "church", "court day", and "barns". Stryker sought photographs of migratory workers that would tell a story about how they lived day-to-day. He asked Dorothea Lange to emphasize cooking, sleeping, praying, and socializing.[15] RA-FSA made 250,000 images of rural poverty. Fewer than half of those images survive and are housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The library has placed all 164,000 developed negatives online.[16] From these, some 77,000 different finished photographic prints were originally made for the press, plus 644 color images, from 1600 negatives.
Documentary filmsThe RA also funded two documentary films by Pare Lorentz: The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the creation of the Dust Bowl, and The River, about the importance of the Mississippi River. The films were deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
World War II activitiesDuring World War II, the FSA was assigned to work under the purview of the Wartime Civil Control Administration, a subagency of the War Relocation Authority. These agencies were responsible for relocating Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to Internment camps. The FSA controlled the agricultural part of the evacuation. Starting in March 1942 they were responsible for transferring the farms owned and operated by Japanese Americans to alternate operators. They were given the dual mandate of ensuring fair compensation for Japanese Americans, and for maintaining correct use of the agricultural land. During this period, Lawrence Hewes Jr was the regional director and in charge of these activities.[17]
Reformers ousted; Farmers Home AdministrationAfter the war started and millions of factory jobs in the cities were unfilled, no need for FSA remained.[citation needed] In late 1942, Roosevelt moved the housing programs to the National Housing Agency, and in 1943, Congress greatly reduced FSA's activities. The photographic unit was subsumed by the Office of War Information for one year, then disbanded. Finally in 1946, all the social reformers had left and FSA was replaced by a new agency, the Farmers Home Administration, which had the goal of helping finance farm purchases by tenants—and especially by war veterans—with no personal oversight by experts. It became part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960s, with a greatly expanded budget to facilitate loans to low-income rural families and cooperatives, injecting $4.2 billion into rural America.[18]
The Great DepressionThe Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, the effects of a declining economy were not felt until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued.
Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future and a reduction in living standards for most ordinary Americans. The market crash highlighted a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits for industrial firms, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth.[19]New York, often called New York City[a] or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. NYC is more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city. New York City is at the southern tip of New York State and is situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county. The five boroughs, which were created in 1898 when local governments were consolidated into a single municipality, are: Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County).[11] New York City is a global city and a cultural, financial, high-tech,[12] entertainment, glamour,[13] and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and scientific output in life sciences,[14][15] research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy,[16][17] and it is sometimes described as the world's most important city[18] and the capital of the world.[19][20]
The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City is one of the world's most populous megacities.[21] The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,[22] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City enforces a right-to-shelter law guaranteeing shelter to anyone who needs shelter, regardless of their immigration status;[23] and the city is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.[24] It is the most visited U.S. city by international visitors.[25] Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City That Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system in the world with 472 passenger rail stations, and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.[26]
New York City traces its origins to Fort Amsterdam and a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[27] The city was temporarily regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange; the city has been named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790,[28] and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. via Ellis Island by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace.[29]
Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's leading financial and fintech center[30][31] and the most economically powerful city in the world,[32] and is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization of their listed companies, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.[33][34] As of 2021, the New York metropolitan area is the second largest metropolitan economy in the world with a gross metropolitan product of almost $2.0 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were its own country, it would have the tenth-largest economy in the world. New York City is an established safe haven for global investors.[35] As of 2023, New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live.[36] New York City is home to the highest number of billionaires,[37][38] individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million),[39] and millionaires of any city in the world.[40] Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten-most visited tourist attractions in 2023.[41] A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District,[42] one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections[43] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[44] Many of the city's landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world, and the city's fast pace led to the phrase New York minute. The Empire State Building is a global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures.[45] New York's residential and commercial real estate markets are the most expensive in the world.[46]
The city features over 120 colleges and universities, including some of the world's top universities.[47] Its public urban university system, the City University of New York, is the largest in the nation.[48] In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship,[49] and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.[50] The New York Times has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media's newspaper of record. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the historic epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture in the city[51] and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement worldwide.[52][53] New York City is the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and sale houses collectively hosting half of the world's art sales; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is both the largest and one of the world's most-visited art museums and hosts the globally focused Met Gala fashion event annually.[54][55]
EtymologySee also: Nicknames of New York CityIn 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York (later King James II of England).[56] James's elder brother, King Charles II, appointed the Duke as proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when England seized it from Dutch control.[57]
HistoryMain article: History of New York CityFor a chronological guide, see Timeline of New York City.Further information: History of Manhattan, Timeline of Brooklyn, Timeline of Queens, Timeline of the Bronx, and Timeline of Staten IslandEarly historyMain article: History of New York City (prehistory–1664)
Lenape sites in Lower ManhattanIn the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.[58]
The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown.[59] He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême).[60] A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River').[61]
In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company.[62] He proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Hudson's first mate described the harbor as "a very good Harbour for all windes" and the river as "a mile broad" and "full of fish".[63] Hudson claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland ('New Netherland').
The first non–Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Juan Rodriguez, a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street in Upper Manhattan, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.[64][65][importance?]
Dutch ruleMain articles: New Amsterdam, Fort Amsterdam, and New Netherland
The Castello Plan, a 1660 map of New Amsterdam (the top right corner is roughly north) in Lower Manhattan
New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New YorkA permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States,[66] with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.[67][68]
The colony of New Amsterdam was centered on what would ultimately become Lower Manhattan. Its area extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and British raids.[69] In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, acting as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band,[70] for "the value of 60 guilders"[71] (about $900 in 2018).[72] A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.[73][74]
Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly.[27] To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (patroons, or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swaths of land, along with local political autonomy and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.[75]
Since 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, Tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).[27][76]
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000.[77][78] Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony; however, he earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups (including Quakers, Jews, and Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship.[79] The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.[80]
English ruleMain articles: Province of New York and History of New York City (1665–1783)
The Fall of New Amsterdam by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, part of the Conquest of New Netherland
Fort George and New York with British Navy ships of the line c. 1731
Slave being burned at the stake after the 1741 slave revolt[81]In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed.[79][80] The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom.[82]
In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the victorious Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname (on the northern South American coast) they had gained from the English; and in return, the English kept New Amsterdam. The fledgling settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII).[83]
After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 150 miles (240 km) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title.[84] The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the Treaty of Breda, which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War.[85][repetition]
On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Anthony Colve of the Dutch navy seized New York from the English at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III, the Prince of Orange.[86] The Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.[87][88]
Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670.[89] By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200.[90] New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population in 1702 alone.[91][92]
In the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York.[93] It became a center of slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730.[94]
Most cases were that of domestic slavery; others were hired out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 of graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.[95]
The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish freedom of the press in North America.[96] In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[97]
American RevolutionFurther information: American Revolution
The Battle of Long Island, one of the largest battles of the American Revolutionary War, which took place in Brooklyn on August 27, 1776The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.[98] The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn.[99]
After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia.[100] They resettled other freedmen in England and the Caribbean.[importance?]
The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war[citation needed] took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conFlagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.[101]
Post-revolutionary period and early 19th centuryMain article: History of New York City (1784–1854)
First inauguration of George Washington in 1789In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States.[102] As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted several events of national scope in 1789—the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time; and the United States Bill of Rights was drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[102] In 1790, for the first time, New York City, surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of that year, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia.[103][104]
Over the nineteenth century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million.[105] Under New York State's abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties.[106][107] Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential United States founders as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children.[108] It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School.[importance?] New York city's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 by 1840, 16,000 of whom were Black.[109][110]
A painting of a snowy city street with horse-drawn sleds and a 19th-century fire truck under blue skyBroadway, which follows the Native American Wecquaesgeek Trail through Manhattan, in 1840.[111]In the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively.[112] The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.[113] Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants.[114]
Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city.[citation needed]
The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing upward of one-quarter of the city's population.[115] There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.[116][117]
American Civil WarMain articles: New York City in the American Civil War and History of New York City (1855–1897)
Depiction of lynching during the New York City draft riots in 1863Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called on the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on.[108] Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to hire a substitute, led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.[108]
The draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, with more than 200 children escaping harm due to efforts of the New York Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants.[116]
At least 120 people were killed.[118] Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865. The White working class had established dominance.[116][118] Violence by longshoremen against Black men was especially fierce in the docks area.[116] It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.[119]
Early 20th centuryMain articles: History of New York City (1898–1945) and History of New York City (1946–1977)
Manhattan's Little Italy in the Lower East Side, c. 1900In 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens.[120] The opening of the subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together.[121] Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.[122]
In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board.[123] In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, killed 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.[124]
New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890.[125] New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had become home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America.[126] The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition.[127] The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline.
