Manhattan
Manhattan is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York, and one of the smallest in the United States. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan is centrally located in the Northeast megalopolis and represents 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.
Before European colonization, present-day Manhattan was part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonists in 1624 on Manhattan Island; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory came under English control in 1664 and was 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. Harlem in Upper Manhattan became the center of what is now known as the cultural Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace in 1969 of the modern gay-rights movement, cementing Manhattan's central role in LGBTQ culture. Manhattan was the site of the original World Trade Center, which was destroyed during the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
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, or, and its residential property has the highest sale price per square foot in the United States.
Manhattan is home to Wall Street as well as 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, New York University, Rockefeller University, and the City University of New York. The headquarters of the United Nations is located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan. Manhattan hosts three of the world's top 10 most-visited tourist attractions: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal. New York Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere. Chinatown has the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere. Fifth Avenue has been ranked as the most expensive shopping street in the world, before falling to second in 2024. The borough hosts many prominent bridges, 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
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.Toponymy
The etymology of the name Manhattan is most likely — amongst other theories, and via loaning by Dutch — from the Lenape's local language Munsee, manaháhtaan. The Lenape word has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the bows". According to a Munsee tradition recorded by Albert Seqaqkind Anthony in the 19th century, the island was named for a grove of hickory trees that was considered ideal for bowmaking. An alternate theory claims a "Delaware source akin to Munsee munahan."Colonial era
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, 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
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. 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. In 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 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.
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, 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.