Manhattan
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Manhattan (/mænˈhætən, mən-/ ⓘ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is coextensive with New York County of the U.S. state of New York, the smallest county by land area in the contiguous United States. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the State of New York, Manhattan constitutes the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass.[6] Manhattan serves as New York City's economic and administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world.[7][8][9][10]
Manhattan New York County, New York | |
|---|---|
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district, in the foreground, with Lower Manhattan and its Financial District in the background | |
Flag Seal | |
| Etymology: Lenape: Manaháhtaan (the place where we get bows) | |
| Nickname: The City | |
Interactive map outlining Manhattan | |
Manhattan Location within the State of New York Manhattan Location within United States Manhattan Location within North America | |
| Coordinates: 40°47′N 73°58′W / 40.783°N 73.967°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | New York |
| County | New York County (coterminous) |
| City | New York City |
| Settled | 1624 |
| Government | |
| • Type | Borough (New York City) |
| • Borough President | Mark Levine (D) — (Borough of Manhattan) |
| • District Attorney | Alvin Bragg (D) — (New York County) |
| Area | |
| • Total | 33.58 sq mi (87.0 km2) |
| • Land | 22.83 sq mi (59.1 km2) |
| • Water | 10.76 sq mi (27.9 km2) 32% |
| Dimensions —width at 14th Street, widest | |
| • Length | 13 mi (21 km) |
| • Width | 2.3 mi (3.7 km) |
| Highest elevation | 265 ft (81 m) |
| Population | |
| • Total | 1,694,250 |
| • Estimate (2022)[3] | 1,596,273 |
| • Density | 74,781.6/sq mi (28,873.3/km2) |
| Demonyms | Manhattanite[4] Knickerbocker (historical) |
| GDP | |
| • Total | US$780.966 billion (2022) · 2nd by U.S. county; 1st per capita |
| Time zone | UTC−05:00 (EST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−04:00 (EDT) |
| ZIP Code format | 100xx, 101xx, 102xx |
| Area code | 212/646/332, 917[a] |
| Website | Manhattan Borough President |
The area of present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory.[11] European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post founded by Dutch colonists in 1624 on lower Manhattan Island; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[12] New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790.[13] The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of arriving immigrants in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals.[14] Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, and houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government.[15] The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, cementing Manhattan's central role in LGBT culture.[16][17] It was also the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed during the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, the borough is bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers and includes several small adjacent islands, including Roosevelt, U Thant, and Randalls and Wards Islands. It also includes the small neighborhood of Marble Hill now on the U.S. mainland.
Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each cutting across the borough's long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan. Manhattan is one of the most densely populated locations in the world, with a 2020 census population of 1,694,250 living in a land area of 22.66 square miles (58.69 km2),[3][18] or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154 residents/km2), and its residential property has the highest sale price per square foot in the United States.[19] Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.[20]
Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial and fintech center of the world,[21][22][23]and Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange (at $25.0 trillion as of August 2023) and Nasdaq ($21.7 trillion).[24] Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, as are numerous colleges and universities, such as Columbia University and New York University; the headquarters of the United Nations is also located in the borough. Manhattan hosts three of the world's most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal.[25] Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.[26] The borough hosts many prominent bridges and tunnels, and skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and One World Trade Center.[27] It is also home to the NBA's New York Knicks and the NHL's New York Rangers.
History edit
Lenape settlement edit
Manhattan was historically part of the Lenapehoking territory inhabited by the Munsee, Lenape,[28] and Wappinger tribes.[29] There were several Lenape settlements in the area including Sapohanikan, Nechtanc, and Konaande Kongh, which were interconnected by a series of trails. The primary trail on the island, which would later become Broadway, ran from what is now Inwood in the north to Battery Park in the south.[30] There were various sites for fishing and planting established by the Lenape throughout Manhattan.[11] The name Manhattan originated from the Lenape's language, Munsee, manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means "bow", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at its southern end that was considered ideal for the making of bows.[31]
Colonial era edit
In April 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing in service of Francis I of France, became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City.[32] Verrazzano entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York Harbor New Angoulême, in reference to the family name of King Francis I; he sailed far enough into the harbor to sight the Hudson River, and he named the Bay of Santa Margarita – what is now Upper New York Bay – after Marguerite de Navarre, the elder sister of the king.[33][34]
Manhattan was first mapped during a 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson.[35] Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River.[36] Manhattan was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on the voyage.[37]
A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island.[38] In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam), in what is now Lower Manhattan.[39][40] The establishment of Fort Amsterdam is recognized as the birth of New York City.[41] In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony.[42] New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653.[43] In 1664, English forces conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II.[44] In August 1673, the Dutch reconquered the colony, renaming it "New Orange", but permanently relinquished it back to England the following year under the terms of the Treaty of Westminster that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War.[45][46]
American Revolution and the early United States edit
Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776.[48] The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British military and political center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war.[49] British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, a day celebrated as Evacuation Day, marking when the last British forces left the city.[50]
From January 11, 1785, until 1789, New York City was the fifth of five capitals of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern).[51] New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789, to August 12, 1790, at Federal Hall.[52] Federal Hall was where the United States Supreme Court met for the first time,[53] the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified,[54] and where the Northwest Ordinance was adopted, establishing measures for admission to the Union of new states.[55]
19th century edit
New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury to expand the city's role as a center of commerce and industry.[56] By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the most populous city in the United States.[57] The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan.[58] The city's role as an economic center grew with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, cutting transportation costs by 90% compared to road transport and connecting the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada.[59][60][61]
Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854.[62] Covering 840 acres (340 ha) in the center of the island, Central Park, which opened its first portions to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped public park in an American city.[63][64][65][66]
New York City played a complex role in the American Civil War. The city had strong commercial ties to the South, but anger around conscription, resentment against Lincoln's war policies and paranoia about free Blacks taking the jobs of poor immigrants[67] culminated in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, among the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history.[68] The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and Manhattan became the first stop for millions seeking a new life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886.[69][70] This immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city became a hotbed of revolution (including anarchists and communists among others), syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization.[citation needed]
In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River established a road connection to Brooklyn and the rest of Long Island.[71] In 1898, New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City of Greater New York", and Manhattan was established as one of the five boroughs of New York City.[72][73] The Bronx remained part of New York County until 1914, when Bronx County was established.[74]
20th century edit
The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together,[75] as did the completion of the Williamsburg Bridge (1903) and Manhattan Bridge (1909) connecting to Brooklyn and the Queensboro Bridge (1909) connecting to Queens.[76] In the 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance,[77] part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline, with the Woolworth Building (1913), 40 Wall Street (1930), Chrysler Building (1930) and the Empire State Building (1931) leapfrogging each other to take their place as the world's tallest building.[78] Manhattan's majority white ethnic group declined from 98.7% in 1900 to 58.3% by 1990.[79] On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers,[80] leading to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace safety regulations.[81]
Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the 30 Rockefeller Plaza.[82] A postwar economic boom led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, the largest being Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, which opened in 1947.[83][84] The United Nations relocated to a new headquarters that was completed in 1952 along the East River.[85][86][87]
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[88][89] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[90][91]
In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[92] While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through the decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[93] The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and Manhattan reclaimed its role at the center of the worldwide financial industry, with wall Street employment doubling from 1977 to 1987.[94] The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter.[95]
In the 1970s, Times Square and 42nd Street - with its sex shops, peep shows, and adult theaters, along with its sex trade, street crime and public drug use - became emblematic of the city's decline, with a 1981 article in Rolling Stone magazine calling the stretch of West 42nd Street in the area the "sleaziest block in America".[96] By the late 1990s, led by efforts by the city and the Walt Disney Corporation, the area had been revived as a center of tourism to the point where it was described by The New York Times as "arguably the most sought-after 13 acres of commercial property in the world."[97]
By the 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically[98][99] and the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market.[100] Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the Flatiron District, adding technology as a key component of Manhattan's economy.[101]
The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, described by the FBI as "something of a deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11", was a terrorist attack in which six people were killed when a van bomb filled with explosives was detonated in a parking lot below the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex.[102]
21st century edit
On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft and collapsed in the September 11 attacks launched by al-Qaeda terrorists. The collapse caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 of the 17,400 who had been in the buildings when the planes hit, in addition to those on the planes.[103] Since 2001, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored, although there has been controversy surrounding the rebuilding. In 2014, the new One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) measured to the top if its spire, became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere[104] and is the world's seventh-tallest building (as of 2023).[105]
The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[106][107]
On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction in the borough, ravaging portions of Lower Manhattan with record-high storm surge from New York Harbor,[108] severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents[109] and leading to gasoline shortages[110] and disruption of mass transit systems.[111][112][113][114] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the borough and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[115]
On October 31, 2017, a terrorist deliberately drove a truck down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight.[116]
Geography edit
According to the United States Census Bureau, New York County has a total area of 33.6 square miles (87 km2), of which 22.8 square miles (59 km2) is land and 10.8 square miles (28 km2) (32%) is water.[1] The northern segment of Upper Manhattan represents a geographic panhandle. Manhattan Island is 22.7 square miles (59 km2) in area, 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide, at its widest point, near 14th Street.[117]
The borough consists primarily of Manhattan Island, along with the Marble Hill neighborhood and several small islands, including Randalls Island and Wards Island and Roosevelt Island in the East River; and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor.[118]
Manhattan Island edit
Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Downtown (Lower Manhattan), Midtown (Midtown Manhattan), and Uptown (Upper Manhattan), with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan lengthwise into its East Side and West Side.[119] Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from the Bronx and the mainland United States. Early in the 19th century, land reclamation was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street.[120] When building the World Trade Center in 1968, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m3) of material excavated from the site[121] was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City.[122] Constructed on piers at a cost of $260 million, Little Island opened on the Hudson River in May 2021, connected to the western termini of 13th and 14th Streets by footbridges.[123]
Marble Hill edit
Marble Hill was part of the northern tip of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to better connect the Harlem and Hudson rivers, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan.[124] Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from the Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.[125] After a May 1984 court ruling that Marble Hill was simultaneously part of the Borough of Manhattan (not the Borough of the Bronx) and part of Bronx County (not New York County),[126] the matter was definitively settled later that year when the New York Legislature overwhelmingly passed legislation declaring the neighborhood part of both New York County and the Borough of Manhattan.[127][128]
Smaller islands edit
Within New York Harbor, there are three smaller islands:
- Ellis Island, shared with New Jersey[129]
- Governors Island[130]
- Liberty Island (administered by the National Park Service)[131]
Other smaller islands, in the East River, include (from north to south):
- Randalls and Wards Islands, joined by landfill
- Mill Rock
- Roosevelt Island, which has a population of 14,000, extends for 2 miles (3.2 km), and was renamed in 1973 from Welfare Island to honor President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[132]
- U Thant Island (legally Belmont Island)
Geology edit
The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan is known as Manhattan schist, well suited for the foundations of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[133] It is part of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region.
