Did You Know!

Built circa 1680, the Conference House (also known as the Billop House) was the site of a fateful meeting in 1776. The British, represented by Admiral Lord Richard Howe, and the Continental Congress, represented by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Edward Rutledge, engaged in an attempt to forestall the American Revolution.

The 2 mile boardwalk at Brooklyn's South Beach is the fourth longest in the world.

John Hertz, who founded the Yellow Cab Company in 1907, chose yellow because he read a survey by the University of Chicago that found yellow was the easiest color to spot.

The triangular shape of the Flatiron Building (an early skyscraper on 23rd Street) produced wind currents that made women's skirts billow and caused police to create the term '23 skiddoo' to shoo gapers from the area.

New York City was briefly the U.S. capital from 1789 to 1790

The Dutch supposedly bought Manhattan from its Native American inhabitants for about $24 worth of trinkets.

Broadway, originating from Lower Manhattan at Bowling Green and ending in Albany, is one of the world's longest streets at 150 mi (241 km). The official name of this street is Highway 9.

Manhattan's downtown southern tip area is predominantly landfill. The actual "natural" Manhattan makes up only 75% of the total area in the downtown region.

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine will be the largest Gothic cathedral in the world when it is completed. However, it was originally (1892) begun as a Romanesque design and converted later to Gothic (1911).

Central Park in the middle of Manhattan covers a larger area than the principality of Monaco.

Staten Island residents voted to secede from the city in 1993, but such a move would require state approval.

New York City
New York City is located on the Eastern Atlantic coast of the United States, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The city center resides at the exact location of 40 degrees, 42 minutes, 51 seconds N latitude, and 74 degrees, 0 minutes 23 seconds W longitude.

New York City is made of five boroughs separated by various waterways. Brooklyn and Queens occupy the western portion of Long Island, while Staten Island and Manhattan are compeletely on their own land mass. Bronx, to the north, remains attached to the New York State mainland.

New York was briefly (1789-90) the U.S. capital and was state capital until 1797. By 1790 it was the largest U.S. city, and the opening (1825) of the ERIE CANAL, linking New York with the GREAT LAKES, led to even greater expansion.

In 1898 a new charter was adopted, making the city Greater New York, a metropolis of five boroughs. Massive IMMIGRATION, mainly from Europe, swelled the city's population in the late 19th and early 20th cent. After World War II, many African Americans from the South, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans migrated to the city in search of jobs.

The Bronx is the only New York borough connected to the mainland.

The world's largest Gothic Cathedral is the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine and it's still under construction. Its first stone was laid in 1892.

The nation's largest public Halloween parade is the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade.

The New York Mercantile Exchange is world's largest physical commodity futures exchange.

Macy's, the world's largest store, covers 2.1 million square feet of space and stocks over 500,000 different items.

The New York Botanical Garden is home to the nation's largest Victorian glasshouse, the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, a New York City landmark that has showcased NYBG's distinguished tropical, Mediterranean, and desert plant collections since 1902.

The Panorama of the City of New York in the Queens Museum of Art is the world's largest architectural model, containing 895,000 individual structures at a scale of 1 inch equals 100 feet. There are 6,374.6 miles of streets in New York City.

The Times Square Business Improvement District plans to drop a ball designed and crafted by Waterford Crystal for New Year's Eve 1999.

The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long.

The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is so long (4,260 feet) that the towers are a few inches out of parallel to accommodate the curvature of the earth.

New York City has 578 miles of waterfront.

Some of the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island and went on to illustrious careers are: Irving Berlin, musician, arrived in 1893 from Russia; Marcus Garvey, politician, arrived 1916 from Jamaica; Bob Hope, comedian, arrived in 1908 from England; Knute Rockne, football coach, arrived in 1893 from Norway; and the von Trapp family of "Sound of Music" fame, arrived in 1938 from Austria. (Source: "Ellis Island & Statue of Liberty," Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island.

The Consolidated Edison electrical substation, built in 1975, has an illusionistic mural of the Brooklyn Bridge by Richard Haas on one side to help it blend in with its historic neighbor.

Since the 1920's, Queens has been the 'home of jazz,' the residence of choice for hundreds of jazz musicians, including such notables as Louis Armstrong, Fats Walker, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzie.