DISCOVERY VISITS NEW YORK

[Music] when you stand up here on top of the new pan am building over 800 feet in the air and look down around you everything you see tells you this is new york but wait a minute is this new york what about this can this be new york too new york city is endless things we'll find out about some of them today as discovery comes home to new york city [Music] discovery 68 the award-winning program for young people with bill owen hi welcome to discovery in the past few months we've traveled all over the world discovering some more of the sights and sounds the people and ideas that make up the world in which we live but today we're going to do something a little bit different we've returned to discovery's home one of the most exciting and truly fascinating cities in the world new york city it's a city that almost defies description because of its many faces and moods one could say that it's just blocks and blocks of skyscrapers covering miles and miles of subway tracks a huge crowded city where people live in boxes stacked up and up because there's nowhere to build but into the skies it's true and it isn't true this is new york city too is new york a city where people are rich and endlessly in search of something to do to keep from being bored to some people it is but to most people it's not is it a melting pot where eventually everybody ends up pretty much the same [Music] true in some ways but not in others is it a big cold city where no one has time for anyone else sometimes but not usually [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] what is new york then well on a warm fall day in washington square in greenwich village if you're young it's a place to sing and talk and pass a few pleasant and easy hours but 100 blocks up this same fifth avenue right up there it's something else again in harlem it's just a place to be crowded and to hope for something better new york isn't an easy city in which to live it's crowded there are too many automobiles sometimes there are too many people on the streets the air isn't the clear air of the rockies but most of the people wouldn't leave if they were paid to go somebody said that trying to define new york is like riding on the water during a hurricane if you decide what it's like but when you've made your mind up it's all changed well let's begin by looking at new york city in terms of things bridges there are bridges 61 of them considered [Music] major there are four automobile tunnels there are 408 places to birth an ocean liner if you've got an ocean liner there are broad avenues of gleaming giant ice blocks the glass curtain wall construction styles of the east side there are crowded blighted streets whose buildings have worn and dulled beyond hope of gleaming in the sun there are wooden frame houses with rubber garden hoses tied to water spigots as though they were addressed ohio and wrongly delivered here to settle among apartment complexes new york is what you happen to find here it is what it tells you it is day by day by day to most youngsters in new york the world is primarily composed of a few square blocks the immediate landscape is one of parking meters and lamp posts doorman and delivery boys a territory whose borders are marked off by traffic cops and stop lights like squares on a giant's chessboard but beyond just beyond the small nest of a world which every new york neighborhood provides is a whole lot more there are zoos and museums and ice skating and radio city and hundreds of different kinds of food and more than eight million other people what part does all of that noisy wonderland play in the lives of the children of new york how do the underrated make it their own we'll find out in just a minute [Music] this is one of the places where new yorkers get together people who know each other and people who don't if you've got a pair of skates or care to rent a pair or if you just want to watch you're welcome here this is the wallman memorial skating rink and it's been one of new york's favorite wintertime activities since it was opened in 1950. waldman rink is located toward the south end of new york city's largest park central park if you stand here and look around you can see three of the parks boundaries three walls of buildings against the sky to the east fifth avenue to the south central park south and to the west central park west right in the middle of the island of manhattan where rents are among the highest in the world and space is at a premium there are 840 acres devoted to grass and trees to baseball and band music and right now to ice skating on a winter afternoon like this one with many children and their parents bundled up in woolen clothing you'll hear lots of laughter and bits of conversation that skate past you this is one of the places where new yorkers have a tendency to look act and sound a little more alike than they really are after all a wool cap is a wool cap and a laugh is a laugh but if we were to jump to the conclusion that the people who live here are all the same we'd be making a big mistake for instance english isn't the only language you'll hear in the streets of the city [Music] the language we are hearing is spanish yet everyone gathered together in this store understands it we're in the city of new york and all of these people live here they are not visitors yet some of them do not as yet understand english these are new new yorkers having migrated here from spanish-speaking areas most predominantly from the commonwealth of puerto rico which is a possession of the united states there are many areas in the city where you can get along quite well without english on the east side uptown the language is german this is east 86th street where there have been immigrants from germany for more than a hundred years is [Music] wherever you look up here there's a teutonic feeling a restaurant is a brow house a sweet shop is a conditorial in the window there's always marzipan the candy made of crushed almonds and sugar the traditional favorite of austrian and german children a few blocks down third avenue everything is irish restaurants and shops are named after counties and towns in ireland and in these irish windows blood sausage and irish soda bread and irish bacon and irish honey everything to make the irish who've been coming here to live since the 1850s feel a little more at home a little sooner recognizable goods that ever so slightly ease the ache that comes with giving up the country of your birth in favor of a land where there is greater opportunity greater opportunity never anywhere is that phrase more meaningful than among the persecuted european jews who came to america to new york city because here at last they'll be allowed to live and let live permitted the quiet freedom to observe their own religious rights in their own manner poison girls living on the lower east side today look and act like american children everywhere but some of their parents still look and sound much the same as they did when they or their parents first arrived from europe the jews of new york's lower east side speak two languages besides english and many of them speak even more some know hebrew because it's the ancient language of the religion some also know yiddish which is a german dialect influenced by hebrew and slavic languages so it's partly german partly polish partly russian partly romanian partly hungarian by kind of massive accident it became the common language of the jewish population of central and eastern europe it's still hurt in new york city today and this is what it sounds like induces