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136-577: The New York City Municipal Archives preserves and makes available more than 10 million historical vital records (birth, marriage and death certificates) for all five boroughs ( Manhattan , Brooklyn , the Bronx , Queens and Staten Island ). Researchers have open access to the indexes, and both microfilmed and digital copies of vital records on-site in the Municipal Library and Archives Reference Room. Copies of vital records can be ordered through

272-595: 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

408-669: 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

544-644: A few forts in Florida , notably San Agustín (present-day Saint Augustine ) in 1565, it sent few settlers to Florida. Colonists moving north from Mexico founded the San Juan on the Rio Grande in 1598 and Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1607–1608. The settlers were forced to leave temporarily for 12 years (1680–1692) by the Pueblo Revolt before returning. Spanish Texas lasted from 1690 to 1821, when Texas

680-457: A five-year celebration of American women winning suffrage. Manhattan Manhattan ( / m æ n ˈ h æ t ən , m ə n -/ man- HAT -ən, mən- ) 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 geographical area in the U.S. state of New York . Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near

816-412: A gradual increase in immigration was recorded. More complete immigration records provide data on immigration after 1830. Though conducted since 1790, the census of 1850 was the first in which place of birth was asked specifically. The foreign-born population in the U.S. likely reached its minimum around 1815, at approximately 100,000 or 1% of the population. By 1815, most of the immigrants who arrived before

952-626: 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

1088-930: A language other than English at home. 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

1224-515: 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 m ) 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,

1360-554: A notable German-American population, contributing to the state's development and growth. Between 1820 and 1930, 3.5 million British and 4.5 million Irish entered America. Before 1845, most Irish immigrants had been Protestants . After 1845, Irish Catholics began arriving in large numbers that were largely driven by the Great Famine . After 1880, larger steam-powered oceangoing ships replaced sailing ships, which resulted in lower fares and greater immigrant mobility. In addition,

1496-661: A profitable cash crop , many plantations were established along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia and Maryland . The colonists were met with hard times including famine, illness, and their relationship with the local Native American tribes . There were several historic events that took place in Jamestown between the settlers and the Native American tribes. When the settler John Rolfe married Pocohontas , there

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1632-494: 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

1768-535: 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

1904-522: 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

2040-722: A small but steady trickle of later arrivals continued. Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of European settlers known as the pilgrims who had left Europe to separate from the Church of England and wanted religious freedom. They sailed from England on the Mayflower and arrived in 1620. Plymouth was part of the New England Confederation , made up of four Puritan colonies: Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Haven. The colonies formed an alliance to protect themselves from attacks from Native American tribes,

2176-553: A state in 1850 with a population of about 90,000. Between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans migrated to the United States, which peaked between 1881 and 1885, when a million Germans settled, primarily in the American Midwest . The Dakota Sioux had signed several treaties with the U.S. government, including the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux (1851) and the Treaty of Mendota (1851), which ceded large portions of their land to

2312-546: A steady flow of new immigrants, mostly from Central England and the London area, kept the population growth. As early as 1630, initial areas of settlement had already been largely cleared of Native Americans by major outbreaks of measles , smallpox , and bubonic plague decades before European settlers began arriving in large numbers. The leading killer was smallpox, which arrived in the New World around 1510–1530. Initially,

2448-453: A total of 599,000. They included about 207,000 Irish, who started to emigrate in large numbers after Britain's easing of travel restrictions, and about 152,000 Germans, 76,000 British, and 46,000 French, the next-largest immigrant groups of the decade. Between 1841 and 1850, immigration nearly tripled again and totaled 1,713,000 immigrants, including at least 781,000 Irish, 435,000 Germans, 267,000 British, and 77,000 French. The Irish, driven by

2584-467: 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

2720-562: 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

2856-598: 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

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2992-506: 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. In April 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano , sailing in service of Francis I of France , became

3128-652: 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 m ) of material excavated from

3264-508: 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

3400-558: Is land and 10.8 square miles (28 km ) (32%) is water. The northern segment of Upper Manhattan represents a geographic panhandle . Manhattan Island is 22.7 square miles (59 km ) 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

