HARLEM NYC DRAFTEE MILRON REID ORIGINAL 4X5 INCH NEGATIVE FROM 5/6/41 BY FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER MORRIS GORDON OF PM NEWSPAPER AND ACCOMPANIED WITH ORIGINAL NEGATIVE ENVELOPE
PM was a liberal-leaning daily newspaper published in New York City by Ralph Ingersoll from June 1940 to June 1948 and financed by Chicago millionaire Marshall Field III.
The paper borrowed many elements from weekly news magazines, such as many large photos and at first was bound with staples. In an attempt to be free of pressure from business interests, it did not accept advertising. These departures from the norms of newspaper publishing created excitement in the industry. Some 11,000 people applied for the 150 jobs available when the publication first hired staff.
Publication history
In 1945, Coulton Waugh employed a novel art approach on his PM strip Hank. According to Waugh, Hank was "a deliberate attempt to work in the field of social usefulness."[1]
The origin of the name is unknown, although Ingersoll recalled that it probably referred to the fact that the paper appeared post meridiem (in the afternoon);[2] The New Yorker reported that the name had been suggested by Lillian Hellman.[3] (There is no historical evidence for the suggestion that the name was an abbreviation of Picture Magazine.)
The first year of the paper was a general success, though it was already in some financial trouble: its circulation of 100,000–200,000 was insufficient. Circulation averaged 165,000, but the paper never managed to sell the 225,000 copies a day it needed to break even. Marshall Field III had become the paper's funder; quite unusually, he was a "silent partner" in this continually money-losing undertaking.[4]
According to a June 21, 1966, memo from Ingersoll:
Before the end of the War it was actually operating in the black.... In my opinion at the time and these 20 years later−PM's death is most soundly attributable to a sustained and well-organized plot originating amongst Field's friends and associates in the business world who were alienated by Field's loyalty to PM and to me. The hostility was there from the beginning; the plot came together under the auspices of a man named Harry Cushing who was a retainer of Field's. The principal and successful offensive of this group was that it had as its objective Field's distraction from PM by persuading him to start the Sun in Chicago. Once they committed Field to the Sun venture, the end was inevitable. I can diagram it for you but merely put it on record here.[5]
PM was sold in 1948 and published its final issue on June 22. The next day it was replaced by the New York Star, which folded on January 28, 1949.
Politics
1942 World War II political cartoon by Dr. Seuss
There were accusations that the paper was Communist-dominated,[6] but others have said that the paper frequently opposed the policies of the Communist Party (CP) and engaged in editorial battles with the CP's paper, the Daily Worker.[7]
Staff
Editors
Leo Huberman was labor editor.
Writers
I. F. Stone was the paper's Washington correspondent. He published an award-winning series on European Jewish refugees attempting to run the British blockade to reach Palestine (later collected and published as Underground to Palestine). Staffers included theater critic Louis Kronenberger and film critic Cecelia Ager. Kenneth G. Crawford wrote for PM from 1939 to 1942.
The sports writers were Tom Meany, Tom O’Reilly and George F. T. Ryall, who covered horse racing. Sophie Smoliar was the New York City reporter working frequently with photographer Arthur Felig ("Weegee") (submitted by her son and a collection of her original articles). Elizabeth Hawes wrote about fashion, and her sister Charlotte Adams covered food.[4][8]
Contributors
Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, published more than 400 cartoons on PM's editorial page.[8][9] Crockett Johnson's comic strip Barnaby debuted in the paper in 1942. Other artists who worked at PM included Ad Reinhardt, one of the founders of Abstract Expressionism, and Joseph Leboit; both contributed margin cartoons and drawings. Noted artist Jack Coggins contributed wartime artwork for at least nine issues between 1940 and 1942.[10]
Coulton Waugh created his short-lived strip, Hank, which began April 30, 1945, in PM. The story of a disabled G.I. returning to civilian life, Hank had a unique look due to Waugh's decorative art style, combined with dialogue lettered in upper and lower case rather than the accepted convention of all uppercase lettering in balloons and captions. Some dialogue was displayed with white lettering reversed into black balloons. Hank sought to raise questions about the reasons for war, and how it might be prevented by the next generation. Waugh discontinued it at the very end of 1945 because of eyestrain.[1] Cartoonist Jack Sparling created the short-lived comic strip Claire Voyant, which ran from 1943 to 1948 in PM, and which was subsequently syndicated by the Chicago Sun-Times. Cartoonist Howard Sparber (né Howard Paul Sparber; 1921–2018) contributed after World War II. The Argentine Cartoonist Dante Quinterno publishes: Patoruzú his successful strip in South America.
Other writers who contributed articles included Erskine Caldwell, Myril Axlerod, McGeorge Bundy, Saul K. Padover, James Wechsler, eventually the paper's editorial writer, Penn Kimball, later a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Myril Axelrod Bennett, Heywood Hale Broun, James Thurber, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene Lyons, Earl Conrad, Benjamin Stolberg, Louis Adamic, Malcolm Cowley,[4] Tip O'Neill (later Speaker of the House;[8] and Ben Hecht.[4]
Photographers
Weegee, Margaret Bourke-White, Ray Platnick and Arthur Leipzig were the primary photographers.