A man working on a steel girder high about a city skyline.A construction worker atop the Empire State Building during its construction in 1930. The Chrysler Building is visible behind him.New York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history.[128] The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.[129]
Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in Eastern Queens and Nassau County. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.[130]
A two-story building with brick on the first floor, with two arched doorways, and gray stucco on the second floor off of which hang numerous rainbow Flags.Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.[131][132][133]The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan.[134] They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[131][135][136][137] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[138][139] Wayne R. Dynes, author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, wrote that drag queens were the only "transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality during the period of the Stonewall riots and thereafter.[140]
Late 20th century to presentMain articles: History of New York City (1978–present) and September 11 attacksIn the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[141] While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[142] By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy.[143] New York City's population reached all-time highs in the 2000, 2010, and 2020 US censuses.The World Trade Center, in Lower Manhattan, during the September 11 attacks in 2001New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.[144] Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. The North Tower became, and remains, the tallest building to ever be destroyed.[145]
The area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure.[146] The World Trade Center PATH station, which had opened on July 19, 1909, as the Hudson Terminal,[importance?] was destroyed in the attacks. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003.[importance?] An 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) permanent rail station designed by Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub, was completed in 2016.[147] The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere[148] and the seventh-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m) in reference to the year of U.S. independence.[149][150][151]
The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[152]Manhattan in the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the worst to strike the city since 1700.[153]New York City was heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Sandy's impacts included the flooding of the New York City Subway system, of many suburban communities, and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days. Numerous homes and businesses were destroyed by fire, including over 100 homes in Breezy Point, Queens.[excessive detail?] Large parts of the city and surrounding areas lost electricity for several days. Several thousand people in Midtown Manhattan were evacuated for six days due to a crane collapse at Extell's One57.[excessive detail?] Bellevue Hospital Center and a few other large hospitals were closed and evacuated.[excessive detail?] Flooding at 140 West Street and another exchange disrupted voice and data communication in Lower Manhattan.[excessive detail?] At least 43 people died in New York City as a result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas.[154]
In March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed in Manhattan.[155] The city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China to become the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, before the infection became widespread across the world and the rest of the nation. As of March 2021, New York City had recorded over 30,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications.
GeographyMain articles: Geography of New York City and Geography of New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary
Aerial view of the New York City metropolitan area with Manhattan at its centerNew York City is situated in the northEastern United States, in southEastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet.[156] The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[157] The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary.[158] The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely freshwater river in the city.[159][importance?]
The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.[160] Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.[161]
The city's total area is 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2); 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km2) of the city is land and 165.841 sq mi (429.53 km2) of this is water.[162][163] The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level, is the highest point on the Eastern seaboard south of Maine.[164] The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.[165]
BoroughsMain articles: Boroughs of New York City and Neighborhoods in New York CityA map showing five boroughs in different colors. 1. Manhattan 2. Brooklyn 3. Queens 4. The Bronx 5. Staten IslandNew York City's five boroughsvteJurisdictionPopulationLand areaDensity of populationGDP †BoroughCountyCensus(2020)squaremilessquarekmpeople/sq. milepeople/sq. kmbillions(2012 US$) 2The BronxBronx1,472,65442.2109.334,92013,482$38.726BrooklynKings2,736,07469.4179.739,43815,227$92.300ManhattanNew York1,694,25122.758.874,78128,872$651.619QueensQueens2,405,464108.7281.522,1258,542$88.578Staten IslandRichmond495,74757.5148.98,6183,327$14.806City of New York8,804,190302.6783.829,09511,234$885.958State of New York20,215,75147,126.4122,056.8429166$1,514.779† GDP = Gross Domestic Product Sources:[166][167][168][169] and see individual borough articles.New York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the Five Boroughs.[170] Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character.[citation needed]
If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States (Staten Island would be ranked 37th as of 2020); these same boroughs are coterminous with the four most densely populated counties in the United States: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Bronx, and Queens.
Manhattan
Lower and Midtown Manhattan photographed by a SkySat satellite in August 2017
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business districtManhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as The City.[171] Manhattan's population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km2) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[172]
Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough of Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.[173][174]
Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River and the East River, and its southern tip, at the confluence of the two rivers on the site of today's Financial District in Lower Manhattan, represents the historical birthplace of New York City itself.[175][176] Several small islands also compose part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randalls and Wards Islands, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into the Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem, bordering the Bronx (Bronx County). Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century until the Great Migration. It was the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The borough of Manhattan also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill, which is contiguous with the Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the Outer Boroughs.
Brooklyn
Downtown Brooklyn seen from Lower ManhattanBrooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the Outer Boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the U.S.[177] Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.[178] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[179][180] and of postmodern art and design.[180][181]
Queens
The growing skyline of Long Island City in Queens,[182] facing the East RiverQueens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,[183] and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.[184][185] Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Downtown Flushing has become one of the busiest central core neighborhoods in the outer boroughs.[citation needed] Queens is the site of the Citi Field baseball stadium, home of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are in Queens.
The Bronx
The Yankee Stadium in the BronxThe Bronx (Bronx County) is both New York City's northernmost borough, and the only one that is mostly on the mainland. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively-owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.[186] It is home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo,[187] which spans 265 acres (1.07 km2) and houses more than 6,000 animals.[188] The Bronx is the birthplace of hip hop music and its associated culture.[189] Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190]
Staten Island
St. George, Staten IslandStaten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. It is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2,500 acres (10 km2), including 28 miles (45 km) of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.[191] Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.
ArchitectureFurther information: Architecture of New York City; List of buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City; List of tallest buildings in New York City; and List of hotels in New York City
The Empire State Building has setbacks, Art Deco details, and a spire. It was the world's tallest building from 1931 to 1970.
The Chrysler Building, built in 1930, is in the Art Deco style, with ornamental hubcaps and a spire.
Landmark 19th-century rowhouses, including brownstones, on tree-lined Kent Street in the Greenpoint Historic District, Brooklyn
Modernist and Gothic Revival architecture in Midtown ManhattanNew York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the Dutch Colonial Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost.[192]
Manhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is universally recognized, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2019, New York City had 6,455 high-rise buildings, the third most in the world after Hong Kong and Seoul.[193] Of these, as of 2011,[needs update] 550 completed structures were at least 330 feet (100 m) high, with more than fifty completed skyscrapers taller than 656 feet (200 m). These include the Woolworth Building, an early example of Gothic Revival architecture in skyscraper design; completed in 1913, for 17 years it was the world's tallest building.[194]
The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setbacks in new buildings and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[195] The Art Deco style of the Chrysler Building (1930) and Empire State Building (1931), with their tapered tops and steel spires, reflected the zoning requirements.[citation needed] The buildings have distinctive ornamentation, such as the eagles at the corners of the 61st floor on the Chrysler Building, and are considered some of the finest examples of the Art Deco style.[196] A highly influential example of the International Style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its façade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prominent example of green design in American skyscrapers[197] and has received an award from the American Institute of Architects and AIA New York State for its design.[citation needed]
The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.[198] In contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.[199][200][201]
Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.[202] A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the roof-mounted wooden water tower. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could break municipal water pipes.[203] Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, such as Jackson Heights.[204]
