V Major Cities

Washington, D.C.

Washington D.C. is the capital of the United States. D.C. stands for District of Columbia, the name of the capital territory. Washington is the name of the city that fills the entire District of Columbia.

●The White House

The White House is a grand mansion with 132 rooms at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the middle of Washington, D.C. It is the America's oldest federal building, where the president of the United States works and lives. Philadelphia architect James Hoban designed the Georgian-style gray sandstone building. George Washington, the first US president, helped lay the building's first stone in 1792. John Adams, the second president, was the first president to live in the White House.

●Capitol Hill

The United States Capitol is located in Washington, D.C. It has been the seat of the US Senate and House of Representatives since 1800. William Thornton, a man with no formal training in architecture won the competition for design of a new United States Capitol in the early 1790s. George Washington laid the cornerstone for the new Capitol on 18 September 1793, and it was completed over a period of decades under the supervision of many architects. The building is situated on Capitol Hill, overlooking the Potomac River.

●The Smithsonian Institution

The Smithsonian Institution is the largest museum complex（综合建筑）in the world. Built in 1846, it was a bequest（遗赠）from British scientist James Smithson. The Smithsonian owns dinosaur bones, historic airplanes, a zoo full of wild animals, famous paintings, and so on. At the Air and Space Museum you can see the first airplane. The Wright brothers flew it in 1903 and the command module（太空船驾驶舱）from Apollo 11, which was the first human mission to land on the Moon.

●Washington Monument

Washington, D.C. is well known for its monuments. No building in the District of Columbia is taller than the Washington Monument. It's 169 meters high. That is taller than a 50-story building. The Washington Monument was constructed to honor the memory of George Washington.

●Thomas Jefferson Memorial

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial, completed in 1943, honors the man who was principal author of the Declaration of Independence, the nation's third president, and the first US Secretary of State. The memorial's walls are inscribed with some of Jefferson's most famous quotations. Inside the round building of the Jefferson Memorial stands a bronze statue of America's third president, Thomas Jefferson.

●Lincoln Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial, a monument dedicated to President Abraham Lincoln（1861—1865）, stands in Potomac Park in Washington, D.C. The structure was inspired by classical Greek architecture, and it houses a grand, marble statue of Lincoln. His short Gettysburg Address is inscribed on a marble wall. He delivered this speech in 1863 during the Civil War. The Lincoln Memorial is where 200,000 people in 1963 heard Martin Luther King, Jr., give his famous“I Have a Dream”speech, which expressed the hopes of the civil rights movement in moving words.

●Roosevelt Memorial

The Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial consists of four outdoor rooms with waterfalls, pools, and gardens. A quotation from Roosevelt is engraved on the wall. Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States. He led the nation through the difficult years of the Great Depression（1930s）and World War II（1939—1945）.

There is only one statue of Roosevelt in the memorial, sitting in a chair with his faithful dog, Fala. There is a statue of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, the first wife of a president to be honored in a national memorial. She is shown before the seal of the United Nations（UN）to which she was the first US delegate in 1948.

New York City

A financial, commercial and cultural center, New York City is the most populous city in the United States and the fourth largest in the world（after Tokyo in Japan, Mexico City in Mexico and São Paulo in Brazil）. About 8.1 million people live in New York City, and 18.3 million live in the city and its surrounding urban area.

In 1626, Manhattan Island was purchased from the Indians by Peter Minuit. It cost about 2,400 dollars. At first, it was called New Amsterdam by the Dutch settlers and later was renamed New York by the English. The city grew rapidly from a deserted island into now a great metropolis.The fast expansion of New York is largely due to its location. It is situated on the best American harbor on the Atlantic Ocean. It also lies on the Hudson River, which allows water transportation into the middle of the United States.

The city has five boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island. As a city of islands, the Bronx is the only borough on the mainland. The other boroughs are on islands. Brooklyn and Queens occupy the western end of Long Island. Water surrounds Staten Island and Manhattan. These two boroughs face each other across New York Harbor.

New York is the world's most ethnically diverse city. About one third of New York's residents, over 2.6 million people, were born in other countries. It is famous for its Chinatown. It also has the largest Jewish population of any city outside Israel. After the blacks were released from slavery, a large number of them moved into cities like New York, Philadelphia, and Washington.