Julius "Skippy" Adelman (born around 1924)[11][12]
John Albert (né John Joseph Albert; 1910–1972)
Bernie Aumuller (né Bernard A. Aumuller; 1920–1971), his father, Bernard George Aumuller (1895–1975) was also a photographer
Gene Badger
Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971)
Hugh Broderick (né Hugh J. Broderick; 1910–1971)
William "Bill" Brunk (Los Angeles Examiner)
John S. DeBiase (1901–1954)[13]
John Derry
Stephen Derry
David Eisendrath, Jr. (né David Benjamin Eisendrath; 1914–1988)
Morris Engel (1918–2005)
Alan Fisher
Morris Gordon (1918–2005)
Irving Haberman (né Isaac Haberman; 1916–2003)
Martin Harris (1908–1971)
Dan Israel
Charles Fenno Jacobs (1904–1974)
Dan Keleher, (né Daniel J. Keleher, Jr., 1908–1952)
Peter Killian
Arthur Leipzig (né Isidore Leipzig; 1918–2014)[14]
Helen Levitt (1913–2009)
Leo Lieb (né Morris Leo Lieb; 1909–2001)
Ray Platnick (né Raphael Platnick; 1917–1986)
Weegee, (pseudonym of Arthur (Usher) Fellig (1899–1968)[15]
Mary "Morrie" Morris (né Mary Louise Morris; 1914–2009), one of the first female AP photographers and pioneer of white umbrellas used give a softer look to flash lighting and portraiture. She, in June 1937, married filmmaker Ralph Steiner. In 1963, she married classical record producer for Mercury, Harold Lawrence (né Harold Levine; 1923–2011), who, at the time, was the General Manager of the London Symphony Orchestra
Contributing photographers
Robert Capa (1913–1954)
Walker Evans (1903–1975)
Edward Weston (1886–1958)
Edward Steichen (1879–1973)
Ralph Steiner (1899–1986)
Sunday magazine section
Picture News was the Sunday magazine section of PM.
Editor: William Thomas McCleery (1912–2000)
Managing editor: Herbert Yahraes (né Herbert Conrad Yahraes, Jr.; 1906–1985)
Associate editors: Lorimer Dexter Heywood (1899–1977), Kenneth Stewart, David Rodman Lindsay (1916–1985), Peggy Wright, Gertrude Stamm
Staff: Raymond Abrashkin (1911–1960), Skippy Adelman, Holly Beye (née Helen Beye; 1922–2011), W. Russell Bowie, Jr. (1920–2002) (son of Walter Russell Bowie), Mary Morris (maiden; 1914–2009), Charles Norman (1904–1996), Roger Samuel Pippett (1895–1962), Robert Rice (1916–1998), Selma Robinson (maiden; 1899–1977) (mother-in-law of Hymen B. Mintz), Dale Rooks (né Rhine Dale Rooks; 1917–1954) (photographer), Lillian E. Ross (née Lillian Rosovsky; 1918–2017)
Art director: H. Russell Countryman
See also
The Day Book
Bibliography
Jason E. Hill: Artist as Reporter. Weegee, Ad Reinhardt, and the PM News Picture. University of California Press, Oakland 2018. ISBN 978-0-520-29143-0
Paul Milkman: PM. A New Deal in Journalism 1940–1948. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick 1997. ISBN 0-8135-2434-2
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.
Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658,[5] it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.[6] Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement. With job losses during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the deindustrialization of New York City after World War II, rates of crime and poverty increased significantly.[7] In the 21st century, crime rates decreased significantly, and Harlem started to gentrify.
The area is served by the New York City Subway and local bus routes. It contains several public elementary, middle, and high schools, and is close to several colleges, including Columbia University, Manhattan School of Music, and the City College of New York. Central Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 10.[1] It is patrolled by the 28th and 32nd Precincts of the New York City Police Department. The greater Harlem area also includes Manhattan Community Districts 9 and 11 and several police precincts, while fire services are provided by four New York City Fire Department companies.
Geography
A map of Upper Manhattan, with Greater Harlem highlighted. Harlem proper is the neighborhood in the center.
Harlem is located in Upper Manhattan, often referred to as "Uptown" by locals. The three neighborhoods comprising the greater Harlem area—West, Central, and East Harlem—stretch from the Harlem River and East River to the east, to the Hudson River to the west; and between 155th Street in the north, where it meets Washington Heights, and an uneven boundary along the south that runs along 96th Street east of Fifth Avenue, 110th Street between Fifth Avenue to Morningside Park, and 125th Street west of Morningside Park to the Hudson River.[8][9][10] Encyclopædia Britannica references these boundaries,[11] though the Encyclopedia of New York City takes a much more conservative view of Harlem's boundaries, regarding only central Harlem as part of Harlem proper.[12]: 573
Central Harlem is the name of Harlem proper; it falls under Manhattan Community District 10.[8] This section is bounded by Fifth Avenue on the east; Central Park on the south; Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Avenue and Edgecombe Avenue on the west; and the Harlem River on the north.[8] A chain of three large linear parks—Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Park and Jackie Robinson Park—situated on steeply rising banks, form most of the district's western boundary. Fifth Avenue, as well as Marcus Garvey Park (also known as Mount Morris Park), separate this area from East Harlem to the east.[8] Central Harlem includes the Mount Morris Park Historic District.
