Photographs: Gerry Cranham/Getty Images.
New York is known as a financial, cultural, transportation, and manufacturing hotspot. The city's gross state product in 2010 was $1.16 trillion, ranking third in size behind the larger states of California and Texas.
If New York were an independent nation, it would rank as the 16th largest economy in the world. Many of the world's largest corporations are based in the city.
Here's a look at the high developed city's most impressive buildings since the 1900's ...
April 1963: A view over New York at dusk from the Rockefeller Centre. The Empire State Building is on the left.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Circa 1960: This 26-story skyscraper in Park Avenue, New York City undergoing the first phase of being covered in aluminium panels.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Three Lions/Getty Images.
1950: The Rockefeller Centre and Plaza in New York City.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
May 2, 1961: A window cleaner clings to the side of one of the skyscrapers in the Rockefeller Centre, protected by a safety harness. The Empire State building towers in the background. William Lovelace/Getty Images
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Helmut Kretz/Getty Images.
June 1962: The new Pan American Airways building (now Met Life building) under construction in New York, as seen from the Chrysler Building. It has fifty-nine floors and is costing $100 million to build.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Leonard G. Alsford/Getty Images.
Circa 1960: Manhattan Island in New York City, viewed from the Empire State Building.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Helicopter passes the art deco spire at the peak of the Chrysler Building, and the Pan Am building, New York City, 1960s.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Helmut Kretz/Getty Images.
June 16, 1962: Two construction workers on the Pan American Building standing on girders 59 storeys above the New York streets.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Keystone Features/Getty Images.
August 12, 1960: Striped awnings cover the windows of R H Macy, a historical shop in Freedomland Park, a Wild West themed park in the Bronx, New York City.
A sign on the front reads 'From this little shop grew the world's largest store', the famous Macy's department store.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Douglas Grundy/Getty Images.
Circa 1960: The car park on the roof of the Port Authority Bus Terminal at Manhattan, New York.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
A night time view of The Guggenheim Museum, New York, circa 1959, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Circa 1955: Washington Square North, New York which American writer, Henry James used as the setting for his novella, Washington Square.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
Circa 1955: Occupying the block between Lexington and 3rd Avenues on 42nd Street, the Socony Moboil Building is made of thousands of squares of sculpted aluminium.
The structure is 38 stories high and is one of the first office buildings to be made of this type of aluminium.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Circa 1955: A christmas tree in Wall St, New York.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
Circa 1950s: Fifth Avenue and the Flatiron Building.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
1950: A parade of shops and a cinema under a Chinese restaurant on 42nd Street, New York.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
Circa 1950: Centre of finance in New York, Wall Street.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
16 October 1946: A view of the exterior of Grand Central Station in New York City.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
1946: A general view of New York Harbour.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images
A view of Times Square at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue, New York City, New York, 1941.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Circa 1939: The midtown buildings of New York City looking North-West. (Photo by Keystone/)
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Circa 1935: The New York Stock Exchange on Broad Street, with the doorway of J P Morgan & Co on the left, seen from Wall Street.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Circa 1935: The New York Stock Exchange on Broad Street and Wall Street, New York.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
February 8, 1934: A raised railway in Brooklyn, New York.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
The Chrysler Building, New York, designed by William Van Alen and completed in 1930.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Exterior view of the Grand Central Terminal, designed by Reed & Stern, Warren & Wetmore, circa 1920.
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RARE images: New York's infrastructure since 1904!
Photographs: Getty Images.
Hotel Astor in New York City, the largest hotel in the world in its time. Built in 1904 to designs of Clinton & Russell.
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