Manhattan

This article is about the New York City borough. For other uses, see Manhattan (disambiguation).

Manhattan New York County
Borough and county
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district, in the foreground, with Lower Manhattan and its Financial District in the background
Flag Seal
Etymology: Lenape: Manaháhtaan (the place where we get bows)
Nickname:  The City
Interactive map outlining Manhattan
Manhattan Location within New York City  United States
State	New York
County	New York County (coterminous)
City	New York City
Settled	1624
Government
• Type	Borough (New York City)
• Borough President	Mark Levine (D) — (Borough of Manhattan)
• District Attorney	Alvin Bragg (D) — (New York County)
Area
• Total	33.58 sq mi (87.0 km2)
• Land	22.83 sq mi (59.1 km2)
• Water	10.76 sq mi (27.9 km2)  32%
Dimensions —width at 14th Street, widest
• Length	13 mi (21 km)
• Width	2.3 mi (3.7 km)
Highest elevation	265 ft (81 m)
Population  (2020)
• Total	1,694,250
• Estimate  (2022)	1,596,273
• Density	74,781.6/sq mi (28,873.3/km2)
Demonyms	Manhattanite Knickerbocker (historical)
GDP
• Total	US$780.966 billion (2022) · 2nd by U.S. county; 1st per capita
Time zone	UTC−05:00 (EST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC−04:00 (EDT)
ZIP Code format	100xx, 101xx, 102xx
Area code	212/646/332, 917
Website	Manhattan Borough President

Manhattan (/mænˈhætən, mən-/ ^ⓘ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is coextensive with New York County, the smallest county by geographical area in the U.S. state of New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's economic and administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world.

Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonists in 1624 on southern Manhattan Island; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Lower Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of arriving immigrants in the late 19th century and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, and houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement, cementing Manhattan's central role in LGBT culture. It was also the site of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed during the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, the borough is bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers and includes several small adjacent islands, including Roosevelt, U Thant, and Randalls and Wards Islands. It also includes the small neighborhood of Marble Hill now on the U.S. mainland. Manhattan Island is divided into three informally bounded components, each cutting across the borough's long axis: Lower 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), or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154 residents/km²), and its residential property has the highest sale price per square foot in the United States. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.

Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial and fintech center of the world,and Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan, as are numerous colleges and universities, such as Columbia University and New York University; the headquarters of the United Nations is also located in the borough. Manhattan hosts three of the world's most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal. Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere. The borough hosts many prominent bridges and tunnels, and skyscrapers including the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and One World Trade Center. It is also home to the National Basketball Association's New York Knicks and the National Hockey League's New York Rangers.

History

Main article: History of Manhattan

See also: History of New York City

Lenape settlement

Manhattan was historically part of the Lenapehoking territory inhabited by the Munsee, Lenape, and Wappinger tribes. 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. There were various sites for fishing and planting established by the Lenape throughout Manhattan. The name Manhattan originated from the Lenape's language, Munsee, manaháhtaan (where manah- means "gather", -aht- means "bow", and -aan is an abstract element used to form verb stems). The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at its southern end that was considered ideal for the making of bows.

Colonial era

Main articles: New Netherland, New Amsterdam, and Province of New York

The Castello Plan, a 1660 map of New Amsterdam (the top right corner is roughly north) in Lower Manhattan

New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New York

In April 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing in service of Francis I of France, became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City. Verrazzano entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York Harbor New Angoulême, in reference to the family name of King Francis I; he sailed far enough into the harbor to sight the Hudson River, and he named the Bay of Santa Margarita – what is now Upper New York Bay – after Marguerite de Navarre, the elder sister of the king.

Manhattan was first mapped during a 1609 voyage of Henry Hudson. 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. Manhattan was first recorded in writing as Manna-hata, in the logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on the voyage.

A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. 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. The establishment of Fort Amsterdam is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony. New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653. 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. 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.

American Revolution and the early United States

Further information: American Revolution

Statue of George Washington in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where in 1789 he was sworn in as the first U.S. president.

