New York, New York (On the Town) New York, New York (On the Town) "New York, New York" is a song from the 1944 musical "On the Town" and the 1949 MGM musical film of the same name. The music was written by Leonard Bernstein and the lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. A well known line of this song is, "New York, New York, a helluva town. The Bronx is up but the Battery's down." For the film version, the word "helluva" was changed to "wonderful" to appease the Production Code offices. In 2004 the film version finished at #41 in AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs
Western New York territory, as did New France until the Seven Years' War. Most of Western New York was officially off-limits to all of the colonies as a result of the establishment of an Indian Reserve over the area following the Seven Years' War. By the 1780s, only New York and Massachusetts still maintained their claims to the territory, which was separated from mainland New York by a Preemption Line. Under federal policy designed to extinguish the states' Revolutionary War debts, the states were required to extinguish their western land claims. Massachusetts extinguished its claim to the territory in exchange for receiving the