3536-411: 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 km ), or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154 residents/km ), and coextensive with New York County, its residential property has the highest sale price per square foot in the United States. Manhattan is home to Wall Street as well as

3672-658: 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. 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

3808-913: 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

3944-471: 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

4080-708: Is well suited for the foundations of Manhattan's skyscrapers . It is part of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region. 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

4216-621: The American Revolution in 1775. Settlements grew from initial English toeholds from the New World to British America . It brought Northern European immigrants, primarily of British, German, and Dutch extraction. The English ruled from the mid-17th century and were by far the largest group of arrivals remaining within the British Empire . Over 90% of those early immigrants became farmers. Large numbers of young men and women came alone as indentured servants . Their passage

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4352-512: The East Anglia ( Norfolk , Suffolk , Essex ), and settled in Boston, Massachusetts and the adjacent areas from around 1629 to 1640 to create a land dedicated to their religion. The earliest New English colonies, Massachusetts , Connecticut , Rhode Island , and New Hampshire , were established along the northeastern coast. Large-scale immigration to this region ended before 1700, but

4488-564: 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

4624-753: 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 . 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

4760-908: 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 . 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

4896-577: The Great Famine (1845–1849), emigrated directly from their homeland to escape poverty and death. The failed revolutions of 1848 brought many intellectuals and activists to exile in the U.S. Bad times and poor conditions in Europe drove people out, and land, relatives, freedom, opportunity, and jobs in the U.S. lured them in. 2. The number of foreign born in 1830 and 1840 decades are extrapolations. Starting in 1820, some federal records, including ship passenger lists, were kept for immigration purposes, and

5032-585: 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),

5168-602: 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. 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

5304-541: The Hudson River in present-day New York State starting about 1626. Wealthy Dutch patroons set up large landed estates along the Hudson River and brought in farmers, who became renters. Others established rich trading posts to trade with Native Americans and started cities such as New Amsterdam (now New York City) and Albany, New York . After the English seized the colony and renamed it New York, Germans (from

5440-629: The Palatinate ) and Yankees (from New England) began arriving. The Dutch initially settled in territories that we refer now as New York, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and New Jersey. The Dutch controlled New Netherland for forty years, an area now known as New York. In 1664, the Dutch settlement area was taken over by the English. In 1696, almost 30,000 people lived in the Province of New York. There were many farm products because of

5576-694: 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

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5712-895: The Third Anglo-Dutch War . 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

5848-860: The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , concluding the Mexican War, extended U.S. citizenship to approximately 60,000 Mexican residents of the New Mexico Territory and 10,000 living in Mexican California . An additional approximate 2,500 foreign-born California residents also became U.S. citizens. In 1849, the California Gold Rush attracted 100,000 would-be miners from the Eastern United States, Latin America, China, Australia, and Europe. California became

5984-454: 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

6120-409: 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 of its spire, became the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and

6256-408: The present day . Throughout U.S. history , the country experienced successive waves of immigration , particularly from Europe (see European Americans ) and later on from Asia (see Asian Americans ) and Latin America (see Hispanic and Latino Americans ). Colonial-era immigrants often repaid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants in which the new employer paid

6392-433: 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: Manhattan

6528-447: 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

6664-686: The 1,537,195 counted in the 2000 census . 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

6800-455: The 1790s. Recent debates have focused on the southern border (see Illegal immigration to the United States and Trump wall ) and the status of "dreamers", people who illegally migrated with their families when they were children and have lived in the U.S. for almost their entire lives (see Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals ). In 1607, the first successful English colony settled in Jamestown, Virginia . Once tobacco had been found to be

6936-489: The 18th century. The following were the countries of origin for new arrivals to the United States before 1790. The regions marked with an asterisk were part of Great Britain. The ancestry of the 3.9 million population in 1790 has been estimated by various sources by sampling last names from the 1790 census and assigning them a country of origin. The Irish in the 1790 census were mostly Scots-Irish. The French were primarily Huguenots . The total U.S. Catholic population in 1790

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7072-452: 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