According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in New York City than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based on a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near the city, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures.[205] Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet of office space as of 2022;[repetition] the COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid work model have prompted consideration of commercial-to-residential conversion within Midtown Manhattan.[206]Ten mile (16km) Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken in February 2018 from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New JerseyRiverside ChurchDeutsche Bank Center220 Central Park SouthCentral Park TowerOne57432 Park Avenue53W53Chrysler BuildingBank of America Tower4 Times SquareThe New York Times BuildingEmpire State BuildingManhattan Westa: 55 Hudson Yards, 14b: 35 Hudson Yards, 14c: 10 Hudson Yards, 14d: 15 Hudson Yards56 Leonard Street8 Spruce StreetWoolworth Building70 Pine StreetFour Seasons Downtown40 Wall Street3 World Trade Center4 World Trade CenterOne World Trade CenterClimateMain article: Climate of New York CityNew York CityClimate chart (explanation)JFMAMJJASOND 3.6 4028 3.2 4230 4.3 5036 4.1 6246 4 7155 4.5 8064 4.6 8570 4.6 8369 4.3 7662 4.4 6551 3.6 5442 4.4 4434█ Average max. and min. temperatures in °F█ Precipitation totals in inchesMetric conversion
Deep snow in Brooklyn during the Blizzard of 2006Under the Köppen climate classification, New York City has a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west are in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates (Dfa).[207][208] Annually, the city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine.[209]
Winters are chilly and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow sea breezes offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachian Mountains keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 33.3 °F (0.7 °C).[210] Temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[211] yet can also reach 60 °F (16 °C) for several days even in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from cool to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 77.5 °F (25.3 °C) in July.[210]
Nighttime temperatures are often enhanced due to the urban heat island effect. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C), although this is a rare achievement, last occurring on July 18, 2012.[212] Similarly, readings of 0 °F (−18 °C) are extremely rare, last occurring on February 14, 2016.[213] Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936;[210] the coldest recorded wind chill was −37 °F (−38 °C) on the same day as the all-time record low.[214] The record cold daily maximum was 2 °F (−17 °C) on December 30, 1917, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum was 87 °F (31 °C), on July 2, 1903.[212] The average water temperature of the nearby Atlantic Ocean ranges from 39.7 °F (4.3 °C) in February to 74.1 °F (23.4 °C) in August.[215]
The city receives 49.5 inches (1,260 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1991 and 2020 was 29.8 inches (76 cm); this varies considerably between years. Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area.[216] Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs.[217] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[154]
vteClimate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals,[b] extremes 1869–present[c]MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecYearRecord high °F (°C)72(22)78(26)86(30)96(36)99(37)101(38)106(41)104(40)102(39)94(34)84(29)75(24)106(41)Mean maximum °F (°C)60.4(15.8)60.7(15.9)70.3(21.3)82.9(28.3)88.5(31.4)92.1(33.4)95.7(35.4)93.4(34.1)89.0(31.7)79.7(26.5)70.7(21.5)62.9(17.2)97.0(36.1)Average high °F (°C)39.5(4.2)42.2(5.7)49.9(9.9)61.8(16.6)71.4(21.9)79.7(26.5)84.9(29.4)83.3(28.5)76.2(24.6)64.5(18.1)54.0(12.2)44.3(6.8)62.6(17.0)Daily mean °F (°C)33.7(0.9)35.9(2.2)42.8(6.0)53.7(12.1)63.2(17.3)72.0(22.2)77.5(25.3)76.1(24.5)69.2(20.7)57.9(14.4)48.0(8.9)39.1(3.9)55.8(13.2)Average low °F (°C)27.9(−2.3)29.5(−1.4)35.8(2.1)45.5(7.5)55.0(12.8)64.4(18.0)70.1(21.2)68.9(20.5)62.3(16.8)51.4(10.8)42.0(5.6)33.8(1.0)48.9(9.4)Mean minimum °F (°C)9.8(−12.3)12.7(−10.7)19.7(−6.8)32.8(0.4)43.9(6.6)52.7(11.5)61.8(16.6)60.3(15.7)50.2(10.1)38.4(3.6)27.7(−2.4)18.0(−7.8)7.7(−13.5)Record low °F (°C)−6(−21)−15(−26)3(−16)12(−11)32(0)44(7)52(11)50(10)39(4)28(−2)5(−15)−13(−25)−15(−26)Average precipitation inches (mm)3.64(92)3.19(81)4.29(109)4.09(104)3.96(101)4.54(115)4.60(117)4.56(116)4.31(109)4.38(111)3.58(91)4.38(111)49.52(1,258)Average snowfall inches (cm)8.8(22)10.1(26)5.0(13)0.4(1.0)0.0(0.0)0.0(0.0)0.0(0.0)0.0(0.0)0.0(0.0)0.1(0.25)0.5(1.3)4.9(12)29.8(76)Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in)10.810.011.111.411.511.210.510.08.89.59.211.4125.4Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 in)3.73.22.00.20.00.00.00.00.00.00.22.111.4Average relative humidity (%)61.560.258.555.362.765.264.266.067.865.664.664.163.0Average dew point °F (°C)18.0(−7.8)19.0(−7.2)25.9(−3.4)34.0(1.1)47.3(8.5)57.4(14.1)61.9(16.6)62.1(16.7)55.6(13.1)44.1(6.7)34.0(1.1)24.6(−4.1)40.3(4.6)Mean monthly sunshine hours162.7163.1212.5225.6256.6257.3268.2268.2219.3211.2151.0139.02,534.7Percent possible sunshine54555757575759635961514857Average ultraviolet index2346788864215Source 1: NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990; dew point 1965–1984)[212][219][209]Source 2: Weather Atlas[220]See Climate of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs.
Sea temperature data for New York[220]MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDecYearAverage seatemperature °F (°C)41.7(5.4)39.7(4.3)40.2(4.5)45.1(7.3)52.5(11.4)64.5(18.1)72.1(22.3)74.1(23.4)70.1(21.2)63.0(17.2)54.3(12.4)47.2(8.4)55.4(13.0)ParksMain article: List of New York City parks
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, with the Unisphere at center, was used in both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fairs.The city of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In its 2018 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the ninth-best park system among the fifty most populous U.S. cities.[221] ParkScore ranks urban park systems by a formula that analyzes median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents.[importance?] In 2021, the New York City Council banned the use of synthetic pesticides by city agencies and instead required organic lawn management. The effort was started by teacher Paula Rogovin's kindergarten class at P.S. 290.[222][importance?]
National parksMain article: National Park Service
The Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a global symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty, freedom, and opportunity[29]Gateway National Recreation Area contains over 26,000 acres (110 km2), most of it in New York City.[223] In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over 9,000 acres (36 km2) of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, it includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park.
The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Stonewall National Monument; Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark.
State parksMain article: New York state parks
Marsha P. Johnson State ParkThere are seven state parks within the confines of New York City. They include:
The Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve, a natural area that includes extensive riding trails.Riverbank State Park, a 28-acre (11 ha) facility[224]Marsha P. Johnson State Park, a state park in Brooklyn and Manhattan that borders the East River renamed in honor of Marsha P. Johnson[225]City parksSee also: New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
The Pond and Midtown Manhattan as seen from Gapstow Bridge in Central Park
The Boathouse on the Lullwater in Prospect Park, BrooklynNew York City has over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of municipal parkland and 14 miles (23 km) of public beaches.[226] The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[190][227]
Central Park, an 843-acre (3.41 km2)[190] park in middle-upper Manhattan, is the most visited urban park in the United States and one of the most filmed and visited locations in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.[228] The park has a wide range of attractions; there are several lakes and ponds, two ice-skating rinks, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, and the 106-acre (0.43 km2) Jackie Onassis Reservoir.[229] Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, and the historic Carousel. On October 23, 2012, hedge fund manager John A. Paulson announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest ever monetary donation to New York City's park system.[230]Washington Square Park is a prominent landmark in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park is an iconic symbol of both New York University and Greenwich Village.Prospect Park in Brooklyn has a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, a lake, and extensive woodlands. Within the park is the historic Battle Pass, prominent in the Battle of Long Island.[231]Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, with its 897 acres (363 ha) making it the city's fourth largest park,[232] was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and the 1964 World's Fair[233] and is host to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the annual U.S. Open Tennis Championships tournament.[234]Over a fifth of the Bronx's area, 7,000 acres (28 km2), is dedicated to open space and parks, including Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York Botanical Gardens.[235]In Staten Island, the Conference House Park contains the historic Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution which was conducted in September 1775, attended by Benjamin Franklin representing the Americans and Lord Howe representing the British Crown.[236] The historic Burial Ridge, the largest Native American burial ground within New York City, is within the park.[237]Military installationsBrooklyn is home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within New York City,[238] aside from Coast Guard operations. The facility was established in 1825 on the site of a battery used during the American Revolution, and it is one of America's longest serving military forts.[239] Today, Fort Hamilton serves as the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the New York City Recruiting Battalion. It also houses the 1179th Transportation Brigade, the 722nd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, and a military entrance processing station. Other formerly active military reservations still used for National Guard and military training or reserve operations in the city include Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Fort Totten in Queens.[citation needed]
DemographicsHistorical populationYearPop.±%16984,937— 17125,840+18.3%17237,248+24.1%173710,664+47.1%174611,717+9.9%175613,046+11.3%177121,863+67.6%179049,401+126.0%180079,216+60.4%1810119,734+51.1%1820152,056+27.0%1830242,278+59.3%1840391,114+61.4%1850696,115+78.0%18601,174,779+68.8%18701,478,103+25.8%18801,911,698+29.3%18902,507,414+31.2%19003,437,202+37.1%19104,766,883+38.7%19205,620,048+17.9%19306,930,446+23.3%19407,454,995+7.6%19507,891,957+5.9%19607,781,984−1.4%19707,894,862+1.5%19807,071,639−10.4%19907,322,564+3.5%20008,008,278+9.4%20108,175,133+2.1%20208,804,190+7.7%Note: Census figures (1790–2010) cover the present area of all five boroughs, before and after the 1898 consolidation. For New York City itself before annexing part of the Bronx in 1874, see Manhattan#Demographics.[240]Source: U.S. Decennial Census;[241]1698–1771[242] 1790–1890[240][243]1900–1990[244] articles: Demographics of New York City and Demographic history of New York CityNew York City is the most populous city in the United States,[249] with 8,804,190 residents incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 United States census.[248][250][251] More than twice as many people live in New York City as compared to Los Angeles, the second-most populous U.S. city.[249] New York City gained more residents between 2010 and 2020 (629,000) than any other U.S. city, and a greater amount than the total sum of the gains over the same decade of the next four largest U.S. cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, Arizona) combined.[252][253] New York City comprises about 44% of the state's population,[254] and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area.[255] The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,538, or 58.4%) were living on Long Island, in Brooklyn, or in Queens.[256] The New York City metropolitan statistical area, has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami.[257]
