New Amsterdam
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| Motto: Excelsior (Ever Upward) | |
| Subdivision of: | Castreleon New, North American League |
| Languages: | |
| Official: | Dutch, Brithenig |
| Others: | English, Scandinavian, Scots, Cherokee, Gaelic, etc. |
| Lord Mayor: | Willem deBlasio |
| Area: | approx. 260 square miles |
| Population: | 7,690,404 New Amsterdamers |
| Established: | 1624, Batavian Settlement |
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New Amsterdam (officially named the City of New Amsterdam) is the most populous city in the NAL, the most densely populated major city in North America, and is at the center of international finance, politics, entertainment, and culture. New Amsterdam is one of the world's global cities, home to an almost unrivaled collection of world-class museums, galleries, performance venues, media outlets, international corporations, and stock exchanges.
Located in the province of Castreleon New, New Amsterdam has a population of over 7 1/2 million people contained within approximately 260 square miles, and is the heart of the New Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, which is one of the largest urban conglomerations in the world with a population of over 21 million. New Amsterdam City proper comprises five boroughs: Manhattan, Breuckelen, Staaten Landt, Ill Broncks, and Llo Rhiant — each of which would be a major city in its own right (while technically a borough of New Amsterdam, Breuckelen behaves very much like a very large suburb of the metropolis).
The city includes large populations of immigrants from over 180 countries who help make it one of the most cosmopolitan places on earth. Many people from all over the North American League are also attracted to New Amsterdam for its culture, energy, and cosmopolitanism, and by their own hope of making it big in the "Big Orange." The city serves as an enormous engine for the global economy, and is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other place in the NAL. The city is estimated to have a Gross Metropolitan Product of nearly £15 billion. If it were a nation, the city would have the 22th highest gross domestic product in the world.
Places of Interest
Given the city's size, it is no surprise that there is plenty to do and see in the "Big Orange."
- American Shaxepere Company is probably the most prestigious theatrical rhepertory in the Western Hemisphere. It has three stages where different kinds of productions are mounted: (1) The John Wilkes Booth Theatre on Broadway (2) The New Globe in Centennial Park, and (3) The Wooden Box, part of the American Shakespear Conservatory, an acting school founded in 1966. The ASC is also the beneficiary of the estate of motion picture actress Gloria Dawson.
- The Statue of Justice is an iconic image of the province, a gift to Kemr's most famous colony from its traditional ally France.
- Little Danzig between Midtown and Downtown on the East side. It boasts some of the finest German restaurants in the city. Nearby Little Marseille is renowned for being a centre of Gaulhosc cuisine and culture, although it has gentrified somewhat in the modern day.
- The World Trade Towers are the tallest buildings in North America and the third tallest in the world. Completed in 1979, they were designed in the Art Deco Revival Style. In September 2001 a pair of airships were hijacked and drove them at top speed directly into the Towers. Unfortunately, both ships used hydrogen instead of helium and despite the automatic safety systems considerable damage was caused to the buildings and the surrounding neighborhood from falling, flaming debris. Sections of both buildings actually collapsed, raining flaming debris below. The exact loss of life is unknown but best estimates put it at over a thousand. Over twenty stories of each Tower are still undergoing repair/reconstruction and extensive fire safety retrofitting. It reopened for business in early 2007.
- Rokkenfelder Center comprises six of the city's most recognizable sky-scrapers, their offices including the corporate headquarters of the the NABC television network as well as those that produce such long-running television shows as "Late Night With David Liebermann" and the long-running sketch show "Sixty Rokk Live" (SRL).
- Saint Gereint's Cathedral in midtown is generally acknowledged as one of the most beautiful structures of its kind in the Americas. Nonetheless, the Batavian Reformed Church, the Bouwerijkerk, is actually older if less well known.
- The Green Dome is the city government building, so-named for the distinctive copper-plated dome at its center. This is where the City Council meets and where the Lord Mayor has his office.
- The T.M.S.Benedict Arnold is the aircraft carrier whose home port is New Amsterdam. Named after the first NAL Minister of War, the Benedict Arnold is the most advanced class of surface vessel in the Solemn League Navy. Tours are conducted three days a week when the ship is docked. Nearby are the GW2-era submersible T.M.S. Shenandoah and the old sailing frigate T.M.S. Covenant. Both are operated as museums.
- Centennial Park, a large rectangular park created in the center of Manhattan, which includes a sailboat pond, a merry-go-round, a variety of statues, Belvedere Castle (which today functions as a weather station), cricket and rugby fields, the famous Boysenberry Field (basis for a song by NoMoreEagleZ, although the field in that song is referred to as "Blueberry Field") and of course the New Globe Theatre, which houses the free Shaxepere-in-the-Park each summer.