7208-440: 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

7344-406: The American Revolution had died, and there had been almost no new immigration thereafter. Nearly all population growth up to 1830 was by internal increase. Around 98% of the population was native-born. By 1850, that shifted to about 90% native-born. The first significant Catholic immigration started in the mid-1840s and lowered the population from about 95% Protestant to about 90% by 1850. In 1848,

7480-434: The British expulsion, and they settled largely in the Southwest Louisiana region now called Acadiana . Their descendants are now called the Cajuns and still dominate the coastal areas. Additional French-speaking refugees entered the area from Saint-Domangue after the Haitian Revolution . Another cultural identity born from French immigrants is the Creole . About 7,000 French-speaking immigrants settled in Louisiana during

7616-446: The Carolinas (post-1663), and Georgia (post-1732). Even there, the immigrants came mostly from England and Scotland, with the exception of Pennsylvania's large Germanic contingent. Elsewhere, internal American migration from other colonies provided nearly all of the settlers for each new colony or state. Populations grew by about 80% over a 20-year period, at a "natural" annual growth rate of 3%. Over half of all new British immigrants in

7752-414: The Department of Records and Information Services. The Municipal Archives consists of four units to ensure the multi-format collections created by New York City Government are acquired, described, preserved and made publicly accessible. They are: The archives’ collections consist of more than 200,000 cubic feet and 185 TB of digital records in the Surrogate's Courthouse . Highlights include documents from

7888-399: The Dutch, and the French. The Pilgrims were a small group of people from Scrooby , England . They originally left England to go to Holland because they wanted separation from the Church of England , and they eventually ended in North America, where they began a new life. In the early 1600s, the Church of England was controlled by King James and the government. When King Henry VIII left

8024-448: The East River; and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor . The Island is about 13.4 miles (21.6 km) from north to south, and at its widest, 2.3 miles (3.7 km). 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

8160-719: The Puritans and their beliefs but wanted them to adapt to their religious ways. The puritans felt that it was their calling to spread the word of the Gospel to the New World, which led them to America. The New English colonists were the most urban and educated of all their contemporaries and had had many skilled farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen among them. They started the first university , Harvard , in 1635 to train their ministers. They mostly settled in small villages for mutual support (nearly all of them had their own militias) and common religious activities. Shipbuilding, commerce, agriculture, and fishing were their main sources of income. New England's healthy climate (the cold winters killed

8296-402: The Roman Catholic Church and appointed himself as the head of the Church of England, the church quickly deteriorated. It was against the law to own of copy of the Word of God, but the Puritans could read the Bible in their own languages and so understood how the Church of England was corrupt. If the Puritans were caught worshipping in secret, they could be put in prison. The Netherlands was open to

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8432-534: The South initially arrived as indentured servants , mostly poor young people who could not find work in England or afford passage to America. In addition, about 60,000 British convicts who were guilty of minor offences were transported to the British colonies in the 18th century, with the "serious" criminals generally having been executed. Ironically, those convicts are often the only immigrants with nearly complete immigration records, as other immigrants typically arrived with few or no records. Although Spain set up

8568-403: The U.S. frontier to the Pacific by 1848. Most immigrants came long distances to settle in the United States. However, many Irish left Canada for the United States in the 1840s. French Canadians , who moved south from Quebec after 1860, and Mexicans , who came north after 1911, found it easier to move back and forth. Excluding enslaved Africans (see slave trade in the United States ), there

8704-483: The U.S. in exchange for promises of annuities, supplies, and reservations and by 1862, the U.S. government failed to uphold its end of these agreements and the Dakota were facing horrible economic conditions. When the Dakota uprising ignited the US government used the opportunity to clear the land and make way for more European settlement. Germans were significant settlers in Minnesota, with communities established in cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul. By 1860, Minnesota had

8840-509: The U.S. permanently. In some groups, like the Southern Italian contadini , it was common to return to their place of origin, which about half of them did. Others, like 90% of Eastern European Jews who immigrated to the United States, stayed permanently. Within the first decade of the 20th century, 14.7 percent of Americans were born in a different country, 22 percent of the population settling in urban areas. Their urban destinations and numbers and perhaps an antipathy towards foreigners, led to

