New York-New York Audio Guide

New York-New York: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to New York-New York

   Welcome to New York-New York, where a whole city skyline has been squeezed onto the Las Vegas Strip. Technically the resort sits in Paradise, Nevada, just outside the Las Vegas city limits, but nobody arrives here thinking about municipal borders. You arrive thinking about Manhattan. Here is the trick that makes this place so clever. The cluster of skyscrapers rising in front of you looks like a crowd of independent buildings, each with its own personality. In fact, they are all one hotel tower, dressed up in different costumes. It is a brilliant illusion, rather like Las Vegas itself. Over the next few minutes we will look at how the skyline was assembled, who designed it and how, what the critics made of it, and the coaster and the Statue of Liberty that give the place its extra drama. Take a moment first to look up and let the silhouette settle in. The resort opened in January 1997, and it has been one of the most photographed fronts on the Strip ever since.

2. 02

   One Tower, Many Skyscrapers

   Let's play spot the skyscraper. The tallest figure in the group is the 47-story imitation of the Empire State Building. Beside it stands a 35-story Chrysler Building. Around them you can find mock versions of the Seagram Building, Lever House and the Municipal Building. The whole skyline is roughly one-third as high as the real thing, and those towers together form the high-rise section that holds the hotel guest rooms. The full cast list is longer and more obscure than most visitors realize. It includes the New York Public Library, 55 Water Street, the Century Building, Liberty Plaza, the New Yorker Hotel, the CBS Building, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, Grand Central Terminal, the Ellis Island Center and the Brooklyn Bridge. Some are easy to name. Others will only ring a bell for people who actually live in New York. In front of the towers, a low wing holds the casino and restaurants. Its front is made from copies of the facades of smaller New York buildings, so the street level feels like a block of the city. One tower, a dozen skyscraper costumes, and a streetscape stitched along the bottom. That is the whole composition.

3. 03

   Building a City From Books

   Here is a story that surprises people. The resort's exterior was designed by Neal Gaskin and Ilia Bezansky, and they did not simply copy what they saw on a trip to New York. They studied travel books and architectural drawings instead. The skyline you see is a city assembled from pages and plans, then built at a grand scale in the desert. The ground itself has a past. The site was previously partly occupied by the Lone Palm Motel and a Rodeway Inn. The new project was developed as a joint venture between MGM Grand, Incorporated and Primadonna Resorts, and the building cost 460 million dollars. When it opened on the third of January, 1997, it was the Strip's newest piece of theme-park entertainment dressed up as architecture. Inside, the layout is deliberately confusing. As in most Las Vegas hotels, the long, winding route from the front door to your room is designed to take you past plenty of slot machines. One New York critic even joked that finding your way around the real New York is easier than finding your way around this one. Today the resort is owned by Vici Properties and operated by MGM Resorts International.

4. 04

   Critics, Coasters and a Copycat Lady Liberty

   Not everyone knew what to make of it. Architecture critic Paul Goldberger of The New York Times wrote that on one level this is the most ridiculous building imaginable, a cynical slap in the face at the notion that time and history carry some weight in the experience of place. Yet the resort collected awards, including best Strip hotel and best hotel architecture in 1997, best Las Vegas architecture in 1998, and coolest building in Las Vegas in 1999. It also won a Thea award in 1998 for Outstanding Achievement. Not all New Yorkers appreciated their replica either. Then there is the Big Apple Coaster, which winds around the hotel's tower structures. Riders reach speeds of up to 67 miles per hour, which is about 108 kilometers per hour, as the skyline whips past. And look for the Statue of Liberty. Its sculptor, Robert Davidson, sued the United States Postal Service in 2013 for copyright infringement. His lawyers argued that the Las Vegas replica is a distinct piece of art, with intentional variations from the original. In July 2018, a judge ordered the Postal Service to pay Davidson 3.5 million dollars. A copy turned out to have an identity of its own.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   New York-New York belongs to a particular moment in Las Vegas history, when the Strip's big resorts competed to offer immersive architecture rather than gaming alone. Up and down the Strip you can find the castle at Excalibur, the 30-story pyramid at Luxor, and a Caesars Palace styled after ostentatious ancient Rome. This resort chose the most famous skyline in America. Before you move on, try a little detective work. Pick out the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building first, then see how many of the quieter buildings you can name. Look for the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty, and notice how the low facades at street level make the whole thing feel like a city block. Then ask yourself the question that Las Vegas keeps asking: when a copy is built this carefully, at this scale, with this much showmanship, what exactly is it a copy of? The answer may be different depending on where you stand.