New York City, New York (A649)

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Scenes from the View-Master packet New York City (A649) from the Famous Cities Series.

 

Packet Cover

 

Booklet Cover

 

From the 16-page booklet:

NEW YORK CITY

New York City is all things to all people. To everyone in the world who has seen American movies it is excitement and glamor and wealth beyond imagining. It is sirens wailing through teeming streets as the good guys chase the bad guys. It is a sable-draped blonde walking a pair of poodles up Park Avenue. It is a sad-eyed Puerto Rican child in a rat-infested tenement. It is a hard-hatted construction worker strolling on a girder a thousand feet above the ground. Tail-coated first-nighters jamming Sardi’s after the final curtain. Garment workers in gesticulating clusters on Seventh Avenue at the noon hour. Impeccably-attired Wall Streeters and Madison Avenue-ites grabbing a quick one before catching the 5:42. It is the wealthiest and the most-publicized city in the world—and to eight million Americans it is home.

A FEW FACTS AND FIGURES. To most non-residents, New York means Manhattan Island, yet two other boroughs—Brooklyn and Queens—have greater populations than the borough of Manhattan. As might be expected, any and all statistics describing the great city are staggering. Some examples: More police officers (about 30,000) than total inhabitants of many fair-sized cities. Assessed value of real estate nearly 30 billion dollars. More than 800 schools with more than 40,000 teachers.

GEOGRAPHICALLY SPEAKING. The city is situated at the mouth of the Hudson River. Its five boroughs are Manhattan, an island between the Hudson and East Rivers and separated from the mainland by the Harlem River; the Bronx, north of the Harlem; Brooklyn and Queens, on the western end of Long Island; and Richmond, on Staten Island southwest of Brooklyn and opposite New Jersey.

THE HUMAN SIDE. Virtually every race and nation in the world is represented in New York. The city has more Negroes than any city in Africa, more Jews than Palestine, more Irish than Dublin, and more Italians than Rome.

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1

Statue of Liberty

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“Miss Liberty,” Bedloe’s Island, Gift of France, 1884

 

From the 16-page booklet:

“FIRST LADY”

A fitting place to begin our View-Master Guided Picture Tour of New York City is with that symbol of the city and of the nation—the Statue of Liberty. For millions of immigrants and travelers the first glimpse of anything American has been this colossal token of friendship between our republic and another. Presented to the American people by the people of France, “Miss Liberty” was erected in 1884 on Bedloe’s Island at the entrance to New York Harbor and unveiled two years later. Total height of the statue and its pedestal is 305 feet, six inches. Hundreds of thousands have climbed the 168 steps inside for the spectacular view from the crown, which has 25 windows and can accommodate up to 30 viewers. A ladder in the arm leads up to the torch but is too steep for public use.

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2

Manhattan

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Manhattan Island Skyscrapers

 

From the 16-page booklet:

CELEBRATED SKYLINE

Here is one more photograph of what is probably the most-photographed spot on earth—Lower Manhattan. This jungle of towering structures constitutes, in effect, the commercial and financial capital of the world. Occupying, roughly, the area known as New Amsterdam before the British took it away from the Dutch in 1664, this section of Manhattan Island is what the New Yorker means when he says “downtown” as opposed to “uptown.”

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5

City Hall

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The City Hall was built in 1811

 

From the 16-page booklet:

SEAT OF GOVERNMENT

Built in 1811, New York’s City Hall is one of the ornaments of American architecture. From its spacious halls officials govern a municipality whose annual budget exceeds that of some entire states. It faces a 10 1/2-acre park which was New York’s Common in colonial times. Rich in history, the park was a meeting place for the Sons of Liberty in Revolutionary days. Beneath its trees the Declaration of Independence was read to a crowd of patriots in the presence of General Washington.

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10

Empire State Building

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Empire State Building

 

From the 16-page booklet:

“TOPLESS TOWER”

New York City has been sprouting world’s tallest buildings for many years. Record holder since 1931 is the Empire State Building, viewed here from Fifth Avenue at Forty-third Street. This colossal structure stands 1472 feet high, not counting the 222-foot television tower that pierces the sky above the 102nd story. Each day the building is invaded by an army of 25,000 office workers, and each year more than 1,500,000 sightseers shoot up in its elevators to view the panorama of the great city. the building’s newest addition is the “Freedom Lights,” a set of revolving lights each weighing a ton.

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12

Grand Central Terminal

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Grand Concourse of Grand Central Terminal

 

From the 16-page booklet:

GIANT STATION

Through the vast main concourse of Grand Central Terminal swarm hundreds of thousands of people every workday. The concourse is 272 feet long, 125 wide and 116 high. It contains the world’s largest color photograph and the world’s largest indoor clock. Deep in the ground below are 48 acres of trackage whose 123 tracks carry 450 trains daily with about 1/4-million passengers.

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14

St. Patrick’s Cathedral

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St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Built 1888

 

From the 16-page booklet:

CENTER OF WORSHIP

St. Patrick’s Cathedral at Madison and Fifth Avenues, stands uncompromisingly amid a thicket of skyscrapers like a monument to another era. Seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the massive Gothic structure resembles the great cathedral at Cologne. Completed in 1888 after thirty years of building, the church is 405 feet long and its towers rise 330 feet above Fifth Avenue. Inside, the central nave rises 112 feet, and its stained glass windows are rated among the finest in the world.

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15

Central Park

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Conservatory Lake in 840-acre Central Park

 

From the 16-page booklet:

BIG CITY PLAYGROUND

New Yorkers wanting to “get away from it all” don’t have far to go. The 840 acres of Central Park, stretching for 2 1/2 miles up the middle of Manhattan, is available to them winter and summer. In this rectangle of both man-made and natural beauties can be found almost every known form of recreation—from a chess-and-checkers pavilion to a swanky nightclub. Here you can row a boat on Conservatory Lake, shown here, ride a horse or carriage, visit a zoo, go lawn-bowling, ice-skate, play baseball or tennis, admire beautiful formal gardens, watch a marionette show, dine in a sidewalk café, or just sit around lazily watching the fascinating passing parade.

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17

Columbia University

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Low Memorial Library, Columbia University

 

From the 16-page booklet:

SEAT OF LEARNING

Architects agree that the Low Memorial Library, one of the first five buildings erected when Columbia University moved to its present location in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights in 1896, is one of America’s most beautiful buildings. The university, one of the nation’s oldest and most renowned, originated in 1754 as King’s College in a vestry room of Trinity Church. One of the biggest and richest educational institutions in the world, it embraces Columbia College, the undergraduate school, and schools of engineering, architecture, political science, medicine, philosophy, dental surgery, pharmacy, and education.

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21

Kennedy Airport

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Kennedy International Airport

 

From the 16-page booklet:

AERIAL GATEWAY

Our tour comes to an end at Kennedy (formerly Idlewild) International Airport. At this gateway to the world more than 12 million passengers arrive and depart every year on scheduled airlines. This flourishing “terminal city,” which was built at a cost of $150 million, includes terminals which can accommodate 140 planes at one time. Largest and most important structure at the huge airport is the International Arrival Building, which includes all flights from foreign countries. Covering an area of 4900 acres, the airport has five runways, the longest nearly 15,000 feet.

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