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. 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. 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.

From January 11, 1785, until 1789, New York City was the fifth of five capitals of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789, to August 12, 1790, at Federal Hall. Federal Hall was where the United States Supreme Court met for the first time, the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, and where the Northwest Ordinance was adopted, establishing measures for admission to the Union of new states.

19th century

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. By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the most populous city in the United States. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan. 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.

Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Covering 840 acres (340 ha) in the center of the island, Central Park, which opened its first portions to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped public park in an American city.

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 culminated in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, among the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history. 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. 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.

In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge across the East River established a road connection to Brooklyn and the rest of Long Island. In 1898, New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City of Greater New York", and Manhattan was established as one of the five boroughs of New York City. The Bronx remained part of New York County until 1914, when Bronx County was established.

20th century

Further information: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and Stonewall riots

Manhattan's Little Italy on the Lower East Side, c. 1900

The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did the completion of the Williamsburg Bridge (1903) and Manhattan Bridge (1909) connecting to Brooklyn and the Queensboro Bridge (1909) connecting to Queens. In the 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline, with the Woolworth Building (1913), 40 Wall Street (1930), Chrysler Building (1930) and the Empire State Building (1931) leapfrogging each other to take their place as the world's tallest building. Manhattan's majority white ethnic group declined from 98.7% in 1900 to 58.3% by 1990. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers, leading to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace safety regulations. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched upon Washington Square Park to commemorate the fire. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of women's liberation, reflecting the alliance of the labor and suffrage movements.

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. 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. The United Nations relocated to a new headquarters that was completed in 1952 along the East River.

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights.

In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. 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. 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. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter.

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". 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."

By the 1990s, crime rates began to drop dramatically 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. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the Flatiron District, cementing technology as a key component of Manhattan's economy.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing, described by the FBI as "something of a deadly dress rehearsal for 9/11", was a terrorist attack in which six people were killed when a van bomb filled with explosives was detonated in a parking lot below the North Tower of the World Trade Center complex.

21st century

See also: September 11 attacks

United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower on September 11, 2001.

On September 11, 2001, the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center were struck by hijacked aircraft and collapsed in the September 11 attacks launched by al-Qaeda terrorists. The collapse caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 of the 17,400 who had been in the buildings when the planes hit, in addition to those on the planes. Since 2001, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored, although there has been controversy surrounding the rebuilding. In 2014, the new One World Trade Center, at 1,776 feet (541 m) measured to the top if its spire, became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and is the world's seventh-tallest building (as of 2023).

The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.

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, severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems. 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.

On October 31, 2017, a terrorist deliberately drove a truck down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight.

Geography

See also: Geography of New York City

Satellite image of Manhattan, bounded by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north, the East River to the east, and New York Harbor to the south, with rectangular Central Park prominently visible. Roosevelt Island, in the East River, belongs to Manhattan.

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. 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.

The borough consists primarily of Manhattan Island, along with the Marble Hill neighborhood and several small islands, including Randalls Island and Wards Island and Roosevelt Island in the East River; and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor.

Manhattan Island

Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Downtown (Lower Manhattan), Midtown (Midtown Manhattan), and Uptown (Upper Manhattan), with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan lengthwise into its East Side and West Side. Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from the Bronx and the mainland United States. Early in the 19th century, land reclamation was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street. When building the World Trade Center in 1968, 1.2 million cubic yards (920,000 m³) of material excavated from the site was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City. Constructed on piers at a cost of $260 million, Little Island opened on the Hudson River in May 2021, connected to the western termini of 13th and 14th Streets by footbridges.

Marble Hill

Main article: Marble Hill, Manhattan

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. 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. 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), 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.

