1.
Chelsea, Manhattan
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Chelsea is a neighborhood on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. Chelsea is divided between Manhattan Community Board 4 and Manhattan Community Board 5 and it contains the Chelsea Historic District and its extension, which were designated by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1970 and 1981 respectively. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, the area has a large LGBTQ population. Chelsea is also known as one of the centers of the art world. Chelsea takes its name from the estate and Georgian-style house of retired British Major Thomas Clarke, the land was bounded by what would become 21st and 24th Streets, from the Hudson River to Eighth Avenue. Clarke chose the name Chelsea after the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for soldiers in London, England. Clarke passed the estate on to his daughter, Charity, who, with her husband Benjamin Moore, added land on the south of the estate, the house was the birthplace of their son, Clement Clarke Moore, who in turn inherited the property. Moore is generally credited with writing A Visit From St. Nicholas and was the author of the first Greek and Hebrew lexicons printed in the United States. Covenants in the deeds of sale specified what could be built on the land – stables, manufacturing, in 1847 the Hudson River Railroad laid its freight tracks up a right-of-way between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues, separating Chelsea from the Hudson River waterfront. By the time of the Civil War, the area west of Ninth Avenue and below 20th Street was the location of numerous distilleries making turpentine and camphene, a lamp fuel. In addition, the huge Manhattan Gas Works complex, which converted coal into gas, was located at Ninth and 18th Street. As well as the piers, warehouses and factories, the area west of Tenth Avenue also included lumberyards and breweries. The social problems of the areas workers provoked John Lovejoy Elliot to form the Hudson Guild in 1897, one of the first settlement houses – private organizations designed to provide social services. A theater district had formed in the area by 1869, and soon West 23rd Street was the center of American theater, led by Pikes Opera House, Chelsea was an early center for the motion picture industry before World War I. Some of Mary Pickfords first pictures were made on the top floors of a building at 221 West 26th Street, while other studios were located on 23rd. London Terrace was one of the worlds largest apartment blocks when it opened in 1930, with a pool, solarium, gymnasium. The massive 23-story Art Deco Walker Building, which spans the block between 17th and 18th Streets just off of Seventh Avenue, was built in the early 1930s. It typifies the real activity of the district, as it has been converted in 2012 to residential apartments on the top 16 floors
2.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
3.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
4.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
5.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Jean Nouvel
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Jean Nouvel is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a member of Mars 1976. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005, a number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work. Nouvel was born on 12 August 1945 in Fumel, France and he is the son of Renée and Roger Nouvel who were teachers. His family moved often when his father became the countys chief school superintendent and his parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language, but when he was 16 years old he was captivated by art when a teacher taught him drawing. With his second wife Catherine Richard, Nouvel has a daughter and he lives now with Mia Hägg, who is a Swedish architect working at her practice Habiter Autrement in Paris. By age 25, Nouvel completed school and entered into his own partnership with François Seigneur, Nouvel was one of the organizers of the competition for the rejuvenation of the Les Halles district and he founded the first Paris architecture biennale in 1980. In 1981, Nouvel won the competition for the Institut du Monde Arabe building in Paris, whose construction was completed in 1987. Mechanical lenses reminiscent of Arabic latticework in its south wall open and shut automatically, Nouvel had three different partners between 1972 and 1984, Gilbert Lezenes, Jean-François Guyot, and Pierre Soria. In 1985, with his junior architects Emmanuel Blamont, Jean-Marc Ibos and Mirto Vitart, then, with Emmanuel Gattani, he formed JNEC in 1988. Ateliers Jean Nouvel, his present practice, was formed in 1994 with Michel Pélissié and is one of the largest in France, ateliers Jean Nouvel site offices are Rome, Geneva, Madrid and Barcelona. They are working on 30 active projects in 13 countries, Nouvel designed a flacon for LHomme, an Yves Saint Laurent fragrance, in a limited edition launched in 2008. The jury acknowledged the persistence, imagination, exuberance, and, above all, Nouvel has designed a number of notable buildings across the world, the most significant of which are listed below. In 2001 director Beat Kuert filmed a documentary about five of Nouvels projects titled Jean Nouvel. 2010 – Serpentine Gallery temporary pavilion, London 2010 – One New Change, London 2011 – Tower 25 in Nicosia 2012 – Doha Tower skyscraper, Doha, Qatar 2012 – City Hall,2015 – Philharmonie de Paris, Paris. In March 2007, the Louvre announced it would build a Louvre branch in the emirate of Abu Dhabi, Jean Nouvel was chosen as architect. The museum was expected to be completed by 2012, though current expectations are that completion will be delayed until at least 2015. The Central Park redevelopment plan in Sydney will see 11 new buildings in partnership with such as Norman Foster to recreate an abandoned brewery occupying almost four inner-city blocks
8.