8976-401: 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

9112-413: The United States in 1848 in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , which ended war between Mexico and the United States. When the former Mexican territories joined the United States, Californios in California numbered about 10,000 and Tejanos in Texas about 4,000. By 1820, Spanish-speaking immigration to the U.S. probably did not exceed 175,000 people. New Mexico had 47,000 Mexican settlers in 1842; Arizona

9248-545: The United States, Californios in California numbered about 10,000 and Tejanos in Texas about 4,000. New Mexico had 47,000 Mexican settlers in 1842. Arizona was only thinly settled. Only a small minority of those settlers were of European descent. As in the rest of the American colonies, new settlements were based on the casta system. Although all could speak Spanish, it was a melting pot of mostly Native Americans with some Spanish, Portuguese, Basques, Jewish, North African Berbers, and Africans. Former Mexican territories joined

9384-415: The bulk of the U.S. industrial labor pool, which allowed the emergence of such industries as steel, coal, automotive, textile, and garment production and enabled the United States to leap into the front ranks of the world's economic giants. More than 23 million people immigrated to the United States from 1880 to 1930 alone. Although many of these immigrants settled in urban centers, not all of them stayed in

9520-440: 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

9656-457: 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 LGBT culture . Manhattan was the site of the original World Trade Center , which was destroyed during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks . Situated on one of

9792-931: The city dating from 1940 and 1985. The Municipal Archives presents several exhibits each year. Recent exhibits include Feeding the City: The Unpublished WPA manuscript; Unlikely Historians showcasing materials collected by the New York City Police Department while conducting surveillance between 1960 and 1975; and Little Syria , presented in cooperation with the Arab American National Museum. The Archives has developed various projects to engage non-traditional audiences including participation in Photoville on an annual basis, gathering community stories from residents of City neighborhoods, and sponsoring

9928-637: 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

10064-1054: 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 lies in USDA plant hardiness zone 7b (5 to 10 °F/-15 to -12.2 °C). Manhattan receives 49.9 inches (1,270 mm) of precipitation annually, which

10200-495: 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

10336-529: 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/km ) in 2022, the highest population density of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual U.S. city . At the 2010 census , there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% from

10472-407: 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. As of the 2020 census , Manhattan's population had increased by 6.8% over

10608-514: The early 18th century and often preferred to settle in the back country and the frontier from Pennsylvania to Georgia, where they mingled with second-generation and later English settlers. They enjoyed the very cheap land and independence from established governments common to frontier settlements. The mostly-agricultural Southern Colonies initially had very high death rates for new settlers because of malaria , yellow fever , and other diseases, as well as skirmishes with Native Americans . However,

10744-503: 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

10880-547: The emergence of the second wave of organized xenophobia. By the 1890s, many Americans, particularly from the ranks of the well-off, white, and native-born, considered immigration to pose a serious danger to the nation's health and security. In 1893 a group formed the Immigration Restriction League, and it and other similarly-inclined organizations began to press Congress for severe curtailment of foreign immigration. Irish and German Catholic immigration

11016-452: 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

11152-541: The expansion of a railroad system in Europe made it easier for people to reach oceanic ports to board ships. Meanwhile, farming improvements in Southern Europe and the Russian Empire created surplus labor. Young people between the ages of 15 and 30 were predominant among newcomers. In this wave of migration, constituting the third episode in the history of U.S. immigration, nearly 25 million Europeans made

11288-511: 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

11424-595: The first Dutch colonial government in New Amsterdam , the most comprehensive collection of records pertaining to the administration of criminal justice in the English-speaking world, two centuries of mayoral papers, the architectural plans for construction of Central Park and the Brooklyn Bridge , and a nationally recognized collection of public education records. The online portal offers 1.6 million images including pictures of every house and building in

11560-488: 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 ,

11696-569: The first stage of industrialization. The Irish Catholics were primarily unskilled workers who built a majority of the canals and railroads and settled in urban areas. Many Irish went to the emerging textile mill towns of the Northeast, but others became longshoremen in the growing Atlantic and Gulf port cities. Half of the Germans headed to farms, especially in the Midwest (with some to Texas), and

