New York City [antikvár]

Any living city is a center of dynamic human activity, a theater of operations for people of countless occupations-artists, artisans, bankers, chefs, doctors, journalists, lawyers, and zookeepers-to name a few. A city is a showcase for the powerful and assured, a springboard for the hopeful and ambitious, a shelter (of sorts) for the landless and oppressed. Planners and designers may be able to improve a city, but they cannot dictate where or when it will expand, decline, or change character. Such changes depend on things going on outside the city limits—on social and political events, on cultural ferment, on world markets. All the forces that go into the making of a city have worked at top speed in the making of New York City. One of the youngest of the world's great cities—it received its first official name, Nieuw Amsterdam, in 1625—it is also one of the largest in terms of population. The astounding towers of Manhattan, visible from miles away, arise from a sliver of real estate about 2.5 miles wide and 12.5 miles long. In this comparatively small area, ringed by water, this "City of Cities" has virtually exploded into being. There are cities more beautiful than New York, many with longer and richer traditions, and some with cultural This page and opposite: Liberty has held her gleaming torch high since 1886, symbolizing hope and welcome to millions. A gift of the people of France, the statue stands on a small island in Upper New York Bay in view of the office towers of Lower Manhattan.