Adjacent counties edit
Climate edit
Under the Köppen climate classification, New York City features both a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and a humid continental climate (Dfa);[134] it is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with a humid subtropical climate. The city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually.[135]
Winters are cold and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean, yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachians keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 32.6 °F (0.3 °C);[136] temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[136][137] and reach 60 °F (16 °C) several days in the coldest winter month.[136] Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically warm to hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 76.5 °F (24.7 °C) in July.[136] Nighttime conditions are often exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow.[138] Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer[139] and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C). Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936.[139]
Manhattan receives 49.9 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010 has been 25.8 inches (66 cm); this varies considerably from year to year.[139]
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record high °F (°C) | 72 (22) | 78 (26) | 86 (30) | 96 (36) | 99 (37) | 101 (38) | 106 (41) | 104 (40) | 102 (39) | 94 (34) | 84 (29) | 75 (24) | 106 (41) |
| Mean maximum °F (°C) | 60.4 (15.8) | 60.7 (15.9) | 70.3 (21.3) | 82.9 (28.3) | 88.5 (31.4) | 92.1 (33.4) | 95.7 (35.4) | 93.4 (34.1) | 89.0 (31.7) | 79.7 (26.5) | 70.7 (21.5) | 62.9 (17.2) | 97.0 (36.1) |
| Mean daily maximum °F (°C) | 39.5 (4.2) | 42.2 (5.7) | 49.9 (9.9) | 61.8 (16.6) | 71.4 (21.9) | 79.7 (26.5) | 84.9 (29.4) | 83.3 (28.5) | 76.2 (24.6) | 64.5 (18.1) | 54.0 (12.2) | 44.3 (6.8) | 62.6 (17.0) |
| Daily mean °F (°C) | 33.7 (0.9) | 35.9 (2.2) | 42.8 (6.0) | 53.7 (12.1) | 63.2 (17.3) | 72.0 (22.2) | 77.5 (25.3) | 76.1 (24.5) | 69.2 (20.7) | 57.9 (14.4) | 48.0 (8.9) | 39.1 (3.9) | 55.8 (13.2) |
| Mean daily minimum °F (°C) | 27.9 (−2.3) | 29.5 (−1.4) | 35.8 (2.1) | 45.5 (7.5) | 55.0 (12.8) | 64.4 (18.0) | 70.1 (21.2) | 68.9 (20.5) | 62.3 (16.8) | 51.4 (10.8) | 42.0 (5.6) | 33.8 (1.0) | 48.9 (9.4) |
| Mean minimum °F (°C) | 9.8 (−12.3) | 12.7 (−10.7) | 19.7 (−6.8) | 32.8 (0.4) | 43.9 (6.6) | 52.7 (11.5) | 61.8 (16.6) | 60.3 (15.7) | 50.2 (10.1) | 38.4 (3.6) | 27.7 (−2.4) | 18.0 (−7.8) | 7.7 (−13.5) |
| Record low °F (°C) | −6 (−21) | −15 (−26) | 3 (−16) | 12 (−11) | 32 (0) | 44 (7) | 52 (11) | 50 (10) | 39 (4) | 28 (−2) | 5 (−15) | −13 (−25) | −15 (−26) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 3.64 (92) | 3.19 (81) | 4.29 (109) | 4.09 (104) | 3.96 (101) | 4.54 (115) | 4.60 (117) | 4.56 (116) | 4.31 (109) | 4.38 (111) | 3.58 (91) | 4.38 (111) | 49.52 (1,258) |
| Average snowfall inches (cm) | 8.8 (22) | 10.1 (26) | 5.0 (13) | 0.4 (1.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.0 (0.0) | 0.1 (0.25) | 0.5 (1.3) | 4.9 (12) | 29.8 (76) |
| Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in) | 10.8 | 10.0 | 11.1 | 11.4 | 11.5 | 11.2 | 10.5 | 10.0 | 8.8 | 9.5 | 9.2 | 11.4 | 125.4 |
| Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 in) | 3.7 | 3.2 | 2.0 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 2.1 | 11.4 |
| Average relative humidity (%) | 61.5 | 60.2 | 58.5 | 55.3 | 62.7 | 65.2 | 64.2 | 66.0 | 67.8 | 65.6 | 64.6 | 64.1 | 63.0 |
| Mean monthly sunshine hours | 162.7 | 163.1 | 212.5 | 225.6 | 256.6 | 257.3 | 268.2 | 268.2 | 219.3 | 211.2 | 151.0 | 139.0 | 2,534.7 |
| Percent possible sunshine | 54 | 55 | 57 | 57 | 57 | 57 | 59 | 63 | 59 | 61 | 51 | 48 | 57 |
| Source 1: NOAA[139][136][135] | |||||||||||||
| Source 2: Weather Atlas[141] | |||||||||||||
Neighborhoods edit
Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention, nor do they have official boundaries. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly"), and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park").[142][143][144][145][146] Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.[147] Alphabet City comprises avenues A, B, C, and D, to which its name refers.[148] Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen, alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton).[149]
Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, which is mixed use, are known for upscale shopping as well as residential use.[150] Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the Bohemian subculture.[151][152][153] Chelsea is one of several Manhattan neighborhoods with large gay populations and has become a center of both the international art industry and New York's nightlife.[154] Chinatown has the highest concentration of people of Chinese descent outside of Asia.[155][156] Koreatown is roughly centered on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.[157] Rose Hill features a growing number of Indian restaurants and spice shops along a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th Streets which has become known as Curry Hill.[158] Washington Heights in Uptown Manhattan is home to the largest Dominican immigrant community in the United States.[159] Harlem, also in Upper Manhattan, is the historical epicenter of African American culture.[160] Since 2010, a Little Australia has emerged and is growing in Nolita, Lower Manhattan.[161]
Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term uptown also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 72nd Street and downtown to the southern portion below 14th Street,[162] with Midtown covering the area in between, though definitions can be fluid. Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations.[162][163] South of Waverly Place, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line.[citation needed] In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south.[164] This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district.
Boroughscape edit
Demographics edit
As of the 2020 census, Manhattan's population had increased by 6.8% over the decade to 1,694,250, representing 19.2% of New York City's population of 8,804,194 and 8.4% of New York State's population of 20,201,230.[3] The population density of New York County was 70,450.8 inhabitants per square mile (27,201.2/km2) in 2022, the highest population density of any county in the United States.[165] At the 2010 census, there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% from the 1,537,195 counted in the 2000 census.[166]
| Racial composition | 2020[167] | 2010[168] | 2000[169] | 1990[79] | 1950[79] | 1900[79] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| White | 50.0% | 57.4% | 54.3% | 58.3% | 79.4% | 97.8% |
| —Non-Hispanic | 46.8% | 48% | 45.7% | 48.9% | n/a | n/a |
| Black or African American | 13.5% | 15.6% | 17.3% | 22.0% | 19.6% | 2.0% |
| Hispanic or Latino (of any race) | 23.8% | 25.4% | 27.1% | 26.0% | n/a | n/a |
| Asian | 13.1% | 11.3% | 9.4% | 7.4% | 0.8% | 0.3% |
| Year | Pop. | ±% |
|---|---|---|
| 1656 | 1,000 | — |
| 1698 | 4,937 | +393.7% |
| 1712 | 5,841 | +18.3% |
| 1723 | 7,248 | +24.1% |
| 1731 | 8,622 | +19.0% |
| 1746 | 11,717 | +35.9% |
| 1756 | 13,040 | +11.3% |
| 1771 | 21,863 | +67.7% |
| 1786 | 23,614 | +8.0% |
| 1790 | 33,131 | +40.3% |
| 1800 | 60,489 | +82.6% |
| 1810 | 96,373 | +59.3% |
| 1820 | 123,706 | +28.4% |
| 1830 | 202,589 | +63.8% |
| 1840 | 312,710 | +54.4% |
| 1850 | 515,547 | +64.9% |
| 1860 | 813,669 | +57.8% |
| 1870 | 942,292 | +15.8% |
| 1880 | 1,164,674 | +23.6% |
| 1890 | 1,441,216 | +23.7% |
| 1900 | 1,850,093 | +28.4% |
| 1910 | 2,331,542 | +26.0% |
| 1920 | 2,284,103 | −2.0% |
| 1930 | 1,867,312 | −18.2% |
| 1940 | 1,889,924 | +1.2% |
| 1950 | 1,960,101 | +3.7% |
| 1960 | 1,698,281 | −13.4% |
| 1970 | 1,539,233 | −9.4% |
| 1980 | 1,428,285 | −7.2% |
| 1990 | 1,487,536 | +4.1% |
| 2000 | 1,537,195 | +3.3% |
| 2010 | 1,585,873 | +3.2% |
| 2020 | 1,694,251 | +6.8% |
| Sources:[3][79][170] | ||
Manhattan had the highest per capita income, at $186,848 in 2022, among United States counties with more than 50,000 residents.[171] Data for 2022 from the Census Bureau showed growing inequality, with those in the top 20% having an average household income of $545,549, more than 50 times higher than the $10,529 average income in the lowest 20% of households, the largest gap of any county in the country and "larger ... than in many developing countries",[172][173] with inequality growing steadily since 2010.[174] As of 2023[update], Manhattan's cost of living was the highest in the United States.[175]
Based on census data for New York County for 2018-2022, the per capita income (in 2022 dollars) was $89,702, the median household income was $99,880 and the poverty rate was 17.2%.[3]
Religion edit
In 2010, the largest organized religious group in Manhattan was the Archdiocese of New York, with 323,325 Catholics worshiping at 109 parishes, followed by 64,000 Orthodox Jews with 77 congregations, an estimated 42,545 Muslims with 21 congregations, 42,502 non-denominational adherents with 54 congregations, 26,178 TEC Episcopalians with 46 congregations, 25,048 ABC-USA Baptists with 41 congregations, 24,536 Reform Jews with 10 congregations, 23,982 Mahayana Buddhists with 35 congregations, 10,503 PC-USA Presbyterians with 30 congregations, and 10,268 RCA Presbyterians with 10 congregations. Altogether, 44.0% of the population was claimed as members by religious congregations, although members of historically African-American denominations were underrepresented due to incomplete information.[176] In 2014, Manhattan had 703 religious organizations, the seventeenth most out of all US counties.[177] There is a large Buddhist temple in Manhattan located at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown.[178]
Languages edit
As of 2010[update], 59.98% (902,267) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 23.07% (347,033) spoke Spanish, 5.33% (80,240) Chinese, 2.03% (30,567) French, 0.78% (11,776) Japanese, 0.77% (11,517) Russian, 0.72% (10,788) Korean, 0.70% (10,496) German, 0.66% (9,868) Italian, 0.64% (9,555) Hebrew, and 0.48% (7,158) spoke African languages at home. In total, 40.02% (602,058) of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke a language other than English at home.[179]
As of 2015, 60.0% (927,650) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 22.63% (350,112) spoke Spanish, 5.37% (83,013) Chinese, 2.21% (34,246) French, 0.85% (13,138) Korean, 0.72% (11,135) Russian, and 0.70% (10,766) Japanese. In total, 40.0% of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke a language other than English at home.[180]
Landmarks and architecture edit
Points of interest on Manhattan Island include the American Museum of Natural History; the Battery; Broadway and the Theater District; Bryant Park; Central Park, Chinatown; the Chrysler Building; The Cloisters; Columbia University; Curry Hill; the Empire State Building; Flatiron Building; the Financial District (including the New York Stock Exchange Building; Wall Street; and the South Street Seaport); Grand Central Terminal; Greenwich Village (including New York University; Washington Square Arch; and Stonewall Inn); Harlem and Spanish Harlem; the High Line; Koreatown; Lincoln Center; Little Australia; Little Italy; Madison Square Garden; Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art); Penn Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal; Rockefeller Center (including Radio City Music Hall); Times Square; and the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Museum and One World Trade Center).
