Fifth Avenue, the great modern central thoroughfare, divides the city into eastside and westside. Here or hereabout are the largest banks, churches, museums, libraries, shops, palaces, and tenements in America.
Fifth Avenue below Fifty-ninth Street is now largely occupied by store and office buildings where once were palatial private houses; and between Madison Square and Fifty-ninth Street contains many hotels and clubs, and the New York Public Library.
The original great thoroughfare, Broadway, runs a northwesterly course through the regular cross street arrangement, making some slight deflections, quite through the middle of the island.
For a distance of two and one-half miles from Fifty-ninth to One Hundred and Tenth Street, Central Park divides the city into two parts.
Other parks are Van Cortlandt, one thousand and sixty-nine acres; Pelham Bay, one thousand seven hundred acres; and Bronx Park, six hundred and sixty-one and sixty-one hundredths acres, containing the Botanical and Zoological Gardens. Prospect Park, Brooklyn, contains five hundred and sixteen and one-quarter acres. A recreation course, skirting the Harlem River, and reserved for fast driving, is the “Speedway,” and extending along the Hudson for three miles is Riverside Drive, with its striking views of the Palisades. On an abrupt elevation is Morningside Park, on which are located the new buildings of Columbia University, St. Luke’s Hospital, and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Beyond Morningside Park is a rocky ridge known as Washington Heights.
The most thickly settled part of Brooklyn borough is in the north, and the business portion is that part fronting on East River and the upper harbor. The southern part is largely marshland. At the southwestern extremity of Long Island, in this borough, stretches a sandbar known as Coney Island, on which are the widely-known popular summer resorts. Queensboro has several large population centers, among them Long Island City and Flushing. Richmond borough (Staten Island) contains numerous villages.
Communication throughout the city is afforded by an extensive system of electric surface, electric elevated roads, the great subway railroad system, and by ferries plying between the boroughs.
The subway has, for part of its course, four tracks, two of which are for express trains. It begins at the City Hall and traverses the whole length of Manhattan Island. The first length of eight miles to Washington Heights was opened in 1904. The following year the line was extended to the Battery, and also under the Harlem River into Bronx. In 1908 a further extension was opened between the Battery and Brooklyn by way of a tunnel. In 1909, a double-tube tunnel, the McAdoo, connected the city at Sixth Avenue and Twenty-third Street with Hoboken, N. J.
In 1910 several tunnels under the Hudson and East Rivers were opened. Other great works of development are almost constantly in progress to deal with the traffic requirements, including further subways, a number of river tunnels, and additional railroad terminals. A recent gigantic railway enterprise is the construction of the Pennsylvania tunnel under the Hudson River.
Some of the larger features of New York call for more detailed notice.