New York's Little Italy area
Glossy skyscrapers tower over taxi-packed, designer shop-lined avenues in this fast-paced city, its residents hopping from one trend to another. But behind the brassy exterior is a fascinating immigrant past. This cultural melting pot permeates New York from its varied neighbourhoods to its gastronomic prowess. For a bigger and tastier bite of the Big Apple, visit the sights that provide an insight into its captivating past.
As they were the first port of call for New York immigrants, it's apt to start with the Harbor Islands. Liberty Island is, of course, home to the Statue of Liberty, the foremost symbol of the American Dream, standing 350-feet high from the base with torch and stone tablet. The observation desk offers stunning views. Built a hundred years after the American Revolution, the statue became an emotive sight for those entering the harbour and still serves as a reminder that this is very much a city of immigrants.
Equally poignant is Ellis Island, across from Lady Liberty. In the late nineteenth century, an influx of Europeans arrived in New York and at Ellis Island's immigration station, they were checked, vetted and had futures determined. Now the Museum of Immigration, it's an indisputable New York must-see. Forget dusty, musty exhibits. The step-by-step process undertaken by immigrants is depicted via first-hand accounts, interesting artefacts, moving photographs and the intact Registry Room and dormitory. You can also see the award-winning film Island of Hope, Island of Tears.
Back on the mainland of Manhattan, head to bustling Chinatown and visit Five Points, a once-wealthy area which declined in the mid-nineteenth century as criminals, sailors and immigrants descended - and prostitution and crime took over. It's where Irish gangs like Dead Rabbits and Pug Uglies fought out their battles (vividly portrayed in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York) but only in 1890 with Jacob A. Riis's book How The Other Half Lives were the plight of this neighbourhood and difficulties of immigrant life highlighted.
A great neighbourhood to visit is the Lower East Side, a genuine melting pot with Dominicans, Chinese and Jews still resident. But the area was once a slum for half a million Eastern European Jews. The excellent Lower East Side Tenement Museum shows the cramped, rundown interior of an 1863 tenement - where four families would share two toilets. Rubbing shoulders with the Lower East Side is the East Village, former haunt of WH Auden and Beat Generation writers like Jack Kerouac.
There's more of Old New York if you look. The Chelsea Hotel is the city's first landmark, with artists, writers and actors like Mark Twain, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Andy Warhol among the former residents. More notoriously, Sid Vicious murdered Nancy Spungen there in 1978. Wall Street has existed since 1635 when the city's first banks and insurance companies set up and it remains the hub of international finance with the New York Stock Exchange at no.11.
Other sights include the New-York Historical Society, the city's oldest museum with 6 million pieces of art, literature and memorabilia including George Washington's inaugural chair; Bowling Green, New York's oldest public park; City Hall, where the Declaration of Independence was first recited in New York in 1776 and the South Sea Seaport, which dates back to the 1600s and was formerly the heart of the port district.
New York is undoubtedly fabulous - but don't miss out on "Old York" while you're there...
