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 Manhattan, 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 coextensive with New York County, its residential property has the highest sale price per square foot in the United States.[19]
Manhattan was historically part of the Lenapehoking territory inhabited by the Munsee, Lenape,[26] and Wappingertribes.[27] 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.[28] 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 verbstems). 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.[29]
Manhattan was first mapped during a 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson.[33] 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.[34] Manhattan was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on the voyage.[35]
A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutchfur trading settlement on Governors Island.[36] 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.[37][38] The establishment of Fort Amsterdam is recognized as the birth of New York City.[39]
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony.[40] New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653.[41] 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.[42] 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.[43][44]
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.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48]
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.[54] By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the most populous city in the United States.[55] The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan.[56] 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.[57][58][59]
The "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", commonly known as the Viele Map, developed by Egbert Ludovicus Viele in 1865
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[65] culminated in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, among the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history.[66] 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.[67][68] 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]
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 30 Rockefeller Plaza.[81] 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.[82][83] The United Nations relocated to a new headquarters that was completed in 1952 along the East River.[84][85][86]
In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[91] 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.[92] The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and Manhattan reclaimed its role as the world's financial center, with Wall Street employment doubling from 1977 to 1987.[93] The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter.[94]
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 between 7th and 8th Avenues the "sleaziest block in America".[95] By the late 1990s, led by efforts by the city and the Walt Disney Company, 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."[96]
By the 1990s, crime rates began to drop dramatically[97][98] and the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonus payments to fuel the growth of the real estate market.[99] Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the Flatiron District, cementing technology as a key component of Manhattan's economy.[100]
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,[107] severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents[108] and leading to gasoline shortages[109] and disruption of mass transit systems.[110][111][112][113] 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.[114]
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.[116]
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.[123] 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.[124] 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),[125] 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.[126][127]
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.[131]
The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan consists of three rock formations: Inwood marble, Fordham gneiss, and Manhattan schist, and is well suited for the foundations of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[132] It is part of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region.
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);[135] temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[135][136] and reach 60 °F (16 °C) several days in the coldest winter month.[135] 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.[135] 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.[137] Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer[138] 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.[138] Manhattan lies in USDA plant hardiness zone 7b (5 to 10 °F/-15 to -12.2 °C).[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.[138]
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] Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen, alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton).[148]
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,[161] 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.[161][162] 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.[163] This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district.
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 and higher than the density of any individual U.S. city.[164][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]
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.[171] In 2014, Manhattan had 703 religious organizations, the seventeenth most out of all US counties.[172] There is a large Buddhist temple in Manhattan located at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown.[173]
Languages
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.[174]
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.[178] 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.[179] Manhattan's skyline includes several buildings that are symbolic of New York, in particular the Chrysler Building[180]: 14 and the Empire State Building, which sees about 4 million visitors a year.[181]
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.[182] 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.[183] Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963.[184] 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".[185] 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.[186] 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.[187]
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.[188]
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.[189] Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park is anchored by the 12-acre (4.9 ha) Great Lawn[190] and offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and several lawns and sporting areas, as well as 21 playgrounds,[191] and a 6-mile (9.7 km) road from which automobile traffic has been banned since 2018.[192] 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.[193]
The remaining 70% of Manhattan's parkland includes 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts, and many other amenities.[194] 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).[195] Other major parks include:[189]
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.[196] Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions. 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.[197]
Manhattan had the highest per capita income, at $186,848 in 2022, among United States counties with more than 50,000 residents.[198] Based on census data for New York County for 2018–2022, the median household income was $99,880 and the poverty rate was 17.2%.[3] 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.[196] 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",[199][200] with inequality growing steadily since 2010.[201] As of 2023[update], Manhattan's cost of living was the highest in the United States.[202]
New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the United States, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan.[203] Manhattan had more than 520 million square feet (48 million square meters) of office space in 2022,[204] 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.[205]Lower Manhattan is the third-largest U.S. central business district (following the Chicago Loop).[206][207] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously known as "Madison Avenue".[208]
Times Square is the hub of Broadway's theater district and a major Manhattan cultural venue with 50 million tourists annually, making it one of the world's most popular tourist destinations.[21]
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.[224][225]
According to The Broadway League, shows on Broadway sold approximately US$1.54 billion worth of tickets in the 2022–2023 and the 2023–2024 seasons with attendance of approximately 12.3 million each.[226]
Real estate
Real estate is a major force driving Manhattan's economy. Manhattan has perennially been home to some of 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,[227] 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.[228] 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.[229] In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten zip codes in the United States by median housing price.[230] 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,[231] 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.
Manhattan has been described as the media capital of the world.[232][233] A significant array of media outlets and their journalists report about international, American, business, entertainment, and New York metropolitan area–related matters from Manhattan.
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,[238] 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[239] and began broadcasts geared toward the African-American community in 1949.[240]WQHT, also known as Hot 97, claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States.[241]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.[242]WBAI, owned by the non-profit Pacifica Foundation, broadcasts eclectic music, as well as political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning viewpoint.[243]
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.[244]NY1, Charter Communications's local news channel, is known for its beat coverage of City Hall and state politics.[245]
Based on data from the 2011–2015 American Community Survey, 59.9% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree.[249] 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.[250]
Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; residents within the New York City metropolitan area, including New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan, will often describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the City".[261] Poet Walt Whitman characterized the streets of Manhattan as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[262]
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.
The annual NYC Pride March (or gaypride 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.[271][272]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.[279]
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,[280] sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible," referring to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan.[281][282] 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.[283] 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.[284] The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stable-hands 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.[285]
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,[286] beginning alongside Central Park and processing southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[289] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[286]
Manhattan does not currently host a professional baseball franchise. The original New York Giants played primarily in the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds from their inception in 1883 until they headed to California with the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season.[297] The New York Yankees began their franchise as the Highlanders, named for Hilltop Park, where they played from their creation in 1903 until 1912.[298] 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.[299] The New York Mets played in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons, before Shea Stadium was completed in 1964.[300] After the Mets departed, the Polo Grounds was demolished in April 1964.[301][302]
The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[303] 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.[304] 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,[305] after which the team moved nearly all of its home schedule to White Plains, New York.[306]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.[307]
Although both of New York City's football teams play today 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.[308] The New York Jets, originally known as the Titans of New York, started out in 1960 at the Polo Grounds, before joining the Mets in Queens at Shea Stadium in 1964.[309]
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.[310]
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.[311][312]
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter; its 1989 revision provided for a strong mayor–council system.[313] 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 US Supreme Court 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 Equal Protection Clause.[314] 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.[citation needed] Manhattan's current Borough President is Mark Levine, elected as a Democrat in November 2021.