There are also numerous iconic bridges across rivers that connect to Manhattan Island, as well as an emerging number of supertall skyscrapers. The Statue of Liberty rests on Liberty Island, an exclave of Manhattan, and part of Ellis Island is also an exclave of Manhattan. The borough has many energy-efficient office buildings, such as the Hearst Tower, the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center,[181] and the Bank of America Tower—the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.[182][183]
The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century.[184] From 1890 to 1973, the title of world's tallest building resided continually in Manhattan (with a gap between 1894 and 1908), with eight different buildings holding the title.[185] Structures such as the Equitable Building of 1915, which rises vertically forty stories from the sidewalk, prompted the passage of the 1916 Zoning Resolution, requiring new buildings to contain setbacks withdrawing progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order to preserve a view of the sky at street level.[186]
Manhattan's skyline includes several buildings that are symbolic of New York, in particular the Chrysler Building[187]: 14 and the Empire State Building, which sees about 4 million visitors a year.[188] The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers, is currently the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.[189]
In 1961, the struggling Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex.[190] Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead & White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City.[191] Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963.[192] The loss of Penn Station led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage".[193] The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including over 1,000 in New York City.[194] In 2017, a multibillion-dollar rebuilding plan was unveiled to restore the historic grandeur of Penn Station, in the process of upgrading the landmark's status as a critical transportation hub.[195]
The 700,000 sq ft (65,000 m2) Moynihan Train Hall, developed as a $1.6 billion renovation and expansion of Penn Station into the James A. Farley Building, the city's former main post office building, was opened in January 2021.[196]
National protected areas edit
- African Burial Ground National Monument
- Castle Clinton National Monument
- Federal Hall National Memorial
- General Grant National Memorial
- Governors Island National Monument
- Hamilton Grange National Memorial
- Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site
- Statue of Liberty National Monument (part)
- Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site
Parkland edit
Parkland covers a total of 2,659 acres (10.76 km2), accounting for 18.2% of the borough's land area; the 840-acre (3.4 km2) Central Park is the borough's largest park, comprising 31.6% of Manhattan's parkland.[197] Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park is anchored by the 12-acre (4.9 ha) Great Lawn[198] and offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and several lawns and sporting areas, as well as 21 playgrounds,[199] and a 6-mile (9.7 km) road from which automobile traffic has been banned since 2018.[200] While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped; the construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects, with some 20,000 workers moving 5 million cubic yards (3.8 million cubic meters) of material to shape the topography and create the English-style pastoral landscape that Olmsted and Vaux sought.[201]
The remaining 70% of Manhattan's parkland includes 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts, and many other amenities.[202] The next-largest park in Manhattan, the Hudson River Park, stretches 4.5 miles (7.2 km) along the Hudson River and comprises 550 acres (220 ha).[203] Other major parks include:[197]
- Bowling Green
- Bryant Park
- City Hall Park
- DeWitt Clinton Park
- East River Greenway
- Fort Tryon Park
- Fort Washington Park
- Harlem River Park
- Holcombe Rucker Park
- Imagination Playground
- Inwood Hill Park
- Isham Park
- J. Hood Wright Park
- Jackie Robinson Park
- Madison Square Park
- Marcus Garvey Park
- Morningside Park
- Randall's Island Park
- Riverside Park
- Sara D. Roosevelt Park
- Seward Park
- St. Nicholas Park
- Stuyvesant Square
- The Battery
- The High Line
- Thomas Jefferson Park
- Tompkins Square Park
- Union Square Park
- Washington Square Park
Economy edit
Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.45 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost more than half of all jobs in New York City.[204] In the second quarter of 2023, Manhattan had an average weekly wage of $2,590, ranked fourth-highest among the nation's 360 largest counties.[204] Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions. Manhattan also has the highest per capita income of any county in the United States.
In 2010, Manhattan's daytime population was swelling to 3.94 million, with commuters adding a net 1.48 million people to the population, along with visitors, tourists, and commuting students. The commuter influx of 1.61 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any county or city in the country,[205] and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.[206]
Financial sector edit
Manhattan's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, and the Nasdaq, now located at 4 Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, representing the world's largest and second-largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall share trading value and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2023.[24] The NYSE American (formerly the American Stock Exchange, AMEX), New York Board of Trade, and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) are also located downtown. Financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency have emerged as more recent constituents of the financial sector as well as the tech sector.
Corporate sector edit
New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the United States, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan.[208] Manhattan had more than 520 million square feet (48 million square meters) of office space in 2022,[209] making it the largest office market in the United States; while Midtown Manhattan, with more than 400 million square feet (37 million square meters) is the largest central business district in the world.[210] Lower Manhattan is the third-largest U.S. central business district (following the Chicago Loop).[211][212] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously known as "Madison Avenue".[213]
Tech and biotech edit
Manhattan has driven New York's status as a top-tier global high technology hub.[215][216] Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high tech industries,[217] is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in its scope. New York City's current tech sphere encompasses a universal array of applications involving artificial intelligence, the internet, new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. As of 2014[update], New York City hosted 300,000 employees in the tech sector.[218][219] In 2015, Silicon Alley generated over US$7.3 billion in venture capital investment,[220] most based in Manhattan, as well as in Brooklyn, Queens, and elsewhere in the region. High technology startup companies and employment are growing in Manhattan and across New York City, bolstered by the city's emergence as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship,[220] social tolerance,[221] and environmental sustainability,[222][223] as well as New York's position as the leading Internet hub and telecommunications center in North America, including its vicinity to several transatlantic fiber optic trunk lines, the city's intellectual capital, and its extensive outdoor wireless connectivity.[224] Verizon Communications, headquartered at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, was at the final stages in 2014 of completing a US$3 billion fiberoptic telecommunications upgrade throughout New York City.[225] As of October 2014, New York City hosted 300,000 employees in the tech sector,[219] with a significant proportion in Manhattan. The technology sector has been expanding across Manhattan since 2010.[226]
The biotechnology sector is also growing in Manhattan based upon the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than US$30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions. The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed a minimum of US$100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[227] In 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg had announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a US$2 billion graduate school of applied sciences on Roosevelt Island, Manhattan, with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[228][229][needs update]
Tourism edit
Tourism is vital to Manhattan's economy, and the landmarks of Manhattan are the focus of New York City's tourists, with a record 66.6 million visiting the city in 2019, bringing in $47.4 billion in tourism revenue. Visitor numbers dropped by two-thirds in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, climbing back to 63.3 million visitors in 2023.[230][231] In the 2018–19 Broadway theater season ending in May 2019, total attendance set records of 14.8 million and shows grossed $1.83 billion.[232] Recovering from closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2022-23 revenues rebounded to $1.58 billion with total attendance of 12.3 million.[233]
Real estate edit
Real estate is a major force in Manhattan's economy. Manhattan has perennially been home to some of the nation's, as well as the world's, most valuable real estate, including the Time Warner Center, which had the highest-listed market value in the city in 2006 at US$1.1 billion,[234] to be subsequently surpassed in October 2014 by the Waldorf Astoria New York, which became the most expensive hotel ever sold after being purchased by the Anbang Insurance Group, based in China, for US$1.95 billion.[235] When 450 Park Avenue was sold on July 2, 2007, for US$510 million, about US$1,589 per square foot (US$17,104/m²), it broke the barely month-old record for an American office building of US$1,476 per square foot (US$15,887/m²) based on the sale of 660 Madison Avenue.[236] In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten zip codes in the United States by median housing price.[237] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States occurred in Manhattan, at a selling price of US$238 million, for a 24,000-square-foot (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park,[238] while Central Park Tower, topped out at 1,550 feet (472 m) in 2019, is the world's tallest residential building, followed globally in height by 111 West 57th Street and 432 Park Avenue, both also located in Midtown Manhattan.
