1.
Pittsburgh
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Pittsburgh is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States, and is the county seat of Allegheny County. The city proper has a population of 304,391. The metropolitan population of 2,353,045 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and the 26th-largest in the U. S. The city features 30 skyscrapers, two inclines, a fortification and the Point State Park at the confluence of the rivers. Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in manufacturing of aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For part of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, Americas 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters moved out. The area has served also as the federal agency headquarters for cyber defense, software engineering, robotics, energy research. The area is home to 68 colleges and universities, including research and development leaders Carnegie Mellon University, the region is a hub for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, sustainable energy, and energy extraction. Pittsburgh was named in 1758 by General John Forbes, in honor of British statesman William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham. The current pronunciation, which is unusual in English speaking countries, is almost certainly a result of a printing error in some copies of the City Charter of March 18,1816. The error was repeated commonly enough throughout the rest of the 19th century that the pronunciation was lost. After a public campaign the original spelling was restored by the United States Board on Geographic Names in 1911. The area of the Ohio headwaters was long inhabited by the Shawnee, the first known European to enter the region was the French explorer/trader Robert de La Salle from Quebec during his 1669 expedition down the Ohio River. European pioneers, primarily Dutch, followed in the early 18th century, Michael Bezallion was the first to describe the forks of the Ohio in a 1717 manuscript, and later that year European fur traders established area posts and settlements. In 1749, French soldiers from Quebec launched an expedition to the forks to unite Canada with French Louisiana via the rivers, during 1753–54, the British hastily built Fort Prince George before a larger French force drove them off. The French built Fort Duquesne based on LaSalles 1669 claims, the French and Indian War, the North American front of the Seven Years War, began with the future Pittsburgh as its center. British General Edward Braddock was dispatched with Major George Washington as his aide to take Fort Duquesne, the British and colonial force were defeated at Braddocks Field. General John Forbes finally took the forks in 1758, Forbes began construction on Fort Pitt, named after William Pitt the Elder while the settlement was named Pittsborough
2.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
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Art museum
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An art museum or art gallery is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection, the term is used for both public galleries, which are non-profit or publicly owned museums that display selected collections of art. On the other hand, private galleries refers to the commercial enterprises for the sale of art, however, both types of gallery may host traveling exhibits or temporary exhibitions including art borrowed from elsewhere. In broad terms, in North American usage, the word gallery alone often implies a private gallery, the term contemporary art gallery refers usually to a privately owned for-profit commercial gallery. These galleries are found clustered together in large urban centers. Smaller cities are home to at least one gallery, but they may also be found in towns or villages. Contemporary art galleries are open to the general public without charge, however. They usually profit by taking a portion of art sales, from 25% to 50% is typical, there are also many non-profit or collective galleries. Some galleries in cities like Tokyo charge the artists a flat rate per day, curators often create group shows that say something about a certain theme, trend in art, or group of associated artists. Galleries sometimes choose to represent artists exclusively, giving them the opportunity to show regularly, a gallerys definition can also include the artist cooperative or artist-run space, which often operates as a space with a more democratic mission and selection process. A vanity gallery is an art gallery that charges fees from artists in order to show their work, the shows are not legitimately curated and will frequently or usually include as many artists as possible. Most art professionals are able to identify them on an artists resume, University art museums and galleries constitute collections of art that are developed, owned, and maintained by all kinds of schools, community colleges, colleges, and universities. This phenomenon exists in both the West and East, making it a global practice, although largely overlooked, there are over 700 university art museums in America alone. This number, in comparison to other kinds of art museums, throughout history, large and expensive works of art have generally been commissioned by religious institutions and monarchs and been displayed in temples, churches, and palaces. Although these collections of art were private, they were made available for viewing for a portion of the public. In classical times, religious institutions began to function as a form of art gallery. Wealthy Roman collectors of engraved gems and other precious objects often donated their collections to temples and it is unclear how easy it was in practice for the public to view these items. At the Palace of Versailles, entrance was restricted to wearing the proper apparel – the appropriate accessories could be hired from shops outside
4.