In 2020, the city had an estimated population density of 29,302.37 inhabitants per square mile (11,313.71/km2), rendering it the nation's most densely populated of all municipalities with more than 100,000 residents. Geographically co-extensive with New York County, the borough of Manhattan's 2017 population density of 72,918 inhabitants per square mile (28,154/km2) makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[258][259][260][repetition] The next three densest counties in the United States are also New York boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens respectively.[261][repetition]
Race and ethnicityMain article: New York City ethnic enclavesHistorical demographics2020[262]2010[263]1990[264]1970[264]1940[264]
Map of racial distribution in New York, 2010 U.S. Census. Each dot is 25 people: White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, or Other (yellow)The city's population in 2020 was 30.9% White (non-Hispanic), 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American (non-Hispanic), 15.6% Asian, and 0.2% Native American (non-Hispanic).[265] A total of 3.4% of the non-Hispanic population identified with more than one race. Throughout its history, New York has been a major port of entry for immigrants into the United States. More than 12 million European immigrants were received at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.[266] The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. By 1900, Germans were the largest immigrant group, followed by the Irish, Jews, and Italians.[267] In 1940, Whites represented 92% of the city's population at 6.6 million.[264][268]
Approximately 37% of the city's population is foreign born, and more than half of all children are born to mothers who are immigrants as of 2013.[269][270] In New York, no single country or region of origin dominates.[269] The ten largest sources of foreign-born individuals in the city as of 2011 were the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago,[271] while the Bangladeshi-born immigrant population has become one of the fastest growing in the city, counting over 74,000 by 2011.[24][272]
Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 census, number more than one million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles.[273] New York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper.[274] The New York City borough of Queens is home to the state's largest Asian American population and the largest Andean (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian) populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area in the world.[275][185] Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Venezuela have arrived in New York City since 2022.[276]Chinatown, Manhattan
Little Italy, Manhattan
Koreatown, Manhattan
Little Manila, Queens
Little Russia, Brooklyn
Little India, QueensThe Chinese population is the fastest-growing nationality in New York State. Multiple satellites of the original Manhattan's Chinatown—home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[277] as well as in Brooklyn, and around Flushing, Queens, are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves—while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County[278] on Long Island,[279] as the New York metropolitan region and New York State have become the top destinations for new Chinese immigrants, respectively, and large-scale Chinese immigration continues into New York City and surrounding areas,[257][280][281][282][283][284] with the largest metropolitan Chinese diaspora outside Asia,[24][285] including an estimated 812,410 individuals in 2015.[286]
In 2012, 6.3% of New York City was of Chinese ethnicity, with nearly three-fourths living in either Queens or Brooklyn.[287] A community numbering 20,000 Korean-Chinese (Chaoxianzu or Joseonjok) is centered in Flushing, Queens, while New York City is home to the largest Tibetan population outside China, India, and Nepal, also centered in Queens.[288] Koreans made up 1.2% of the city's population, and Japanese 0.3%. Filipinos were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group at 0.8%, followed by Vietnamese, who made up 0.2% of New York City's population in 2010. Indians are the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.4% of the city's population, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis at 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.[289] Queens is the preferred borough of settlement for Asian Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Malaysians,[290][257] and other Southeast Asians;[291] while Brooklyn is receiving large numbers of both West Indian and Asian Indian immigrants, and Manhattan is the favored destination for Japanese.[citation needed]
New York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city. At 2.7 million in 2012, New York's non-Hispanic White population is larger than the non-Hispanic White populations of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston combined.[292] The non-Hispanic White population has begun to increase since 2010.[293][needs update]
The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse. According to 2012 census estimates, there were roughly 560,000 Italian Americans, 385,000 Irish Americans, 253,000 German Americans, 223,000 Russian Americans, 201,000 Polish Americans, and 137,000 English Americans. Additionally, Greek and French Americans numbered 65,000 each, with those of Hungarian descent estimated at 60,000 people. Ukrainian and Scottish Americans numbered 55,000 and 35,000, respectively. People identifying ancestry from Spain numbered 30,838 total in 2010,[294] and Belarusians numbered about 55,000 as of 2010.[295]
People of Norwegian and Swedish descent both stood at about 20,000 each, while people of Czech, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent all numbered between 12,000 and 14,000.[296] Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City,[297] with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic White population, enumerating over 30,000, and including more than half of all Central Asian immigrants to the United States,[298] most settling in Queens or Brooklyn. Albanian Americans are most highly concentrated in the Bronx,[299] while Astoria, Queens is the epicenter of American Greek culture as well as the Cypriot community.[citation needed]
New York is home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world, numbering 1.6 million in 2022, more than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined.[300] In the borough of Brooklyn, an estimated 1 in 4 residents is Jewish.[301] The city's Jewish communities are derived from many diverse sects, predominantly from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and including a rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish population, the largest outside Israel.[288]
The metropolitan area is home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least 20 Little India enclaves, and 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns;[246] the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American,[280] Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American[280] and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering 4.8 million;[294] and includes multiple established Chinatowns within New York City alone.[302]
Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela are the top source countries from South America for immigrants to the New York City region; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.[303] Amidst a resurgence of Puerto Rican migration to New York City, this population had increased to approximately 1.3 million in the metropolitan area as of 2013.[citation needed]
Since 2010, Little Australia has emerged and is growing rapidly, representing the Australasian presence in Nolita, Manhattan.[304][305][306][307] In 2011, there were an estimated 20,000 Australian residents of New York City, nearly quadruple the 5,537 in 2005.[308][309] Qantas Airways of Australia and Air New Zealand have been planning for long-haul flights from New York to Sydney and Auckland, which would both rank among the longest non-stop flights in the world.[310] A Little Sri Lanka has developed in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.[311] Le Petit Sénégal, or Little Senegal, is based in Harlem. Richmond Hill, Queens is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community,[312] as well as Punjab Avenue (ਪੰਜਾਬ ਐਵੇਨਿਊ), or Little Punjab, for its high concentration of Punjabi people. Little Poland is expanding rapidly in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.[citation needed]
Sexual orientation and gender identityMain articles: LGBT culture in New York City, Same-sex marriage in New York, Stonewall riots, and NYC Pride MarchFurther information: New York City Drag March, Queens Liberation Front, Queens Pride Parade, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, List of LGBT people from New York City, and List of largest LGBT events
Caribbean NYC-LGBTQ Equality Project
The NYC Dyke March, the world's largest celebration of lesbian pride and culture[313]
NYC Pride March in Manhattan, the world's largest[314][315]
The Multicultural Festival at the 2018 Queens Pride ParadeNew York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBTQ populations and the most prominent.[51] The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual people, the largest in the United States.[316][317] Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in New York since the New York v. Onofre case in 1980 which invalidated the state's sodomy law.[318] Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011, and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011.[319] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre".[320] LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[321] LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."[322]
The annual New York City Pride March proceeds southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[323][314] The annual Queens Pride Parade is held in Jackson Heights and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.[324]
Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan alone.[325] New York City is home to the largest transgender population in the world, estimated at more than 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan and Queens; however, until the June 1969 Stonewall riots, this community had felt marginalized and neglected by the gay community.[324][140] Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender-rights demonstration in LGBTQ history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 affiliation (2014)[328][329]Christian 59%Catholic 33%Protestant 23%Other Christian 3%Unaffiliated 22%Jewish 8%Muslim 7%Hindu 2%Buddhist 1%Other faiths 1%Religious affiliations in New York City
The landmark Neo-Gothic Roman Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral, Midtown Manhattan
Central Synagogue, a notable Reform synagogue located at 652 Lexington Avenue
The Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Upper Manhattan, the first mosque built in New York City
Ganesh Temple in Flushing, Queens, the oldest Hindu temple in the U.S.ChristianityFurther information: St. Patrick's Cathedral (Midtown Manhattan), Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and Christmas in New YorkLargely as a result of Western European missionary work and colonialism, Christianity is the largest religion (59% adherent) in New York City,[328] which is home to the highest number of churches of any city in the world.[19] Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination (33%), followed by Protestantism (23%), and other Christian denominations (3%). The Roman Catholic population are primarily served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Brooklyn. Eastern Catholics are divided into numerous jurisdictions throughout the city. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest branch of Protestantism in the city (9%), followed by Mainline Protestantism (8%), while the converse is usually true for other cities and metropolitan areas.[329] In Evangelicalism, Baptists are the largest group; in Mainline Protestantism, Reformed Protestants compose the largest subset. The majority of historically African American churches are affiliated with the National Baptist Convention (USA) and Progressive National Baptist Convention. The Church of God in Christ is one of the largest predominantly Black Pentecostal denominations in the area. Approximately 1% of the population is Mormon. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and other Orthodox Christians (mainstream and independent) were the largest Eastern Christian groups. The American Orthodox Catholic Church (initially led by Aftimios Ofiesh) was founded in New York City in 1927.[citation needed]