West Harlem (Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights) comprises Manhattan Community District 9 and does not form part of Harlem proper. The two neighborhoods' area is bounded by Cathedral Parkway/110th Street on the south; 155th Street on the north; Manhattan/Morningside Ave/St. Nicholas/Bradhurst/Edgecombe Avenues on the east; and Riverside Park/the Hudson River on the west. Manhattanville begins at roughly 123rd Street and extends northward to 135th Street. The northernmost section of West Harlem is Hamilton Heights.[9]
East Harlem, also called Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is located within Manhattan Community District 11, which is bounded by East 96th Street on the south, East 138th Street on the north, Fifth Avenue on the west, and the Harlem River on the east. It is not part of Harlem proper.[10]
SoHa controversy
Further information: Morningside Heights, Manhattan § SoHa controversy
In the 2010s some real estate professionals started rebranding south Harlem and Morningside Heights as "SoHa" (a name standing for "South Harlem" in the style of SoHo or NoHo) in an attempt to accelerate gentrification of the neighborhoods. "SoHa", applied to the area between West 110th and 125th Streets, has become a controversial name.[13][14][15] Residents and other critics seeking to prevent this renaming of the area have labelled the SoHa brand as "insulting and another sign of gentrification run amok"[16] and have said that "the rebranding not only places their neighborhood's rich history under erasure but also appears to be intent on attracting new tenants, including students from nearby Columbia University".[17]
Multiple New York City politicians have initiated legislative efforts to curtail this practice of neighborhood rebranding, which when successfully introduced in other New York City neighborhoods, have led to increases in rents and real estate values, as well as "shifting demographics".[17] In 2011, U.S. Representative Hakeem Jeffries attempted but failed to implement legislation "that would punish real estate agents for inventing false neighborhoods and redrawing neighborhood boundaries without city approval."[17] By 2017, New York State Senator Brian Benjamin also worked to render illegal the practice of rebranding historically recognized neighborhoods.[17]
Political representation
Politically, central Harlem is in New York's 13th congressional district.[18][19] It is in the New York State Senate's 30th district,[20][21] the New York State Assembly's 68th and 70th districts,[22][23] and the New York City Council's 7th, 8th, and 9th districts.[24]
History
Harlem, from the old fort in the Central Park, New York Public Library
Three Harlem Women, ca. 1930
Main article: History of Harlem
Before the arrival of European settlers, the area that would become Harlem (originally Haarlem) was inhabited by a Native American band, the Wecquaesgeek, dubbed Manhattans or Manhattoe by Dutch settlers, who along with other Native Americans, most likely Lenape,[25] occupied the area on a semi-nomadic basis. As many as several hundred farmed the Harlem flatlands.[26] Between 1637 and 1639, a few settlements were established.[27][28] The settlement of Harlem was formally incorporated in 1660[2] under the leadership of Peter Stuyvesant.[29]
During the American Revolution, the British burned Harlem to the ground.[30] It took a long time to rebuild, as Harlem grew more slowly than the rest of Manhattan during the late 18th century.[31] After the American Civil War, Harlem experienced an economic boom starting in 1868. The neighborhood continued to serve as a refuge for New Yorkers, but increasingly those coming north were poor and Jewish or Italian.[32] The New York and Harlem Railroad,[33] as well as the Interborough Rapid Transit and elevated railway lines,[34] helped Harlem's economic growth, as they connected Harlem to lower and midtown Manhattan.
Apartment building in Central Harlem
A condemned building in Harlem after the 1970s
The Jewish and Italian demographic decreased, while the black and Puerto Rican population increased in this time.[35] The early-20th century Great Migration of black people to northern industrial cities was fueled by their desire to leave behind the Jim Crow South, seek better jobs and education for their children, and escape a culture of lynching violence; during World War I, expanding industries recruited black laborers to fill new jobs, thinly staffed after the draft began to take young men.[36] In 1910, Central Harlem population was about 10% black people. By 1930, it had reached 70%.[37]
Starting around the time of the end of World War I, Harlem became associated with the New Negro movement, and then the artistic outpouring known as the Harlem Renaissance, which extended to poetry, novels, theater, and the visual arts. So many black people came that it "threaten[ed] the very existence of some of the leading industries of Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama."[38] Many settled in Harlem. By 1920, central Harlem was 32.43% black. The 1930 census revealed that 70.18% of central Harlem's residents were black and lived as far south as Central Park, at 110th Street.[39]
However, by the 1930s, the neighborhood was hit hard by job losses in the Great Depression. In the early 1930s, 25% of Harlemites were out of work, and employment prospects for Harlemites stayed poor for decades. Employment among black New Yorkers fell as some traditionally black businesses, including domestic service and some types of manual labor, were taken over by other ethnic groups. Major industries left New York City altogether, especially after 1950. Several riots happened in this period, including in 1935 and 1943.