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.[315] 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.[316]
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.[320][321]
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.[324] 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.[325]The Mafia (also known as Cosa Nostra) first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the US East Coast 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.[326] From 1920 to 1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.[326]
New York City as a whole experienced a sharp increase in crime during the post-war period.[327] The murder rate in Manhattan hit an all-time high of 42 murders per 100,000 residents in 1979.[328] Manhattan retained the highest murder rate in the city until 1985 when it was surpassed by the Bronx.[328] 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,[329] with murders in Manhattan dropping from 503 in 1990, at the citywide peak, to 78 in 2022, a decline of 84%.[330]
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.[331] Mirroring a nationwide trend, rates of shootings and violent crimes in 2023 declined from their peaks during the pandemic.[332][333][334]
Housing
Tenement houses in 1936
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.[335][336] By 1929, a new housing code effectively ended construction of tenements, though some survive today on the East Side of the borough.[336] Conversely, there were also areas with luxury apartment developments, the first of which was the Dakota on the Upper West Side.[337]
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.[338] 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, after the Bronx.[339] Public housing administered by NYCHA accounts for nearly 100,000 residents in more than 50,000 units in 2023.[340] Completed in 1935, the First Houses in the East Village were one of the country's first publicly-funded low-income housing projects.[341][342] At $2,024 in 2022, Manhattan has the highest average cost for rent of any county in the US, although a lower percentage of annual income than in several other American cities.[343]
Manhattan's real estate market for luxury housing continues to be among the most expensive in the world,[344] 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).[345] As of the fourth quarter of 2021, the median value of homes in Manhattan was $1,306,208, second highest among US counties.[346]
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.[347][348] According to the 2000 United States Census, 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.[349] 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.[350]
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.[351] 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.[352][353]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.
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.[362] 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.[363]
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.[364][365]
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.[366][367] The ferry has been fare-free since 1997.[368] 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.[369][370] The first routes of NYC Ferry opened in 2017.[371][372] 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.[373]
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.[376]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 1950 building 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.[375][377][374] In 2024, the Port Authority announced plans for a new terminal that would be completed by 2032 and include a pair of office buildings to defray the costs of the project.[378]
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.[379] Private vehicle for hire companies provide significant competition for taxicabs.[380]
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 called for twelve numbered "avenues" running north and south roughly parallel to the Hudson River, each 100 feet (30 m) wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue on the west side.[56][382] 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.[383] The numbered streets in Manhattan run east–west, and are generally 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between streets.[56] The address algorithm of Manhattan is used to estimate the closest east–west cross street for building numbers on north–south avenues.[384]
According to the original Commissioner's Plan, there were 155 numbered crosstown streets,[385] 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.[386][387] Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 57th and 125th Streets,[388] 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.[389] In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, Times Square, and Columbus Circle.[390][391]
"Crosstown streets" refers primarily to major east-west streets connecting Manhattan's East Side and West Side. The trip is notoriously frustrating for drivers because of heavy congestion on narrow local streets; 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.[392][393] In New York City, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present, significantly shaping traffic patterns in Manhattan.[394]
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).[395] 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.[395][396] A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise on the eastern horizon on December 5 and January 8.[397]
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.[403] 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.[404] 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;[405] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[406] 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.[407] These ferries mainly serve midtown, Battery Park City, and Wall Street.
Gas and electric service is provided by Consolidated Edison. Manhattan witnessed the doubling of its natural gas supply when a new gas pipeline opened on November 1, 2013.[409]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[410] by some 1,800 Manhattan customers.[411] Cable service is provided by Time Warner Cable and telephone service is provided by Verizon Communications, although AT&T is available as well.
The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal.[412] The bulk of the city's trash 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.[413] A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities.
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.[414]
New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[416] 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 US with a majority of drinking water pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.[417] 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.[418] Water comes to Manhattan through the tunnels 1 and 2, and in the future through Tunnel No. 3, begun in 1970.[419]
^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]
^The presidential election results 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.
^Moynihan, Colin. "F.Y.I."Archived 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?"
^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.
^Michael Kimmelman (September 30, 2016). "Penn Station Reborn". The New York Times. Retrieved August 3, 2022.
^Sarah Waxman. "The History of New York's Chinatown". Mediabridge Infosystems, Inc. Retrieved January 12, 2024. Manhattan's Chinatown, the largest Chinatown in the United States and the site of the largest concentration of Chinese in the Western Hemisphere, is located on the Lower East Side.
^Broadway, Society of Architectural Historians. Accessed November 30, 2023. "Predating the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, Broadway was initially a Native American trading trail running the length of Manhattan. Various indigenous peoples living on the island—including Lenni Lenape, Delaware Lenape, and Wickquasgeck—used the route, known as the Wickquasgeck Trail, to exchange goods with each other. Following Dutch settlement in 1609 and the establishment of Fort Amsterdam in lower Manhattan, the Wickquasgeck Trail's southern endpoint became a site for trading between the indigenous peoples and the European colonists."
^Giovanni da Verrazzano, Mariners' Museum and Park. Accessed December 24, 2023. "Verrazzano sailed onward, continuing his search for the Northwest Passage. In mid-April 1524, Verrazzano and his crew became the first known Europeans to sail into New York Bay. Once again they were greeted peacefully by the Native Americans and treated well."
^R. J. Knecht: Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I; p. 372. Cambridge University Press (1996) ISBN0-521-57885-X
^"Henry Hudson and His Exploration"Archived January 18, 2012, at the Wayback MachineScientific American, September 25, 1909. Accessed May 1, 2007. "This was a vain hope however, and the conviction must finally have come to the heart of the intrepid adventurer that once again he was foiled in his repeated quest for the northwest passage ... On the following day the Half Moon let go her anchor inside of Sandy Hook. The week was spent in exploring the bay with a shallop, or small boat, and "they found a good entrance between two headlands" (the Narrows) "and thus entered on the 12th of September into as fine a river as can be found""
^History, Governor's Island. Accessed December 24, 2023. "The Dutch West India Company first arrived to New Amsterdam and opted to set up camp on the small, 70-acre Island rather than brave the wilderness that lay across the water on the island that would later be known as Manhattan."