New York City is a constellation of famous buildings. The most outstanding ones include the Empire State Building, United Nations headquarters, Rockefeller Center, and the destroyed twin towers of World Trade Center.

●Empire State Building

The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark in New York City and one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. Its name is derived from the nickname for the state of New York（the Empire State）. It stood as the world's tallest building for more than forty years, from its completion in 1931 until the construction of the World Trade Center's North Tower was completed in 1972. Following the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001, the Empire State Building once again became the tallest building in New York City and New York State, the third tallest skyscraper in the Americas（after Chicago's Willis Tower and Trump International Hotel and Tower）and the 15th tallest in the world.

The Empire State Building was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1986. In 2007, it was ranked number one on the List of America's Favorite Architecture according to the AIA.

●United Nations Headquarters

The landmark buildings of the United Nations（UN）stand in Manhattan, alongside the East River in New York City. Established in 1945, the UN moved into its New York headquarters in the fall of 1952, and the majority of the world's nations are now members. Each country displays its flag near the entryway.

●Rockefeller Center

Rockefeller Center is a vast complex of 19 commercial buildings covering 89,000 m2in the center of Midtown Manhattan. It is entertainment and shopping center, and home to NBC—TV and radio and other media. Built by the Rockefeller family, it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

●The Statue of Liberty

Standing on Staten Island in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States and is a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28,1886, designated as a National Monument in 1924 and restored for her centennial on July 4,1986.

●World Trade Center

The World Trade Center（WTC）was a complex located in the heart of New York City's downtown financial district whose seven buildings were destroyed in 2001 in the September 11 terrorist attacks. The most notable were the main two towers, which were 110 stories tall each, stood over 410 meters high, and occupied about one acre of the total 16 acre of the site's land.The complex contained 1.24 million m2of office space. When completed in 1972, the North Tower became the tallest building in the world for two years, surpassing the Empire State Building after a 40-year reign. The North Tower stood 417 meters tall and featured telecommunications antenna that was added at the top of the roof in 1978 and stood 110 meters tall.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, hijackers（劫持犯）flew two 767 jets into the complex, one into each tower, in a coordinated suicide attack. After burning for 56 minutes, the South Tower collapsed, followed a half-hour later by the North Tower, with the attacks on the World Trade Center resulting in 2,750 deaths. The process of cleanup and recovery at the World Trade Center site took eight months. The first new building at the site was 7 World Trade Center which opened in May 2006. The site is currently being rebuilt with six new skyscrapers and a memorial to the casualties of the attacks.

●Central Park

Central Park is a large park in the middle of New York City. It offers a zoo, a nature center, playgrounds, paths for running and bicycling, and places for ice skating, roller skating, and playing sports. Horse-drawn carriages are popular with both tourists and New Yorkers.

●Wall Street

Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, running through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange, New York's financial center and the leading financial center for the world; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. You can find many banks, stock markets,stockbrokers, and other financial institutions along this famous street and in the Financial District.

Landmark buildings on Wall Street include Federal Hall, 14 Wall Street, 40 Wall Street, and the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Broad Street. In 1789, Federal Hall and Wall Street was the scene of the United States' first presidential inauguration. George Washington took the oath of office on the balcony of Federal Hall overlooking Wall Street on April 30, 1789. This was also the location of the passing of the Bill of Rights.

●Broadway Theater District

New York City's Broadway theater district is considered by many to be the epitome（典范，缩影）of world-class stage talent and entertainment and Broadway shows in New York have included famous productions over the years. Broadway is a generic（总称的）term that has grown to include more than just Broadway Street in New York City. It is an entire area on and adjacent to Broadway Street in midtown Manhattan, in and around Times Square, and includes several theaters of varying sizes and popularity. Times Square is a major intersection in Manhattan and a symbol of New York City. It is the site of the annual New Year's Eve ball drop; about 1 million revelers crowd Times Square for the New Year's Eve celebrations. Times Square has achieved the status of an iconic world landmark which is principally defined by its spectacular, animated digital advertisements. The theater district runs from about 40th Street to the mid-fifties. The majority of the theatres are between 7th and 8th Avenue.