Smaller islands

See also: List of smaller islands in New York City

Liberty Island, an exclave of Manhattan, New York City, and the state of New York, that is surrounded by New Jersey waters

Within New York Harbor, there are three smaller islands:

• Ellis Island, shared with New Jersey
• Governors Island
• Liberty Island (administered by the National Park Service)

Other smaller islands, in the East River, include (from north to south):

• Randalls and Wards Islands, joined by landfill
• Mill Rock
• Roosevelt Island, which has a population of 14,000, extends for 2 miles (3.2 km), and was renamed in 1973 from Welfare Island to honor President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• U Thant Island (legally Belmont Island)

Geology

Main article: Geology of Manhattan

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. It is part of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region.

Climate

See also: Climate of New York City

Central Park in autumn

Under the Köppen climate classification, New York City features both a humid subtropical climate (Cfa) and a humid continental climate (Dfa); it is the northernmost major city on the North American continent with a humid subtropical climate. The city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually.

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); temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter, and reach 60 °F (16 °C) several days in the coldest winter month. 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. 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. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer 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.

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.

Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals, extremes 1869–present
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Record high °F (°C)	72 (22)	78 (26)	86 (30)	96 (36)	99 (37)	101 (38)	106 (41)	104 (40)	102 (39)	94 (34)	84 (29)	75 (24)	106 (41)
Mean maximum °F (°C)	60.4 (15.8)	60.7 (15.9)	70.3 (21.3)	82.9 (28.3)	88.5 (31.4)	92.1 (33.4)	95.7 (35.4)	93.4 (34.1)	89.0 (31.7)	79.7 (26.5)	70.7 (21.5)	62.9 (17.2)	97.0 (36.1)
Mean daily maximum °F (°C)	39.5 (4.2)	42.2 (5.7)	49.9 (9.9)	61.8 (16.6)	71.4 (21.9)	79.7 (26.5)	84.9 (29.4)	83.3 (28.5)	76.2 (24.6)	64.5 (18.1)	54.0 (12.2)	44.3 (6.8)	62.6 (17.0)
Daily mean °F (°C)	33.7 (0.9)	35.9 (2.2)	42.8 (6.0)	53.7 (12.1)	63.2 (17.3)	72.0 (22.2)	77.5 (25.3)	76.1 (24.5)	69.2 (20.7)	57.9 (14.4)	48.0 (8.9)	39.1 (3.9)	55.8 (13.2)
Mean daily minimum °F (°C)	27.9 (−2.3)	29.5 (−1.4)	35.8 (2.1)	45.5 (7.5)	55.0 (12.8)	64.4 (18.0)	70.1 (21.2)	68.9 (20.5)	62.3 (16.8)	51.4 (10.8)	42.0 (5.6)	33.8 (1.0)	48.9 (9.4)
Mean minimum °F (°C)	9.8 (−12.3)	12.7 (−10.7)	19.7 (−6.8)	32.8 (0.4)	43.9 (6.6)	52.7 (11.5)	61.8 (16.6)	60.3 (15.7)	50.2 (10.1)	38.4 (3.6)	27.7 (−2.4)	18.0 (−7.8)	7.7 (−13.5)
Record low °F (°C)	−6 (−21)	−15 (−26)	3 (−16)	12 (−11)	32 (0)	44 (7)	52 (11)	50 (10)	39 (4)	28 (−2)	5 (−15)	−13 (−25)	−15 (−26)
Average precipitation inches (mm)	3.64 (92)	3.19 (81)	4.29 (109)	4.09 (104)	3.96 (101)	4.54 (115)	4.60 (117)	4.56 (116)	4.31 (109)	4.38 (111)	3.58 (91)	4.38 (111)	49.52 (1,258)
Average snowfall inches (cm)	8.8 (22)	10.1 (26)	5.0 (13)	0.4 (1.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.0 (0.0)	0.1 (0.25)	0.5 (1.3)	4.9 (12)	29.8 (76)
Average precipitation days (≥ 0.01 in)	10.8	10.0	11.1	11.4	11.5	11.2	10.5	10.0	8.8	9.5	9.2	11.4	125.4
Average snowy days (≥ 0.1 in)	3.7	3.2	2.0	0.2	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.2	2.1	11.4
Average relative humidity (%)	61.5	60.2	58.5	55.3	62.7	65.2	64.2	66.0	67.8	65.6	64.6	64.1	63.0
Mean monthly sunshine hours	162.7	163.1	212.5	225.6	256.6	257.3	268.2	268.2	219.3	211.2	151.0	139.0	2,534.7
Percent possible sunshine	54	55	57	57	57	57	59	63	59	61	51	48	57
Source 1: NOAA
Source 2: Weather Atlas

Neighborhoods

Main articles: Neighborhoods in New York City and List of Manhattan neighborhoods

The Empire State Building (in foreground) looking south from the top of Rockefeller Center with One World Trade Center (in background)

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"). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands. Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen, alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton).

Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, which is mixed use, are known for upscale shopping as well as residential use. Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the Bohemian subculture. Chelsea is one of several Manhattan neighborhoods with large gay populations and has become a center of both the international art industry and New York's nightlife. Chinatown has the highest concentration of people of Chinese descent outside of Asia. Koreatown is roughly centered on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Rose Hill features a growing number of Indian restaurants and spice shops along a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th Streets which has become known as Curry Hill. Washington Heights in Uptown Manhattan is home to the largest Dominican immigrant community in the United States. Harlem, also in Upper Manhattan, is the historical epicenter of African American culture. Since 2010, a Little Australia has emerged and is growing in Nolita, Lower Manhattan.

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, 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. South of Waverly Place, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south. This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district.

Boroughscape

Ten-mile Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken February 21, 2018, from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey.

1. Riverside Church
2. Time Warner Center
3. 220 Central Park South
4. Central Park Tower
5. One57
6. 432 Park Avenue
7. 53W53
8. Chrysler Building
9. Bank of America Tower
10. Conde Nast Building
11. The New York Times Building
12. Empire State Building
13. Manhattan West
14. a: 55 Hudson Yards, b: 35 Hudson Yards, c: 10 Hudson Yards, d: 15 Hudson Yards
15. 56 Leonard Street
16. 8 Spruce Street
17. Woolworth Building
18. 70 Pine Street
19. 30 Park Place
20. 40 Wall Street
21. Three World Trade Center
22. Four World Trade Center
23. One World Trade Center

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of Manhattan

Broadway in Midtown Manhattan. As of the 2020 U.S. census, Manhattan was the most densely populated municipality in the United States.

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. 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. 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.

Historical population

Year	Pop.	±%
1656	1,000	—
1698	4,937	+393.7%
1712	5,841	+18.3%
1723	7,248	+24.1%
1731	8,622	+19.0%
1746	11,717	+35.9%
1756	13,040	+11.3%
1771	21,863	+67.7%
1786	23,614	+8.0%
1790	33,131	+40.3%
1800	60,489	+82.6%
1810	96,373	+59.3%
1820	123,706	+28.4%
1830	202,589	+63.8%
1840	312,710	+54.4%
1850	515,547	+64.9%
1860	813,669	+57.8%
1870	942,292	+15.8%
1880	1,164,674	+23.6%
1890	1,441,216	+23.7%
1900	1,850,093	+28.4%
1910	2,331,542	+26.0%
1920	2,284,103	−2.0%
1930	1,867,312	−18.2%
1940	1,889,924	+1.2%
1950	1,960,101	+3.7%
1960	1,698,281	−13.4%
1970	1,539,233	−9.4%
1980	1,428,285	−7.2%
1990	1,487,536	+4.1%
2000	1,537,195	+3.3%
2010	1,585,873	+3.2%
2020	1,694,251	+6.8%
Sources:

Racial composition	2020	2010	2000	1990	1950	1900
White	50.0%	57.4%	54.3%	58.3%	79.4%	97.8%
—Non-Hispanic	46.8%	48%	45.7%	48.9%	n/a	n/a
Black or African American	13.5%	15.6%	17.3%	22.0%	19.6%	2.0%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race)	23.8%	25.4%	27.1%	26.0%	n/a	n/a
Asian	13.1%	11.3%	9.4%	7.4%	0.8%	0.3%

Religion

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. In 2014, Manhattan had 703 religious organizations, the seventeenth most out of all US counties. There is a large Buddhist temple in Manhattan located at the foot of the Manhattan Bridge in Chinatown.