^Dutch ColoniesArchived May 19, 2010, at the Wayback Machine, National Park Service. Accessed May 19, 2007. "Sponsored by the West India Company, 30 families arrived in North America in 1624, establishing a settlement on present-day Manhattan."
^City Seal and FlagArchived April 28, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, New York City. Accessed November 20, 2016. "Date: Beneath the horizontal laurel branch the date 1625, being the year of the establishment of New Amsterdam."
^New Netherlands Becomes New York, University of Houston Digital History. Accessed January 3, 2024. "In 1664, the English sent a fleet to seize New Netherlands, which surrendered without a fight. The English renamed the colony New York, after James, the Duke of York, who had received a charter to the territory from his brother King Charles II."
^Scheltema, Gajus and Westerhuijs, Heleen (eds.),Exploring Historic Dutch New York. Museum of the City of New York/Dover Publications, New York (2011). ISBN978-0-486-48637-6
^"History of New York City - 1600s NYC", History 101 NYC. Accessed January 3, 2024. "1673: A pivotal moment in New York City's history when Dutch forces briefly reclaimed it during the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The city, captured by the English in 1664 and renamed New York, was temporarily dubbed New Orange in honor of William of Orange.... 1674: The Treaty of Westminster, signed in February, officially concluded the Third Anglo-Dutch War. This treaty marked a crucial turn in colonial history, transferring New York permanently to English control."
^Fort Washington, American Battlefield Trust. Accessed November 30, 2023. "Fought on November 16, 1776 on the island of Manhattan, the Battle of Fort Washington was the final devastating chapter in General Washington's disastrous New York Campaign.... At 3:00 P.M., after a fruitless attempt to gain gentler surrender terms for his men, Magaw surrendered Fort Washington and its 2,800 surviving defenders to the British."
^Axelson, Erik Peter."Happy Evacuation Day"Archived October 5, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, November 23, 2005. Accessed December 24, 2023. "During the Revolutionary War, New York City was occupied by British forces (from September 15, 1776 to November 25, 1783). For generations afterward, New Yorkers celebrated its repatriation from the British as Evacuation Day."
^"January Highlight: Superintending Independence, Part 1", Harvard University Declaration Resources Project, January 4, 2017. Accessed December 24, 2023. "From January 11, 1785 through 1789, the Congress of the Confederation met in New York City, at City Hall (which later became Federal Hall) and at Fraunces Tavern."
^Historic New York, American Experience. Accessed December 24, 2023. "But New York's enormous Revolutionary War debt had the federal government hovering on the brink of bankruptcy, so Alexander Hamilton struck a momentous deal with Thomas Jefferson.... Alexander Hamilton's extraordinary early vision helped invent the economic future not only for his adoptive city, but also for the rest of the United States. Although the country was 90% agrarian, Hamilton understood that the future lay in manufacturing. As the first Secretary of the Treasury in New York City in 1789, he mapped out a blueprint for a new kind of nation – one based not on plantations and slave labor, but on commerce, manufacturing, and immigrant toil."
^Dunlap, David W."Last Time New York Had Just 27 House Seats? The City Was on the Rise", Archived September 24, 2014, at the Wayback MachineThe New York Times, December 1, 2010. Accessed December 24, 2023. "Even as war with Britain seemed more and more inevitable, however, New York spent much of 1810 — boisterously and confidently — developing into the American metropolis. New York, just as I pictured it. This was the year New York surpassed Philadelphia in population to become the largest city of the young republic, with 96,373 people; 94,687 of whom were free, 1,686 of whom were enslaved."
^ abcThe Commissioners' Plan, 1811, Museum of the City of New York. Accessed December 1, 2023. "The avenues are 100 feet wide, the standard cross street is 60 feet, and major cross streets are 100 feet.... The second pattern derives from block dimensions: all blocks are 200 feet north to south, but their dimensions east to west vary, diminishing in width from the center of the island to the shorelines."
^Bridges, William (1811). Map of the City of New York and Island of Manhattan with Explanatory Remarks and References.
^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."
^Blair, Cynthia. "1858: Central Park Opens", 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 CommonArchived December 26, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Thefreedomtrail.org.
^Rybczynski, Witold. "Olmsted's Triumph"Archived December 26, 2015, at the Wayback Machine, Smithsonian (magazine), July 2003. Accessed November 20, 2016. "By 1876, landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted and architect Calvert Vaux had transformed the swampy, treeless 50 blocks between Harlem and midtown Manhattan into the first landscaped park in the United States."
^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."
^Ward, Geoffrey C."Gangs of New York"Archived 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."
^"New Jerseyans' Claim To Liberty I. Rejected"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, October 6, 1987. Accessed June 30, 2009. "The Supreme Court today refused to strip the Statue of Liberty of its status as a New Yorker. The Court, without comment, turned away a move by a two New Jerseyans to claim jurisdiction over the landmark for their state."
^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."
^"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."
^Dim, Joan Marans. "New York's Golden Age of Bridges", Fordham University Press, 2012. ISBN978-0-8232-5308-1. Accessed December 4, 2023. "The Williamsburg followed in 1903, the Queensboro (renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge) and the Manhattan in 1909, the George Washington in 1931, the Triborough (renamed the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge) in 1936, the Bronx-Whitestone in 1939, the Throgs Neck in 1961, and the Verrazano-Narrows in 1964."
^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)."
^The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Accessed December 1, 2023. "One hundred years ago on March 25, fire spread through the cramped Triangle Waist Company garment factory on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building in lower Manhattan. Workers in the factory, many of whom were young women recently arrived from Europe, had little time or opportunity to escape. The rapidly spreading fire killed 146 workers."
^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."
^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."
^Christopher Effgen (September 11, 2001). "New York Crime Rates 1960–2009". Disastercenter.com. Archived from the original on June 29, 2014. Retrieved July 20, 2014.
^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."
^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."
^New York City Administrative Code Section 2-202 Division into boroughs and boundaries thereof – Division Into Boroughs And Boundaries Thereof.Archived 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. ISBN978-0-8232-1245-3.
^Michael Kimmelman (May 20, 2021). "A New $260 Million Park Floats on the Hudson. It's a Charmer". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 28, 2021. Retrieved May 25, 2021. Little Island, developed by Barry Diller, with an amphitheater and dramatic views, opens on Hudson River Park. Opponents battled it for years.
^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."
^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.
