This page was written by Gregory Rosmaita to help describe the New York geography to me.
i think that the "aerial shot taken from a long distance from new york" may have been taken from carteret, new jersey, which is a vantage from which a lot of the panoramic shots of the skyline are taken (most of the shots of the skyline that are familiar are taken from NJ, for, as i (at least attempted to) explain in a previous emessage, there aren't any bridges to obscure the view. if the view is from the southwest of the island of manhattan (and it sounds so from the description - especially the bit about lady liberty being a cyan spec in the left; is staten island visible? (it would be to the southwest of the battery - there is another, unihabited, island closer to the tip of manhattan named governor's island - it was once were paupers were burried, but is now where you need to go in order to get your car when it is towed by the city of new york) can you see a suspension bridge in the right-hand side of the picture?
Stephen: There is no suspension bridge visible. If there was no smoke (the smoke obscures nearly the entire island right down to the water, with the exception of a small section of land which is not built up at the far right) the bridges would be visible in the middle of the picture.
(there is a bridge that connects new jersey to staten island, named the bayonne bridge, which leads to a highway that bisects staten island, and directly to the verazano narrows bridge, which connects staten island with long island.
by the way, carteret is named after one of the original "lords proprietor" of new jersey
re: Aerial view of New York, the body of land to the left connected by suspension bridges is brooklyn, one of NYC's 5 burough (it has to be, for the only suspension bridge over the hudson on the western side of the island of manhattan is the george washington bridge, which crosses from new jersey to the northernmost portion of manhattan, but which is mostly used as a means of accessing the bronx... the southernmost suspension bridge is the famous brooklyn bridge - moving northward, sequentially from the brooklyn bridge, the other suspension bridges are the manhattan bridge and the williamsburgh bridge (all of which remain closed as of this writing), although i'm not sure if the williamsburgh bridge would be in the aerial view, as it is not as close to the brooklyn bridge as is the manhattan bridge (which was built to accomodate the heavy traffic on the brooklyn bridge, the first bridge over the east river) and you only mention 2 bridges - by the way, the williamsburgh bridge is also known as the delancy street bridge (at least, if you live in manhattan, as that is the street into which the bridge feeds on the manhattan side - if you live in brooklyn, you'd call it the williamsburgh bridge, as it connects to the part of brooklyn known as williamsburgh)
the "spit of land" is the southernmost tip of the island of manhattan - the bit at the very end is called "the battery" - the "financial district" proper extends from the north end of the battery (the southern end of which is a park, with a view of staten island, the statue of liberty, etc.) up to the southern edge of the WTC complex - traditionally it is limited to the eastern portion of the area, although it has spread outward - the northern limit of the financial/wall street district on the eastern side of the island is vescey street, which is the street that forms the northern side of the WTC complex, which would be square, were it not for the angle of the west side highway; as you can well imagine, the twin towers were orientational points when you were downtown, just as the empire state building serves as an orientational point in mid-town.
the body of water over which the suspension bridges stand (on the left side of manhattan) is the east river; the body of water which runs down the right is the hudson river; their confluence is known as upper new york bay - i live in jersey city, which is directly across the river from WTC, with a skyline emblazoned on my memory which is dominated by the twin towers, which on a clear day at the JC waterfront, looked almost close enough to reach out and grab (don't know if i told you that i was fully sighted for 20 years, and have only been blind for 13)