New York City Hall Marriage Sources of New York City Hall Marriage resources from the Web

As in all fifty states, the head of the executive branch of government is a Governor. The legislative branch is called the Legislature and consists of a Senate and an Assembly. Unlike most States, the New York electoral law permits electoral fusion, and New York ballots tend to have, in consequence, a larger number of parties on them, some being permanent minor parties that seek to influence the major parties and others being ephemeral parties formed to give major-party candidates an additional line on the ballot.

Raw, unregulated capitalism created large middle, upper-middle and upper classes, but its need for manpower encouraged immigration into the city on an unprecedented scale, with mixed results. The famed melting pot was brought into being, from which multitudes have since arisen in the successful pursuit of "the American Dream". But countless others failed to rise, or entire generations were forced to plough themselves under for their children or grandchildren to rise.

East of New York City extends the appropriately named "Long Island", stretching approximately 120 miles (190 km) from Brooklyn and Queens Counties (part of NY City) on the western end to Orient and Montauk Points in the rural "East End" of the Island. The two counties that you encounter as you travel east from NY City are Nassau and Suffolk.

Exchange members interested in buying and selling a particular stock on behalf of investors gather around the appropriate post where a specialist broker, who is employed by a NYSE member firm (that is, he/she is not an employee of the New York Stock Exchange), acts as an auctioneer in an open outcry auction market environment to bring buyers and sellers together and to manage the actual auction.

Manhattan is connected by bridges and tunnels to New Jersey to the west, and three New York City boroughs: the Bronx to the northeast and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough is the Staten Island Ferry, whose terminal is at Battery Park at its southern tip.

The second area is the Adirondack Mountains. This is an area of very specialized products, including talc, industrial garnets, and zinc. It should be noted that the Adirondacks are not part of the Appalachian system, despite their location, but are structurally part of the mineral-rich Canadian Shield. Finally in the inland southwestern part of the state in the Allegheny Plateau is a region of drilled wells.

In 1860, parts of Castleton and Southfield were made into a new town, Middletown. The Village of New Brighton in the town of Castleton was incorporated in 1866, and in 1872 the Village of New Brighton annexed all the remainder of the Town of Castleton and became coterminous with the town.

The name of the street derives from the fact that during the 17th century, it formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement where the Dutch had constructed a crude wall of timber and earthwork in 1652. The wall was ostensibly meant as a defense against attack from Lenape Indians, New England colonists, and the British, but it was never tested in battle. The wall was dismantled by the British in 1699

Even though there are far more registered Democrats than Republicans, the island has only voted for the Democratic presidential nominee three times since 1952 — in 1964, 1996 and 2000. In 2004 George W. Bush received 57% of the island's votes to 42% for John Kerry; by contrast, Kerry outpolled Bush in the city's other four boroughs cumulatively by a margin of 77% to 22%. The congressional district which includes Staten Island has been in Republican hands since 1981 and is currently represented by Vito Fossella, elected in a 1997 special election to replace Susan Molinari.

The Lenape called the region Scheyischbi, or "the place bordering the ocean", and perhaps Lenapehoking, meaning "place where the Lenape dwell," although there is not universal agreement among scholars regarding this. The Lenape hunted, fished, and gathered roughly 150 species of edible wild plants, as well as using slash and burn agriculture, with the women sowing such crops as maize, sunflowers, and squash. The harbor and rivers also provided for rich fishing, especially of oyster and striped bass.

The fort was designed mainly to protect the company's trading operations further upriver from attack by other European powers. Within a year, a small settlement, called New Amsterdam had grown around the fort, with a population that included mostly the garrison of company troops, as well as a contigent of Walloon families who were brought in primarily to farm the nearby land of lower Manhattan supply the company operations with food.

The Hudson River is named for Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Netherlands, who explored it in 1609, though the first European to see it, in 1524, was the Italian Giovanni da Verrazano whose expedition was financed by the citizens of Lyon, France, under the auspices of King Francois I. Early European settlement of the area clustered around the river.