New York city's Parks and Culture

~ Although New York is the most populous and densely settled of all American cities, more than 1,000 individual parks with more than 37,000 acres of parkland are available to the public. ~

The creation of Central Park between 1857 and 1875 affected the development of public open space throughout the United States.

Almost all subsequent U.S. park designers imitated some or all of the features found in Central Park.

American landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux designed the 341-hectare (843-acre) park, located in the center of Manhattan.

It has numerous playgrounds, a children's zoo, 8 km (5 mi) of bridle paths, bicycling and jogging lanes, a large reservoir, a sailboat pond, two ice-skating rinks, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, a swimming pool, and a lake for row-boating.

On summer evenings, there are free band concerts, free dances, and free nightly performances of plays in the Delacorte Theatre, an amphitheater that seats 2,300.

Of the park's many monuments the most famous is the 3,500-year-old Egyptian obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle.

Two of the largest parks, Pelham Bay Park, with 862 hectares (2,130 acres), and Van Cortlandt Park, with 464 hectares (1,146 acres), are in the Bronx.

The Bronx also has New York's largest zoo and largest botanical garden, both located in the 292-hectare (721-acre) Bronx Park.

The largest park in Queens is Flushing Meadows-Corona, with 509 hectares (1,257 acres). It was the site of two world's fairs.

Brooklyn's Prospect Park and Botanic Garden are two favorite retreats in that borough. Beaches fringe many of the city's parks and recreation areas, such as those in Pelham Bay, Rockaway, Coney Island, and South Beach.

Sports:---
New York offers almost every kind of sport and recreation.

Yankee Stadium in the Bronx is one of the best-known outdoor athletic fields in the United States and the home of the New York Yankees.

It is known as “the house that Ruth built,” because the Yankees dominated baseball and drew millions of fans with the play of the legendary and charismatic Yankee baseball great Babe Ruth.

Yankee Stadium has also hosted dozens of other spectacular events, from heavyweight boxing championships to papal masses.

Adjacent to each other in Queens, Shea Stadium is the home of the National League New York Mets professional baseball team, while the National Tennis Center is the home of the annual United States Open Tennis Championships.

The New York Marathon in the fall is now the largest running event in the nation, annually attracting 30,000 or more entrants in a race through the five boroughs.

Two professional football teams play in the area: the New York Giants and the New York Jets, both of the National Football League.

The Giants formerly played in Yankee Stadium and the Jets once made their home in Shea Stadium. Both teams now play their home games in Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Madison Square Garden is perhaps the nation’s most famous indoor arena.

The home of the New York Knicks professional basketball team and the New York Rangers professional hockey team, the garden is actually the fourth building to have that name, as each successive structure was replaced to make way for a larger facility.

The first and the second were actually on Madison Square, and they become famous for public events as well as the rooftop restaurant.

The current edifice, which also hosts rock concerts, boxing matches, and religious and cultural events, is situated above Pennsylvania Station, the nation’s busiest passenger rail terminal.

Zoos and Gardens :----
The New York Zoological Park, better known as the Bronx Zoo, is the largest of the city’s five zoos.

With 3,500 animals, it is one of the finest zoos in the United States.

Established in 1899 and extensively redesigned at the end of the 20th century, it now occupies about 100 hectares (250 acres).

The Bronx Zoo was a pioneer in arranging animals according to the continent from which they came and in placing them in enclosures similar to their natural habitats.

The Bronx Zoo includes Jungle World, an indoor rain forest; Wild Asia, where visitors ride in monorail cars and animals roam at large; and the World of Darkness, where nocturnal animals can be observed.

Also in the central part of the Bronx is the New York Botanical Garden. One of the oldest and largest such institutions in the United States, it includes 12 outdoor display gardens and extensive walking trails on its 100 hectares (250 acres) of grounds.

Similarly, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden adjacent to Prospect Park presents a glorious spectacle during the flowering season. Its 20 hectares (50 acres) contain more than 12,000 different species of plants, including 900 kinds of roses alone.

A special section of Japanese cherry trees is an unusual feature of the garden.