World Trade Center

The World Trade Center was originally a complex of seven buildings in Lower Manhattan. They were destroyed by terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. A new complex is currently under construction.

Today a new complex is rising at the site, known as the 'new WTC'. A memorial to the victims of the attacks now occupies the location of the former Twin Towers.

The Twin Towers

World Trade Center

The two towers were different in height: the first one, built in 1972, reached a height of 417 meters and the second one, finished one year later measured 415 meters. The One World Trade Center was the tallest building in the world until 1974, when the Sears Tower was built in Chicago. At the time of their destruction, the Twin Towers still ranked in the top 10 of the highest buildings in the world and dominated the skyline of lower Manhattan.

The World Trade Center was a project started up in 1960 by David Rockefeller. The towers were sometimes nicknamed David and Nelson, the Rockefeller brothers. The design came from Minoru Yamasaki and Emery Roth & Sons. The monolithic Twin Towers were never seen as great architecture, but it certainly was a great engineering feat.

Battery Park City

In the late 1970s, an area that was once part of the Hudson River became a vibrant neighborhood at the tip of Manhattan.

How Battery Park City was Formed

By the late 1950s, due in part to the growing popularity of air transportation, the shipping piers in Lower Manhattan's port area had become 

largely dilapidated. In an effort to revitalize that part of the city, local government began to consider ways to better use the space.
By the 1960s, ideas emerged to build a 90-acre planned community near the city's busy financial district and architect Wallace K. Harrison called for a "comprehensive community consisting of housing, social infrastructure and light industry".

Funding began in 1972 and during the next few years, existing piers were buried and 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 cubic meters) of dirt and rocks excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center and other smaller projects was used to build Battery Park City (BPC), named for the nearby park.

PanAm Building

The Metlife building, still known by many as the Pan Am Building is probably the one skyscraper most New Yorkers would like to see demolished.

A Blocked View

The main reasons for the dislike of the New Yorkers for this building are the blocking of the view on Park Avenue and the massive structure, which has often been criticized as 'cheap quality' or 'monumental bad architecture'. On the other hand the structural concept of the building is very intriguing and its sheer massiveness symbolizes New York as a huge compact city. Due to its location though, the building completely blocks the view on Park Avenue and the - much more appraised - New York Central building (Helmsley Building), which dates from 1929.

United States Custom House

The U.S. Custom House - a National Historic Landmark that is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places - is an imposing Beaux-Arts building designed by Minnesota architect Cass Gilbert. The Custom House was one of the first public building projects to employ private architects.

The Building

The current Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House sits on Bowling Green at the tip of Manhattan, occupying the site where the first Custom House was built in the late 1700s 

but destroyed by fire in 1814.

By 1892, it was evident that the Customs Service, which had moved from place to place for almost 80 years after the fire, needed a permanent and larger place to call its own. The government purchased the old Bowling Green site, and in 1893, the new Tarsney Act authorized the secretary of the treasury to use private architects, selected through architectural competitions, to design federal buildings.

Prospect Park

This beautiful 585-acre (237 ha) large park is an oasis in the middle of bustling Brooklyn.

Designed by famed landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the designers of Central Park in Manhattan, Prospect Park was built in the 1860s. Olmsted and Vaux considered this park a better creation than Central Park.

Meant to provide the growing population of Brooklyn with a place to enjoy trees, flowers, and recreational activities, the park was to be a relaxing, pastoral landscape. According to Engineer-in-chief Egbert L. Viele, this park was to be a tranquil haven where people could recover from the hectic city life.

The park is created around a wide open grassland, known as the Long Meadow. 

Long Meadow

At almost one mile (1.5km) in length, this is the longest meadow in all of New York City.

Fort Tryon Park

Fort Tryon Park is a 67 acre (27 hectare) large park located on a cliffy terrain in the Hudson Heights neighborhood, which is part of Washington Heights, an area in the northwest of Manhattan Island.

