Tag Archives: new york city

Chinatown

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The Chinatown in New York City is located north of the Financial District area of Lower Manhattan. It is one of the largest Chinatowns in the United States, and one of the oldest ethnic Chinese enclaves in the western hemisphere. Today in New York City area there are also the Flushing Chinatown and Brooklyn Chinatown where large concentration of Chinese can be found, but the Manhattan Chinatown remains to be a popular destination for tourists given its easy to reach location in Manhattan.

My first visit to Chinatown was during my first trip to New York City almost twenty years ago. We went there for dinner as a tour group for dinner, and we had the option of looking for Chinese food in Chinatown or Italian food in nearby Little Italy. Having spent my first few months in the United States as an exchange student in a small town in Michigan where there were not many Asians around, it was quite a shock to the senses to see so many Chinese around, walking on crowded sidewalk of Canal Street with street vendors selling souvenirs, luxury goods knockoffs, snacks, etc. and seeing stores and restaurants with Chinese signs.

Many years later, after spending years living in bigger cities where you can find more ethnic diversity, it’s no longer a novelty to visit Chinatown. But I still go there when visiting New York; you can still find good Chinese food there.

The photo below was taken during one of those meals at Chinatown. This one was at Joe’s Shanghai Restaurant, which is known for its Shanghai-style soup dumplings (xiao long bao). The little steamed dumpling actually has soup inside, so you have to eat it very carefully; put the dumpling on a spoon, bite the skin a little bit so you can drink in the soup, then you finish with the rest of the dumpling.

Xiao long bao (soup dumpling) at Joe's Shanghai

South Street Seaport

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The South Street Seaport is a historical area within walking distance from New York City’s Financial District. What used to be a harbor / pier is now turned into a modern shopping mall while preserving the Pier 17 building architecture, and a Maritime Museum with several historical ships was set outside the building. From the Pier 17 building, you can also see a nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge that connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

I’ve visited the South Street Seaport area several times while doing walking tour in the Lower Manhattan area. The nice view of the Brooklyn Bridge from there and the interesting contrast of having the historic ships with modern office buildings in the background make this place a good photo destination while in New York City. The Pier 17 shopping mall is also a nice place to stop and rest before continuing a walking tour.

The photo below was taken in an afternoon when I visited the Seaport. You can see the historic ships and Pier 17 in the photo.

Pier 17

Trinity Church

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Only one block away from the NYSE Building on Wall Street, there is another historical building that seems to be out of place with the tall buildings around. The Trinity Church, located at the corner of Wall Street and Broadway, was founded in 1697. The current building is the third building built on the same place in 1846. The architect of the building was Richard Upjohn, who was one of the co-founders of the American Institute of Architects.

The Trinity Church is one of the Episcopal churches in New York City. The church also has a chapel few blocks away from the main church building called the St. Paul’s Chapel. Opened in 1766, the St. Paul’s Chapel is the oldest surviving church building in Manhattan. George Washington worshipped at this chapel after his inauguration as the first President of the United States. In 2001, it became known as ‘The Little Chapel That Stood’ as it remained standing after the nearby World Trade Center twin towers collapsed during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

I’ve passed both the Trinity Church and the St. Paul’s Chapel when I did a walking tour around the Financial District. On one visit to the Trinity Church, I ended up not going in to see the church interior because there was a service going on. I did visit the churchyard next to the church. It was a nice oasis in the middle of the Financial District to retreat for a moment from the hustle and bustle of the city. One of the people buried there was Alexander Hamilton, the first United States Secretary of Treasury (his portrait appears on the US $10 bill).

The photo below was taken during my visit to the Trinity Churchyard. I noticed this cool reflection of the churchyard on the church’s door glass pane — an interesting perspective to see churchyard with the big office building next to it.

Trinity Church

Wall Street

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Not far from the Battery Park in New York City where you can board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, you can find the center of American financial industry, the New York Financial District with its famous street, Wall Street. On 11 Wall Street you can find the New York Stock Exchange building. The NYSE is the world’s largest stock exchange by market capitalization. Inside the NYSE building is the trading floor where the day-to-day business of the stock market is being conducted. Since the September 11 attacks, the trading floor is closed to public. Today if you want see the action inside in person, you can follow one of these suggestions on eHow: go on educational program or visit as part of a college class, apply for an internship at the NYSE, get a trading license and become an actual stock trader, or start a company and take it public.