our tallest in arnold zoyo this is bernstein's kosher delicatessen on essex street in the heart of the old jewish community on the lower east side you won't find ham or bacon or pork being served here because orthodox jewish dietary laws consider these meats to be unclean also where meat is served milk cheese and butter are not served and the reverse is true what is typical food in a jewish restaurant in new york city salami to start with then there's hot corned beef and the kind of spiced beef that's called pastrami there are potato knishes and crepe loft a kind of dumpling this particular restaurant even serves kosher chinese dishes for dessert there is strudel apple cherry and usually there is cheese strudel but not here because this is a restaurant which serves meat and cheese even in chi strudel is a dairy product well we've been pointing out the differences in ethnic groups in new york city because they do exist in the rich dense sub-communities within the metropolis we could have done more there are the italians of new york's little italy and there is chinatown there are the hungarians and the poles and the fins and the czechs and the greeks and almost every other group in the world there's another point to be made how new yorkers from different backgrounds get together and use their city we'll see a zoo to which adults aren't admitted unless they're in the custody of a child and a museum that's nearly a secret and we'll do that in just a minute [Music] the central park zoo is within a hundred yards of fifth avenue it's another popular part of central park's 840 acres some of the birds and other animals are just part of the landscape the squirrels and the gophers the robins and the pigeons come and go as freely as the new york residents and visitors who come to the zoo others have been brought here to give new york youngsters a look at some fancy animals they might not otherwise see outside of travel films there are secret deer from japan zebras from africa bears from the arctic yaks from tibet camels from arabia they're all right here within a couple of minutes walk from fifth avenue with its buildings and buses central park has been a protected part of manhattan for 110 years but one of the best things about it is a recent addition [Music] this is the children's zoo unaccompanied adults aren't tolerated here except one day a week since this is after all a democracy but this is a children's world constructed with only one thing in mind letting young hands touch and feel young minds stretch and learn don't be the animals is a sign you won't see here youngsters are allowed to offer bits of food to ducks and sheep and ponies they're encouraged to reach out and find out what a llama from argentina actually feels like and if the tongue of an ordinary goat is rough or smooth lots of the children who visit the children's zoo are new yorkers it's become a year-round habit with people who live here but there are some other things which are high in the list of any visitor but which most new yorkers put off until tomorrow here's one of them every year for a modest fee 2 million individuals ride 102 elevator floors to get here the top of the empire state building the tallest building in the world it's a once-in-a-lifetime view exactly 1472 feet above street level if you want to go up higher you can in a helicopter this is the roof of the pan am building an airport or more properly a heliport over 800 feet in the sky for the businessman traveler or sightseer there's regularly scheduled service from here to new york city's airports from a helicopter you can see in all directions you can get a sense of the way manhattan lies surrounded by the other four boroughs you can see to the hudson river on the west and the east river over where its name indicates it ought to be central park sticks out at you like a long ton and the skyscrapers of lower manhattan rise like a reflection this is new york from the top maybe it can be said that people who live here like to meet the city eye to eye maybe that's why it's mainly the tourists who zoom up all these floors to look out at the city new yorkers are used to having a lot of people around they're well accustomed to crowds and noise [Music] what do new yorkers do for quiet there are at least a few places where they know they can always find peace even in a city of 8 million human beings one of them is here in fort tryon park overlooking the hudson river this is the cloisters a museum of medieval art it's a branch of the metropolitan museum of art it's been one of the city's most popular quiet places since it was open to the public in 1938 their frequent programs have recorded music from the period in which cloisters were a feature of everyday architecture this is one of the museum's four french cloisters or covered walkways in the 12th century and before walkways like this were considered ideal for silent thought and private study they still are [Music] so [Music] want even more quiet even greater solitude it's new york city's quietest mood and it happens like clockwork once every week this is wall street on sunday morning there is absolutely no place in the city as silent on a sunday for comparison's sake this is the same wall street on a working day all that activity has to do with the world of finance the buying and selling of stocks and bonds it's a complicated and erratic world and this small street is its heart but on sundays the stones of wall street seem to shut out the present to close themselves off from commerce and remember new york's early days when tall masted sailing ships filled the harbor just a few blocks from here now the harbor is without its sails new york harbor's fondest tie to the past is the staten island ferry still as everybody who rides it will tell you the best ride you can think of for only a nickel it takes 20 minutes to cross from the ferry docks on the manhattan side to the terminal at st george staten island in that little stretch of time you get a good look at the busy new york harbor including the most american of all american trademarks the statue of liberty there she is over there to tourists newcomers to the city of new york and even his hardened residence she's something to be seen well worth the trip over to where she stands but if you happen to take this boat every day to get to work or to school then she's something a little like the iron deer on the front lawn in west virginia it all depends on your point of view and so for that matter does new york city we'll be back in just a minute we've seen a little bit of new york city as it presents itself to strangers we've been in manhattan because that's the part most people think of as new york but what if you lived in one of the other boroughs and life in manhattan was as far from your everyday thoughts as it might be if you lived in iowa or louisiana well life in elvingville on the southern tip of staten island is about as remote from life in manhattan as you can get and still be within the city limits peter cruz lives in eldingville his world is made up to a large degree of truck farms and marshes and rural lanes and paths what's on his mind well horses and ponies for one thing and baby raccoons skunks hamsters and mice and dogs and cats we'll find out all about that next week on part two of discovery comes home to new york city see you then bye bye the discovery production unit's domestic transportation arrangements and production consideration provided by united airlines [Music] hey this has been a jewels power production in association with abc news and public [Music] affairs