Due to its high topographical location, the park offers great views over the surrounding landscape.
The most popular attractions in the park are the beautiful Heather Garden and the Cloisters, a replica of a Medieval monastery which is home to a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and has magnificent displays of medieval art.

Fort Tryon Flagpole

Fort Tryon

Fort Tryon Park is situated at the site of the former Fort Tryon, which was one of several outposts of Fort Washington. The fort was used during the American Revolution by the Continental army in an effort to repel the British Army.

The British Forces and their Hessian mercenaries however defeated the revolutionaries on November 16, 1776 and named the outpost after Major General Sir William Tryon, the last British governor of the colonial province New York. Remains of the fortifications are still clearly visible in the park. A plaque and flagpole commemorate the defense of the outpost.

Park Avenue

The classiest street in New York City, Park Avenue has always been associated with the "rich and famous".

History of the Street

Once upon a time in the mid 1800s, Park Avenue bore a different name - Fourth Avenue - and it carried the tracks of the New York and Harlem Railroad. As development in New York City progressed, some train tracks were sunk and portions of the boulevard were renamed Park Avenue due to the green, park-like areas present in the vicinity.

The building of Grand Central Terminal in 1927 allowed for auto traffic to proceed down the street without hassle and more of this wide expanse was open to traffic and became known as Park Avenue. By 1956, all of Fourth Avenue from 17th Street to the remainder of its distance became known as Park Avenue.

Jefferson Market Library

Located in Manhattan's tony Greenwich Village neighborhood, the Jefferson Market Library is a branch of New York City's acclaimed public library system. This unique building became a library in 1967, but prior to that had a long and colorful history.

The Early Days

The Jefferson Market Library, originally a courthouse, was designed in the Victorian Gothic style and was erected between 1875 and 1877 alongside an adjacent prison and market. It cost $360,000 to build and housed a police court, a civil court, and a basement where prisoners were held before they headed off to jail.

The building was continuously lauded for its unique and splendid architecture and was often touted as one of the most beautiful buildings in the country at the turn of the century.

The courthouse was the site of a number of famous trials, including the murder trial of Harry Thaw, who was accused of killing architect Stanford White. The famous trial, which also involved chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit, became the subject for E.L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime, which was eventually turned into an award-winning Broadway musical.

Carl Schurz Park

Named for a Civil War general and newspaper editor, Carl Schurz Park is one of New York City's loveliest public green spaces.

History and Design

Sitting at the edge of the German-American 

community of Yorkville, 15-acre (6 ha) Carl Schurz Park pays homage to a German revolutionary who became an American statesman and reformer and served as a Union Army General in the Civil War. Schurz and his sister were also instrumental in setting up the "kindergarten" system in the U.S. and he later became a prominent journalist in the city as well.

Brooklyn Museum

The Brooklyn Museum is considered one of the best art institutions in the United States.

History of the Museum

The Brooklyn Museum was originally conceived as 

Brooklyn Museum

the Brooklyn Institute for Arts and Sciences, the focal point of an educational complex planned in the 19th century for the growing city of Brooklyn, which would eventually include the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Prospect Park Zoo, and the Central Library. The idea was to create a museum six times the size of what was eventually built, but the ambitious plans were shelved when Brooklyn became a borough of 

Hall of the Americas

New York City in 1898.

9/11 Memorial

The National September 11 Memorial commemorates the victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The memorial opened on the 10th anniversary of the attacks at the site of the former twin towers of the WTC.

Design Competition

Soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center plans were made to create a memorial to commemorate the victims of the tragedy. As early as in April 2003, a competition was launched by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for the design of a World Trade Center memorial. In total 5,201 submissions were made from 63 different countries. 

Reflecting Pool

On January 6, 2004, a 13 member jury selected a design by architect Michael Arad and Peter Walker. The jury lauded the openness of the design, which was dubbed 'Reflecting Absence'.