There were major changes following World War II. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Harlem was the scene of a series of rent strikes by neighborhood tenants, led by local activist Jesse Gray, together with the Congress of Racial Equality, Harlem Youth Opportunities Unlimited (HARYOU), and other groups. These groups wanted the city to force landlords to improve the quality of housing by bringing them up to code, to take action against rats and roaches, to provide heat during the winter, and to keep prices in line with existing rent control regulations.[40]
The largest public works projects in Harlem in these years were public housing, with the largest concentration built in East Harlem.[41] Typically, existing structures were torn down and replaced with city-designed and managed properties that would, in theory, present a safer and more pleasant environment than those available from private landlords. Ultimately, community objections halted the construction of new projects.[42]
From the mid-20th century, the low quality of education in Harlem has been a source of distress. In the 1960s, about 75% of Harlem students tested under grade levels in reading skills, and 80% tested under grade level in math.[43] In 1964, residents of Harlem staged two school boycotts to call attention to the problem. In central Harlem, 92% of students stayed home.[44] In the post-World War II era, Harlem ceased to be home to a majority of the city's black people,[45] but it remained the cultural and political capital of black New York, and possibly black America.[46][47]
By the 1970s, many of those Harlemites who were able to escape from poverty left the neighborhood in search of better schools and homes, and safer streets. Those who remained were the poorest and least skilled, with the fewest opportunities for success. Though the federal government's Model Cities Program spent $100 million on job training, health care, education, public safety, sanitation, housing, and other projects over a ten-year period, Harlem showed no improvement.[48] The city began auctioning its enormous portfolio of Harlem properties to the public in 1985. This was intended to improve the community by placing property in the hands of people who would live in them and maintain them. In many cases, the city would even pay to completely renovate a property before selling it (by lottery) below market value.[49]
After the 1990s, Harlem began to grow again. Between 1990 and 2006 the neighborhood's population grew by 16.9%, with the percentage of black people decreasing from 87.6% to 69.3%,[39] then dropping to 54.4% by 2010,[50] and the percentage of whites increasing from 1.5% to 6.6% by 2006,[39] and to "almost 10%" by 2010.[50] A renovation of 125th Street and new properties along the thoroughfare[51][52] also helped to revitalize Harlem.[53]
Culture
See also: Harlem Renaissance
Welcome to Harlem sign above the now defunct Victoria 5 cinema theater on 125th st
In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem was the focus of the "Harlem Renaissance", an outpouring of artistic work without precedent in the American Black community. Though Harlem musicians and writers are particularly well remembered, the community has also hosted numerous actors and theater companies, including the New Heritage Repertory Theater,[29] National Black Theater, Lafayette Players, Harlem Suitcase Theater, The Negro Playwrights, American Negro Theater, and the Rose McClendon Players.[54]
The Apollo Theater on 125th Street in November 2006
The Apollo Theater opened on 125th Street on January 26, 1934, in a former burlesque house. The Savoy Ballroom, on Lenox Avenue, was a renowned venue for swing dancing, and was immortalized in a popular song of the era, "Stompin' at the Savoy". In the 1920s and 1930s, between Lenox and Seventh Avenues in central Harlem, over 125 entertainment venues were in operation, including speakeasies, cellars, lounges, cafes, taverns, supper clubs, rib joints, theaters, dance halls, and bars and grills.[55]
133rd Street, known as "Swing Street", became known for its cabarets, speakeasies and jazz scene during the Prohibition era, and was dubbed "Jungle Alley" because of "inter-racial mingling" on the street.[56][57] Some jazz venues, including the Cotton Club, where Duke Ellington played, and Connie's Inn, were restricted to whites only. Others were integrated, including the Renaissance Ballroom and the Savoy Ballroom.
In 1936, Orson Welles produced his black Macbeth at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem.[58] Grand theaters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries were torn down or converted to churches. Harlem lacked any permanent performance space until the creation of the Gatehouse Theater in an old Croton aqueduct building on 135th Street in 2006.[59]
Spiritual African Drummer on 135th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard
From 1965 until 2007, the community was home to the Harlem Boys Choir, a touring choir and education program for young boys, most of whom are black.[60] The Girls Choir of Harlem was founded in 1989, and closed with the Boys Choir.[61]
From 1967 to 1969, the Harlem Cultural Festival took place in Mount Morris Park. Another name for this festival is "Black Woodstock". Artists like Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, and Gladys Knight performed here.[62][63]
Harlem is also home to the largest African American Day Parade, which celebrates the culture of African diaspora in America. The parade was started up in the spring of 1969 with Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. as the Grand Marshal of the first celebration.[64]
Arthur Mitchell, a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, established Dance Theatre of Harlem as a school and company of classical ballet and theater training in the late 1960s. The company has toured nationally and internationally. Generations of theater artists have gotten a start at the school.
By the 2010s, new dining hotspots were opening in Harlem around Frederick Douglass Boulevard.[65] At the same time, some residents fought back against the powerful waves of gentrification the neighborhood is experiencing. In 2013, residents staged a sidewalk sit-in to protest a five-days-a-week farmers market that would shut down Macombs Place at 150th Street.[66]
Uptown Night Market was founded in 2021 to celebrate cuisine, community, and culture.[67] It is one of the largest night markets in Manhattan. The main attractions include musical performances, arts and crafts shows, and food.[68]
Music
Black Ivory in Harlem 2017
Many R&B/Soul groups and artists formed in Harlem. The Main Ingredient, Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers, Black Ivory, Cameo, Keith Sweat, Freddie Jackson, Alyson Williams, Johnny Kemp, Teddy Riley and others got their start in Harlem.
Manhattan's contributions to hip-hop stems largely from artists with Harlem roots such as Doug E. Fresh, Big L, Kurtis Blow, The Diplomats, Mase or Immortal Technique. Harlem is also the birthplace of popular hip-hop dances such as the Harlem shake, toe wop, and Chicken Noodle Soup.