As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the median value of homes in Manhattan was $1,306,208. It ranked second among US counties for highest median home value at the time, second to Nantucket.[239]
Media edit
Manhattan has been described as the media capital of the world.[240][241] A significant array of media outlets and their journalists report about international, American, business, entertainment, and New York metropolitan area–related matters from Manhattan.
News edit
Manhattan is served by the major New York City daily news publications, including The New York Times, which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism[242] and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record;[243] the New York Daily News; and the New York Post, which are all headquartered in the borough. The nation's largest newspaper by circulation, The Wall Street Journal, is also based in Manhattan.[244] Other daily newspapers include AM New York and The Villager. The New York Amsterdam News, based in Harlem, is one of the leading Black-owned weekly newspapers in the United States. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[245]
Television, radio, and film edit
The television industry developed in Manhattan and is a significant employer in the borough's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox,[246] as well as Univision, are all headquartered in Manhattan, as are many cable channels, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, and Comedy Central. In 1971, WLIB became New York City's first Black-owned radio station[247] and began broadcasts geared toward the African-American community in 1949.[248] WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States.[249] WNYC, broadcasting on both an AM and FM signal, has the largest public radio audience in the nation and is the most-listened to commercial or non-commercial radio station in Manhattan.[250] WBAI, owned by the non-profit Pacifica Foundation, broadcasts eclectic music, as well as political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning viewpoint.[251]
The oldest public-access television cable TV channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971, offers eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussions of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming.[252] NY1, Charter Communications's local news channel, is known for its beat coverage of City Hall and state politics.[253]
Education edit
Education in Manhattan is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Non-charter public schools in the borough are operated by the New York City Department of Education,[256] the largest public school system in the United States. Charter schools include Success Academy Harlem 1 through 5, Success Academy Upper West, and Public Prep.
Several notable New York City public high schools are located in Manhattan, including A. Philip Randolph Campus High School, Beacon High School, Stuyvesant High School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, High School of Fashion Industries, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, NYC Lab School, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Hunter College High School, and High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College. Bard High School Early College, a hybrid school created by Bard College, serves students from around the city.
Many private preparatory schools are also situated in Manhattan, including the Upper East Side's Brearley School, Dalton School, Browning School, Spence School, Chapin School, Nightingale-Bamford School, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Hewitt School, Saint David's School, Loyola School, and Regis High School. The Upper West Side is home to the Collegiate School and Trinity School. The borough is also home to Manhattan Country School, Trevor Day School, Xavier High School and the United Nations International School.
Based on data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey, 59.9% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree.[257] As of 2005, about 60% of residents were college graduates and some 25% had earned advanced degrees, giving Manhattan one of the nation's densest concentrations of highly educated people.[258]
Manhattan has various colleges and universities, including Columbia University (and its affiliate Barnard College), Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, New York Institute of Technology, New York University (NYU), The Juilliard School, Pace University, Berkeley College, The New School, Yeshiva University, and a campus of Fordham University. Other schools include Bank Street College of Education, Boricua College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan College of New York, Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, Touro College, and Union Theological Seminary. Several other private institutions maintain a Manhattan presence, among them Mercy College, St. John's University, Adelphi University, The King's College, and Pratt Institute. Cornell Tech, part of Cornell University, is developing on Roosevelt Island.
The City University of New York (CUNY), the municipal college system of New York City, is the largest urban university system in the United States, serving more than 226,000 degree students and a roughly equal number of adult, continuing and professional education students.[259] A third of college graduates in New York City graduate from CUNY, with the institution enrolling about half of all college students in New York City. CUNY senior colleges located in Manhattan include: Baruch College, City College of New York, Hunter College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice and William E. Macaulay Honors College; graduate studies and doctorate-granting institutions are Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, CUNY Graduate Center, CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and CUNY School of Professional Studies.[260][261] The only CUNY community college located in Manhattan is the Borough of Manhattan Community College.[262] The State University of New York is represented by the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York State College of Optometry, and Stony Brook University – Manhattan.[263]
Manhattan is a world center for training and education in medicine and the life sciences.[264] The city as a whole receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities,[265] the bulk of which goes to Manhattan's research institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medical College, and New York University School of Medicine.
Manhattan is served by the New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country.[266] The five units of the Central Library—Mid-Manhattan Library, 53rd Street Library, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library, and the Science, Industry and Business Library—are all located in Manhattan.[267] More than 35 other branch libraries are located in the borough.[268]
Culture edit
Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; regionally, residents within the New York City metropolitan area, including natives of New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan, will often describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the City".[269] Poet Walt Whitman characterized the streets of Manhattan as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[270]
In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched upon Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of women's liberation, reflecting the alliance of the labor and suffrage movements.[271]
Manhattan has been the scene of many important global and American cultural movements. The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States and introduced writers Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. Manhattan's visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. The downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s included artist Andy Warhol and clubs like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54, where he socialized.
Broadway theatre is considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats, almost all in and around Times Square. Off-Broadway theatres feature productions in venues with 100–500 seats.[272][273] Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to 12 influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan.
Manhattan is also home to some of the most extensive art collections in the world, both contemporary and classical art, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum. The Upper East Side has many art galleries,[274][275] and the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea is known for its more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from both upcoming and established artists.[276][277] Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in Manhattan.[278][279]
Manhattan is the epicenter of LGBT culture and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem.[282] The borough is widely acclaimed as the cradle of the modern LGBTQ rights movement, with its inception at the June 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, Lower Manhattan – widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[89][283][284] and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.[90][285] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre"—[286] radiating from this central hub, as LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[287] Multiple gay villages have developed, spanning the length of the borough from the Lower East Side, East Village, and Greenwich Village, through Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen, uptown to Morningside Heights.
The annual NYC Pride March (or gay pride parade) traverses southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village; the Manhattan parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[281][280] Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, produced by Heritage of Pride. The events were in partnership with the I ❤ NY program's LGBT division, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan.[288]
The borough is represented in several prominent idioms. The phrase New York minute is meant to convey an extremely short time such as an instant,[289] sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible," referring to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan.[290][291] The expression "melting pot" was first popularly coined to describe the densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side in Israel Zangwill's play The Melting Pot, which was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet set in New York City in 1908.[292] The iconic Flatiron Building is said to have been the source of the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building.[293] The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stablehands to refer to New York City's horse racetracks and named his racing column "Around The Big Apple". Jazz musicians adopted the term to refer to the city as the world's jazz capital, and a 1970s ad campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau helped popularize the term.[294] Manhattan, Kansas, a city of 53,000 people,[295][importance?] was named by New York investors after the borough and is nicknamed the "little apple".[296]
Manhattan is well known for its street parades, which celebrate a broad array of themes, including holidays, nationalities, human rights, and major league sports team championship victories. The majority of higher profile parades in New York City are held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[297] beginning alongside Central Park and processing southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[300] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[297]
Other notable parades including the world's oldest St. Patrick's Day Parade, held annually in March since 1762,[301][302] the NYC Pride March in June,[303] the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October,[304] and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations.[305] Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other heroic national accomplishments march northward on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan, along the Canyon of Heroes.[306] New York Fashion Week, held at various locations
in Manhattan, is a high-profile semiannual event featuring models displaying the latest wardrobes created by prominent fashion designers worldwide in advance of these fashions proceeding to the retail marketplace.
Sports edit
Manhattan is home to the NBA's New York Knicks and the NHL's New York Rangers, both of which play their home games at Madison Square Garden, the only major professional sports arena in the borough.[307] The Garden was also home to the WNBA's New York Liberty through the 2017 season, but that team's primary home is now the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. The New York Jets proposed a West Side Stadium for their home field, but the proposal was eventually defeated in June 2005, and they now play at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.[308]
While Manhattan does not currently host a professional baseball franchise, three of the four Major League Baseball teams to have played in New York City played in Manhattan. The original New York Giants played in the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue from their inception in 1883—except for 1889, when they split their time between Jersey City, New Jersey, and Staten Island, and when they played in Hilltop Park in 1911—until they headed to California with the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season.[309] The New York Yankees began their franchise as the Highlanders, named for Hilltop Park, where they played from their creation in 1903 until 1912.[310] The team moved to the Polo Grounds with the 1913 season, where they were officially christened the New York Yankees, remaining there until they moved across the Harlem River in 1923 to Yankee Stadium.[311] The New York Mets played in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons, before Shea Stadium was completed in 1964.[312] After the Mets departed, the Polo Grounds was demolished in April 1964, replaced by public housing.[313][314]
The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[315] The New York Knicks started play in 1946 as one of the National Basketball Association's original teams, playing their first home games at the 69th Regiment Armory, before making Madison Square Garden their permanent home.[316] The New York Liberty of the WNBA shared the Garden with the Knicks from their creation in 1997 as one of the league's original eight teams through the 2017 season,[317] after which the team moved nearly all of its home schedule to White Plains in Westchester County.[318] Rucker Park in Harlem is a playground court, famed for its streetball style of play, where many NBA athletes have played in the summer league.[319]
Although both of New York City's football teams play today across the Hudson River in MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, both teams started out playing in the Polo Grounds. The New York Giants played side-by-side with their baseball namesakes from the time they entered the National Football League in 1925, until crossing over to Yankee Stadium in 1956.[320] The New York Jets, originally known as the Titans of New York, started out in 1960 at the Polo Grounds, staying there for four seasons before joining the Mets in Queens at Shea Stadium in 1964.[321]
The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League have played in the various locations of Madison Square Garden since the team's founding in the 1926–1927 season. The Rangers were predated by the New York Americans, who started play in the Garden the previous season, lasting until the team folded after the 1941–1942 NHL season, a season it played in the Garden as the Brooklyn Americans.[322]
The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League played their home games at Downing Stadium for two seasons, starting in 1974. The playing pitch and facilities at Downing Stadium were in unsatisfactory condition, however, and as the team's popularity grew they too left for Yankee Stadium, and then Giants Stadium. The stadium was demolished in 2002 to make way for the $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, which includes an Olympic-standard 400-meter running track and, as part of Pelé's and the Cosmos' legacy, includes a FIFA-approved floodlit soccer stadium that hosts matches between the 48 youth teams of a Manhattan soccer club.[323][324]
Government edit
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter, which has provided for a strong mayor–council system since its revision in 1989.[325] The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Manhattan.