^"Keeping New York City 'Cool' Is The Job Of NASA's 'Heat Seekers'"Archived October 1, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, NASA, January 30, 2006. Accessed November 20, 2016. "The urban heat island occurrence is particularly pronounced during summer heat waves and at night when wind speeds are low and sea breezes are light. During these times, New York City's air temperatures can rise 7.2 °F (4.0 °C) higher than in surrounding areas."
^Belvedere Castle, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. Accessed January 5, 2024. "This changed in 1919 when the United States Weather Bureau moved the Central Park Observatory to the castle. Until that time, weather measurements were taken from the Arsenal at Fifth Avenue and 64th Street where Dr. Daniel Draper founded a meteorological observatory in 1869. The Weather Bureau took over the operation in 1911, and moved it here eight years later, enclosing the castle and altering the turret's shape to accommodate their scientific instruments. "
^Senft, Bret. "If You're Thinking of Living In/TriBeCa; Families Are the Catalyst for Change"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, September 26, 1993. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Families have overtaken commerce as the catalyst for change in this TRIangle BElow CAnal Street (although the only triangle here is its heart: Hudson Street meeting West Broadway at Chambers Street, with Canal its north side) ... Artists began seeking refuge from fashionable SoHo (SOuth of HOuston) as early as the mid-70s."
^Bruni, Frank. "The Grounds He Stamped: The New York Of Ginsberg"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, April 7, 1997. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Indeed, for all the worldwide attention that Mr. Ginsberg received, he was always a creature and icon principally of downtown Manhattan, his world view forged in its crucible of political and sexual passions, his eccentricities nurtured by those of its peculiar demimonde, his individual myth entwined with that of the bohemian East Village in which he made his home. He embodied the East Village and the Lower East Side, Bill Morgan, a friend and Mr. Ginsberg's archivist, said yesterday."
^Dunlap, David W. "The New Chelsea's Many Faces"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, November 13, 1994. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Gay Chelsea's role has solidified with the arrival of A Different Light bookstore, a cultural cornerstone that had been housed for a decade in an 800-square-foot (74 m2) nook at 548 Hudson Street, near Perry Street. It now takes up more than 5,000 square feet (500 m2) at 151 West 19th Street and its migration seems to embody a northward shift of gay life from Greenwich Village... Because of Chelsea's reputation, Mr. Garmendia said, single women were not likely to move in. But single men did. "The whole neighborhood became gay during the 70's", he said."
^"Chinatown: A World of Dining, Shopping, and History". Archived from the original on July 9, 2006. Retrieved April 27, 2007., NYC & Company. Accessed June 30, 2009. "No visit to New York City is complete without exploring the sights, cuisines, history, and shops of the biggest Chinatown in the United States. The largest concentration of Chinese people—150,000—in the Western Hemisphere are in a two-square-mile area in downtown Manhattan that's loosely bounded by Lafayette, Worth, and Grand streets and East Broadway."
^Shaun Busuttil (November 3, 2016). "G-day! Welcome to Little Australia in New York City". KarryOn. Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved May 24, 2019. In Little Australia, Australian-owned cafes are popping up all over the place (such as Two Hands), joining other Australian-owned businesses (such as nightclubs and art galleries) as part of a growing green and gold contingent in NYC. Indeed, walking in this neighbourhood, the odds of your hearing a fellow Aussie ordering a coffee or just kicking back and chatting are high – very high – so much so that if you're keen to meet other Aussies whilst taking your own bite out of the Big Apple, then this is the place to throw that Australian accent around like it's going out of fashion!
^ ab"NYC Basics". Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved October 11, 2007., NYC & Company. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Downtown (below 14th Street) contains Greenwich Village, SoHo, TriBeCa, and the Wall Street financial district."
^Emily Injeian (August 12, 2022). "Uptown vs. Downtown? What's the difference?". NewDevRev. Retrieved September 10, 2023. Keep in mind, uptown and downtown are not just neighborhood designations, they are also directions. If you hear someone say they are moving uptown, that could mean they are moving anywhere north of where they currently live. Likewise with downtown.
^Mann, Camille; Valera, Stephanie. "World's Most Crowded Islands". The Weather Channel. Archived from the original on April 9, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
^Skyline, 1900 - 1916, Skyscraper Museum. Accessed December 3, 2023. "The majority of high-rise construction began after 1890, when the World Building topped out at 309 feet, and accelerated in the years after 1893 with a spate of new towers."
^"The Destruction of Penn Station", PBS, February 18, 2014. Accessed December 3, 2023. "In 1961, the financially strapped Pennsylvania Railroad announced it had sold the air rights above Penn Station. The company would tear down what had once been its crowning jewel to build Madison Square Garden, a high-rise office building and sports complex."
^"Rebuild Penn Station A movement dedicated to the reconstruction of Penn Station". Rebuild Penn Station. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved September 1, 2017. Our mission is to dramatically enhance the quality of life in the New York City metropolitan area by rebuilding the original Pennsylvania Station as the centerpiece of a new world-class transportation network for the entire region.
^Moynihan Station Development Corporation, Empire State Development. Accessed December 3, 2023. "The Moynihan Station Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Empire State Development, has overseen the construction of the Moynihan Train Hall, a world-class transportation hub for the 21st century. The Train Hall project was completed on-schedule and opened to the public on January 1, 2021.... The redeveloped Farley Building also houses 700,000 square feet of new commercial, retail and dining space within the mixed-use facility and has created an iconic civic space for Manhattan's West Side."
^Great Lawn, Central Park Conservancy. Accessed December 26, 2023. "The 55-acre area hosts a great range of recreational activities and is a popular destination for picnicking, sunbathing, relaxing, playing and watching softball, and enjoying the scenery. The main oval lawn area is 12 acres and includes six fields for softball."
^Kang, Tricia. "160 Years of Central Park: A Brief History", Central Park Conservancy, June 1, 2017. Accessed December 26, 2023. "Construction began on the Park in 1858. Workers moved nearly 5 million cubic yards of stone, earth, and topsoil, built 36 bridges and arches, and constructed 11 overpasses over the transverse roads. They also planted 500,000 trees, shrubs, and vines. The landscapes were manmade and all built by hand."
^"Section O: Environmental Conservation and Recreation, Table O-9". 2014 New York State Statistical Yearbook(PDF). The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government. 2014. p. 672. Archived from the original(PDF) on September 16, 2015. Retrieved September 29, 2016.
^"Social Explorer analysis for The New York Times finds Manhattan income gap exceeds Third World levels", Social Explorer, September 29, 2023. Accessed January 3, 2024. "The island of Manhattan, a global economic capital, reported the largest income gap in the nation; Bronx and Kings counties also were among the 10 U.S. counties with the greatest income disparity between rich and poor. 'It's amazingly unequal,' Andrew Beveridge, president of Social Explorer, told The Times. 'It's a larger gap than in many developing country.'"
^Lower Manhattan Recovery OfficeArchived June 18, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Federal Transit Administration. Accessed June 23, 2014. "Lower Manhattan is the third largest business district in the nation. Prior to September 11th more than 385,000 people were employed there and 85% of those employees used public transportation to commute to work."
^"Defining Moments in Agency History - Madison Avenue: Place or Mindset?", American Association of Advertising Agencies, September 19, 2017. Accessed December 26, 2023. "The phrase 'Madison Avenue' has long been synonymous with the advertising agency business, but what is that based on? Were most agencies concentrated on that single street at one point, or is this a misnomer?... According to Roland Marchand's book, Advertising the American Dream, the phrase 'Madison Avenue' was first used to denote advertising around 1923, and by the late 1920s, it was both a prevalent and geographically accurate term."
^Jillian Eugenios, Steve Hargreaves & Aimee Rawlins (October 7, 2014). "The most innovative cities in America". CNNMoney. Archived from the original on October 10, 2014. Retrieved October 7, 2014.
^The Tourism Industry in New York City Reigniting the Return, New York State ComptrollerThomas DiNapoli, April 2021. Accessed January 1, 2024. "After reaching a record high of 66.6 million visitors in 2019 and generating $47.4 billion in spending, the number of visitors to New York City dropped by 67 percent and their spending declined by 73 percent in 2020.... New York City hosted 66.6 million visitors in 2019 (about 25 percent of the State's 265.5 million visitors that year), a tenth-consecutive annual record. In 2020, the pandemic and related behavioral and governmental restrictions caused the number to drop to 22.3 million, a 67 percent reduction (see Figure 1)."
^David, Greg. "Tourists Are Back to NYC in Big Numbers", The City, September 5, 2023. Accessed January 1, 2024. "But the city will not surpass its 2019 record of 66.6 million visitors because once-numerous travelers from China remain few and far between and Americans are flocking to Europe in unprecedented numbers.... Still, the numbers show a rebound with the official forecast from the tourism agency NYC & Co. still predicting 63.3 million visitors this year, up 12% from last year."
^Dawn Ennis (May 24, 2017). "ABC will broadcast New York's pride parade live for the first time". LGBTQ Nation. Retrieved September 22, 2018. Never before has any TV station in the entertainment and news media capital of the world carried what organizer boast is the world's largest Pride parade live on TV.
^"History of Television in NYC", NYC TV Week. Accessed January 2, 2024. "The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, are all headquartered in New York City. New York is often thought of as the media capital of the world, due to its presence in numerous television shows and movies, and that it is the home of the four major American broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox."
^Smothers, Ronald. "Station Offers Perspective Of Black New Yorkers", The New York Times, July 3, 1987. Accessed January 2, 2024. "From sunrise to sunset each day, WLIB-AM, a radio station oriented to the concerns of a large segment of New York's black community, becomes what David Lampel likes to call 'a crucible of black opinion' as listeners call in to address issues in the news and questions posed by hosts and guests.... Inner City Broadcasting bought the station in 1973 for $1.7 million. At the time, said Percy E. Sutton, the former Manhattan Borough President who is chairman of the company, the station had been broadcasting rhythm and blues, gospel and news to a mostly black audience since 1949."
^Coscarelli, Joe. "For Hip-Hop Radio and Its Voices, Change Is on the Air", The New York Times, February 13, 2015. Accessed January 2, 2024. "But with the loss of so much institutional memory, including D.J.s and hosts who had witnessed the birth of hip-hop, the station risks slipping from its perch as the nation's premier regional and hard-boiled rap outlet, current and former employees said in interviews."
^President's BioArchived June 18, 2008, at the Wayback Machine, WNYC. Accessed May 1, 2007. "Heard by over 1.2 million listeners each week, WNYC radio is the largest public radio station in the country and is dedicated to producing broadcasting that extends New York City's cultural riches to public radio stations nationwide." "WNYC - About WNYC". Archived from the original on September 26, 2003. Retrieved December 13, 2010.
^Levy, Nicole. "The crisis at WBAI", Politico, February 12, 2014. Accessed January 2, 2024. "It's no secret that WBAI — the wholly listener-supported, left-leaning station at 99.5 FM — and its owner, the nonprofit Pacifica Foundation, have long been strapped for cash."
^Wienerbronner, Danielle (November 9, 2010). "Most Beautiful College Libraries". TheHuffingtonPost.com. Archived from the original on April 14, 2012. Retrieved September 9, 2012.
^McGeehan, Patrick. "New York Area Is a Magnet For Graduates"Archived March 31, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, August 16, 2006. Accessed March 27, 2008. "In Manhattan, nearly three out of five residents were college graduates and one out of four had advanced degrees, forming one of the highest concentrations of highly educated people in any American city."
^Purdum, Todd S. "Political memo; An Embattled City Hall Moves to Brooklyn"Archived May 1, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, February 22, 1992. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Leaders in all of them fear that recent changes in the City Charter that shifted power from the borough presidents to the City Council have diminished government's recognition of the sense of identity that leads people to say they live in the Bronx, and to describe visiting Manhattan as 'going to the city.'"
^Weber, Bruce. "Critic's Notebook: Theater's Promise? Look Off Broadway"Archived July 29, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, July 2, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2007. "It's also true that what constitutes Broadway is easy to delineate; it's a universe of 39 specified theaters, which all have at least 500 seats. Off-Broadway is generally considered to comprise theaters from 99 to 499 seats (anything less is thought of as Off Off), which ostensibly determines the union contracts for actors, directors, and press agents."
^ abDawn Ennis (May 24, 2017). "ABC will broadcast New York's pride parade live for the first time". LGBTQ Nation. Archived from the original on July 28, 2017. Retrieved September 26, 2018. Never before has any TV station in the entertainment and news media capital of the world carried what organizer boast is the world's largest Pride parade live on TV.
^Silverman, Brian. Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day (Volume 7 of Frommer's $ A Day). John Wiley & Sons, January 21, 2005. ISBN0764588354, 9780764588358. p. 28.
^Dolkart, Andrew S. "The Architecture and Development of New York City: The Birth of the Skyscraper – Romantic Symbols"Archived June 2, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, Columbia University. Accessed May 15, 2007. "It is at a triangular site where Broadway and Fifth Avenue—the two most important streets of New York—meet at Madison Square, and because of the juxtaposition of the streets and the park across the street, there was a wind-tunnel effect here. In the early twentieth century, men would hang out on the corner here on Twenty-third Street and watch the wind blowing women's dresses up so that they could catch a little bit of ankle. This entered into popular culture and there are hundreds of postcards and illustrations of women with their dresses blowing up in front of the Flatiron Building. And it supposedly is where the slang expression "23 skidoo" comes from because the police would come and give the voyeurs the 23 skidoo to tell them to get out of the area."
^"Metropolitan Transportation Authority"Archived December 28, 2023, at the Wayback Machine, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, March 17, 2023. Accessed December 28, 2023. "The New York City Saint Patrick's Day Parade is the oldest and largest St. Patrick's Day Parade in the world. The first parade was held on March 17, 1762 — fourteen years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence."
^About Us, New York's Village Halloween Parade. Accessed December 28, 2023.
^Annual Events, New York City Tourism + Conventions. Accessed December 28, 2023.
^Ticker Tape Parades, Baruch College. Accessed December 28, 2023. "Ticker-Tape Parades, perhaps some of the most unique NYC phenomena, are triumphant celebrations of special occasions or persons, which normally take place within a few days notice. Ticker-tape parades are held in the so called 'Canyon of Heroes' located in the Financial District on lower Broadway."
^Lamb, Bill. Hilltop Park (New York), Society for American Baseball Research. Accessed December 28, 2023. "Unloved and short-lived – it served as a baseball venue for only ten years – scant tears were shed when the confines passed from the major-league scene after the 1912 season. Yet without Hilltop Park, the American League would have been unable to secure a foothold in New York City. And the fortunes of the game's dominant franchise might well have played out far differently."
^Drebinger, John. "The Polo Grounds, 1889–1964: A Lifetime of Memories; Ball Park in Harlem Was Scene of Many Sports Thrills", The New York Times, January 5, 1964. Accessed December 28, 2023. "With this move, the Mets committed themselves, come hell or high water right out of Flushing Bay, to open their 1964 National League season next April in Shea Stadium, their new home in Flushing Meadow. At the same time, the City Housing Authority announced it meant to lose no time putting into operation its housing development that is to go up on the site now occupied by the Polo Grounds."
^Arnold, Martin. "Ah, Polo Grounds, The Game is Over; Wreckers Begin Demolition for Housing Project", The New York Times, April 11, 1964. Accessed December 28, 2023. "Thus began the demolition of the Polo Grounds yesterday.... After demolition is completed, the site will be used for a $30 million low‐rent, public housing project. In the project, 1,614 families will live in four 30-story buildings, will attend schooI and will use the project's children center, play area, community center and child welfare station."
^"Home Sweet Home"Archived December 11, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Pro Football Hall of Fame, September 10, 2010. Accessed November 20, 2016. "The Giants shared the Polo Grounds with the New York Baseball Giants from the time they entered the league in 1925 until 1955."
^The David N. Dinkins Manhattan Municipal BuildingArchived October 24, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, New York City. Accessed November 20, 2016. "The Municipal Building was completed in 1914, but the first offices were occupied as early as January 1913. By 1916, the majority of the offices were full and open to the public."
^Grogan, Jennifer. Election 2004—Rise in Registration Promises Record Turnout, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Accessed April 25, 2007. "According to the board's statistics for the total number of registered voters as of the October 22 deadline, there were 1.1 million registered voters in Manhattan, of which 727,071 were Democrats and 132,294 were Republicans, which is a 26.7 percent increase from the 2000 election, when there were 876,120 registered voters."
^Al CaponeArchived May 12, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Chicago History Museum. Accessed May 16, 2007. "Capone was born on January 17, 1899, in Brooklyn, New York.... He became part of the notorious Five Points gang in Manhattan and worked in gangster Frankie Yale's Brooklyn dive, the Harvard Inn, as a bouncer and bartender."
^ abPhil Henshaw (August 7, 2005). "The Great Crime Wave". Synapse9.com. Retrieved February 26, 2022.
^Southall, Ashley. "Crime in New York City Plunges to a Level Not Seen Since the 1950s", The New York Times, December 27, 2017. Accessed August 6, 2023. "It would have seemed unbelievable in 1990, when there were 2,245 killings in New York City, but as of Wednesday there have been just 286 in the city this year — the lowest since reliable records have been kept.... If the trend holds just a few more days, this year's homicide total will be under the city's previous low of 333 in 2014, and crime will have declined for 27 straight years, to levels that police officials have said are the lowest since the 1950s."
^Dale, Daniel. "Fact check: Here's the truth about crime in Manhattan", CNN, April 17, 2023. Accessed January 3, 2024. "New York City publishes crime statistics on its website, so the truth is easy to find. In 1990, when the city set its all-time record for total murders, there were 503 recorded murders in Manhattan, which is one of the city's five boroughs. In 2022, Manhattan recorded 78 murders – a decline of about 84% from 1990."
^Marcius, Chelsia Rose; and Shanhan, Ed. "Major Crimes Rose 22 Percent in New York City, Even as Shootings Fell", The New York Times, January 5, 2023. Accessed August 6, 2023. "The declines in murders and shootings last year appeared to be in line with similar drops in other U.S. cities, which, like New York, experienced a surge in such crimes in 2020 and 2021 amid the worst of the pandemic, criminal justice experts said.... Mr. Herrmann also noted that, based on his own analysis of Police Department data, the decline in shootings had yet to be felt in some neighborhoods long plagued by gun violence, including Brownsville and Bushwick in Brooklyn; Central Harlem and Inwood in Manhattan; and East Concourse and Claremont in the Bronx."
^Marcello, Philip. "FACT FOCUS: NYC crime is not worst ever, despite claims", Associated Press, April 18, 2023. Accessed January 3, 2024.""CLAIM: Crime in New York City is the worst it's ever been, especially in the borough of Manhattan where Trump faces criminal charges. THE FACTS: While it's true that major crimes in New York City rose last year compared to 2021, criminal justice experts say crime levels were significantly higher three decades ago, and that the current levels are more comparable to where New York was a decade ago, when people frequently lauded it as America's safest big city.... 'Virtually every major crime category is lower in Manhattan now than it was last year,' he wrote."
^ abPeterson, Iver. "Tenements of 1880s Adapt to 1980s"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, January 3, 1988. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Usually five stories tall and built on a 25-foot (7.6 m) lot, their exteriors are hung with fire escapes and the interiors are laid out long and narrow—in fact, the apartments were dubbed railroad flats."
^Apmann, Sarah Bean. "Landmarks of New York: First Houses", Village Preservation Blog, December 3, 2015. Accessed January 7, 2024. "On December 3, 1935, First Houses were dedicated and opened, the first housing project undertaken by the then-recently established New York City Housing Authority and the first publicly-funded low-income housing project in the nation. The groundbreaking development was made a New York City landmark on November 12, 1974."
^Price, Richard. "The Rise and Fall of Public Housing in NYC; A subjective overview.", Guernica, October 1, 2014. Accessed January 7, 2024. "In 1935, the first public housing complex in New York, prosaically christened First Houses, (landmarked since 1974) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, offered 122 apartments featuring oak wood floors and brass fixtures. The rent, adjusted to each family's monthly income, ranged from five to seven dollars."
^"County Median Home Price". National Association of Realtors. January 4, 2019. Archived from the original on April 20, 2022. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
^"New York City Pedestrian Level of Service Study – Phase I, 2006"Archived June 15, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, New York City Department of City Planning, April 2006, p. 4. Accessed May 17, 2007. "In the year 2000, 88% of workers over 16 years old in the U.S. used a car, truck or van to commute to work, while approximately 5% used public transportation and 3% walked to work.... In Manhattan, the borough with the highest population density (66,940 people/sq mi. in year 2000; 1,564,798 inhabitants) and concentration of business and tourist destinations, only 18% of the working population drove to work in 2000, while 72% used public transportation and 8% walked."
^"Manhattan"(PDF). TSTC.org. Archived from the original(PDF) on July 23, 2011. Retrieved September 13, 2010.
^Lee, Jennifer 8. "Midair Rescue Lifts Passengers From Stranded East River Tram"Archived January 2, 2016, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, April 19, 2006. Accessed February 28, 2008. "The system, which calls itself the only aerial commuter tram in the country, has been featured in movies including City Slickers, starring Billy Crystal; Nighthawks, with Sylvester Stallone; and Spider-Man in 2002."
^Holloway, Lynette. "Mayor to End 50-Cent Fare On S.I. Ferry"Archived October 30, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, April 29, 1997. Accessed June 30, 2009. "Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said yesterday that he would eliminate the 50-cent fare on the Staten Island Ferry starting July 4, saying people who live outside Manhattan should not have to pay extra to travel."
^"Route Map"(PDF). NYC Ferry. 2017. Archived from the original(PDF) on June 28, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
^ abWilson, Colleen. "Port Authority Bus Terminal was once a marvel. Will the next one meet commuters' needs?", The Record, June 30, 2021. Accessed January 4, 2024. "Becoming the busiest bus terminal in the world doesn't happen without also bearing the brunt of blame every time a commute goes horribly wrong — deserved or otherwise.... The popularity of bus commuting over the Hudson River has steadily risen over the last seven decades, with some 260,000 people a day coming through the terminal pre-pandemic.... A more efficient terminal should improve some of the delays through the Lincoln Tunnel and exclusive bus lane (XBL), the dedicated lane in the morning that converges all buses into a single lane from I-495 into the Lincoln Tunnel from New Jersey."
^McGeehan, Patrick; and Hu, Winnie. "'Notorious' Port Authority Bus Terminal May Get a $10 Billion Overhaul", The New York Times, January 21, 2021, updated September 23, 2021. Accessed January 4, 2024. "The bus terminal plan, which has been in the works for more than seven contentious years, would cost as much as $10 billion and could take a decade to complete.... More than 250,000 people passed through it on a typical weekday before the pandemic, according to the Port Authority.... The bus terminal, a brick hulk perched at the mouth of the Lincoln Tunnel, has long exceeded its capacity — when it opened in late 1950, it was expected to handle 60,000 passengers a day."
^McGeehan, Patrick. "A Look at the $10 Billion Design for a New Port Authority Bus Terminal The Port Authority unveiled a revised design for a replacement of the much-reviled transit hub, which opened in 1950.", The New York Times, February 1, 2024. Accessed February 9, 2024. "Instead of the dismal, brick hulk that has darkened two full blocks of Midtown Manhattan for more than 70 years, there would be a bright, modern transit hub topped by two office towers.... Construction is expected to take eight years, he said, meaning the project could be completed by 2032.... The revised plan eliminates those structures but includes a pair of office towers that could be more than 60 stories tall on Eighth Avenue at the corners of 40th and 42nd Streets. Payments from the developers of those buildings would help cover the cost of the project, Mr. Cotton said."
^Gray, Christopher. "Are Manhattan's Right Angles Wrong?", The New York Times, October 23, 2005. Accessed December 1, 2023. "In 1811, the New York commissioners published their eight-foot-long map, showing 12 main north-south avenues and a dense network of east-west streets for much of Manhattan, with the old angled road of Broadway meandering through."
^Boland, Ed Jr. "F.Y.I.: By the Numbers", The New York Times, August 18, 2002. Accessed December 1, 2023. "Q. What is the highest numbered street in New York City?... The highest numbered street in Manhattan is 228th Street, but that is in Marble Hill, a section of Manhattan north of the Harlem River. The highest numbered street on Manhattan Island is 220th Street in Inwood. The northbound numerations that begin in Manhattan continue through the Bronx until New York City meets Yonkers at West 263rd Street."
^Remarks of the Commissioners for laying out streets and roads in the City of New York, under the Act of April 3, 1807Archived June 10, 2007, at the Wayback Machine, Cornell University. Accessed May 2, 2007. "These streets are all sixty feet wide except fifteen, which are one hundred feet wide, viz.: Numbers fourteen, twenty-three, thirty-four, forty-two, fifty-seven, seventy-two, seventy-nine, eighty-six, ninety-six, one hundred and six, one hundred and sixteen, one hundred and twenty-five, one hundred and thirty-five, one hundred and forty-five, and one hundred and fifty-five—the block or space between them being in general about two hundred feet."
^Broadway, Society of Architectural Historians. Accessed December 30, 2023. "Broadway is a 13-mile roadway running from the southern tip to the northernmost point of the island of Manhattan.... Predating the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, Broadway was initially a Native American trading trail running the length of Manhattan. Various indigenous peoples living on the island—including Lenni Lenape, Delaware Lenape, and Wickquasgeck—used the route, known as the Wickquasgeck Trail, to exchange goods with each other."
^"Grow the Green Line", Urban Design Forum, February 26, 2018. Accessed December 30, 2023. "Broadway today is an anomaly, unneeded for vehicular traffic, that cuts through a standardized urban form. It is an extra street modulating an otherwise functioning grid. However, it is the only road that connects four of the most important public spaces in the city: Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, and Times Square; each found where this diagonal route crosses an avenue and marks a major street."
^Union Square, Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace. Accessed December 30, 2023. "New York's famed thoroughfare Broadway is responsible for some of the city's most famous parks. The irregularity of Broadway's span created space for Union Square, Madison Square, Herald Square, Times Square, and Columbus Circle.... Therefore Broadway does not run parallel to the north-south avenues of the grid. Broadway runs diagonally, intersecting other avenues and slicing uniform rectangles into small awkward blocks."
^Sagalyn, Lynne B. "The Cross Manhattan Expressway", Museum of the City of New York, November 14, 2016. Accessed January 3, 2024. "In 1959, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, under the control and direction of New York City's 'master builder' Robert Moses, put forth ambitious plans for two expressways crossing Manhattan. These elevated highways would cut through neighborhoods and across the island, connecting New York with its wider metropolitan region.... Moses was particularly dedicated to pushing the Lower Manhattan Expressway through after another plan for Mid-Manhattan failed.... The citizen-led opposition campaign that led to the high-profile defeat of the Lower Manhattan Expressway in 1967 saved the neighborhood of SoHo and triggered a new, broader appreciation for preservation in areas that were of historical significance for cultural and economic reasons."
^ abSilverman, Justin Rocket (May 27, 2006). "Sunny delight in city sight". Newsday. Archived from the original on August 3, 2018. Retrieved May 11, 2020. 'Manhattanhenge' occurs Sunday, a day when a happy coincidence of urban planning and astrophysics results in the setting sun lining up exactly with every east-west street in the borough north of 14th Street. Similar to Stonehenge, which is directly aligned with the summer-solstice sun, "Manhattanhenge" catches the sun descending in perfect alignment between buildings. The local phenomenon occurs twice a year, on May 28 and July 12...
^Morris, Hugh. "Manhattanhenge is coming: what is it, and how can I see it?", The Daily Telegraph, May 31, 2019. Accessed December 30, 2023. "It is worth noting that the time when the rising sun aligns with Manhattan's streets, around December 5 and January 8, on either side of the winter solstice, is also known as Manhattanhenge but nobody seems that fussed about it. Poor Winter"
^Ray, C. Claiborne. "Q&A"Archived March 28, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times, May 12, 1992. Accessed June 30, 2009. "In a steam-powered system, the whole cycle of compression, cooling, expansion and evaporation takes place in a closed system, like that in a refrigerator or electrical air-conditioner. The difference, Mr. Sarno said, is that the mechanical power to run the compressor comes from steam-powered turbines, not electrical motors."
^"Current Reservoir Levels". New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Archived from the original on July 7, 2016. Retrieved August 15, 2014.
Burke, Katie. ed. Manhattan Memories: A Book of Postcards of Old New York (2000); Postcards lacking the (c) symbol are in the public domain.
Jackson, Kenneth T. and David S. Dunbar, eds. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries (2005), 1015 pages of excerpts
Still, Bayrd, ed. Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present (New York University Press, 1956)
Virga, Vincent, ed. Historic Maps and Views of New York (2008)
Stokes, I.N. Phelps. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909 compiled from original sources and illustrated by photo-intaglio reproductions of important maps plans views and documents in public and private collections (6 vols., 1915–28). A highly detailed, heavily illustrated chronology of Manhattan and New York City. see The Iconography of Manhattan Island All volumes are on line free at:
I.N. Phelps Stokes; The Iconography of Manhattan Island Vol 1. 1915 v. 1. The period of discovery (1524–1609); the Dutch period (1609–1664). The English period (1664–1763). The Revolutionary period (1763–1783). Period of adjustment and reconstruction; New York as the state and federal capital (1783–1811)
I.N. Phelps Stokes; The Iconography of Manhattan Island Vol 2. 1916 v. 2. Cartography: an essay on the development of knowledge regarding the geography of the east coast of North America; Manhattan Island and its environs on early maps and charts / by F.C. Wieder and I.N. Phelps Stokes. The Manatus maps. The Castello plan. The Dutch grants. Early New York newspapers (1725–1811). Plan of Manhattan Island in 1908
I.N. Phelps Stokes; The Iconography of Manhattan Island Vol 3. 1918 v. 3. The War of 1812 (1812–1815). Period of invention, prosperity, and progress (1815–1841). Period of industrial and educational development (1842–1860). The Civil War (1861–1865); period of political and social development (1865–1876). The modern city and island (1876–1909)
I.N. Phelps Stokes; The Iconography of Manhattan Island Vol 5. 1926; v. 5. The Revolutionary period, part II (1776–1783). Period of adjustment and reconstruction New York as the state and federal capital (1783–1811). The War of 1812 (1812–1815); period of invention, prosperity, and progress (1815–1841). Period of industrial and educational development (1842–1860). The Civil War (1861–1865); Period of political and social development (1865–1876). The modern city and island (1876–1909)
Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City: A Narrative History (2004) 640pp; Excerpt and text search; Popular history concentrating on violent events & scandals
Homberger, Eric. The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History (2005)
Kouwenhoven, John Atlee. The Columbia Historical Portrait of New York: An Essay in Graphic History. (1953)
Lankevich, George J. New York City: A Short History (2002)
McCully, Betsy. City at the Water's Edge: A Natural History of New York (2005), environmental history excerpt and text search
Reitano, Joanne. The Restless City: A Short History of New York from Colonial Times to the Present (2010), Popular history with focus on politics and riots excerpt and text search
Story, Louise and Saul, Stephanie (February 2015). Towers of Secrecy. A series of 6 articles "examining people behind shell companies buying high-end real estate" in midtown Manhattan. Part 1: Time Warner Center: Symbol of the Boom, Part 2: The Mysterious Malaysian Financier, Part 3: The Besieged Indian Builder, Part 4: The Mexican Power Brokers, Part 5: The Russian Minister and Friends, Summary: The Hidden Money Buying Up New York Real Estate. The New York Times
William J. Broad, Why They Called It the Manhattan Project, The New York Times, October 2007. Ten sites in Manhattan that helped to build the first atomic bomb in the 1940s
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