Harlem's classical music birthed organizations and chamber ensembles such as Roberta Guaspari's Opus 118,[69] Harlem Chamber Players,[70] Omnipresent Music Festival BIPOC Musicians Festival,[71] Harlem Quartet, and musicians such as violinist Edward W. Hardy.[72]
In the 1920s, African American pianists who lived in Harlem invented their own style of jazz piano, called stride, which was heavily influenced by ragtime. This style played a very important role in early jazz piano[73][74]
Language
In 1938, jazz bandleader and singer Cab Calloway published the first dictionary by an African-American, Cab Calloway's Cat-ologue: A "Hepster's" Dictionary, which became the official jive language reference book of the New York Public Library.[75][76] In 1939, Calloway published an accompanying book titled Professor Cab Calloway’s Swingformation Bureau, which instructed readers how to apply the words and phrases from the dictionary. He released several editions until 1944, the last being The New Cab Calloway’s Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive.[77] Poet Lemn Sissay observed that "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away."[78]
Religious life
St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
Religious life has historically had a strong presence in Black Harlem. The area is home to over 400 churches,[79] some of which are official city or national landmarks.[80][81] Major Christian denominations include Baptists, Pentecostals, Methodists (generally African Methodist Episcopal Zionist, or "AMEZ" and African Methodist Episcopalian, or "AME"), Episcopalians, and Roman Catholic. The Abyssinian Baptist Church has long been influential because of its large congregation. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a chapel on 128th Street in 2005.
Many of the area's churches are "storefront churches", which operate in an empty store, or a basement, or a converted brownstone townhouse. These congregations may have fewer than 30–50 members each, but there are hundreds of them.[82] Others are old, large, and designated landmarks. Especially in the years before World War II, Harlem produced popular Christian charismatic "cult" leaders, including George Wilson Becton and Father Divine.[83]
Mosques in Harlem include the Masjid Malcolm Shabazz (formerly Mosque No. 7 Nation of Islam, and the location of the 1972 Harlem mosque incident), the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood and Masjid Aqsa. Judaism, too, maintains a presence in Harlem through the Old Broadway Synagogue. A non-mainstream synagogue of Black Hebrews, known as Commandment Keepers, was based in a synagogue at 1 West 123rd Street until 2008.
Landmarks
St Martin's Episcopal Church, at Lenox Avenue and 122nd Street
Hotel Theresa building at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 125th Street
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, at the same intersection as the Hotel Theresa
Officially designated landmarks
Many places in Harlem are official city landmarks labeled by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission or are listed on the National Register of Historic Places:
12 West 129th Street, a New York City landmark[84]
17 East 128th Street, a New York City landmark[85]
369th Regiment Armory, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[86][81]
Abyssinian Baptist Church, a New York City landmark[87]
Apollo Theater, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[88][81]
Astor Row, a set of New York City landmark houses[80]: 207
Blockhouse No. 1, Fort Clinton, and Nutter's Battery, part of Central Park, a New York City scenic landmark and NRHP-listed site[89][81]
Central Harlem West–130–132nd Streets Historic District, a New York City landmark[90]
Dunbar Apartments, a New York City landmark[91]
Graham Court Apartments, a New York City landmark[92]
Hamilton Grange, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[93]
Harlem River Houses, a New York City landmark[94]
Harlem YMCA, a New York City landmark[95]
Hotel Theresa, a New York City landmark[96]
Jackie Robinson YMCA Youth Center, a New York City landmark[97]
Langston Hughes House, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[98][81]
Macombs Dam Bridge and 155th Street Viaduct, a New York City landmark[99]
Manhattan Avenue-West 120th-123rd Streets Historic District, a NRHP historic district[81]
Metropolitan Baptist Church, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[100][81]
Minton's Playhouse, a NRHP-listed site[81]
Morningside Park, a New York City scenic landmark[101]
Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, a New York City landmark[102]
Mount Morris Park Historic District, a New York City landmark district[103]
Mount Olive Fire Baptized Holiness Church, a New York City landmark[104]
New York Public Library 115th Street Branch, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[105][81]
Regent Theatre, a New York City landmark[106]
Schomburg Collection for Research in Black Culture, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[107][81]
St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Church, a New York City landmark[108]
St. Andrew's Church, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[109][81]
St. Philip's Protestant Episcopal Church, a New York City landmark[110]
St. Martin's Episcopal Church (formerly Trinity Church), a New York City landmark[111]
St. Nicholas Historic District, a New York City landmark district[112]
St. Paul's German Evangelical Lutheran Church, a New York City landmark[113]
Wadleigh High School for Girls, a New York City landmark[114]
Washington Apartments, a New York City landmark[115]
Other points of interest
Other prominent points of interest include:
Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building
All Saints Church
ATLAH World Missionary Church
Bushman Steps, stairway that led baseball fans from the subway to The Polo Grounds ticket booth.[116]
Cotton Club
Duke Ellington Circle
Frederick Douglass Circle
Harbor Conservatory for the Performing Arts
Harlem Children's Zone
Harlem Hospital Center
The Harlem School of the Arts
Lenox Lounge
Marcus Garvey Park
Harlem Fire Watchtower, a New York City landmark and NRHP-listed site[117][81]
Morningside Park
National Black Theatre
New York College of Podiatric Medicine
Red Rooster
Rucker Park
Savoy Ballroom
St. Nicholas Houses
Studio Museum in Harlem
Sylvia's Soul Food
Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine
New York Amsterdam News
Demographics
The demographics of Harlem's communities have changed throughout its history. In 1910, black residents formed 10% of Harlem's population, but by 1930, they had become a 70% majority.[7] The period between 1910 and 1930 was marked by the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern cities, including New York. Within the city, this era also witnessed an influx of black residents from downtown Manhattan neighborhoods, where blacks were feeling less welcome, to the Harlem area.[7] The black population in Harlem peaked in 1950, with a 98% share of the population of 233,000. As of 2000, central Harlem's black residents comprised 77% of the total population of that area; however, the black population has recently declined as many African Americans move out and more immigrants move in.[118] As of 2021, central Harlem's black residents comprises 44% of the total population area, estimating 56,668 black residents. [119] In that regard, there are an estimated 27% (34,773) Hispanics, 18% (23,182) White, 4% (5,151) Asian, 6% (7,727) of two or more races and 2% (2,575) Other.