The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.[326] Since 1990, the largely powerless Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Manhattan's current Borough President is Mark Levine, elected as a Democrat in November 2021. Levine replaced Gale Brewer, who went on to represent the sixth district of the New York City Council.
Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, is the District Attorney of New York County. Manhattan has ten City Council members, the third largest contingent among the five boroughs. It also has twelve administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents.
As the host of the United Nations, the borough is home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates.[327] It is also the home of New York City Hall, the seat of New York City government housing the Mayor of New York City and the New York City Council. The mayor's staff and thirteen municipal agencies are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, completed in 1914, one of the largest governmental buildings in the world.[328]
Politics edit
¶ The presidential election results below for the years 1876–1912 are not strictly comparable with the earlier and later ones because New York County included the West Bronx after 1874 and all of what is now the Borough of the Bronx (Bronx County, New York) from 1895 until The Bronx became a separate borough in 1914.
| Year | Republican / Whig | Democratic | Third party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | % | No. | % | No. | % | |
| 2020 | 85,185 | 12.21% | 603,040 | 86.42% | 9,588 | 1.37% |
| 2016 | 64,930 | 9.71% | 579,013 | 86.56% | 24,997 | 3.74% |
| 2012 | 89,559 | 14.92% | 502,674 | 83.74% | 8,058 | 1.34% |
| 2008 | 89,949 | 13.47% | 572,370 | 85.70% | 5,566 | 0.83% |
| 2004 | 107,405 | 16.73% | 526,765 | 82.06% | 7,781 | 1.21% |
| 2000 | 82,113 | 14.38% | 454,523 | 79.60% | 34,370 | 6.02% |
| 1996 | 67,839 | 13.76% | 394,131 | 79.96% | 30,929 | 6.27% |
| 1992 | 84,501 | 15.88% | 416,142 | 78.20% | 31,475 | 5.92% |
| 1988 | 115,927 | 22.89% | 385,675 | 76.14% | 4,949 | 0.98% |
| 1984 | 144,281 | 27.39% | 379,521 | 72.06% | 2,869 | 0.54% |
| 1980 | 115,911 | 26.23% | 275,742 | 62.40% | 50,245 | 11.37% |
| 1976 | 117,702 | 25.54% | 337,438 | 73.22% | 5,698 | 1.24% |
| 1972 | 178,515 | 33.38% | 354,326 | 66.25% | 2,022 | 0.38% |
| 1968 | 135,458 | 25.59% | 370,806 | 70.04% | 23,128 | 4.37% |
| 1964 | 120,125 | 19.20% | 503,848 | 80.52% | 1,746 | 0.28% |
| 1960 | 217,271 | 34.19% | 414,902 | 65.28% | 3,394 | 0.53% |
| 1956 | 300,004 | 44.26% | 377,856 | 55.74% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1952 | 300,284 | 39.30% | 446,727 | 58.47% | 16,974 | 2.22% |
| 1948 | 241,752 | 32.75% | 380,310 | 51.51% | 116,208 | 15.74% |
| 1944 | 258,650 | 33.47% | 509,263 | 65.90% | 4,864 | 0.63% |
| 1940 | 292,480 | 37.59% | 478,153 | 61.45% | 7,466 | 0.96% |
| 1936 | 174,299 | 24.51% | 517,134 | 72.71% | 19,820 | 2.79% |
| 1932 | 157,014 | 27.78% | 378,077 | 66.89% | 30,114 | 5.33% |
| 1928 | 186,396 | 35.74% | 317,227 | 60.82% | 17,935 | 3.44% |
| 1924 | 190,871 | 41.20% | 183,249 | 39.55% | 89,206 | 19.25% |
| 1920 | 275,013 | 59.22% | 135,249 | 29.12% | 54,158 | 11.66% |
| 1916 | 113,254 | 42.65% | 139,547 | 52.55% | 12,759 | 4.80% |
| 1912 | 63,107 | 18.15% | 166,157 | 47.79% | 118,391 | 34.05% |
| 1908 | 154,958 | 44.71% | 160,261 | 46.24% | 31,393 | 9.06% |
| 1904 | 155,003 | 42.11% | 189,712 | 51.54% | 23,357 | 6.35% |
| 1900 | 153,001 | 44.16% | 181,786 | 52.47% | 11,700 | 3.38% |
| 1896 | 156,359 | 50.73% | 135,624 | 44.00% | 16,249 | 5.27% |
| 1892 | 98,967 | 34.73% | 175,267 | 61.50% | 10,750 | 3.77% |
| 1888 | 106,922 | 39.20% | 162,735 | 59.67% | 3,076 | 1.13% |
| 1884 | 90,095 | 39.54% | 133,222 | 58.47% | 4,530 | 1.99% |
| 1880 | 81,730 | 39.79% | 123,015 | 59.90% | 636 | 0.31% |
| 1876 | 58,561 | 34.17% | 112,530 | 65.66% | 289 | 0.17% |
| 1872 | 54,676 | 41.27% | 77,814 | 58.73% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1868 | 47,738 | 30.59% | 108,316 | 69.41% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1864 | 36,681 | 33.23% | 73,709 | 66.77% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1860 | 33,290 | 34.83% | 62,293 | 65.17% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1856 | 17,771 | 22.32% | 41,913 | 52.65% | 19,922 | 25.03% |
| 1852 | 23,124 | 39.98% | 34,280 | 59.27% | 436 | 0.75% |
| 1848 | 29,070 | 54.51% | 18,973 | 35.57% | 5,290 | 9.92% |
| 1844 | 26,385 | 48.15% | 28,296 | 51.64% | 117 | 0.21% |
| 1840 | 20,958 | 48.69% | 21,936 | 50.96% | 153 | 0.36% |
| 1836 | 16,348 | 48.42% | 17,417 | 51.58% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1832 | 12,506 | 40.97% | 18,020 | 59.03% | 0 | 0.00% |
| 1828 | 9,638 | 38.44% | 15,435 | 61.56% | 0 | 0.00% |
The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Registered Republicans are a minority in the borough, constituting 9.88% of the electorate as of April 2016[update]. Registered Republicans are more than 20% of the electorate only in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Financial District as of 2016[update]. Democrats accounted for 68.41% of those registered to vote, while 17.94% of voters were unaffiliated.[332][333]
No Republican has won the presidential election in Manhattan since 1924, when Calvin Coolidge won a plurality of the New York County vote over Democrat John W. Davis, 41.20%–39.55%. Warren G. Harding was the most recent Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the Manhattan vote, with 59.22% of the 1920 vote. The borough is the most important source of funding for political campaigns in the United States; From 2016 to 2020, eight of the ten ZIP Codes where residents gave the greatest number of maximum allowable contribution of $2,800 to congressional candidates were located in Manhattan.[334]
Representatives in the U.S. Congress edit
As of 2023, three Democrats represented Manhattan in the United States House of Representatives.[335]
- Dan Goldman (first elected in 2022) represents New York's 10th congressional district, which includes Lower Manhattan, as well as a portion of Brooklyn.
- Jerry Nadler (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 12th congressional district, which includes the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, and Midtown Manhattan.
- Adriano Espaillat (first elected in 2016) represents New York's 13th congressional district, which includes the Upper Manhattan, as well as part of the northwest Bronx.
Federal offices edit
The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Manhattan. The James Farley Post Office at 421 Eighth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, between 31st Street and 33rd Street, is New York City's main post office.[336] Both the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit are located in Lower Manhattan's Foley Square, and the U.S. Attorney and other federal offices and agencies maintain locations in that area.
Crime and public safety edit
Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States became a magnet for immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their home countries. After arriving in New York, many new arrivals ended up living in squalor in the slums of the Five Points neighborhood, an area between Broadway and the Bowery, northeast of New York City Hall. By the 1820s, the area was home to many gambling dens and brothels, and was known as a dangerous place to go. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the horrendous living conditions he had seen.[337] The area was so notorious that it even caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who visited the area before his Cooper Union speech in 1860.[338] The predominantly Irish Five Points Gang was one of the country's first major organized crime entities.