North Shore (Pittsburgh)
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The North Shore is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvanias North Side. It has a zip code of 15212, and has representation on Pittsburgh City Council by both the members for District 1 and 6. The neighborhood is home to Heinz Field, PNC Park and The Andy Warhol Museum and it is developing rapidly between the two stadiums. Two new light rail opened in the spring of 2012. The North Side station is located beside PNC Park and near the portal of the Allegheny River Tunnel. Allegheny station is located by Heinz Field, and is the current western terminus of the line, in October 2014 two 11-story office skyscrapers were proposed for the area by local parking lot manager Alco Parking. The project is likely to move forward, as soon as a tenant can be found. Allegheny Center, Central Northside, Allegheny West, Downtown Pittsburgh, Chateau, East Allegheny, Troy Hill, list of Pittsburgh neighborhoods Interactive Pittsburgh Neighborhoods Map
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.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
7.
Pop art
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Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art presented a challenge to traditions of art by including imagery from popular culture such as advertising. In pop art, material is sometimes removed from its known context, isolated. Pop art employs aspects of culture, such as advertising, comic books. One of its aims is to use images of popular culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any culture and it is also associated with the artists use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques. Pop art is interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism. Due to its utilization of found objects and images, it is similar to Dada, Pop art and minimalism are considered to be art movements that precede postmodern art, or are some of the earliest examples of postmodern art themselves. Pop art often takes imagery that is currently in use in advertising, product labeling and logos figure prominently in the imagery chosen by pop artists, seen in the labels of Campbells Soup Cans, by Andy Warhol. Even the labeling on the outside of a box containing food items for retail has been used as subject matter in pop art. The origins of pop art in North America developed differently from Great Britain, in the United States, pop art was a response by artists, it marked a return to hard-edged composition and representational art. They used impersonal, mundane reality, irony, and parody to defuse the personal symbolism, in the U. S. some artwork by Larry Rivers, Alex Katz and Man Ray anticipated pop art. By contrast, the origins of pop art in post-War Britain, while employing irony, early pop art in Britain was a matter of ideas fueled by American popular culture when viewed from afar. Similarly, pop art was both an extension and a repudiation of Dadaism, among those artists in Europe seen as producing work leading up to pop art are, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, and Kurt Schwitters. During the 1920s, American artists Gerald Murphy, Charles Demuth and Stuart Davis created paintings that contained pop culture imagery, the Independent Group, founded in London in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to the pop art movement. They were a gathering of young painters, sculptors, architects, writers and their group discussions centered on pop culture implications from elements such as mass advertising, movies, product design, comic strips, science fiction and technology. This material of found objects such as advertising, comic characters, magazine covers. One of the collages in that presentation was Paolozzis I was a Rich Mans Plaything, following Paolozzis seminal presentation in 1952, the IG focused primarily on the imagery of American popular culture, particularly mass advertising. Nevertheless, Alloway was one of the critics to defend the inclusion of the imagery of mass culture in the fine arts
8.
Andy Warhol
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Andy Warhol was an American artist who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Warhol initially pursued a career as a commercial illustrator. After exhibiting his work in galleries in the late 1950s. He promoted a collection of known as Warhol superstars, and is credited with coining the widely used expression 15 minutes of fame. In the late 1960s, he managed and produced the rock band The Velvet Underground. He authored numerous books, including The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and Popism and he is also notable as a gay man who lived openly as such before the gay liberation movement. Warhol has been the subject of retrospective exhibitions, books. The Andy Warhol Museum in his city of Pittsburgh, which holds an extensive permanent collection of art. Many of his creations are very collectible and highly valuable, the highest price ever paid for a Warhol painting is US$105 million for a 1963 canvas titled Silver Car Crash, his works include some of the most expensive paintings ever sold. A2009 article in The Economist described Warhol as the bellwether of the art market, Warhol was born on August 6,1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was the child of Ondrej Warhola and Julia, whose first child was born in their homeland. His parents were working-class Lemko emigrants from Mikó, located in todays northeastern Slovakia, Warhols father emigrated to the United States in 1914, and his mother joined him in 1921, after the death of Warhols grandparents. Warhols father worked in a coal mine, the family lived at 55 Beelen Street and later at 3252 Dawson Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family was Byzantine Catholic and attended St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church, Andy Warhol had two older brothers—Pavol, the oldest, was born before the family emigrated, Ján was born in Pittsburgh. Pavols son, James Warhola, became a childrens book illustrator. He became a hypochondriac, developing a fear of hospitals and doctors, often bedridden as a child, he became an outcast at school and bonded with his mother. At times when he was confined to bed, he drew, listened to the radio, Warhol later described this period as very important in the development of his personality, skill-set and preferences. When Warhol was 13, his father died in an accident, as a teenager, Warhol graduated from Schenley High School in 1945
9.