Harlem suffers from unemployment rates generally more than twice the citywide average, as well as high poverty rates.[120] and the numbers for men have been consistently worse than the numbers for women. Private and governmental initiatives to ameliorate unemployment and poverty have not been successful. During the Great Depression, unemployment in Harlem went past 20% and people were being evicted from their homes.[121] At the same time, the federal government developed and instituted the redlining policy. This policy rated neighborhoods, such as Central Harlem, as unappealing based on the race, ethnicity, and national origins of the residents.[3] Central Harlem was deemed 'hazardous' and residents living in Central Harlem were refused home loans or other investments.[3] Comparably, wealthy and white residents in New York City neighborhoods were approved more often for housing loans and investment applications.[3] Overall, they were given preferential treatment by city and state institutions.
In the 1960s, uneducated blacks could find jobs more easily than educated ones could, confounding efforts to improve the lives of people who lived in the neighborhood through education.[3] Land owners took advantage of the neighborhood and offered apartments to the lower-class families for cheaper rent but in lower-class conditions.[122] By 1999 there were 179,000 housing units available in Harlem.[123] Housing activists in Harlem state that, even after residents were given vouchers for the Section 8 housing that was being placed, many were not able to live there and had to find homes elsewhere or become homeless.[123] These policies are examples of societal racism, also known as structural racism. As public health leaders have named structural racism as a key social determinant of health disparities between racial and ethnic minorities,[124] these 20th century policies have contributed to the current population health disparities between Central Harlem and other New York City neighborhoods.[3]
Central Harlem
For census purposes, the New York City government classifies Central Harlem into two neighborhood tabulation areas: Central Harlem North and Central Harlem South, divided by 126th street.[125] Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Central Harlem was 118,665, a change of 9,574 (8.1%) from the 109,091 counted in 2000. Covering an area of 926.05 acres (374.76 ha), the neighborhood had a population density of 128.1 inhabitants per acre (82,000/sq mi; 31,700/km2).[126] The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 9.5% (11,322) White, 63% (74,735) African American, 0.3% (367) Native American, 2.4% (2,839) Asian, 0% (46) Pacific Islander, 0.3% (372) from other races, and 2.2% (2,651) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 22.2% (26,333) of the population. Harlem's Black population was more concentrated in Central Harlem North, and its White population more concentrated in Central Harlem South, while the Hispanic / Latino population was evenly split.[127]
The most significant shifts in the racial composition of Central Harlem between 2000 and 2010 were the White population's increase by 402% (9,067), the Hispanic / Latino population's increase by 43% (7,982), and the Black population's decrease by 11% (9,544). While the growth of the Hispanic / Latino was predominantly in Central Harlem North, the decrease in the Black population was slightly greater in Central Harlem South, and the drastic increase in the White population was split evenly across the two census tabulation areas. Meanwhile, the Asian population grew by 211% (1,927) but remained a small minority, and the small population of all other races increased by 4% (142).[128]
The entirety of Community District 10, which comprises Central Harlem, had 116,345 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 76.2 years.[3]: 2, 20 This is lower than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods.[129]: 53 (PDF p. 84) Most inhabitants are children and middle-aged adults: 21% are between the ages of 0–17, while 35% are between 25 and 44, and 24% between 45 and 64. The ratio of college-aged and elderly residents was lower, at 10% and 11% respectively.[3]: 2
As of 2017, the median household income in Community District 10 was $49,059.[4] In 2018, an estimated 21% of Community District 10 residents lived in poverty, compared to 14% in all of Manhattan and 20% in all of New York City. Around 12% of residents were unemployed, compared to 7% in Manhattan and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 48% in Community District 10, compared to the boroughwide and citywide rates of 45% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, as of 2018, Community District 10 is considered to be gentrifying: according to the Community Health Profile, the district was low-income in 1990 and has seen above-median rent growth up to 2010.[3]: 7
Other sections
In 2010, the population of West Harlem was 110,193.[130] West Harlem, consisting of Manhattanville and Hamilton Heights, is predominately Hispanic / Latino, while African Americans make up about a quarter of the West Harlem population.[9]