As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang.[339] The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period.[340] From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.[340]
New York City as a whole experienced a sharp increase in crime during the post-war period.[341] The murder rate in Manhattan hit an all-time high of 42 murders per 100,000 residents in 1979.[342] Manhattan retained the highest murder rate in the city until 1985 when it was surpassed by the Bronx.[342] Most serious violent crime has been historically concentrated in Upper Manhattan and the Lower East Side, though robbery in particular was a major quality of life concern throughout the borough. Through the 1990s and 2000s, levels of violent crime in Manhattan plummeted to levels not seen since the 1950s,[343] with murders in Manhattan dropping from 503 in 1990, at the citywide peak, to 78 in 2022, a decline of 84%.[344]
Today crime rates in most of Lower Manhattan, Midtown, the Upper East Side, and the Upper West Side are consistent with other major city centers in the United States. However, crime rates remain high in the Upper Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem, Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, and New York City Housing Authority developments across the borough, despite significant reductions. After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, there had been an increase in violent crime, particularly in Upper Manhattan.[345] Mirroring a nationwide trend, rates of shootings and violent crimes in 2023 declined from their peaks during the pandemic.[346][347][348]
Housing edit
During Manhattan's early history, wood construction and poor access to water supplies left the city vulnerable to fires. In 1776, shortly after the Continental Army evacuated Manhattan and left it to the British, a massive fire broke out destroying one-third of the city and some 500 houses.[349]
The rise of immigration near the turn of the 20th century left major portions of Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, densely packed with recent arrivals, crammed into unhealthy and unsanitary housing. Tenements were usually five stories high, constructed on the then-typical 25 by 100 feet (7.6 by 30.5 m) lots, with "cockroach landlords" exploiting the new immigrants.[350][351] By 1929, stricter fire codes and the increased use of elevators in residential buildings, were the impetus behind a new housing code that effectively ended the tenement as a form of new construction, though many tenement buildings survive today on the East Side of the borough.[351] Conversely, there were also areas with luxury apartment developments, the first of which was the Dakota on the Upper West Side.[352]
Manhattan offers a wide array of private housing, as well as public housing, which is administered by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Affordable rental and co-operative housing units throughout the borough were created under the Mitchell–Lama Housing Program.[353] There were 923,302 housing units in 2022[3] at an average density of 40,745 units per square mile (15,732/km2). As of 2003[update], only 24.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind the Bronx.[354] Public housing administered by NYCHA accounts for nearly 100,000 residents in more than 50,000 units in 2023.[355] Completed in 1935, the First Houses in the East Village were one of the country's first publicly-funded low-income housing projects.[356][357] At $2,024 in 2022, Manhattan has the highest average cost for rent of any county in the United States. As the borough has the nation's highest income per capita, rent is a lower percentage of annual income than in several other American cities.[358]
Manhattan's real estate market for luxury housing continues to be among the most expensive in the world,[359] and Manhattan residential property continues to have the highest sale price per square foot in the United States.[19] Manhattan's apartments cost $1,773 per square foot ($19,080/m2), compared to San Francisco housing at $1,185 per square foot ($12,760/m2), Boston housing at $751 per square foot ($8,080/m2), and Los Angeles housing at $451 per square foot ($4,850/m2).[360]
Infrastructure edit
Transportation edit
This section may contain an excessive amount of intricate detail that may interest only a particular audience. (August 2023) |
Public transportation edit
Manhattan is unique in the U.S. for intense use of public transportation and lack of private car ownership. While 88% of Americans nationwide drive to their jobs, with only 5% using public transport, mass transit is the dominant form of travel for residents of Manhattan, with 72% of borough residents using public transport to get to work, while only 18% drove.[361][362] According to the 2000 United States Census, 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.[363] In 2008, Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a congestion pricing system to regulate entering Manhattan south of 60th Street, but the state legislature rejected the proposal.[364]
The New York City Subway, the largest subway system in the world by number of stations, is the primary means of travel within the city, linking every borough except Staten Island. There are 151 subway stations in Manhattan, out of the 472 stations.[365] A second subway, the PATH system, connects six stations in Manhattan to northern New Jersey. Passengers pay fares with pay-per-ride MetroCards, which are valid on all city buses and subways, as well as on PATH trains.[366][367] Commuter rail services operating to and from Manhattan are the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), which connects Manhattan and other New York City boroughs to Long Island; the Metro-North Railroad, which connects Manhattan to Upstate New York and Southwestern Connecticut; and NJ Transit trains, which run to various points in New Jersey.
The US$11.1 billion East Side Access project, which brings LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal, opened in 2023; this project utilized a pre-existing train tunnel beneath the East River, connecting the East Side of Manhattan with Long Island City, Queens.[368][369] Four multi-billion-dollar projects were completed in the mid-2010s: the $1.4 billion Fulton Center in November 2014,[370] the $2.4 billion 7 Subway Extension in September 2015,[371] the $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub in March 2016,[372][373] and Phase 1 of the $4.5 billion Second Avenue Subway in January 2017.[374][375]
MTA New York City Transit offers a wide variety of local buses within Manhattan under the brand New York City Bus. An extensive network of express bus routes serves commuters and other travelers heading into Manhattan.[376] The bus system served 784 million passengers citywide in 2011, placing the bus system's ridership as the highest in the nation, and more than double the ridership of the second-place Los Angeles system.[377]
The Roosevelt Island Tramway, one of two commuter cable car systems in North America, takes commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in less than five minutes, and has been serving the island since 1978.[378][379]
The Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, annually carries over 21 million passengers on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) run between Manhattan and Staten Island. Each weekday, five vessels transport about 65,000 passengers on 109 boat trips.[380][381] The ferry has been fare-free since 1997.[382] In February 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city government would begin NYC Ferry to extend ferry transportation to traditionally underserved communities in the city.[383][384] The first routes of NYC Ferry opened in 2017.[385][386] All of the system's routes have termini in Manhattan, and the Lower East Side and Soundview routes also have intermediate stops on the East River.[387]
The metro region's commuter rail lines converge at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, on the west and east sides of Midtown Manhattan, respectively. They are the two busiest rail stations in the United States. About one-third of users of mass transit and two-thirds of railway passengers in the country live in New York and its suburbs.[388] Amtrak provides inter-city passenger rail service from Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York and New England; cross-Canadian border service to Toronto and Montreal; and destinations in the Southern and Midwestern United States.
The Port Authority Bus Terminal is the city's main intercity bus terminal and the world's busiest bus station, It serves 250,000 passengers on 7,000 buses each workday in a building opened in 1950 that was designed to accommodate 60,000 daily passengers. A 2021 plan announced by the Port Authority would spend $10 billion to expand capacity and modernize the facility.[390][391][389]
Major highways edit
Taxis edit
New York's iconic yellow taxicabs, which number 13,087 citywide and must have a medallion authorizing the pickup of street hails, are ubiquitous in the borough.[392] Various private vehicle for hire companies provide significant competition for taxicab drivers in Manhattan.[393]
Bicycles edit
According to the government of New York City, Manhattan had 19,676 bicycle commuters in 2017, roughly doubling from its total of 9,613 in 2012.[394]
Streets and roads edit
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each 100 feet (30 m) wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue on the west side.[58][395] There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village.[396] The numbered streets in Manhattan run east–west, and are generally 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets.[58] With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile.[397] The typical block in Manhattan is 250 by 600 feet (76 by 183 m). The address algorithm of Manhattan refers to the formulas used to estimate the closest east–west cross street for building numbers on north–south avenues.[398]
According to the original Commissioner's Plan, there were 155 numbered crosstown streets,[399] but later the grid was extended up to the northernmost corner of Manhattan Island, where the last numbered street is 220th Street, though the grid continues to 228th Street in the borough's Marble Hill neighborhood.[400][401] Moreover, the numbering system continues even in the Bronx, north of Manhattan, despite the fact that the grid plan is not as regular in that borough, whose last numbered street is 263rd Street.[401][402] Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 57th and 125th Streets,[403] which became some of the borough's most significant transportation and shopping venues. Broadway, following the route of a Native American trail, is the most notable of many exceptions to the grid, starting at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan and continuing north for 13 miles (21 km) into the Bronx at Manhattan's northern tip.[404] In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Union Square (Park Avenue South/Fourth Avenue and 14th Street), Madison Square (Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street), Herald Square (Sixth Avenue and 34th Street), Times Square (Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street), and Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue/Central Park West and 59th Street).[405][406]
"Crosstown traffic" refers primarily to vehicular traffic between Manhattan's East Side and West Side. The trip is notoriously frustrating for drivers because of heavy congestion on narrow local streets laid out by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, absence of express roads other than the Trans-Manhattan Expressway at the far north end of Manhattan Island; and restricted to very limited crosstown automobile travel within Central Park. Proposals to build highways traversing the island through Manhattan's densest neighborhoods, namely the Mid-Manhattan Expressway across 34th Street and the Lower Manhattan Expressway through SoHo, failed in the 1960s.[407][408] Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present, significantly shaping traffic patterns in Manhattan.[409]
Another consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge).[410] On May 28 and July 12, the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level.[410][411] A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise on the eastern horizon on December 5 and January 8.[412]
The FDR Drive and Harlem River Drive, both designed by controversial New York master planner Robert Moses,[413] comprise a single, long limited-access parkway skirting the east side of Manhattan along the East River and Harlem River south of Dyckman Street. The Henry Hudson Parkway is the corresponding parkway on the West Side north of 57th Street.
River crossings edit
Being primarily an island, Manhattan is linked to New York City's outer boroughs by numerous bridges, of various sizes. Manhattan has fixed highway connections with New Jersey to its west by way of the George Washington Bridge, the Holland Tunnel, and the Lincoln Tunnel, and to three of the four other New York City boroughs—the Bronx to the northeast, and Brooklyn and Queens (both on Long Island) to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough, Staten Island, is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. The ferry terminal is located near Battery Park at Manhattan's southern tip. It is also possible to travel on land to Staten Island by way of Brooklyn, via the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
The 14-lane George Washington Bridge, the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge,[414][415] connects Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan to Bergen County in New Jersey.[416] There are numerous bridges to the Bronx across the Harlem River, and five (listed north to south)—the Triborough (known officially as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), Ed Koch Queensboro (also known as the 59th Street Bridge), Williamsburg, Manhattan, and Brooklyn Bridges—that cross the East River to connect Manhattan to Long Island.[417]
Several tunnels also link Manhattan Island to New York City's outer boroughs and New Jersey. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[418] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sail through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the world's first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel.[419] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940;[420] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[421] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn.
Several ferry services operate between New Jersey and Manhattan.[422] These ferries mainly serve midtown, Battery Park City, and Wall Street.