11832-535: The former servants founded small farms on the frontier. By the early 18th century, the arrival of Africans forced to become slaves became a significant component of the immigrant population in the Southern colonies. In fact, between 1700 and 1740, a large majority of the net overseas migration to those colonies were Africans. In the third quarter of the 18th century, the population of that region amounted to roughly 55% British, 38% black, and 7% German . In 1790, 42% of

11968-412: 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

12104-714: The largely middle-class and Protestant membership was fragmented over the issue of slavery and had most often joined the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election . European immigrants joined the Union Army in large numbers, including 177,000 born in Germany and 144,000 born in Ireland, a full 16% of the Union Army. Many Germans could see the parallels between slavery and serfdom in

12240-472: The long trip. Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and other Slavs made up the bulk of this migration, with 2.5 to 4 million Jews being among them. Each group evinced a distinctive migration pattern in terms of the gender balance within the migratory pool, the permanence of their migration, their literacy rates, the balance between adults and children, and the like. However, they shared one overarching characteristic: they flocked to urban destinations and made up

12376-460: The lower Delaware River , with immigrants of Swedes and Finns . Those colonies were absorbed by 1676. The Middle Colonies were scattered west of New York City (established 1626; taken over by the English in 1664) and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (established 1682). New Amsterdam/New York had the most diverse residents from different nations and prospered as a major trading and commercial center after about 1700. From around 1680 to 1725, Pennsylvania

12512-627: 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. Within New York Harbor , there are three smaller islands: Other smaller islands, in the East River , include (from north to south): The bedrock underlying much of Manhattan consists of three rock formations: Inwood marble , Fordham gneiss , and Manhattan schist , and

12648-692: 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

12784-484: The mosquitoes and other disease-bearing insects), small widespread villages (minimizing the spread of disease), and abundant food supply resulted in the lowest death rate and the highest birth rate of any of the colonies. The eastern and northern frontier around the initial New England settlements was mainly settled by the descendants of the original New Englanders. Immigration to the New England colonies after 1640 and

12920-501: The old fatherland. Between 1840 and 1930, about 900,000 French Canadians left Quebec , migrated to the United States, and worked mainly in New England . About half of them returned. Since the population of Quebec was only 892,061 in 1851, that was a massive exodus. 13.6 million Americans claimed to have French ancestry in the 1980 census. Many of them have ancestors who emigrated from French Canada since immigration from France

13056-611: 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

13192-645: The other half became craftsmen in urban areas. Nativism took the form of political anti-Catholicism directed mostly at the Irish, as well as Germans. It became important briefly in the mid-1850s in the guise of the Know Nothing party. Most of the Catholics and German Lutherans became Democrats, and most of the other Protestants joined the new Republican Party. During the Civil War, ethnic communities supported

13328-511: The places in which historically, northern English, Scottish and Scots-Irish Protestants settled: in the interior of the South , and the Appalachian region. Scots-Irish American immigrants, were made up of people from the southernmost counties of Scotland who had initially settled in Ireland. They were heavily Presbyterian, and largely self-sufficient. The Scots-Irish arrived in large numbers in

13464-773: The plantations established in these colonies were mostly owned by friends (mostly minor aristocrats and gentry) of the British-appointed governors. A group of Gaelic-speaking Scottish Highlanders created a settlement at Cape Fear in North Carolina, which remained culturally distinct until the mid-18th century, when it was swallowed up by the dominant English-origin culture. Many settlers from Europe arrived as indentured servants and had their passage paid for, in return for five to seven years of work, including free room and board, clothing, and training, but without cash wages. After their periods of indenture expired, many of

13600-986: The population in South Carolina and in Georgia was of African origin. Before 1800, the growing of tobacco, rice, and indigo in plantations in the Southern colonies had relied heavily on the labor of slaves from Africa. The Atlantic slave trade to mainland North America stopped during the American Revolution and was outlawed in most states by 1800 and the entire nation in the 1808 Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves , but some slaves continued to be smuggled in illegally. The Thirteen Colonies differed in how they were settled and by whom, but they had many similarities. Nearly all were settled and financed by privately organized British settlers or families using free enterprise without any significant royal or parliamentary government support. Nearly all commercial activity