In 2010, the population of East Harlem was 120,000.[131] East Harlem originally formed as a predominantly Italian American neighborhood.[132] The area began its transition from Italian Harlem to Spanish Harlem when Puerto Rican migration began after World War II,[133] though in recent decades, many Dominican, Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants have also settled in East Harlem.[134] East Harlem is now predominantly Hispanic / Latino, with a significant African-American presence.[133]
2020 Census
In the 2020 census, Harlem's demographics were broken up into North Harlem, South Harlem, Hamilton Heights, West Harlem, and Morningside Heights. North Harlem had 40,000+ Black residents being the largest concentration of the black population of the Harlem area, 20,000 to 29,999 Hispanic residents, 5,000 to 9,999 White residents, and less than 5000 Asian residents. South Harlem had 20,000 to 29,999 Black residents, 5,000 to 9,999 Hispanic residents, 10,000 to 19,999 White residents, and fewer than 5,000 Asian residents. Hamilton Heights had 10,000 to 19,999 Black residents, 20,000 to 29,999 Hispanic residents being the largest population group in this section, 5,000 to 9,999 White residents, and fewer than 5,000 Asian residents. West Harlem had an equal number of Black and Hispanic residents with each of their population at 5,000 to 9,999 residents and each the White and Asian population were fewer than 5,000 residents. Morningside Heights had and equal amount of Black and Hispanic residents with each of their population at 5,000 to 9,999 residents, 10,000 to 19,999 White residents, and 5,000 to 9,999 Asian residents; the only section of Harlem to have a significant concentration of Asian residents.[135]
Police and crime
NYPD Police Service Area 6, which serves NYCHA developments in greater Harlem
Central Harlem is patrolled by two precincts of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).[136] Central Harlem North is covered by the 32nd Precinct, located at 250 West 135th Street,[137] while Central Harlem South is patrolled by the 28th Precinct, located at 2271–2289 Eighth Avenue.[138]
The 28th Precinct has a lower crime rate than it did in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 72.2% between 1990 and 2021. The precinct reported 2 murders, 9 rapes, 172 robberies, 245 felony assaults, 153 burglaries, 384 grand larcenies, and 52 grand larcenies auto in 2021.[139] Of the five major violent felonies (murder, rape, felony assault, robbery, and burglary), the 28th Precinct had a rate of 1,125 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2019, compared to the boroughwide average of 632 crimes per 100,000 and the citywide average of 572 crimes per 100,000.[140][141][142]
The crime rate in the 32nd Precinct has also decreased since the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 71.4% between 1990 and 2021. The precinct reported 16 murders, 18 rapes, 183 robberies, 519 felony assaults, 168 burglaries, 320 grand larcenies, and 54 grand larcenies auto in 2021.[143] Of the five major violent felonies (murder, rape, felony assault, robbery, and burglary), the 32nd Precinct had a rate of 1,042 crimes per 100,000 residents in 2019, compared to the boroughwide average of 632 crimes per 100,000 and the citywide average of 572 crimes per 100,000.[140][141][142]
As of 2018, Community District 10 has a non-fatal assault hospitalization rate of 116 per 100,000 people, compared to the boroughwide rate of 49 per 100,000 and the citywide rate of 59 per 100,000. Its incarceration rate is 1,347 per 100,000 people, the second-highest in the city, compared to the boroughwide rate of 407 per 100,000 and the citywide rate of 425 per 100,000.[3]: 8
Crime trends
Main article: Crime in Harlem
Police hit a man on the ground with batons during the Harlem riot of 1964
In the early 20th century, Harlem was a stronghold of the Sicilian Mafia, other Italian organized crime groups, and later the Italian-American Mafia. As the ethnic composition of the neighborhood changed, black criminals began to organize themselves similarly. However, rather than compete with the established mobs, gangs concentrated on the "policy racket", also called the numbers game, or bolita in East Harlem. This was a gambling scheme similar to a lottery that could be played, illegally, from countless locations around Harlem. According to Francis Ianni, "By 1925 there were thirty black policy banks in Harlem, several of them large enough to collect bets in an area of twenty city blocks and across three or four avenues."[144]
By the early 1950s, the total money at play amounted to billions of dollars, and the police force had been thoroughly corrupted by bribes from numbers bosses.[145] These bosses became financial powerhouses, providing capital for loans for those who could not qualify for them from traditional financial institutions, and investing in legitimate businesses and real estate. One of the powerful early numbers bosses was a woman, Madame Stephanie St. Clair, who fought gun battles with mobster Dutch Schultz over control of the lucrative trade.[146]
The popularity of playing the numbers waned with the introduction of the state lottery, which is legal but has lower payouts and has taxes collected on winnings.[147] The practice continues on a smaller scale among those who prefer the numbers tradition or who prefer to trust their local numbers bank to the state.