Heliports edit
Manhattan has three public heliports: the East 34th Street Heliport (also known as the Atlantic Metroport) at East 34th Street, owned by New York City and run by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC); the Port Authority Downtown Manhattan/Wall Street Heliport, owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and run by the NYCEDC; and the West 30th Street Heliport, a privately owned heliport owned by the Hudson River Park Trust.[423] US Helicopter offered regularly scheduled helicopter service connecting the Downtown Manhattan Heliport with John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, before going out of business in 2009.[424]
Utilities edit
Gas and electric service is provided by Consolidated Edison to all of Manhattan. Con Edison's electric business traces its roots back to Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned electric utility. The company started service on September 4, 1882, using one generator to provide 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers with 800 light bulbs, in a one-square-mile area of Lower Manhattan from his Pearl Street Station.[425][excessive detail?] Con Edison operates the world's largest district steam system, which consists of 105 miles (169 km) of steam pipes, providing steam for heating, hot water, and air conditioning[426] by some 1,800 Manhattan customers.[427] Cable service is provided by Time Warner Cable and telephone service is provided by Verizon Communications, although AT&T is available as well.
Manhattan witnessed the doubling of the natural gas supply delivered to the borough when a new gas pipeline opened on November 1, 2013.[428]
The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal.[429] The bulk of the city's trash ultimately is disposed at mega-dumps in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio (via transfer stations in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens) since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.[430] A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities. Like New York City, New Jersey and much of Greater New York relies on exporting its trash.
New York City has the largest clean-air diesel-hybrid and compressed natural gas bus fleet, which also operates in Manhattan, in the country. It also has some of the first hybrid taxis, most of which operate in Manhattan.[431]
Health care edit
There are many hospitals in Manhattan, including two of the 25 largest in the United States (as of 2017):[432]
- Bellevue Hospital
- Lenox Hill Hospital
- Lower Manhattan Hospital
- Metropolitan Hospital Center
- Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital
- Mount Sinai Hospital
- NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital
- NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem
- NYU Langone Medical Center
Water purity and availability edit
New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[433] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.[434] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a US$3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[435] Water comes to Manhattan through the tunnels 1 and 2, completed in 1917 and 1935, and in future through Tunnel No. 3, begun in 1970.[436]
See also edit
Notes edit
- ^ Area codes 718, 347, and 929 are used in Marble Hill.
- ^ Mean monthly maxima and minima (i.e. the expected highest and lowest temperature readings at any point during the year or given month) calculated based on data at said location from 1991 to 2020.
- ^ Official weather observations for Central Park were conducted at the Arsenal at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street from 1869 to 1919, and at Belvedere Castle since 1919.[140]
References edit
Citations edit
- ^ a b 2010 Census Gazetteer Files: New York County Subdivisions June 16, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, United States Census Bureau. Accessed June 19, 2017.
- ^ Manhattan High Point
- ^ a b c d e f g QuickFacts New York; New York city, New York; New York County, New York, United States Census Bureau. Accessed January 5, 2024.
- ^ Moynihan, Colin. "F.Y.I." April 17, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, September 19, 1999. Accessed December 17, 2019. "There are well-known names for inhabitants of four boroughs: Manhattanites, Brooklynites, Bronxites and Staten Islanders. But what are residents of Queens called?"
- ^ "Gross Domestic Product by County and Metropolitan Area, 2022" (PDF). www.bea.gov. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
- ^ "World Urban Areas" (PDF). Demographia. April 2018. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
- ^ "A Nation challenged: in New York; New York Carries On, but Test of Its Grit Has Just Begun" March 24, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, October 11, 2001. Accessed November 20, 2016. "A roaring void has been created in the financial center of the world."
- ^ Sorrentino, Christopher (September 16, 2007). "When He Was Seventeen". The New York Times. Retrieved December 22, 2007.
In 1980, there were still the remains of the various downtown revolutions that had reinvigorated New York's music and art scenes and kept Manhattan in the position it had occupied since the 1940s as the cultural center of the world.
{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ Michael P. Ventura (April 6, 2010). . DNAinfo. Archived from the original on August 4, 2017. Retrieved June 11, 2017.
- ^ Dawn Ennis (May 24, 2017). . LGBTQ Nation. Archived from the original on July 28, 2017. Retrieved June 4, 2017.
- ^ a b Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (1998). Gotham : a history of New York City to 1898. Mike Wallace. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN 978-0-585-36462-9. OCLC 47011419.
- ^ "KINGSTON Discover 300 Years of New York History DUTCH COLONIES". National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. from the original on November 23, 2008. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
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- ^ Canal History, New York State Canal Corporation. Accessed January 3, 2024. "In 1825, Governor Dewitt Clinton officially opened the Erie Canal as he sailed the packet boat Seneca Chief along the Canal from Buffalo to Albany.... The explosion of trade prophesied by Governor Clinton began, spurred by freight rates from Buffalo to New York of $10 per ton by Canal, compared with $100 per ton by road.... The Erie Canal played an integral role in the transformation of New York City into the nation's leading port, a national identity that continues to be reflected in many songs, legends and artwork today."
- ^ "Sachems & Sinners An Informal History Of Tammany Hall", Time, August 22, 1955. Accessed December 1, 2023. "Born in Philadelphia, Wood went to New York to become an actor, but turned instead to politics and rose to become the first real Boss of Tammany Hall. In 1854 he became Mayor of New York City."
- ^ Central Park Opens: 1858, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Accessed December 24, 2023. ""
- ^ Blair, Cynthia. , Newsday. Accessed May 29, 2007. "Between 1853 and 1856, city commissioners purchased more than 700 acres (280 ha) from 59th Street to 106th Street between Fifth and Eighth Avenues to create Central Park, the nation's first public park [sic] as well as its first landscaped park." In actuality, Boston Common is the nation's first public park. Boston Common December 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Thefreedomtrail.org.
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- ^ Morgan, David. "New York's Central Park", CBS News, July 21, 2019. Accessed December 24, 2023. "America's first major landscaped public park, Manhattan's 840-acre Central Park welcomes more than 37 million visitors every year."
- ^ Harris, Leslie M. "The New York City Draft Riots of 1863" excerpted from In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863 June 29, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, University of Chicago Press. Accessed November 20, 2016.
- ^ Ward, Geoffrey C. "Gangs of New York" July 16, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, a review of Paradise Alley by Kevin Baker, The New York Times, October 6, 2002. Accessed June 30, 2009. "The New York draft riots remain the worst civil disturbance in American history: according to the historian Adrian Cook, 119 people are known to have been killed, mostly rioters or onlookers who got too close when federal troops, brought back from the battlefield to restore order, started shooting."
- ^ Statue of Liberty March 16, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, National Park Service. Accessed May 17, 2007.
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- ^ Brooklyn Bridge, New York City Department of Transportation. Accessed November 30, 2023. "The Brooklyn Bridge was designed by John A. Roebling. Construction began in 1869 and was completed in 1883.... The Brooklyn Bridge connects the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn by spanning the East River."
- ^ Consolidation of the Five-Borough City: 1898, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Accessed November 30, 2023. "On January 1, 1898, the separate jurisdictions of New York (Manhattan), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island joined together to form a single metropolis: the City of Greater New York. Movements for consolidation had been considered as far back as 1820, but by the end of the 19th century proponents were claiming that a single metropolitan jurisdiction stretching over five boroughs would run more efficiently and cement New York as the economic and cultural capital of the nation."
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- ^ "Birth of a Borough", A Walk Through the Bronx. Accessed January 3, 2024. "After consolidation in 1898, the twenty-third and twenty-fourth wards became the borough of the Bronx, which with Manhattan remained part of New York County (the other boroughs were already separate counties).... It was not until 1912, however, that the state legislature established the County of the Bronx as the sixty-second county in the state, effective January 1, 1914."
- ^ Opening ceremonies, New York subway, Oct. 27, 1904, Library of Congress. Accessed December 1, 2023.
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- ^ A New African American Identity: The Harlem Renaissance, National Museum of African American History and Culture. Accessed December 1, 2023.
- ^ Barr, Jason M. "Why Doesn’t New York Construct the World’s Tallest Building Anymore?", Building the Skyline, December 23, 2020. Accessed December 4, 2023. "Generation II was the twentieth century before World War I. This crop included the Singer Building (1908, 674 feet, 205 meters, 41 stories), the Metropolitan Life Tower (1909, 700 feet, 210 meters, 50 stories), and the Woolworth Building (1913, 792 feet, 241 meters, 55 stories).... Left to Right: Bank of Manhattan Building (1930), Chrysler Building (1930), Empire State Building (1931)."
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- ^ Markel, Howard. "How the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire transformed labor laws and protected workers’ health", PBS NewsHour, March 31, 2021. Accessed December 4, 2023. "Activists kept their memory alive by lobbying their local and state leaders to do something in the name of building and worker safety and health. Three months later, John Alden Dix, then the governor of New York, signed a law empowering the Factory Investigating Committee, which resulted in eight more laws covering fire safety, factory inspection, and sanitation and employment rules for women and children. The following year, 1912, activists and legislators in New York State enacted another 25 laws that transformed its labor protections among the most progressive in the nation."
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- ^ "A History of StuyTown & Peter Cooper Village", Stuytown, January 12, 2019. Accessed December 27, 2023. "Construction of StuyTown took place between 1945-1947, encompassing 110 buildings and 11,250 apartments."
- ^ About Us, United Nations. Accessed December 27, 2023. "Construction began on UN Day (24 October) 1949 and was completed in 1952. Since then, the iconic buildings have gracefully 'hovered' over the East River, using the natural landscape to emphasize the brilliance of the 'glass curtain' wall of the Secretariat (the first of its kind in Manhattan), like a beacon of light to the world."