13736-848: 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 . 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

13872-531: 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. History of immigration to the United States#1850 to 1930 The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States from the colonial era to

14008-589: 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

14144-467: The ship's captain. In the late 19th century, immigration from China and Japan was restricted. In the 1920s, restrictive immigration quotas were imposed but political refugees had special status. Numerical restrictions ended in 1965. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States have come from Asia and Central America (see Central American crisis ). Attitudes towards new immigrants have fluctuated from favorable to hostile since

14280-589: 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 drove a truck down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight. According to the United States Census Bureau , New York County has a total area of 33.6 square miles (87 km ), of which 22.8 square miles (59 km )

14416-432: 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

14552-548: 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 was part of the northern tip of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal , dug in 1895 to better connect

14688-542: 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

14824-565: The start of the English Civil War decreased to less than 1% (about equal to the death rate) in nearly all of the years prior to 1845. The rapid growth of the New England colonies (approximately 900,000 by 1790) was almost entirely from the high birth rate (>3%) and the low death rate (<1%) per year. The Dutch colonies, which were organized by the United East Indian Company , were first established along

14960-642: 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,

15096-520: 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

15232-404: The total white population of just under 3.2 million in 1790, approximately 86% was of British ancestry (60%, or 1.9 million, English, 4.3% Welsh, 5.4% Scots, 5.8% Irish (South), and 10.5% Scots-Irish). Among those whose ancestry was from outside of British Isles, Germans were 9%, Dutch 3.4%, French 2.1%, and Swedish 0.25%. Blacks made up 19.3% (or 762,000) of the U.S. population. The number of Scots

15368-473: The war and produced large numbers of soldiers on both sides. Riots broke out in New York City and other Irish and German strongholds in 1863 when a draft was instituted, particularly in light of the provision exempting those who could afford payment. Immigration totaled 8,385 in 1820, with immigration totals gradually increasing to 23,322 by 1830; for the 1820s, immigration more than doubled to 143,000. Between 1831 and 1840, immigration more than quadrupled to

15504-600: The woods and grasslands, which provided feed for the animals. The Hudson River was used to ship farm products and furs. Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware formed the Middle Colonies . Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers from England and Wales, followed by Ulster Scots (Northern Ireland) on the frontier and numerous German Protestant sects, including the German Palatines . The earlier colony of New Sweden had small settlements on

15640-473: 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

15776-531: 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

15912-582: The world's top 10 most-visited tourist attractions: Times Square , Central Park , and Grand Central Terminal . Penn Station is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere . Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere. Fifth Avenue is the most expensive shopping street in the world. The borough hosts many prominent bridges , tunnels , and skyscrapers including

16048-614: 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 located in the Turtle Bay neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan. Manhattan hosts three of

16184-537: 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

16320-472: Was 200,000; Irish and Scots-Irish 625,000. The overwhelming majority of Southern Irish were Protestant, as there were only 60,000 Catholics in the United States in 1790, 1.6% of the population. Many U.S. Catholics were descendants of English Catholic settlers in the 17th century, and the rest were Irish, German and some Acadians who remained. In that era, the population roughly doubled every 23 years, mostly by natural increase. Relentless population expansion pushed

16456-465: Was a moment of peace between the two cultures. Prior to the union, Algonquian tribes battled the settlers. The year 1609 was known as the " Starving Time " since over 100 settlers died from starvation and illness. John Rolfe introduced a new type of tobacco seed from the West Indies , and the Jamestown society began to improve. Thus began the first and longest era of immigration that lasted until

16592-470: Was around 27% descendants of Dutch settlers, about 6% African, and the remainder mostly English with a wide mixture of other Europeans. New Jersey and Delaware had a British majority, with 7–11% Germans, about 6% Africans, and a small contingent of the Swedish descendants of New Sweden. The fourth major center of settlement was the western frontier , in the inland parts of Pennsylvania and south colonies. It

16728-517: Was carried out by small, privately owned businesses with good credit both in America and in England, which was essential since they were often cash poor. Most settlements were largely independent of British trade since they grew or manufactured nearly everything that they needed. The average cost of imports per household was 5–15 pounds sterling per year. Most settlements consisted of complete family groups with several generations present. The population