JudaismMain articles: Judaism in New York City, History of the Jews in New York, and Jewish arrival in New AmsterdamJudaism, the second-largest religion practiced in New York City, with approximately 1.6 million adherents as of 2022, represents the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, greater than the combined totals of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[330][331] Nearly half of the city's Jews live in Brooklyn, which is one-quarter Jewish.[332][333] The ethno-religious population makes up 18.4% of the city and its religious demographic makes up 8%.[334] The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company.[335][importance?] Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.[336][relevant?] In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism.[337] Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. 770 Eastern Parkway is the headquarters of the international Chabad Lubavitch movement, and is considered an icon, while Congregation Emanu-El of New York in Manhattan is the largest Reform synagogue in the world.[citation needed]
IslamMain article: Islam in New York CityIslam ranks as the third largest religion in New York City, following Christianity and Judaism, with estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers of Islam, including 10% of the city's public school children.[338] 22.3% of American Muslims live in New York City, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere[339]—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.[340] Powers Street Mosque in Brooklyn is one of the oldest continuously operating mosques in the U.S., and represents the first Islamic organization in both the city and the state of New York.[341][342]
Hinduism and other religious affiliationsFurther information: Hindu Temple Society of North AmericaFollowing these three largest religious groups in New York City are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and a variety of other religions. As of 2023, 24% of Greater New Yorkers identified with no organized religious affiliation, including 4% Atheist.[343]
Wealth and income disparityNew York City, like other large cities, has a high degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2017.[344] In the first quarter of 2014,[needs update] the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[345] In 2022, New York City was home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, with a total of 107.[37] New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.[346] New York City is one of the relatively few American cities levying an income tax (about 3%) on its residents.[347][348][349] As of 2018, there were 78,676 homeless people in New York City.[350]
EconomyMain article: Economy of New York CityFurther information: Economy of Long Island and Economy of New York
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district[351]see captionThe Financial District of Lower ManhattanNew York City is a global hub of business and commerce and an established safe haven for global investors,[35] and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[352] New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care and life sciences,[15] medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal, and accelerating ahead of California seaports in monthly cargo volumes in 2023.[353][354][355]
Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City,[356] as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists.[357][358] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as Madison Avenue.[359] The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages.[360] The non-profit Partnership for New York City is the city's pre-eminent private business association, comprising approximately 330 corporate leaders.[citation needed] The fashion industry is based in Midtown Manhattan and is represented by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CDFA), headquartered in Lower Manhattan.
Significant economic sectors include non-profit institutions, and universities. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. particularly in smaller operations.[citation needed] The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the industry, although revival efforts were underway,[361] and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as Seventh Avenue.[362]
Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with up to $234 million worth of exports each year.[363] Godiva, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, is headquartered in Manhattan,[364] and an unofficial chocolate district in Brooklyn is home to several chocolate makers and retailers.[365] Food processing is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents.[citation needed]
In 2017, there were 205,592 employer firms in New York City.[263] Of those firms, 64,514 were owned by minorities, while veterans owned 5,506 of those firms, statistics pertinent to the increasing participation of U.S. firms in diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.[263]Midtown Manhattan in panorama from Weehawken, New Jersey, pictured in September 2021Wall StreetMain article: Wall StreetA large Flag is stretched over Roman style columns on the front of a large building.The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies[366][367]New York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. The city's securities industry continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and is an important economic engine.[citation needed] Many large financial companies are headquartered in New York City, and the city is home to a burgeoning number of financial startup companies.
Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange, at 11 Wall Street, and the Nasdaq, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013.[366][367] Investment banking fees on Wall Street totaled approximately $40 billion in 2012,[368][needs update] while in 2013, senior New York City bank officers who manage risk and compliance functions earned as much as $324,000 annually.[369][importance?] In fiscal year 2013–14, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.[370]
New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S. economy.[371]: 31–32 [372] New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment managers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers.[371]: 34–35  New York is the principal commercial banking center of the United States.[373]
Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are based in the city. Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2018,[374] making it the largest office market in the United States,[375] while Midtown Manhattan, with 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2018,[374] is the largest central business district in the world.[376]
Tech and biotechFurther information: Tech:NYC, Tech companies in New York City, Biotech companies in New York City, and Silicon Alley
View from the Empire State Building looking southward (downtown) at the central Flatiron District, the cradle of Silicon Alley, initially metonymous for the New York metropolitan region's high tech sector
Cornell Tech on Roosevelt IslandNew York is a top-tier global technology hub.[12][377] Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries,[378] is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech Environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in scope since at least 2003, when tech business appeared in more places in Manhattan and in other boroughs, and not much silicon was involved.[378][379] New York City's current tech sphere encompasses the array of applications involving universal applications of artificial intelligence,[380][381] broadband internet,[382] new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments.
Technology-driven startup companies and entrepreneurial employment are growing in New York City and the region. The technology sector has been claiming a greater share of New York City's economy since 2010.[383] Tech:NYC, founded in 2016, is a non-profit organization which represents New York City's technology industry with government, civic institutions, in business, and in the media, and whose primary goals are to further augment New York's substantial tech talent base and to advocate for policies that will nurture tech companies to grow in the city.[384]
The biotechnology sector is growing in New York City, based on the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a $2 billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[385][386] By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than $30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions.[excessive detail?] The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed[needs update] a minimum of $100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[387]
Real estate
Apple Store at Fifth Avenue, one of the most expensive shopping streets in the world.[388][389]The total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$1.479 trillion for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of 6.1% from the previous year and up 38% from the $1.072 trillion assessed for 2017; of the total market value for 2024, single family homes accounted for $765 billion (51.7%), co-ops, condos and apartment buildings totaled $351 billion (23.7%) and commercial properties were valued at $317 billion (21.4%).[390][391]
In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten ZIP codes in the United States by median housing price.[392] Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commands the highest retail rents in the world, at $3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) in 2017.[393] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States achieved completion in Manhattan, at a selling price of $238 million, for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.[394] In 2022, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$3,600.00, one of the world's highest. New York City real estate is a safe haven for global investors.[35]
TourismMain article: Tourism in New York City
Times Square, the hub of the theater district and a global media center, is one of the world's leading tourist attractions with 50 million tourists annually.[43]
The I Love New York logo designed by Milton Glaser in 1977Tourism is a vital industry for New York City, and NYC & Company represents the city's official bureau of tourism. New York has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, reflecting over 60 million visitors to the city per year, the world's busiest tourist destination.[19] Approximately 12 million visitors to New York City have been from outside the United States, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. Multiple sources have called New York the most photographed city in the world.[395][396][397]
I Love New York (stylized I ❤ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,[398] and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo, owned by New York State Empire State Development,[399] appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the city and state, some licensed, many not.[citation needed] The song is the state song of New York.
The majority of the most high-profile tourist destinations to the city are situated in Manhattan. These include Times Square; Broadway theater productions; the Empire State Building; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; the United Nations headquarters; the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and One World Trade Center); the art museums along Museum Mile; green spaces such as Central Park, Washington Square Park, the High Line, and the medieval gardens of The Cloisters; the Stonewall Inn; Rockefeller Center; ethnic enclaves including the Manhattan Chinatown, Koreatown, Curry Hill, Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy, and Little Australia; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Brooklyn Bridge (shared with Brooklyn); the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree; the St. Patrick's Day Parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at SummerStage.[citation needed]
Points of interest have developed in the city outside Manhattan and have made the outer boroughs tourist destinations in their own right. These include numerous ethnic enclaves; the Unisphere, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and Downtown Flushing in Queens;[citation needed] Downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn;[citation needed] the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx;[citation needed] and the Staten Island Ferry.
