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toy boats on a toy lake, with flat hamburgers on a terrace over the
pretty small zoo, popcorn underfoot and trees blossoming lost
balloons, at which the animals stare with sleepy eyes.
LINCOLN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS at
Broadway and 64th Streets is a focus of year-round activity in music,
drama and dance. Conceived in the mid-1950s, Lincoln Center for
the Performing Arts has made accessible in one 14-acre Manhattan
district a variety of previously scattered cultural activities and institutions.
Lincoln Center houses not only showcases for opera, ballet and concerts,
but an experimental repertory theatre and special educational facilities
for the performing arts.
New Yorkers congregate at intermissions of a ballet given in the
New York State Theatre, an opera at the Metropolitan Opera House
and a concert at Philharmonic Hall.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY was founded in 1754 by royal
decree of George II, King of England, "for the Instruction of Youth
in the Learned Languages and the Liberal Arts and Sciences". Now it
is a private institution where the tuition is very high.
NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Central Park West at
77th Street, is a museum and library devoted to American history, and
especially to the history of New York City. Exhibits include old fire
engines, antique carriages and prints, as well as paintings and sculpture.
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, 79th
Street and Central Park West, is world-renowned for its outstanding
exhibitions of man and nature. Its halls: Ocean Life, the Biology of
Fishes, Man in Africa, Earth History and the Biology of Invertebrates.
The dinosaurs, American Indian, and animals in life-like scenes of their
natural habitat are among the most popular halls.
HAYDEN PLANETARIUM is at 81st Street and Central Park West,
adjoining the American Museum of Natural History. Its dome serves as
a screen for the projector, which reproduces the intricate movements of
the stars and planets with unsurpassed realism. The programs, narrated
by Planetarium astronomers, are changed six times a year.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, at 82nd Street and Fifth
Avenue, is one of the world's leading art museums, and the largest in
the Western Hemisphere. Its collections span the history of world art
from the ancient civilizations to the present day, and include hundreds
of world-famous masterpieces. In addition to its extensive galleries of
painting and sculpture, the Museum has displays of armour, tapestries,
musical instruments, decorative arts, and costumes. Its American Wing
contains entire rooms from early American homes.