Manhattan

Manhattan is a borough of New York City, coterminous with New York County. Although its population is only third largest of the five boroughs (after Brooklyn and Queens), it is the most densely populated county in the United States. The Island of Manhattan is the largest section of the borough (and county), which also includes numerous smaller islands and a small section of the North American mainland.

Manhattan is the borough that some tourists most closely associate with New York City. A commercial, financial, and cultural center of the world, Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums and universities. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations and the seat of city government. Historically, its commercial streets have been characterized by thousands of unique and diverse shops, though a more recent influx of national chains has caused it to increasingly resemble other American cities and suburbs at a higher density. Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States and is the site of most of the city's corporate headquarters, as well as both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.

History

The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, which translates into "island of many hills" in Lenape, so written earliest in the 1609 logbook (Record of October 2) of Robert Juet, an officer of the Dutch East India Company yacht Halve Maen or Half Moon.[2] The ship was captained by Henry Hudson, who, in the service of the Dutch Republic, was covertly commissioned to seek a Northwest Passage to China. The Half Moon first entered Upper New York Bay on September 11, 1609, and sailing up the lower Hudson River, anchored off the tip of northern Manhattan that night. As emissary of Holland’s Lord-Lieutenant Maurits he named the river he discovered after him; the Mauritius River.

A manuscript map of 1610 depicts the name Manahata twice, on the west as well as the east side of the Mauritius River, later named Hudson River, thereby referring to the tribes that dwelled at the mouth of the river as the Manahata Indians (later historians supposed that these people would have been the Lenape). In 1625, Johannes de Laet, Director of the Dutch West India Company wrote in his “New World”: “The great North River of New-Netherland is called by some the Manhattas River from the people who dwell near its mouth; but by our countrymen it is generally called the Great River”. In the 1630 edition, he continues to write of “another fort of greater importance at the mouth of the same North River, upon an island which our people call Manhattas or Manhattans Island, because of this nation of Indians happened to possess the same, and by them it has been sold to the company”. He thus confirmed that the island had been purchased in 1626 by Peter Minuit, the third director of New Netherland from the native Lenape Native Americans for 60 guilders worth of trade goods (traditionally translated to about $24, which according to the Oregon State University website's estimated conversion factors, is about the equivalent of $500-$700 American in today's currency.

It is generally assumed that the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano explored New York Harbor in 1524 and that a few months later the Portuguese Esteban Gómez did the same. However, there is no evidence of any exploration, latitude calculations, surveying or mapping. There is only a vague textual description of having seen an estuary that may perhaps resemble Hudson’s river. None of those navigators from other nations had penetrated well into the bay or explored the chief river substantiated with textual and visual evidence until the Dutch did so in 1609.

The province of New Netherland was settled in 1624 at Governors Island (the birth date of New York State), whereas the town of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island was founded in 1625 (the birth date of New York City) by New Netherland's second director, Willem Verhulst, who, together with his council, had selected Manhattan as the optimal place for permanent settlement. That year, in 1625, military engineer and surveyor Cryn Fredericksz van Lobbrecht laid out a citadel with Fort Amsterdam as centerpiece.

In 1664, King Charles II had resolved to annex New Netherland and consolidate it with his North American possessions in order “to install one form of government, both in church and state... to install the Anglican government as in Old England”. He sent an expeditionary force composed of New Englanders and “reinforced by four royal ships crammed full with an extraordinary amount of men and warlike stores” and demanded New Netherland’s surrender. Director General Peter Stuyvesant and his council negotiated 24 articles of provisional transfer, which gave New Netherlanders liberties and freedoms unlike those available to New Englanders and Virginians.

In October 1665, Stuyvesant reported that “many verbal warnings came from diverse country people on Long Island, who daily noticed the growing and increasing strength of the English, and gathered from their talk that their business was not only with New Netherland but with the booty and plunder, and for these were they called out and enrolled. Which was afterwards confirmed not only by the dissolute English soldiery, but even by the most steady officers and by a striking example exhibited to the colonists of New Amstel on the South Delaware River, who, notwithstanding they had offered no resistance, but requested good terms, could not obtain them, but were invaded, stripped, utterly plundered and many of them sold as slaves to Virginia”.

Consequently, the negotiations assured that the legal and political tradition of tolerance as the basis of cultural diversity and pluralism since 1624 was perpetuated by the Articles of Transfer under English authority. Thus safeguarded, the notion of tolerance endured after conclusive jurisdictional establishment of English dominion over New Netherland in 1674, and through the formation of the United States of America, when it was reintroduced as a constitutional right under the Bill of Rights in 1791.

New Amsterdam’s significance, therefore, lies in the fact that it gave rise to what would become the most diverse city in the world, and the nation’s largest municipality ― itself a legal concept introduced, in 1653, in New Amsterdam.

