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People&Culture

Culture, Education, and Recreation

Education

New York's intense cultural life rests on the bedrock of the city's more than 90 institutions of higher education. Among the most prominent are Columbia University in Upper Manhattan, New York University in Greenwich Village, Yeshiva University, City University of New York, Brooklyn College, Fordham, Hunter, and St. John's. There are innovative programs at the New School, religious scholarship at Union Theological Seminary, and medical residency training at such distinguished hospitals as Bellevue, Columbia-Presbyterian, New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, New York University Medical Center, and Rockefeller University.

Recreation

New York has professional sports teams in virtually every league, including the football Giants and Jets, the basketball Knicks, the baseball Mets and Yankees, and the ice hockey Rangers and Islanders. The city also hosts the annual United States Open tennis championship in Flushing Meadow in Queens, the New York Marathon , and major boxing bouts, track meets, and other sports in Madison Square Garden.

Some popular teams began to play their home games in suburbs, raising the painful specters of baseball's lamented Brooklyn (now Los Angeles) Dodgers and New York (now San Francisco) Giants, who both moved in 1958. In quest of new stadiums, the football Giants moved to East Rutherford, N.J., in 1976, followed by the Jets several years later. In 1977 one of the city's basketball teams became the New Jersey Nets.

New York's parks provide facilities for tennis, squash, basketball, and ice skating. The parks and playgrounds number about 1,100. There are popular beaches (Coney Island, for one), botanical gardens, and a zoo in practically every borough. The International Wildlife Conservation Park (formerly the Bronx Zoo) is one of the most popular in the United States.

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