West Side Highway
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The West Side Highway is a mostly surface section of New York State Route 9A that runs from West 72nd Street along the Hudson River to the southern tip of Manhattan in New York City. It replaced the West Side Elevated Highway, built between 1929 and 1951, which was shut down in 1973 due to neglect and lack of maintenance, and was dismantled by 1989. The term West Side Highway is often used, particularly by the news media traffic reporters. The current highway was complete by 2001, but required some reconstruction due to damage sustained in the 9/11 attacks and it uses the surface streets that existed before the elevated highway was built, West Street, Eleventh Avenue and Twelfth Avenue. A short section of 12th Avenue still runs between 125th and 138th Streets, under the Riverside Drive Viaduct, Eleventh Avenue is a separate street north of 22nd Street. The portion between West 42nd Street and Canal Street is part of the Lincoln Highway, the highway is a six-to-eight lane urban boulevard, with the northernmost section, from 59th Street to 72nd Street, elevated above a former rail yard adjacent to tracks still used by Amtrak. Trucks and buses are allowed only on the surface section, the West Side Highways surface section takes three names, West Street from the Battery Park Underpass north to Tenth Avenue, then 11th Avenue to 22nd Street, and finally 12th Avenue to 59th Street. The highway begins from Battery Park close to the mouth of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel where it also accepts traffic from the terminus of the Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive. From there, the route passes close to the site of the World Trade Center at Vesey Street, the route continues with this name passing by numerous piers along the Hudson River until Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District where it becomes Eleventh Avenue. Eleventh Avenue begins just north of the intersection with Tenth Avenue, the highway is concurrent with Eleventh Avenue north of this point, passing by the 14th Street Park at 14th Street. The highway continues with this name alongside the Chelsea Piers until it reaches 22nd Street where the branches off from Eleventh Avenue onto Twelfth Avenue. At 22nd Street, the highway continues as Twelfth Avenue passing by the Chelsea Waterside Park and it passes just west of the Javits Center from 34th Street to 38th Street and over the Lincoln Tunnel at 39th Street. The road continues past the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and Piers 84 to 92, at 54th Street, 12th Avenue attains a highway with service roads character, with the service roads running as far as 59th Street. From there, Twelfth Avenue becomes elevated and at 72nd Street, various proposals circulated in the 1920s to build an expressway on the west side. It would eliminate 106 grade crossings over 84 blocks and it ran into opposition because of fears that it would create a rail monopoly. The highway would run on top of the ten-story buildings, a similar alternative was offered by Benjamin Battin. The proposal immediately ran into stiff opposition, the City Club and New York City Mayor James J. Walker objected to the highway on the grounds that it would block waterfront-bound freight traffic. They believed that the plans should wait until the railroad tracks were removed in the area
9.
Arab World Institute
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Housed within the institution are a museum, library, auditorium, restaurant, offices and meeting rooms. The AWI is located in a known as the Institut du Monde Arabe. Originally, a project conceived in 1973 by President Valéry Giscard dEstaing, the museum was constructed between 1981 and 1987 under the presidency of French President Francois Mitterrand as part of his urban development series entitled, the Grand Projets. Libya joined the institute in 1984, the building was constructed from 1981 to 1987 and has floor space of 181,850 square feet. The Architecture-Studiotogether with Jean Nouvel, won the 1981 design competition and this project is a result of funds from both the League of Arab States and the French government, with the cost of the building totaling around €230,000,000. The building acts as a zone between the Jussieu Campus of Pierre and Marie Curie University, built in large rationalist urban blocks. The river façade follows the curve of the waterway, reducing the hardness of a rectangular grid, at the same time the building appears to fold itself back in the direction of the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. In contrast to the surface on the river side, the southwest façade is an uncompromisingly rectangular glass-clad curtain wall. It faces a large public space that opens in the direction of the Île de la Cité. Visible behind the wall, a metallic screen unfolds with moving geometric motifs. The mechanism creates interior spaces with filtered light — an effect often used in Islamic architecture with its climate-oriented strategies, the innovative use of technology and success of the buildings design catapulted Nouvel to fame and is one of the cultural reference points of Paris. Recipient of the 1989 Aga Khan Award for Architectural Excellence, jury members included historian Oleg Grabar. Within the museum are objects from the Arab world ranging from before Islam through into the twentieth century, one of the main initiatives within the museum is the inclusion of special exhibitions
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