Having so saved the New Netherland culture from destruction, the political power of a minority among the majority was soon to transform, over time, the region from a utilitarian community based on the values of a republic and the Dutch language to a class society based on royal values and the English language. Hence, New York County is named in honor of the Royal Majesty of Great Britain, the Duke of York, later to become the Catholic James II of England after whom the City and State of New York were also named. In 1691, however, the Catholic religion was outlawed in New York by an act of parliament. This ban technically remained in effect until the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

From January 11, 1785 to Autumn 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress residing at New York City Hall then at Fraunces Tavern. New York was the first capital of the country under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States from March 4, 1789 to August 12, 1790 at Federal Hall.

New York City, surrounded by two brackish rivers, had a limited supply of fresh water available on the island, which dwindled as the city grew rapidly after the American Revolutionary War. To supply the needs of the growing population, the city acquired land in Westchester County and constructed the Croton Aqueduct system, which went into service in 1842. The system took water from a dam at the Croton River, and sent it down through the Bronx, over the Harlem River via the High Bridge, to storage reservoirs in Central Park and at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and through a network of cast iron pipes on to consumer's faucets. In the early twentieth century, the existing water supply system was supplemented with much larger reservoirs in the Catskill Mountains, connected to the city by a series of mammoth water tunnels.

At the time of creation of New York County, its territory consisted of Manhattan Island, and occupied the same area that it occupies today. In 1873, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County. In 1898, when New York City was constituted as five boroughs, the separate boroughs of Manhattan and of the Bronx were formed, though both remained within the single County of New York. In 1914, those parts of the then New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County were constituted the new Bronx County, and New York County was reduced again to its present boundaries.

From the latter half of the 1960s through most of the 1970s, Manhattan suffered from urban flight as much of the middle-class fled to the suburbs due to an increase in crime. However, as with many other American cities, there was an increase in population growth in the latter part of the century due to a renewed interest in the urban lifestyle, a trend that began in the late 1980s and has continued to present day. It was thought that the September 11, 2001 attacks would initiate a new exodus from the City due to a fear of terrorism, but this has not occurred.

History of New York City

Geography

Manhattan Island is bound by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan from The Bronx and the mainland United States. The island is 20 mile of land measuring 13 miles long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) across at its widest point. The borough of Manhattan includes both Manhattan Island and several small islands, including Randall's Island, Ward's Island, and Roosevelt Island to the east and Ellis Island, Liberty Island, and Governors Island to the south in New York Harbor. The borough has an area of 33.8 mile, of which 32.01% is water.

One Manhattan neighborhood is actually contiguous with The Bronx. Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan. Eventually the part of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from The Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.

Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times. Reclamation is most notable in Lower Manhattan with modern developments such as Battery Park City, created from land excavated during the construction of the World Trade Center. Much of the natural variations in topography have been evened out. One possible meaning for " Manhattan" is "island of hills"; in fact, the island was quite hilly before European settlement.

Manhattan is loosely divided into downtown, midtown, and uptown regions, with Fifth Avenue demarcating Manhattan's east and west sides.

Manhattan is connected by a bridge as well as vehicular and train tunnels to New Jersey to the west, and three New York City boroughs: the Bronx to the northeast; Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. Its terminal is located at Battery Park at its southern tip. It is possible to travel to Staten Island via Brooklyn, using one of Brooklyn's bridges, the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

A 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). On separate occasions in late May and early July (for 2006 the exact dates are 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. A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December (January 11 and December 2 in 2006).

The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoos and aquariums in the city, is currently undertaking The Mannahatta Project, a computer simulation to visually reconstruct the ecology and geography of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609, and compare it to what we know of the island today.

Manhattan neighborhoods

Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), ethnically descriptive (Chinatown), or abbreviations (TriBeCa, which stands for "Triangle Below Canal Street"). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.

Some neighborhoods, like SoHo (South of Houston), are commercial in nature and known for upscale shopping. Others, like the Lower East Side and East Village, have been associated with the "Bohemian" subculture, though many artists have relocated to Brooklyn from these neighborhoods. Chelsea is a center of New York's art industry and nightlife. Washington Heights is a vibrant neighborhood of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Manhattan's Chinatown is the largest in the Western hemisphere. The Upper West Side is often characterized as a liberal and family-friendly alternative to the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States.

In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south. (Though even north and south here are relative - north in Manhattan is a logical north, determined by the main axis of the island, and corresponding to the direction of the avenues of the street grid. Uptown is actually more like north-by-northeast.) This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and the business district in Midtown. The term uptown refers to the northern part of Manhattan (generally speaking, above 59th Street) and downtown to the southern portion (typically below 23rd Street or 14th Street).

Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street). South of Waverly Place in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. North of 14th Street, nearly all east-west streets use numeric designations, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island.