I’ve only visited the NYSE as part of a walking tour in the area outside. Just right across the street from the NYSE building, there is another building that is also historically significant, the Federal Hall. The Federal Hall was the site where George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States, and the building was also home of the first Congress, the first Supreme Court, and the first Executive Branches. It’s worth the visit especially given its significance in the birth of the United States of America as a country.

The photo below was taken in front of the NYSE building. It’s the pediment part of the NYSE building facade, designed by John Quincy Adams Ward. Entitled “Integrity Protecting the Works of Man,” it depicts the 22-foot figure of Integrity in the center, with Agriculture and Mining to her left and Science, Industry and Invention on her right, representing the sources of American prosperity. The waves on either extreme of the pediment symbolize the ocean-to-ocean influence of the Exchange.

NYSE Building

New York City

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I finished my series of blog posts on National Historic Sites with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, both located near New York City. So I thought as my next series of postings I would write about places I’ve visited in this large city. New York City is the most populous, most densely populated, and most culturally diverse city in United States. It’s one of the major metropolitan areas in the world that does not require any introduction. But your view of this city may differ when you look at the city from the lens of a visitor vs. from the point of view of a city resident.

My first visit to New York City was almost twenty years ago, as part of a high school group from the Midwest. In the early 1990s, New York City was not as ‘clean’ and safe as it is today. I remember staying in an area in Brooklyn where we were warned not to get out to the street unless we’re in a group of at least four people, and on our first trip outside the place we stayed, we saw a limousine with bullet holes on the window passing by. I also remember dining at a restaurant supposedly famous with many celebrity visitors, having a ‘chicken noodle soup’ that was basically just chicken broth with some noodles and no chicken pieces in it, and paying $8 for that small bowl. I also experienced being offered illegal drugs while walking with friends in the Washington Square Park in SoHo area.

Several years later, I visited New York City again, this time with my family. We did a road trip after attending my grad school graduation. We went for a day trip into the city, taking the Grayline bus tour around the city. I remembered my parents and my brother said they had enough seeing the big city after only a couple of hours into the trip (coming from Jakarta, Indonesia, they saw New York as just another big city with a lot of people and bad traffic problems).

Fast forward few years later. My brother graduated from college, and was going to continue to grad school. For his field, the best schools and jobs are located in the Big Apple. He wasn’t excited about the prospect of having to live in this big city, but he was admitted to a well-known school in his field and for a program that he was interested in; it was hard to turn down. He lived in Queens while going to school in Manhattan for a couple of years, then after graduation, he got a job where it made more sense for him to live in Upper East Side of Manhattan. During those years, his perception of New York City changed — it became a place that he liked to live in especially with its diversity and the opportunities it provided. During that time, I also relocated to Washington, DC, meaning I was only four-hour trip away from where my brother lived. I visited him many times, and got to see New York from the perspective of one of its residents, and I started seeing it as a place that is full of diversity and things to discover.

Fast forward again few years later to today. Since then, my brother had moved to the West Coast for a couple of years, and then moved back to New York City. Now he lives in Brooklyn, owning his own place there. So he is establishing his roots as a New Yorker. I still come to visit now and then, and I’m always looking forward to look for things to discover (especially with food!). And I’m getting familiar enough with the city layout and the subway system that I could go from place to place on my own like locals.

There are so many places in New York City to feature, and undoubtedly I will go back to visit many times in the future. For this series of blog posts, I will highlight some places I visited in the past where I have photos in my flickr archive to show.

The photo below was taken from the Liberty Island during my visit there a couple of weeks ago. It’s a photo of New York City (mostly Manhattan) skyline, with the familiar Empire State Building on the left, the new One World Trade Center still being built at the Ground Zero, the tall buildings in the Financial District, and the Brooklyn Bridge connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn on the right.

New York City skyline