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- ^ David, Greg. "New York City: Then & Now", Crain's New York, June 27, 2010. Accessed December 3, 2023. "Still, Wall Street stands apart, not only as the engine of the city's rebirth and the dominant figure on the New York business landscape, but as the singular ingredient that the city can no longer live without, for better and for worse.... Back in 1977, Wall Street's ranks had been winnowed to 70,000, a decline of 30% during the decade. Those jobs accounted for only 5% of all the wages in the city.... The securities industry in the city more than doubled in size in the decade to 160,000. The pay its people received increased sixfold, accounting for almost 13% of all the wages in the city."
- ^ St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan, NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project. Accessed December 3, 2023. "By the time HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, was first identified in 1983, St. Vincent’s had become the epicenter of the epidemic in New York City with patients overwhelming the emergency room, its hallways, and beds."
- ^ Chakraborty, Deblina. "When Times Square was sleazy", CNN, April 18, 2016. Accessed January 2, 2024. "The sex market and drug trade thrived in the area, and homeless encampments dotted its streets. Many local theaters – once legitimate operations showcasing the performances of renowned actors like Lionel Barrymore – had become home to peep shows and porn movies.... In 1981, Rolling Stone magazine called West 42nd Street, located in the heart of Times Square, the 'sleaziest block in America.'"
- ^ Bagli, Charles V.; and Kennedy, Randy. "Disney Wished Upon Times Sq. And Rescued a Stalled Dream", The New York Times, April 5, 1998. Accessed January 2, 2024. "Only five years later, a relative blink of the eye in the world of New York City development, that 42d Street is a dim memory. Times Square is a swirl of theaters, theme restaurants, tourist buses and construction cranes. It has become arguably the most sought-after 13 acres of commercial property in the world."
- ^ Fagan, Jeffrey; Zimring, Franklin E.; and Kim, June. "Declining Homicide in New York City: A Tale of Two Trends", Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Summer 1998. Accessed December 3, 2023. "The peak year in Manhattan and the Bronx was 1990, while Brooklyn and Queens had their highest levels in 1991. Still, the temporal pattern during the late 1980s and early 1990s was pretty consistent across boroughs."
- ^ "1990s Drop in NYC Crime Not Due to CompStat, Misdemeanor Arrests, Study Finds", New York University, February 4, 2013. Accessed December 3, 2023. "New York City experienced a historic decline in crime rates during the 1990s, but it was not due to the implementation of CompStat or enhanced enforcement of misdemeanor offenses, according to an analysis by NYU sociologist David Greenberg."
- ^ Hevesi, Dennis. "In Much of the City, A Robust Market" March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, March 16, 1997. Accessed June 29, 2009.
- ^ Gallagher, Fergal. "The Mysterious Origins of the Term Silicon Alley Revealed", Built in NYC, November 4, 2015. Accessed December 3, 2023. "The moniker ‘Silicon Alley’ first emerged in the mid-1990s as a way to group the wave of new media tech startups that were located around the Flatiron neighborhood of Manhattan near Madison Square Park. The physical alley refers to the corridor that connects Midtown to Lower Manhattan, running past the Flatiron building at Madison Square Park and Union Square towards Soho."
- ^ World Trade Center Bombing 1993, Federal Bureau of Investigation. Accessed December 3, 2023. "On February 26, 1993, at about 17 minutes past noon, a thunderous explosion rocked lower Manhattan. The epicenter was the parking garage beneath the World Trade Center, where a massive eruption carved out a nearly 100-foot crater several stories deep and several more high.... The attack turned out to be something of a deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11; with the help of Yousef’s uncle Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al Qaeda would later return to realize Yousef's nightmarish vision."
- ^ Jackson, Patrick. "September 11 attacks: What happened on 9/11?", BBC News, August 3, 2021. Accessed December 3, 2023. "How many people died?... At the Twin Towers, 2,606 people died - then or later of injuries... When the first plane struck, an estimated 17,400 people were in the towers."
- ^ Boyette, Chris; and Hetter, Katia. "It’s official: One World Trade Center to be tallest U.S. skyscraper", CNN, November 12, 2013. Accessed December 3, 2023. "One World Trade Center in New York will be the United States’ tallest building when completed, beating out Chicago's Willis Tower, according to an announcement Tuesday by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat.... The spire reaches from that parapet to the new building’s height of 1,776 feet."
- ^ Tallest Buildings, Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Accessed December 3, 2023.
- ^ "Hundreds of protesters descend to 'Occupy Wall Street'", CNN Money, September 17, 2011. Accessed December 1, 2023.
- ^ Greene, Brian. "How 'Occupy Wall Street' Started and Spread", U. S. News & World Report, October 17, 2011. Accessed December 1, 2023.
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- ^ "New York Terrorist Attack: Truck Driver Kills Eight in Lower Manhattan" April 29, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, NBC News, November 1, 2017. Accessed November 1, 2017.
- ^ Passikoff, Ben. The Writing on the Wall: Rediscovering New York City's "Ghost Signs", p. 61. Simon and Schuster, 2017. ISBN 9781510702950. Accessed January 1, 2024. "Manhattan is 22.7 square miles of land, measuring 2.3 miles wide at 14th Street and 13.4 miles long."
- ^ New York City Administrative Code Section 2-202 Division into boroughs and boundaries thereof – Division Into Boroughs And Boundaries Thereof. January 4, 2018, at the Wayback Machine, Justia. Accessed November 20, 2016. "The borough of Manhattan shall consist of the territory known as New York county, which shall contain all that part of the city and state, including that portion of land commonly known as Marble Hill and included within the county of New York and borough of Manhattan for all purposes pursuant to chapter nine hundred thirty-nine of the laws of nineteen hundred eighty-four and further including the islands called Manhattan Island, Governor's Island, Bedloe's Island, Ellis Island, Franklin D. Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island and Oyster Island..."
- ^ Martin Dunford; Jack Holland (2002). The Rough Guide to New York City. Rough Guides. p. v.
- ^ Brian J. Cudahy (1990). Over and Back: The History of Ferryboats in New York Harbor. Fordham University Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-8232-1245-3.
- ^ Gillespie, Angus K. (1999). Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center. Rutgers University Press. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-7838-9785-1.
- ^ Aileen Jacobson (August 15, 2018). "Battery Park City: A Resort-Like Community Built on Landfill". The New York Times.
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Little Island, developed by Barry Diller, with an amphitheater and dramatic views, opens on Hudson River Park. Opponents battled it for years.
- ^ Gray, Christopher. "Streetscapes: Spuyten Duyvil Swing Bridge; Restoring a Link In the City's Lifeline" January 16, 2020, at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times, March 6, 1988. Accessed December 26, 2023. "At some point, the wooden bridge was replaced by an iron one, certainly by 1895 when the Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River were widened and joined as the Harlem River Ship Canal, linking the East and Hudson Rivers."
- ^ Jackson, Nancy Beth. "If You're Thinking of Living In/Marble Hill; Tiny Slice of Manhattan on the Mainland" March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine. The New York Times, January 26, 2003. Accessed December 26, 2023. "The building of the Harlem River Ship Canal turned the hill into an island in 1895, but when Spuyten Duyvel Creek on the west was filled in before World War I, the 51 acres became firmly attached to the mainland and the Bronx."
- ^ Chambers, Marcia. "Judge's Ruling Revives Dispute On Marble Hill", The New York Times, May 16, 1984. Accessed January 8, 2024. "After a painstaking legal and historical analysis, Justice Peter J. McQuillan said rather, that Marble Hill lies in both. 'The conclusion is irresistible,' he said in a 36-page opinion, that Marble Hill is situated in the Borough of Manhattan, but is not part of New York County. By statute, he said, 'it is in Bronx County.' Contrary to what the Legislature may have thought when it redefined boundary lines for Manhattan in 1938 and again in 1940, it 'dealt only with boroughs and not counties,' the judge wrote. In short, the boundaries of New York County and Manhattan are not the same, he said."
- ^ "Bill Would Clarify Marble Hill's Status", The New York Times, June 27, 1984. Accessed January 8, 2024. "The Assembly voted tonight to move the Marble Hill section of the Borough of Manhattan into New York County, thereby correcting a 46-year old mistake.... A dispute over Marble Hill followed, but the matter was mostly put to rest in 1938, when the boundaries of the Borough of Manhattan were shifted to include Marble Hill.... Tonight the Assembly voted 140 to 4 and joined the Senate in moving to change that, and the measure now goes to the Governor. It would be retroactive to Jan. 1, 1938."
- ^ Montesano v New York City Hous. Auth., Justia, as corrected through March 19, 2008. Accessed January 8, 2024. "Less than 10 weeks after the Boyd decision, the Legislature eliminated any doubt that the Borough of Manhattan and New York County were conterminous in this respect by specifically including Marble Hill in both the Borough of Manhattan and New York County, 'for all purposes,' retroactive to 1938 (L 1984, ch 939). The official map of the City of New York now shows that Marble Hill is located in New York County."
- ^ Ken Jennings (November 18, 2013). "You Think You Know Which State Owns Ellis Island, but You're Probably Wrong". Condé Nast Traveler.
- ^ Amy Thomas (April 27, 2023). "Governors Island: The uninhabited isle that birthed NYC". BBC Travel.
- ^ "Statue of Liberty". National Park Service. Retrieved September 13, 2023.
- ^ Roosevelt Island, The Cultural Landscape Foundation. Accessed December 26, 2023. "Called Blackwell Island beginning in the 18th century, this 147-acre, two-mile-long island in the East River was sold to the City of New York in 1828....In 1973 the island was renamed for Franklin D. Roosevelt, during which time Louis Kahn was commissioned to design a memorial park honoring Roosevelt’s four freedoms speech, which was not completed until 2012. Today, the island is home to more than 14,000 residents."
- ^ Sarah Bradford Landau; Carl W. Condit (1996). Rise of the New York Skyscraper, 1865–1913. Yale University Press. p. 24.
- ^ Peel, M.C.; Finlayson, B.L. . The University of Melbourne. Archived from the original on January 13, 2015. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
- ^ a b "New York Central Park, NY Climate Normals 1961−1990". National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved July 18, 2020.
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