Whitney Museum of American Art
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The Whitney Museum of American Art – known informally as the Whitney – is an art museum located in Manhattan. It was founded in 1931 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, a wealthy and prominent American socialite, the Whitney focuses on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Its permanent collection more than 21,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, films, videos. The museums Annual and Biennial exhibitions have long been a venue for younger, from 1966 to 2014, the Whitney was located at 945 Madison Avenue at East 75th Street in Manhattans Upper East Side. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the namesake and founder, was herself a well-regarded sculptor as well as a serious art collector. With the aid of her assistant, Juliana R. Force, in 1929, she offered to donate over 500 works of art to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the museum declined the gift. This, along with the apparent preference for European modernism at the recently opened Museum of Modern Art, led Whitney to start her own museum, exclusively for American art, in 1929. Force became the first director of the museum, and under her guidance, in 1954, the museum left its original location and moved to a small structure on 54th Street connected to and behind the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street. On April 15,1958, a fire on the floor of MOMA that killed one person forced the evacuation of paintings. Among the paintings moved in the evacuation was A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte which had been on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1961, the museum began seeking a site for a larger building. The Whitney settled in 1966 at the southeast corner of Madison Avenue at 75th Street in Manhattans Upper East Side, in 1967, Mauricio Lasansky showed The Nazi Drawings. The exhibition traveled to the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the institution grappled with space problems for decades. From 1973 to 1983 the Whitney operated its first branch at 55 Water Street, in 1983 Philip Morris installed a Whitney branch in the lobby of its Park Avenue headquarters. In 1981 the museum opened a space in Stamford, Connecticut. Each museum had its own director, and all plans were to be approved by a Whitney committee, but each time the effort was abandoned, either because of the cost or the design or both. In order to secure space for the museums collections, then-director Thomas N. Armstrong III developed plans for a 10-story. The proposed addition, designed by Michael Graves and announced in 1985, Graves had proposed demolishing the flanking brownstones down to the East 74th Street corner for a complementary addition. After the project gradually lost the support of many of the museum’s trustees, between 1995 and 1998, the building underwent a renovation and addition by Richard Gluckman
10.
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
11.
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
12.
Essex Crossing
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Essex Crossing is a planned mixed-use development in New York Citys Lower East Side, part of the existing area known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area. The development will cost an estimated US$1.1 billion and it will sit on a total of nine city blocks, most of them occupied by parking lots that replaced tenements razed in 1967. Essex Crossing, originally approved as a component of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area in October 2012, is expected to create 1,000 housing units,1,000 permanent jobs, and 5,000 construction jobs. The plan was presented to the public in September 2013 by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, SPURA which covers five vacant plots of land acquired as part of a 1965 urban renewal plan, near Delancey and Grand Streets. Some original SPURA land was developed, but five lots remain vacant to this day. However, political corruption abounded, and the new apartments were never built, during the Koch administration that ended in 1989, the city contracted with Sam LeFrak to build, but massive divided opposition caused it to be withdrawn. The land still sat vacant in 2012, the Board, community and city planners and public officials will finalize the plans for development. On October 11,2012, the New York City Council approved the project, then referred to as SPURA. On September 18,2013, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a plan for the Essex Crossing project. In June 2014, demolition of structures in the area commenced, on August 2,2014, it was revealed that a municipal parking lot at Broome and Essex Streets would be closed for soil testing and for planning of the future Warhol museum. Groundbreaking for the crossing was said to come as early as spring 2015, on December 31, another parking lot was closed, this time a private one on Suffolk Street. Final designs for Essex Crossing will be released on January 14,2015, the Essex Street Market and a firehouse on Broome Street will be demolished by early 2015. Upon its completion, it will comprise the Essex Street Market, restaurants, office space, a theater. The buildings, designed by Herman Jessor, were finished in 1959, the Blue Tower is not LEED certified. The tower had a characteristic slant that sets it apart from buildings in the vicinity. The 15, 000-square-foot market is made up of approximately 35 individual stalls that range in size from 90 to 600 square feet, in September 2013 it was announced that the market would be integrated into the Essex Crossing. The new building will have 39 stalls and two restaurants, an existing parking garage at 107 Essex Street, north of Delancey Street, is also being renovated as part of the redevelopment plan. Originally slated to be converted into housing under an idea by Councilwoman Margaret Chin, it was dropped from the project, part of the development includes a new public park on Broome Street between Suffolk and Clinton streets, spanning 15,000 square feet
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