The city site

Sections of the granite bedrock of New York date to about 100 million years ago, but the topography of the present city is largely the product of the glacial recession that marked the end of the Wisconsin Glacial Stage about 10,000 years ago. Great erratic boulders in Manhattan’s Central Park, deep kettle depressions in Brooklyn and Queens, and the glacial moraine that remains in parts of the metropolitan area provide silent testimony to the enormous power of the ice. Glacial retreat also carved out the waterways around the city. The Hudson and East rivers, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and Arthur Kill are, in reality, estuaries of the Atlantic Ocean, and the Hudson is tidal as far north as Troy. The approximately 600 miles (1,000 km) of New York shoreline are locked in constant combat with the ocean, as it erodes the land and adds new sediments elsewhere. Although the harbour is constantly dredged, ship channels are continually filled with river silt and are too shallow for more modern deep-sea vessels.

New York City: Metropolitan area New York City metropolitan area. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

New York City: Central area Central New York City, depicting the borough of Manhattan southward from Central Park. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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South of the rockbound terrain of Manhattan stretches a sheltered, deepwater anchorage offering easy access to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1524 the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to enter the harbour, which he named Santa Margarita, and he reported that the hills surrounding the vast expanse of New York Bay appeared to be rich in minerals; more than 90 species of precious stone and 170 of the world’s minerals have actually been found in New York. Verrazzano’s daring expedition was commemorated in 1964, when what was then the world’s longest suspension bridge was dedicated to span the Narrows at the entrance to Upper New York Bay.

Walk through Central Park and the Garment District and hop a ferry past the Statue of Liberty in New York City A look at New York City in the 1980s, showing activity in the Garment District and views of the public transportation system and the urban landscape, including the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. See all videos for this article

Only the third largest American port at the time of the American Revolution, New York gradually achieved trade domination and by the mid-1800s handled more than half of the country’s oceangoing travelers and commercial trade. After 1900 New York was the world’s busiest port, a distinction it held until the 1950s. Cargo containerization, the obsolescence of its waterfront piers, and soaring labour costs shifted business to the New Jersey side of the river after the 1960s, but at the beginning of the 21st century the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey still dominated the water trade of the northeastern United States.