●Greenwich Village

Greenwich Village is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families. Greenwich Village, however, was known in the late 19th—to earlier mid 20th centuries as the bohemian（放荡不羁的文化人）capital and the birthplace of the Beat movement（披头族，20世纪50年代末出现于美国知识阶层中的一颓废流派）. Greenwich Village was better known as Washington Square—based on the major landmark Washington Square Parkor in the 19th century.

Currently, artists and local historians bemoan the fact that the bohemian days of Greenwich Village are long gone, because of the extraordinarily high housing costs in the neighborhood. The artists have fled to otherplaces. Nevertheless, residents of Greenwich Village still possess a strong community identity and are proud of their neighborhood's unique history and fame, and its well-known liberal live-and-let-live attitude.

●Fifth Avenue

Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan. Fifth Avenue serves as a symbol of wealthy New York and is consistently ranked as one of the most expensive streets in the world. For several years starting in the mid-1990s, the shopping district between 49th and 57th Streets was ranked as having the world's most expensive retail spaces on a cost per square foot basis. The average rent on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan is $10,226 per square meter per year. In 2008, Forbes（《福布斯》）magazine ranked Fifth Avenue as being the most expensive street in the world.

Los Angeles

Located along the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles is the largest city in the state of California and the second largest in the United States. Often abbreviated as L.A. and nicknamed the City of Angels, Los Angeles has an estimated population of 3.8 million and the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is home to nearly 12.9 million residents. Its inhabitants are known as“Angelenos.”In 2008, Los Angeles was named the world's eighth most economically powerful city by Forbes.com, ahead of Shanghai and Toronto but behind Chicago and Paris.

●Location

Los Angeles sprawls over 1,290.6 km2in Southern California between the San Gabriel Mountains and the ocean. People depend on cars to get around this large area. As a result, the city develops powerful roads and freeways, and at the same time suffers from air pollution and traffic jams.

●History

Los Angeles was founded in 1781 by Spanish governor. It became a part of Mexico in 1821, following its independence from Spain. In 1848, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Los Angeles and California were purchased as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, thereby becoming part of the United States. It grew rapidly after railroads linked it to the Midwest and Eastern United States. Between 1880 and 1920, the population jumped from 11, 000 to 1 million people. In 1970, California became the US state with the largest population and in 1982, it surpassed Chicago to become the second largest US city and it is still growing.

Los Angeles is one of the world's centers of business, international trade, entertainment, culture, media, fashion, science, technology, and education. It is home to renowned institutions covering a broad range of professional and cultural fields, and is one of the most substantial economic engines within the United States. As the home base of Hollywood, it is known as the“Entertainment Capital of the World, ” leading the world in the creation of motion pictures, television production and recorded music. The importance of the entertainment business to the city has led many celebrities to call Los Angeles and its surrounding suburbs home.

●People

Los Angeles is home to a large number of people from China, Japan, Vietnam, and other places around the globe. Nearly half of the city's people are Hispanics. Most of the Hispanics are of Mexican ancestry. More Mexicans live in Los Angeles than in any other city except Mexico City. The city is also renowned for its great population of Chinese immigrants and displays of Chinese tradition and culture. Here you can find the famous Chinese American Museum, where materials and photographs that depict the experiences of Chinese Americans living in Southern California from 1850 to 2000 are collected. Los Angeles also has one of the largest Chinatowns in the United States.

●Capital of Movies

Los Angeles is called the capital of movies. Early in the 1900s, the movie industry moved from New York City to Los Angeles. Most of the movie studios were located in a part of Los Angeles called Hollywood. In 1923, a real estate agency put up a huge sign on a hilltop to advertise the area. The letters of the sign, which spell Hollywood, stand 14 meters tall. It is a city landmark.

Beverly Hills is a city in the western part of Los Angeles County. It is home to countless Hollywood celebrities and the wealthy. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are entirely surrounded by the city of Los Angeles. The area is called“Golden Triangle”with a population of 34,980 as of the 2006 census. Beverly Hills contains some of the largest homes in Los Angeles County and the nation. These homes range from the extravagant and luxurious in size, to the more elegant and modern homes, and then to the many small duplex（联式房屋）rental units and detached（独立的）homes with less than 280 square meters. The city's average household income is just over$87,000.

Movies are big business in Los Angeles. But there is a lot more going on than moviemaking. The city's seaport is one of the busiest in the United States. Los Angeles is a leading producer of aircraft and military equipment. It is also an important banking center.