Where we work // New York

The New York Office

This great city goes by many monikers; “the Big Apple”, “the Empire State”, “the city that never sleeps” and to live and work here – especially for Barker Langham in the professional field of museums and culture – is ever changing, ever exciting. F. Scott Fitzgerald aptly once wrote that to see New York city is to see the “wild promise of all the mystery and beauty in the world”.

In its relatively young 400-year history, New York city has grown and changed rapidly, repeatedly renewing itself through successive waves of immigration and urban development that have led to the creation of such a diverse, bubbling and complex metropolis today. While the city is made up of five boroughs each with their own strong character and cultural identifiers: Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, it is often the island of ‘Manhattan’ that is geographically and culturally considered the core of the city. While the name ‘Manhattan’ is the original, indigenous name given to the island and derived from the Lanape language meaning “place for gathering the (wood to make) bows” - in reference to the once dense forest of Hickory trees that covered the island - Manhattan today is a jungle of a very different kind!

With over 27,000 people per square mile, New York is the nation’s most populous city and has more than twice the population of its nearest competitor, Los Angeles. The inhabitants of New York city comprise of a melting pot of cultures and nationalities, indeed, almost 40% of New Yorkers were born and raised in another country, so it’s unsurprising that New York city is the most linguistically diverse city in the world; New Yorkers speak approximately 800 languages with some dialects - such Quechua and Garifuna - being so rare they are even abating in their countries of origin.

Aside from the bustling residents and financial notoriety of Wall Street – where more than $15 billion worth of stocks are traded every day on the New York Stock Exchange, which itself sits on the largest storage of gold in the world (more than 7,000 tons is locked deep underground!) - New York is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites, many of which are internationally renowned and form a core of the city’s identity. Of these, there are almost 150 museums and some 400 art galleries in the city. The Metropolitan Museum of Art - with over 3.5 million artworks and artifacts in its impressive collection - is the largest museum in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the premier American museum. While the relative youth of a city like New York cannot lay claim to old historic sites of other great world cities, New Yorkers are often pleased to flaunt that the Brooklyn Bridge - one of the most iconic bridges in the world – is older than the Tower Bridge in London by some 11 years!

After all the cultural immersion and concrete jungle trekking (New York is a ‘walking’ city after-all), NYC also has some of the best food to offer, thanks to its richly diverse community with nationalities that hail from all over the world; the ice cream cone, pasta primavera and eggs Benedict were all invented in New York City. But perhaps the most iconic food connoted with NYC is pizza. The first American pizza joint opened in NYC in 1905 thanks to a wave of Italian immigrants that settled in the city and today, there are approximately 1,600 pizza restaurants in NYC.

Despite the fact that NYC gets 15 times more snow than the South Pole each year, the hospitality of this wondrous city remains boundlessly warm and welcoming to those willing to keep up with the galloping pace! It is a metropolis that truly, rarely – if ever – sleeps.

Jody Neal

Associate & US Representative