16864-712: Was controlled by the Quakers. The commercial center of Philadelphia was run mostly by prosperous Quakers and was supplemented by many small farming and trading communities, with a strong German contingent located in villages in the Delaware River Valley. Around 1680, when Pennsylvania was founded, many more settlers started to arrive in the Middle Colonies. Many Protestant sects were attracted by freedom of religion and good cheap land. They were about 60% British and 33% German. By 1780, New York's population

17000-646: 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. 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

17136-465: Was governed as a colony that was separate from New Spain . In 1731, Canary Islanders (or "Isleños") arrived to establish San Antonio . Very few of the few hundred Texan and New Mexican colonizers in the Spanish colonial period were Spaniards and criollos . California, New Mexico, and Arizona all had settlements. In 1781, Mexican settlers founded Los Angeles. When the former Spanish colonies joined

17272-507: Was mainly settled from about 1717 to 1775 by Presbyterian farmers from Northern England border lands, Scotland , and Ulster who were fleeing hard times and religious persecution. Between 250,000 and 400,000 Scots-Irish migrated to America in the 18th century. The Scots-Irish soon became the dominant culture of the Appalachians from Pennsylvania to Georgia . Areas whose 20th-century censuses reported mostly " American " ancestry were

17408-557: Was only thinly settled. In the late 17th century, French expeditions established a foothold on the Saint Lawrence River , Mississippi River and Gulf Coast . Interior trading posts, forts, and cities were thinly spread. The city of Detroit was the third-largest settlement in New France . New Orleans expanded when several thousand French-speaking refugees from the region of Acadia made their way to Louisiana after

17544-439: Was opened in January 2021. Parkland covers a total of 2,659 acres (10.76 km ), accounting for 18.2% of the borough's land area; the 840-acre (3.4 km ) 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,

17680-773: Was opposed in the 1850s by the nativist movement , originating in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party (not to be confused with the modern Republican Party ). Nativism was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome . Active mainly from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization , but its efforts met with little success. There were few prominent leaders, and

17816-519: Was paid by employers in the colonies who needed help on the farms or in shops. Indentured servants were provided food, housing, clothing and training but did not receive wages. At the end of the indenture (usually around age 21, or after a service of seven years), they were free to marry and start their own farms. Seeking religious freedom in the New World, 100 English Pilgrims established a small settlement near Plymouth, Massachusetts , in 1620. Tens of thousands of English Puritans arrived, mostly from

17952-474: Was probably less than 5%. The Native American population inside territorial U.S. boundaries was less than 100,000. The 1790 population reflected the loss of approximately 46,000 Loyalists , or "Tories", who immigrated to Canada at the end of the American Revolution, 10,000 of whom went to England and 6,000 to the Caribbean. The 1790 census recorded 3.9 million inhabitants (not counting American Indians). Of

18088-441: Was relatively little immigration from 1770 to 1830. There was, however, significant emigration from the U.S. to Canada, including about 75,000 Loyalists as well as Germans and others looking for better farmland in what is now Ontario. Large-scale immigration in the 1830s to the 1850s came from Britain, Ireland and Germany, and most were attracted by the cheap farmland. Some were artisans and skilled factory workers who were attracted by

18224-574: Was rural, with close to 80% owning the land on which they lived and farmed. After 1700, as the Industrial Revolution progressed, more of the population started to move to cities, as had happened in Britain. Initially, the Dutch and German settlers spoke languages brought over from Europe, but English was the main language of commerce. Governments and laws mainly copied English models. The only major British institution to be abandoned

18360-590: Was the aristocracy , which was almost totally absent. The settlers generally established their own law courts and popularly elected governments. The self-ruling pattern became so ingrained that for the next 200 years, almost all new settlements had their own government up and running shortly after the settlers' arrival. After the colonies were established, their population growth comprised almost entirely organic growth, with foreign-born immigrant populations rarely exceeding 10%. The last significant colonies to be settled primarily by immigrants were Pennsylvania (post-1680s),

18496-721: 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. New York grew as an economic center, first as

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