Media and entertainmentMain article: Media in New York CityFurther information: New Yorkers in journalism
Rockefeller Center, one of Manhattan's leading media and entertainment hubs
Times Square Studios on Times Square is sometimes called the "Crossroads of the World".New York City has been described as the entertainment[19][400][401] and digital media capital of the world.[402] The city is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there.[403] As of 2019, New York City was the second-largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals. The filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly $9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015.[404] By volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production—one-third of all American independent films are produced there.[405][406] The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is based in New York.[407][importance?] In the first five months of 2014,[needs update] location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013,[408] with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013–2014 cycle.[409]
New York City is the center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is the largest media market in North America.[410] Some of the city's media conglomerates and institutions include Warner Bros. Discovery, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corp, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, Fox Corporation, and Paramount Global. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.[411] Two of the top three record labels' headquarters are in New York: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group has offices in New York.[importance?] New media enterprises are contributing an increasingly important component to the city's central role in the media sphere.[citation needed]
More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city,[406] and the publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[412] Two of the three national daily newspapers with the largest circulations in the United States are published in New York: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYT). Nicknamed "the Grey Lady",[importance?] the NYT has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record.[413] Tabloid newspapers in the city include the New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson,[414] and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[415] At the local news end of the media spectrum, Patch Media is headquartered in Manhattan.
New York City has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[416] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[417] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent[citation needed] African American newspaper. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[418] The television and radio industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy.[citation needed] The three major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Many cable networks are based in the city as well, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Food Network, AMC, and Comedy Central. News 12 Networks operated News 12 The Bronx and News 12 Brooklyn. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.[citation needed]
New York is a major center for non-commercial educational media. NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City,[419] and has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[420] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[421]
EducationMain article: Education in New York City
Butler Library at Columbia University
The Washington Square Arch, an unofficial icon of both New York University and the Greenwich Village neighborhood that surrounds it[422]
Fordham University's Keating Hall in the BronxNew York City has the largest educational system of any city in the world.[19] The city's educational infrastructure spans primary education, secondary education, higher education, and research.
Primary and secondary educationThe New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in approximately 1,800 separate primary and secondary schools, including charter schools, as of the 2017–2018 school year.[423] The city's public school system includes nine specialized high schools to serve academically and artistically gifted students. The city government pays the Pelham Public Schools to educate a very small, detached section of the Bronx.[424][importance?]
The New York City Charter School Center assists the setup of new charter schools.[425] There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools in the city.[426]
Higher education and researchMore than a million students, the highest number of any city in the United States,[427] are enrolled in New York City's more than 120 higher education institutions, with more than half a million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone as of 2020, including both degree and professional programs.[428] According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any global city.[429]
The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation,[citation needed] comprising 25 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system includes campuses in New York City, including SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY Maritime College, and SUNY College of Optometry.
New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, and Yeshiva University; several of these universities are ranked among the top universities in the world,[430][431] while some of the world's most prestigious institutions like Princeton University and Yale University remain in the New York metropolitan area.
The city hosts other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as Pace University, St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, Adelphi University - Brooklyn, Mercy College (New York), The College of Mount Saint Vincent, Parsons School of Design, The New School, Pratt Institute, New York Film Academy, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Wagner College.
Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. In 2019, the New York metropolitan area ranked first on the list of cities and metropolitan areas by share of published articles in life sciences.[14] New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, and in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City.[432] There are 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions as of 2004.[433]
Major biomedical research institutions include Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College, being joined by the Cornell University/Technion-Israel Institute of Technology venture on Roosevelt Island. The graduates of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx earned the highest average annual salary of any university graduates in the United States, $144,000 as of 2017.[434][importance?]
Human resourcesPublic healthMain articles: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
New York-Presbyterian Hospital, affiliated with Columbia University and Cornell University, is the largest hospital and largest private employer in New York City and one of the world's busiest hospitals.[435]The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) operates the public hospitals and outpatient clinics as a public benefit corporation. As of 2021, HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States with $10.9 billion in annual revenues,[436] HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States[repetition] serving 1.4 million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents.[437] HHC was created in 1969 by the New York State Legislature as a public benefit corporation (Chapter 1016 of the Laws 1969).[438][importance?] HHC operates 11 acute care hospitals, five nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the poor and working class. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of the New York area's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance and is the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers.[439][third-party source needed]
HHC's facilities annually provide millions of New Yorkers services interpreted in more than 190 languages.[440] The most well-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the President of the United States and other world leaders if they become sick or injured while in New York City.[441] The president of HHC is Ramanathan Raju, MD, a surgeon and former CEO of the Cook County health system in Illinois.[442][importance?] In August 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation outlawing pharmacies from selling cigarettes once their existing licenses to do so expired, beginning in 2018.[443][needs update] New York City enforces a right-to-shelter law guaranteeing shelter to anyone who needs it, regardless of their immigration, socioeconomic, or housing status, which entails providing adequate shelter and food.[23]
Public safetyPolice and law enforcementMain articles: New York City Police Department and Law enforcement in New York CityFurther information: Police surveillance in New York City and Crime in New York City
The New York Police Department (NYPD), the largest police force in the United States
NYPD police officers in BrooklynThe New York Police Department (NYPD) is the largest police force in the United States by a significant margin, with more than 35,000 sworn officers.[444] Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, New York's Finest.
Crime overall has trended downward in New York City since the 1990s.[445] In 2012, the NYPD came under scrutiny for its stop-and-frisk program,[446][447][448] which has undergone several policy revisions since then.[citation needed] In 2014, New York City had the third-lowest murder rate among the largest U.S. cities,[449] having become significantly safer after a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s.[450] Violent crime in New York City decreased more than 75% from 1993 to 2005, and continued decreasing during periods when the nation as a whole saw increases.[451] By 2002, New York City was ranked 197th in crime among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000.[451] In 1992, the city recorded 2,245 murders.[452] In 2005, the homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1966,[453] and in 2009, the city recorded fewer than 461 homicides for the first time ever since crime statistics were first published in 1963.[452] New York City has stricter gun laws than most other cities in the U.S.—a license to own any firearm is required in New York City, and the NY SAFE Act of 2013 banned assault weapons—and New York State had the fifth lowest gun death rate of the states in 2020.[454] New York City recorded 491 murders in 2021.[455]
Organized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1820s, followed by the Tongs in the same neighborhood, which ultimately evolved into Chinatown, Manhattan. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades.[456] The Mafia and gang presence has declined in the city in the 21st century.[457][458]
FirefightingMain article: New York City Fire Department
The Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the largest municipal fire department in the United StatesThe Fire Department of New York (FDNY) provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services for the five boroughs of New York City. The FDNY is the largest municipal fire department in the United States and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department.[citation needed] The FDNY employs approximately 11,080 uniformed firefighters and more than 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics.[citation needed] The FDNY's motto is New York's Bravest.
The fire department faces multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, the FDNY responds to fires that occur in the New York City Subway.[459] Secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires, also present challenges.
The FDNY is headquartered at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn,[460] and the FDNY Fire Academy is on the Randalls Island.[461] There are three Bureau of Fire Communications alarm offices which receive and dispatch alarms to appropriate units. One office, at 11 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, houses Manhattan/Citywide, Brooklyn, and Staten Island Fire Communications; the Bronx and Queens offices are in separate buildings.[importance?]
Public library system
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Headquarters Building of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd StreetThe New York Public Library (NYPL) has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States.[462] Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library (QPL), the nation's second-largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) serves Brooklyn.[462]
CultureMain article: Culture of New York CityFurther information: LGBT culture in New York City, Music of New York City, List of nightclubs in New York City, List of LGBT people from New York City, List of people from New York City, New York Fashion Week, and Met Gala
(from right to left) The John Golden Theatre, Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, and Booth Theatre on West 45th Street in Manhattan's Theater DistrictNew York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world.[463][464][465][466] In describing New York, author Tom Wolfe said, "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather."[467]
The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art;[468][469] abstract expressionism (known as the New York School) in painting; and hip-hop,[189][470] punk,[471] hardcore,[472] salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz,[473] and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.[474][475] New York has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.[citation needed]
The city is frequently the setting for novels, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.[476][477] New York has frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor.[478]
One of the most common traits attributed to New York City is its fast pace,[479][480][481] which spawned the term New York minute.[482] Journalist Walt Whitman characterized New York's streets as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[481]
New York City's residents are prominently known for their resilience historically, and more recently related to their management of the impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.[483][484][485] New York was voted the world's most resilient city in 2021 and 2022 per Time Out's global poll of urban residents.[484]
Arts
Carnegie HallNew York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries.[486] The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.[486] Wealthy business magnates in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which have become internationally renowned. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions,[citation needed] and in the 1880s, New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition.[citation needed] New York City itself is the subject or background of many plays and musicals.
Performing artsMain articles: Broadway theatre and Music of New York City
The Lincoln Center houses internationally renowned performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and the Juilliard School.Broadway theatre is one of the premier forms of English-language theatre in the world, named after Broadway, the major thoroughfare that crosses Times Square,[487] sometimes referred to as "The Great White Way".[488][489][490] Forty-one venues in Midtown Manhattan's Theatre District, each with at least 500 seats, are classified as Broadway theatres. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an 11.4% increase from $1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season. Attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.[491] Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan.[citation needed]
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents free music concerts in Central Park.[492]
Visual artsMain article: List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of Museum Mile, is one of the largest museums in the world.[493]New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites. Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,[494] in the upper portion of Carnegie Hill.[495] Nine museums occupy the length of this section of Fifth Avenue, making it one of the densest displays of culture in the world.[496] Its art museums include the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, and The Africa Center. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation.[497] Many of the world's most lucrative art sales are held in New York City.[498][499]
CuisineMain articles: Cuisine of New York City, List of restaurants in New York City, and List of Michelin starred restaurants in New York CityPeople crowd around white tents in the foreground next to a red brick wall with arched windows. Above and to the left is a towering stone bridge.Smorgasburg, which opened in 2011 as an open-air food market, is part of the Brooklyn Flea.[500]New York City's food culture includes an array of international cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Central and Eastern European immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from those regions, brought bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, knishes, and delicatessens (delis) to the city. Italian immigrants brought New York-style pizza and Italian cuisine into the city, while Jewish immigrants and Irish immigrants brought pastrami[501] and corned beef,[502] respectively. Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses are ubiquitous throughout the city. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs[503] examples of modern New York street food. The city is home to "nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world", according to Michelin.[504] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's restaurants based on inspection results.[505] As of 2019, there were 27,043 restaurants in the city, up from 24,865 in 2017.[506] The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park attracts more than ten thousand people nightly to sample food from more than 85 countries.[507]
Parades
The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade[508]
The annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the world's largest Halloween parade[509]New York City is well known for its street parades, the majority held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[508] beginning alongside Central Park[importance?] and proceeding southward to the Flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[510] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[508] Other notable parades including the annual New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the NYC LGBT Pride March in June, the LGBT-inspired Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.
Accent and dialectMain articles: New York City English and New York accentThe New York area is home to a distinctive regional accent and speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It has been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[511] The traditional New York area speech pattern is known for its rapid delivery, and its accent is characterized as non-rhotic so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, therefore the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk".[512] The classic version of the New York City dialect is centered on middle- and working-class New Yorkers. The influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect,[512] and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent.[512]
SportsMain article: Sports in the New York metropolitan areaSee also: Traditional games of New York CityThree runners in a race down a street where onlookers are cheering behind barriers.The New York Marathon, held annually in November, is the largest marathon in the world.[513]A tennis stadium pack with fans watching a grass court.The U.S. Open Tennis Championships are held every August and September in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens.A baseball stadium from behind home plate in the evening.Citi Field, also in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, has been home to the New York Mets since 2009.
Yankee Stadium in The Bronx is home to the New York Yankees and New York City FC.
Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan is home to the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and St. John's Red Storm.
Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association and the New York Liberty of the Women's National Basketball Association
UBS Arena, home of the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League (NHL)New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,[514] Major League Baseball,[515] the National Basketball Association,[516] the National Hockey League,[517] and Major League Soccer.[518] The New York metropolitan area hosts the most sports teams in the first four major North American professional sports leagues with nine, one more than Los Angeles, and has 11 top-level professional sports teams if Major League Soccer is included, one more than Los Angeles. Participation in professional sports in the city predates all professional leagues, as the New York Mutuals became one of the first professional baseball teams in 1869, two years before the organization of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the first professional league, of which the Mutuals were founding members.
The city has played host to more than 40 major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are in the New York metropolitan area.[519] Madison Square Garden, its predecessor, the original Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, are sporting venues in New York City, the latter two having been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps. New York was the first of eight American cities to have won titles in all four major leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA), having done so following the Knicks' 1970 title. In 1972, it became the first city to win titles in five sports when the Cosmos won the NASL final.[citation needed]
American footballThe city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,[520] which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.[521]
BaseballNew York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball".[522] There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas to host two Major League Baseball teams, the others being Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and until the Athletics depart Oakland, California, the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in 2000. No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in 1906, St. Louis in 1944, and the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989).[citation needed]
The city's two Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field in Queens,[523] and the New York Yankees, who play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. These teams compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has come to be called the Subway Series.[repetition] The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,[524] while the Mets have won the World Series twice.[525] The city was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,[526] and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.[527] There is one Minor League Baseball team in the city, the Mets-affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones,[528] and the city gained a club in the independent Atlantic League when the Staten Island FerryHawks began play in 2022.[529]
BasketballThe city's National Basketball Association teams are the Brooklyn Nets (previously known as the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets as they moved around the metropolitan area[importance?]) and the New York Knicks, while the New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association team. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[530] The city is well known for its links to basketball, which is played in nearly every park in the city by local youth, many of whom have gone on to play for major college programs and in the NBA.[citation needed]
Ice hockeyThe metropolitan area is home to three National Hockey League teams. The New York Rangers, the traditional representative of the city itself and one of the league's Original Six, play at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The New York Islanders, traditionally representing Nassau and Suffolk Counties of Long Island, play in UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, and played in Brooklyn's Barclays Center from 2015 to 2020. The New Jersey Devils play at Prudential Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey and traditionally represent the counties of neighboring New Jersey which are coextensive with the boundaries of the New York metropolitan area and media market.
SoccerMain article: Soccer in the New York metropolitan areaIn soccer, New York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium[531] and the New York Red Bulls, who play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.[532] NJ/NY Gotham FC plays their home games in Red Bull Arena, representing the metropolitan area in the National Women's Soccer League. Historically, the city is known for the New York Cosmos, the highly successful former professional soccer team which was the American home of Pelé.[citation needed] A new version of the New York Cosmos was formed in 2010, and most recently played in the third-division National Independent Soccer Association before going on hiatus in January 2021. New York was a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup[533] and will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.[534]
Tennis and otherThe annual United States Open Tennis Championships is one of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens.[535] The New York City Marathon, which courses through all five boroughs, is the world's largest running marathon,[513] with 51,394 finishers in 2016[536] and 98,247 applicants for the 2017 race.[513][needs update] The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.[537][failed verification] The city is considered the host of the Belmont Stakes, the last, longest and oldest of horse racing's Triple Crown races, held just over the city's border at Belmont Park. The city hosted the 1932 U.S. Open golf tournament and the 1930 and 1939 PGA Championships, and has hosted both events several times, most notably[citation needed] for nearby Winged Foot Golf Club. The Gaelic games are played in Riverdale, Bronx at Gaelic Park, home to the New York GAA, the only North American team to compete at the senior inter-county level.[citation needed]
International eventsNew York City hosted the 1984 Summer Paralympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. New York City's offer to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was one of five finalists, but lost out to article: Environmental issues in New York CityTwo yellow taxis on a narrow street lined with shops.As of 2012, New York City had about 6,000 hybrid taxis in service, the largest number of any city in North America.[539]Environmental issues in New York City are affected by the city's size, density, abundant public transportation infrastructure, and its location at the mouth of the Hudson River. For example, it is one of the country's biggest sources of pollution and has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions rate and electricity usage. Governors Island is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center to make New York City the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[540]
Environmental impact reduction
Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in the Sunset ParkAs an oceanic port city, New York City is vulnerable to the long-term manifestations of global warming and rising seas. Climate change has spawned the development of a significant climate resiliency and Environmental sustainability economy in the city. Governors Island is slated to host a US$1 billion research and education center intended to establish New York's role as the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[541] New York City has focused on reducing its Environmental impact and carbon footprint.[542] Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in the United States. Also, by 2010, the city had 3,715 hybrid taxis and other clean diesel vehicles, representing around 28% of New York's taxi fleet in service, the most of any city in North America.[543] New York City is the host of Climate Week NYC, the largest Climate Week to take place globally and regarded as major annual climate summit.[citation needed]
New York's high rate of public transit use, more than 200,000 daily cyclists as of 2014,[544] and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States.[545] Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally the rate for metro regions is about 8%.[546] In both its 2011 and 2015 rankings, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States,[547][548][549] and in 2018, Stacker ranked New York the most walkable U.S. city.[550] Citibank sponsored public bicycles for the city's bike-share project, which became known as Citi Bike, in 2013.[551] New York City's numerical "in-season cycling indicator" of bicycling in the city had hit an all-time high of 437 when measured in 2014.[552]
The city government was a petitioner in the landmark Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency Supreme Court case forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants.[citation needed] The city is a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green office buildings, including the Hearst Tower among others.[197] Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2014 and 2050 to reduce the city's contributions to climate change, beginning with a comprehensive "Green Buildings" plan.[542]
Water purity and availabilityMain articles: Food and water in New York City and New York City water supply system
Ridgewood Reservoir on the border between the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, within what is now Highland ParkThe New York City drinking water supply is extracted from the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[553] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification through water treatment plants.[554] The city's municipal water system is the largest in the United States, moving over one billion gallons of water per day;[555] a leak in the Delaware aqueduct results in some 20 million gallons a day being lost under the Hudson River.[556] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a $3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[557] The ongoing expansion of New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city's history,[558] with segments serving Manhattan and the Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020.[559][needs update] In 2018, New York City announced a $1 billion investment to protect the integrity of its water system and to maintain the purity of its unfiltered water supply.[555]
Air qualityAccording to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,[560] the annual average concentration in New York City's air of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) was 7.0 micrograms per cubic meter, or 3.0 micrograms within the recommended limit of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5.[561] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in partnership with Queens College, conducts the New York Community Air Survey to measure pollutants at about 150 locations.[562]
Environmental revitalizationNewtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) a long estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, is designated a Superfund site for Environmental clean-up and remediation of the waterway's recreational and economic resources for many communities.[563] One of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey, it had been one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the country,[564] containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million US gallons (110,000 m3) of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City's sewer system,[564] and other accumulation.