- Not to be missed are Groote Centraal Station and its rival Pennsylvaania Station, the two chief railway terminals in the City. Both stations have become part of the Pennsylvaania Central system, although formerly they belonged to the New Castreleon Central Railway and the Pennsylvaania Railroad, respectively. Groote Centraal was built a little north of the developing city center, when there were still farms on Manhattan, and was built on the grandest of scales. Pennsylvaania Station was built downtown not far from the Library and the Theatre District. Both were built in such a way that hotels, convention centres, shops and offices are all erected above their vast subterranean rail yards. All that is in evidence above ground level are grand cathedral like marble and iron structures, despite the fact that due to the Hudson River the railroads had to run through tunnels into Manhattan. Indeed, Penn Station was never demolished *there*.
- Musée Amérique, by far America's most prestigious museum, run by the federal government located not far from Centennial Park.
- Covenant Square with its famous statue of Bjørn Honstadt is one of the oldest public parks in the city as well as major subway hub.
Culture
- Provincal University of New Castreleon. This fine university is home to the famed Gibbon Chair of Linguistics
- The Theatre District on Broadway (although technically not on the street Broadway (Breede weg), performances at Wainwright Center are considered "Broadway Shows").
- The Public Library with its world-famous stone dragons.
- The Cloisters, a museum situated inside an authentic European monastery re-assembled on the upper west side of Manhattan.
Transportation
The New Amsterdam Metro is justly renowned as one of the most extensive and complicated in the world. Over three dozen different lines operated by a plethora of different companies criss-cross all the boroughs. The
Individual cab drivers are also very common in the city, ranging from simple "gypsy cabs" to fully licensed "green" cabs, horse-drawn carriages (especially in Midtown, in and around Centennial Park) and the high-end "limos."
In east Breuckelen is the JFK Aerodrome, named for the war hero of the then-fledgling Continental Air Force (and brother of future General Moderator Edward Moore O'Kinneide).
Staaten Landt/Ysl Staten is the site of the James Wainwright Aerodrome, named for the assassinated General Moderator. It can most easily be reached via the Staaten Landt Ferry (generally known as "the best threepenny tour in the world").
New Amsterdam boasts 3 grand train stations, with two being located within the city itself: Groote Centraal Station and Pennsylvaania (often shortened to Penn) Station. Both are owned and operated primarily by the Penn Central Railway, which is the primary railway in the northeastern NAL; nevertheless, Groote Centraal also serves as the base of operations for the Boston & New Castreleon Central Railway (split off from the Penn Central in 1975), while Penn Station additionally accommodates passenger trains from the Southern Railroad, Reading Railway, and Boston & Maine Railway, among others. Across the Hudson River in Pavonia, Oxbridge, the Erie Lackawanna Railway serves Hoboken Terminal, with the long-distance Phoebe Snow and Lake Cities to Chicago.
Commuter rail trains are operated by multiple state-owned operators in conjunction with the major railways. The Lange Eylandt Railroad, a former subsidiary of the Penn Central sold to the City of New Amsterdam in 1975, operates electric and diesel commuter trains from Pennsylvaania Station to the outer reaches of Lange Eylandt, including connecting the affluent towns of Lange Strand and Montauk to Breuckelen and Manhattan. To the north of the city, Penn Central and the B&NCC operate Metro-Noord commuter trains under contract from the city out of Groote Centraal, running up the Hudson Valley and out to the major automobile manufacturing plants in the western part of the metropolitan area. Oxbridge Transit operates commuter trains along the Northeast Corridor and the Erie Lackawanna Main Line from Hoboken Terminal and Penn Station, taking over the old services of the so-called Mersey Central Railway.
Manhattan
Manhattan is verily divided - although not officially - between the area known as the "Old Town", which is more or less the area south of 14th street although by some authorities it is the area beneath Orange Street, and the "New Town", which is further up from it; the new town is remarkably different that it has numbered streets, neatly laid out in a grid, unlike further south where the roads are more "jumbled". Neighborhoods in the Old Town include Little Marseilles and Cantonville as well as DrieBenOr ("Driehoek Benenden Oranjestraat"), formerly the location of the notorious Vijfpunten slum, and of course Wall Street/de Waalstraat.
Further north is Nieuw Haarlem, an area home to a cluster of ethnic minorities groups e.g. Gypsies, Afroes, Indians, Jews, Sicilians, Erdekans, Floridians, etc. (Actually, ethnic neighborhoods dot the city, but Nieuw Haarlem is one of the largest collections of same, and also boasts some of the finest Jass clubs in the world). This is also where one can find the home of GM Franklin Donald Rosenberg, open to the public as a museum.
