New York City

New York City is the biggest city in the United States.

It is built on islands and by the sea. It has very tall buildings called skyscrapers. People from all over the world live there.

New York City is in the northeastern United States, where the Hudson and East rivers flow into one of the world's great harbors. It is made of five parts called boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. About 8.8 million people lived there at the 2020 census.

Since the first U.S. census in 1790, New York has been the country's largest city. It is famous for its skyline of skyscrapers. Britannica calls it a collection of many neighborhoods, each with its own way of life, and the most international city in the country. It is also home to the United Nations.

New York City lies at the mouth of the Hudson River in southeastern New York state. It covers Manhattan and Staten islands, the western parts of Long Island and a small piece of the mainland north of Manhattan, 790 km² in all. The 2020 census counted 8,804,190 people in the city and 20,140,470 in the New York–Newark–Jersey City metropolitan area.

Britannica describes New York as the largest and most influential American metropolis, the most populous and most international city in the country, and for two centuries its largest and wealthiest. More than half of all the people and goods that ever entered the United States came through its port. Once the capital of both its state and the nation, it is the host city of the United Nations.

The Statue of Liberty holds up a torch in the harbor.

It was a gift from France. The Empire State Building is a very tall tower. The Brooklyn Bridge hangs from strong cables. Central Park is a huge park full of trees.

The Statue of Liberty, a gift from France, has stood at the entrance to New York Harbor since 1886. From the ground to the tip of her torch she is 305 feet (about 93 meters) tall. The Empire State Building was completed in 1931, and today One World Trade Center rises 541 meters.

The Brooklyn Bridge, built from 1869 to 1883, was the first bridge to use steel for its cable wire, and until 1890 it had the longest main span in the world. In the middle of Manhattan, Central Park gives the city about 340 hectares of green space.

Made in Paris by the sculptor Bartholdi, with an iron framework by Gustave Eiffel, the Statue of Liberty was France's gift for the centenary of American independence; inaugurated in 1886, it stands at the entrance to New York Harbor and, in UNESCO's words, has welcomed millions of immigrants ever since (World Heritage, 1984). The National Park Service gives its height from the ground to the tip of the torch as 305 ft 1 in.

John Augustus Roebling's Brooklyn Bridge (1869–83), finished by his son Washington Roebling after John's death, had a 486 m main span, the world's longest until 1890, and was the first bridge to use steel cable wire. Under a new zoning code's setback rules, the Chrysler (1930) and Empire State (1931) buildings rose; One World Trade Center now reaches 1,776 ft (541 m). Central Park, about 340 hectares laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in the mid-19th century as the city's "lungs", interrupts Manhattan's street grid.

New York has all four seasons.

Winters are cold, and sometimes it snows. Summers are warm. Many kinds of birds and fish live in and around the city.

New York has cold winters and warm summers. In January the average temperature is about 0 °C, and in June about 22 °C. About 1,120 millimeters of rain and snow fall in a year. The climate is moderate enough that the harbor rarely freezes.

The land itself was shaped by glaciers. When the ice melted about 10,000 years ago, it left giant boulders that you can still see in Central Park. Wildlife lives here too: about 80 kinds of fish, birds from peregrine falcons to pigeons, raccoons, and now and then a coyote.

Britannica gives an average of about 0 °C in January and 22 °C in June, with recorded extremes from −26 °C to 41 °C and about 1,120 mm of precipitation a year; the moderate climate means the harbor rarely freezes. On October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy's unprecedented storm surge flooded low-lying areas and tunnels in and around Lower Manhattan.

The present topography is largely the work of the glacial retreat that ended the Wisconsin Glacial Stage about 10,000 years ago: erratic boulders in Central Park, kettle depressions in Brooklyn and Queens, and moraines. The Hudson and East rivers are in reality estuaries of the Atlantic, and the Hudson is tidal as far north as Troy. The city still holds 80 fish species, birds from the peregrine falcon to the pigeon, raccoons and occasional coyotes, with refuges at Jamaica Bay, Clove Lakes and Alley Pond.

People from many countries live in New York.

Each neighborhood feels a little different. There are zoos in every borough. There are big museums, theaters and parks to explore.

Britannica calls New York the most ethnically diverse city in the United States, and says that moving from one neighborhood to the next can feel like passing from one country to another, and many neighborhoods offer their own foods and languages.

There is a zoo in every borough, and well-loved botanical gardens in the Bronx and Brooklyn. Broadway is famous for its theaters, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art stands beside Central Park. In 2003 the first section of Hudson River Park opened along the river.

Britannica calls New York the most ethnically diverse and religiously varied city in the country, a city of neighborhoods where residents keep familiar cuisines, languages and experiences. Since 1643, when 18 languages were heard in New Amsterdam, it has drawn newcomers; Ellis Island processed about 12,000 people a day, and by 1900 the Lower East Side had one of the greatest population densities in world history.

Its place names have become shorthand for whole industries: Wall Street for finance, Broadway for theater, Fifth Avenue for shopping, Seventh Avenue for fashion, and Harlem for the Jazz Age. The Bronx and Brooklyn botanical gardens are highly regarded nationally, every borough has a zoo, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art stands beside Central Park.