Government and politicsMain articles: Government of New York City, Politics of New York City, and Elections in New York CityGovernment
New York City Hall is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions.[citation needed]
New York County Courthouse houses the New York Supreme Court and other governmental offices.New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a Strong mayor–council form of government[565] since its consolidation in 1898. The city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.
The City Council is a unicameral body of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.[566] Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit,[567] which is reset after a four-year break. The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and the City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.[568][569]
Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System.
Uniquely among major American cities,[citation needed] New York is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square near City Hall in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are based in New York, also on Foley Square in Manhattan.
Politics
Eric Adams, the current Mayor of New York CityThe present mayor is Eric Adams. He was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote, and assumed office on January 1, 2022. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of April 2016, 69% of registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10% are Republicans.[570] New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential election since President Calvin Coolidge won the five boroughs in 1924. A Republican candidate for statewide office has not won all five boroughs of the city since it was incorporated in 1898. In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of any party to receive more than 80% of the overall vote in New York City, sweeping all five boroughs.[importance?] Party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development, and labor politics are of importance in the city.[citation needed] Thirteen out of 26 U.S. congressional districts in the state of New York include portions of New York City.[571]
New York City is the most important geographical source of political fundraising in the United States. At least four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions were in Manhattan for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. The top ZIP Code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry.[572][excessive detail?] The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more than it receives back). City residents and businesses also sent an additional $4.1 billion in the 2009–2010 fiscal year to the state of New York than the city received in return.[573]
TransportationMain article: Transportation in New York CityRapid transit
Port Authority Bus Terminal, the world's busiest bus station, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street[574]Mass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the United States, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City metropolitan area.[575][576]
BusesNew York City's public bus fleet runs 24/7 and is the largest in North America.[577] The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the main intercity bus terminal of the city, serves 7,000 buses and 200,000 commuters daily, making it the busiest bus station in the world.[574]
RailMain article: New York City SubwayA row of yellow taxis in front of a multi-story ornate stone building with three huge arched windows.New York City is home to the two busiest train stations in the U.S., Grand Central Terminal (pictured) and Penn Station.The front end of a subway train, with a red E on a LED display on the top. To the right of the train is a platform with a group of people waiting for their train.The New York City Subway, the world's largest rapid transit system by number of stationsThe New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with 472, and by length of routes. Nearly all of New York's subway system is open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to systems in most cities.[578] The New York City Subway is the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere,[579] with 1.70 billion passenger rides in 2019,[580] while Grand Central Terminal, referred to as "Grand Central Station", is the world's largest railway station by number of train platforms.[581]
Public transport is widely used in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit.[582] This is in contrast to the rest of the United States, where 91% of commuters travel in automobiles to their workplace.[583] According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in the New York City area spend an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities.[584] New York is the only U.S. city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car.[585] Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19 billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans.[586]
New York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America.[575] The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines.[575] For 24 hours a day, the elevated AirTrain system in Queens connects JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road; a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.[587][588] For inter-city rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, and long-distance train service to other North American cities.[589]
The Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day. The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH train) links Midtown and Lower Manhattan to northEastern New Jersey. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day; meaning three of the six rapid transit systems in the world which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York (the others are a portion of the Chicago "L", the PATCO Speedline serving Philadelphia, and the Copenhagen heavy rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway.[592]
AirMain article: Aviation in the New York metropolitan area
John F. Kennedy Airport in QueensNew York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air transportation corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area include John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport; 130.5 million travelers used these three airports in 2016.[593] JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2012; as of 2011, JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.[594]
Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.[595] Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities[needs update].[596] Other commercial airports in or serving the New York metropolitan area include Long Island MacArthur Airport, Trenton–Mercer Airport and Westchester County Airport. The primary general aviation airport serving the area is Teterboro Airport.
Ferries, taxis and tramsMain articles: Staten Island Ferry, NYC Ferry, Taxis of New York City, and Roosevelt Island Tramway
The Staten Island Ferry shuttles commuters between Manhattan and Staten Island.The Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry route, carrying more than 23 million passengers from July 2015 through June 2016 on a 5.2-mile (8.4 km) route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24/7.[597][598] Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area. NYC Ferry, a NYCEDC initiative with routes planned to travel to all five boroughs, was launched in 2017.[599]
Other features of the city's transportation infrastructure encompass 13,587 yellow taxicabs;[600] other vehicle for hire companies;[601][602] and the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that transports commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Island.
Cycling networkMain article: Cycling in New York City
Citi Bike bike share service, which started in May 2013New York City has mixed cycling conditions that include urban density, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and many pedestrians. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; recreational cycling clubs; and an increasing number of commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2017 there were approximately 450,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 in 2005.[603] As of 2017, New York City had 1,333 miles (2,145 km) of bike lanes, compared to 513 miles (826 km) in 2006.[603] As of 2019, there are 126 miles (203 km) of segregated or "protected" bike lanes citywide.[604]
Streets and highwaysFurther information: Commissioners' Plan of 1811
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 put in place the rectangular grid plan of the streets of ManhattanStreets are also a defining feature of the city. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 greatly influenced its physical development. Several streets and avenues, including Broadway,[605] Wall Street,[606] Madison Avenue,[359] and Seventh Avenue are used as metonyms for national industries: theater, finance, advertising, and fashion, respectively.
New York City has an extensive web of freeways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other and to North Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is common for motorists to be stranded for hours in traffic congestion that are a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour.[607][608] Congestion pricing in New York City will go into effect in 2022 at the earliest[needs update].[609][610][611]
Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present.[612]
River crossingsFurther information: List of bridges and tunnels in New York CityManhattan and Staten Island are primarily coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are at the west end of the larger Long Island, and the Bronx is on New York State's mainland. Manhattan Island is linked to New York City's outer boroughs and to New Jersey by an extensive network of bridges and tunnels.
Bridges
The George Washington Bridge, across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[613][614]The 14-lane George Washington Bridge, connecting Manhattan to New Jersey across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[613][614] The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, spanning the Narrows between Brooklyn and Staten Island, is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest.[615][616] The Brooklyn Bridge, with its stone neo-Gothic suspension towers, is an icon of the city itself; opened in 1883, it was the first steel-wire suspension bridge and was the longest suspension bridge in the world until 1903.[617][618] The Queensboro Bridge "was the longest cantilever span in North America" from 1909 to 1917.[619] The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, "is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges", and its design "served as the model for the major long-span suspension bridges" of the early 20th century.[620] The Throgs Neck Bridge and Whitestone Bridge connect Queens and the Bronx, while the Triborough Bridge connects the three boroughs of Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx.
Tunnels
Lincoln TunnelThe Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[621] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.[622][623] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.[624] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (officially known as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District in Lower Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn.

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