As immigrants from Europe arrived during the mid-nineteenth century, New York City drastically changed with the consolidation of five boroughs in 1898.
2011: New York City attracted 50.5 million visitors.
Grand Central, one of the most widely frequented train stations, attracts more than 750,000 people daily, 1 million during the holidays and 21.6 million out-of-towners. It’s said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt used platform number 61, a “secret” underground track, to get to the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
2011: MTA New York City Transit data shows that weekday subway ridership was 5.3 million and annual ridership was 1.6 billion.
For those that hail a taxi, there are more than 50,000 vehicles and approximately 100,000 divers regulated and licensed by the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission.
One of the busiest intersections in the city is at the corner of 42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue with an average of 7,500 people frequenting it at any given hour.
Of the many attractions that draw tourists each year, is Central Park, which is spread across 843 total acres.
The New York Public Library, which serves about 16 million patrons per year, has 88 miles of shelf space in its Humanities & Social Science Library and 40 miles under Bryant Park. 120,000 square feet is linked to the main building by a 120-foot tunnel. From design to construction, this section of the library took 16 years to complete.
With roughly 3,000 street vendors serving up cuisine in New York City, food trucks are not just part of the city’s culture – they are a taste-worthy option. Zagat-rated food trucks include Nauti, lobster-roll cuisine, lukeslobster.com/nauti; Coolhaus, gourmet hand-made ice cream sandwiches, eatcoolhaus.com; and Taim Mobile, a vegetarian Israeli truck, taimmobile.com.
The ING New York City Marathon, which takes place through five boroughs in the city had 46,795 official finishers – 29,867 men and 16,928 women in 2011 – making it one of the world’s largest-running events.
While premier rooms at places like Hotel Plaza Athénée, The Peninsula-New York, and the Mandarin Oriental, can set a person back in the thousands, the average daily hotel room in New York City is priced at $290.
According to a Zagat survey, the average cost of a dinner in New York City is $43.46, including drink, tax and tip.
Manhattan’s Chinatown has the largest collection of Chinese residents in the Western Hemisphere.
Top theater shows in 2011-2012 brought in the following: Wicked, $91 million; Lion King, $87.9 million; Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark, $79 million; and the Book of Mormon, $72.2 million.
New York City has been a go-to scene for Hollywood films; the Empire State Building, for example, was featured in more than 250 films, including “King Kong,” “An Affair to Remember,” and “Sleepless in Seattle,” just to name a few. The Empire State Building rests on 79,288 square feet, approximately 2 acres. Nearly 10 million bricks were used to build the structure, 730 tons of aluminum and stainless steel and 57,000 tons of steel. Final construction fees topped in at $41 million.
Wall Street profits fell 72 percent in 2011, to $7.65 billion. 2011 securities industry bonuses still totaled $19.7 billion.
More than 25 percent of the world’s gold is located 80 feet beneath the Federal Reserve Bank on Wall Street.
The first New York Fashion Week, held in 1943, (which was called Press Week) was the first organized fashion week in the world. It was created to steer attention away from the French fashion during World War II.
The Fashion District, also known as the New York Garment District brings in billions of dollars of revenue per year, and is only stretched on a one square-mile radius.