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.

Landmarks and architecture

Main article: Architecture of New York City

See also: List of skyscrapers in New York City

Points of interest on Manhattan Island include the American Museum of Natural History; the Battery; Broadway and the Theater District; Bryant Park; Central Park, Chinatown; the Chrysler Building; The Cloisters; Columbia University; Curry Hill; the Empire State Building; Flatiron Building; the Financial District (including the New York Stock Exchange Building; Wall Street; and the South Street Seaport); Grand Central Terminal; Greenwich Village (including New York University; Washington Square Arch; and Stonewall Inn); Harlem and Spanish Harlem; the High Line; Koreatown; Lincoln Center; Little Australia; Little Italy; Madison Square Garden; Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue (including the Metropolitan Museum of Art); Penn Station, Port Authority Bus Terminal; Rockefeller Center (including Radio City Music Hall); Times Square; and the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Museum and One World Trade Center).

There are also numerous iconic bridges across rivers that connect to Manhattan Island, as well as an emerging number of supertall skyscrapers. The Statue of Liberty rests on Liberty Island, an exclave of Manhattan, and part of Ellis Island is also an exclave of Manhattan. The borough has many energy-efficient office buildings, such as the Hearst Tower, the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center, and the Bank of America Tower—the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification.

Many tall buildings have setbacks on their facade due to the 1916 Zoning Resolution, exemplified at Park Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

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. 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. Manhattan's skyline includes several buildings that are symbolic of New York, in particular the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, which sees about 4 million visitors a year.

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. 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. Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. 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". 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. 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.

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.

National protected areas

• African Burial Ground National Monument
• Castle Clinton National Monument
• Federal Hall National Memorial
• General Grant National Memorial
• Governors Island National Monument
• Hamilton Grange National Memorial
• Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site
• Statue of Liberty National Monument (part)
• Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site

Parkland

Central Park

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. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the park is anchored by the 12-acre (4.9 ha) Great Lawn and offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and several lawns and sporting areas, as well as 21 playgrounds, and a 6-mile (9.7 km) road from which automobile traffic has been banned since 2018. 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.

The remaining 70% of Manhattan's parkland includes 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts, and many other amenities. 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). Other major parks include:

• Bowling Green
• Bryant Park
• City Hall Park
• DeWitt Clinton Park
• East River Greenway
• Fort Tryon Park
• Fort Washington Park
• Harlem River Park
• Rucker Park
• Imagination Playground
• Inwood Hill Park
• Isham Park
• J. Hood Wright Park
• Jackie Robinson Park
• Madison Square Park
• Marcus Garvey Park
• Morningside Park
• Randall's Island Park
• Riverside Park
• Sara D. Roosevelt Park
• Seward Park
• St. Nicholas Park
• Stuyvesant Square
• The Battery
• The High Line
• Thomas Jefferson Park
• Tompkins Square Park
• Union Square Park
• Washington Square Park

Economy

Main article: Economy of New York City

The New York Stock Exchange

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.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.

Manhattan had the highest per capita income, at $186,848 in 2022, among United States counties with more than 50,000 residents. 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%. 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. 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", with inequality growing steadily since 2010. As of 2023, Manhattan's cost of living was the highest in the United States.

Financial sector

Main article: Wall Street

The Financial District of Lower Manhattan, seen from Brooklyn

Manhattan's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, and the Nasdaq, now located at 4 Times Square in Midtown Manhattan, representing the world's largest and second-largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall share trading value and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2023. The NYSE American (formerly the American Stock Exchange, AMEX), New York Board of Trade, and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) are also located downtown.

Corporate sector

New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the United States, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan. Manhattan had more than 520 million square feet (48 million square meters) of office space in 2022, 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. Lower Manhattan is the third-largest U.S. central business district (following the Chicago Loop). New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously known as "Madison Avenue".

Tech and biotech

Silicon Alley, and Tech:NYC