Statistics from 1940 show about 100 murders per year in Harlem, "but rape is very rare".[148] By 1950, many whites had left Harlem and by 1960, much of the black middle class had departed. At the same time, control of organized crime shifted from Italian syndicates to local black, Puerto Rican, and Cuban groups that were somewhat less formally organized.[144] At the time of the 1964 riots, the drug addiction rate in Harlem was ten times higher than the New York City average, and twelve times higher than the United States as a whole. Of the 30,000 drug addicts then estimated to live in New York City, 15,000 to 20,000 lived in Harlem. Property crime was pervasive, and the murder rate was six times higher than New York's average. Half of the children in Harlem grew up with one parent, or none, and lack of supervision contributed to juvenile delinquency; between 1953 and 1962, the crime rate among young people increased throughout New York City, but was consistently 50% higher in Harlem than in New York City as a whole.[149]
Injecting heroin grew in popularity in Harlem through the 1950s and 1960s, though the use of this drug then leveled off. In the 1980s, use of crack cocaine became widespread, which produced collateral crime as addicts stole to finance their purchasing of additional drugs, and as dealers fought for the right to sell in particular regions, or over deals gone bad.[150]
With the end of the "crack wars" in the mid-1990s, and with the initiation of aggressive policing under mayors David Dinkins and his successor Rudy Giuliani, crime in Harlem plummeted. Compared to in 1981, when 6,500 robberies were reported in Harlem, reports of robberies dropped to 4,800 in 1990; to 1,700 in 2000; and to 1,100 in 2010.[151] Within the 28th and 32nd precincts, there have been similar changes in all categories of crimes tracked by the NYPD.[137][138]
Despite reductions versus historic highs, Harlem continues to have a high rate of violent crime and one of the highest rates of violent crime in New York City.[140] This crime is largely correlated with high concentrations of poverty. Illicit activities such as theft, robbery, drug trafficking, prostitution are prevalent. Criminal organizations like street gangs are responsible for many of the murders and shootings in the neighborhood.
Gangs
There are many gangs in Harlem, often based in housing projects; when one gang member is killed by another gang, revenge violence erupts which can last for years.[152] In addition, the East Harlem Purple Gang of the 1970s, which operated in East Harlem and surroundings, was an Italian American group of hitmen and heroin dealers.[153]
Harlem and its gangsters have a strong link to hip hop, rap and R&B culture in the United States, and many successful rappers in the music industry came from gangs in Harlem.[154] Gangster rap, which has its origins in the late 1980s, often has lyrics that are "misogynistic or that glamorize violence", glamorizing guns, drugs and easy women in Harlem and New York City.[155][154]
Fire safety
The Quarters of FDNY Engine Company 59/Ladder Company 30
Central Harlem is served by four New York City Fire Department (FDNY) fire stations:[156]
Engine Company 37/Ladder Company 40 – 415 West 125th Street[157]
Engine Company 58/Ladder Company 26 – 1367 5th Avenue[158]
Engine Company 59/Ladder Company 30 – 111 West 133rd Street[159]
Engine Company 69/Ladder Company 28/Battalion 16 – 248 West 143rd Street[160]
Five additional firehouses are located in West and East Harlem. West Harlem contains Engine Company 47 and Engine Company 80/Ladder Company 23, while East Harlem contains Engine Company 35/Ladder Company 14/Battalion 12, Engine Company 53/Ladder Company 43, and Engine Company 91.[156]
Health
As of 2018, preterm births and births to teenage mothers are more common in Central Harlem than in other places citywide. In Central Harlem, there were 103 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 23 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide), though the teenage birth rate is based on a small sample size.[3]: 11 Central Harlem has a low population of residents who are uninsured. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 8%, less than the citywide rate of 12%.[3]: 14
The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Central Harlem is 0.0079 milligrams per cubic metre (7.9×10−9 oz/cu ft), slightly more than the city average.[3]: 9 Ten percent of Central Harlem residents are smokers, which is less than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers.[3]: 13 In Central Harlem, 34% of residents are obese, 12% are diabetic, and 35% have high blood pressure, the highest rates in the city—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively.[3]: 16 In addition, 21% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.[3]: 12
Eighty-four percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is less than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 79% of residents described their health as "good," "very good," or "excellent," more than the city's average of 78%.[3]: 13 For every supermarket in Central Harlem, there are 11 bodegas.[3]: 10
The nearest major hospital is NYC Health + Hospitals/Harlem in north-central Harlem.[161][162]
Social factors
The population health of Central Harlem is closely linked to influential social factors on health, also known as social determinants of health, and the impact of structural racism on the neighborhood. The impact of discriminatory policies such as redlining have contributed to residents' bearing worse health outcomes in comparison to the average New York city resident. This applies to life expectancy, poverty rates, environmental neighborhood health, housing quality, and childhood and adult asthma rates. Additionally, the health of Central Harlem residents are linked to their experience of racism.[163][164] Public health and scientific research studies have found evidence that experiencing racism creates and exacerbates chronic stress that can contribute to major causes of death, particularly for African-American and Hispanic populations in the United States, like cardiovascular diseases.[164][165][166][167]
Certain health disparities between Central Harlem and the rest of New York City can be attributed to 'avoidable causes' such as substandard housing quality, poverty, and law enforcement violence – all of which are issues identified by the American Public Health Association as key social determinants of health. These deaths that can be attributed to avoidable causes are known as "avertable deaths" of "excess mortality'"in public health.[168]
Health problems
Health and housing conditions
Access to affordable housing and employment opportunities with fair wages and benefits are closely associated with good health.[169] Public health leaders have shown that inadequate housing qualities is linked to poor health.[170] As Central Harlem also bears the effects of racial segregation, public health researchers claim that racial segregation is also linked to substandard housing and exposure to pollutants and toxins. These associations have been documented to increase individual risk of chronic diseases and adverse birth outcomes.[124] Historical income segregation via redlining also positions residents to be more exposed to risks that contribute to adverse mental health status, inadequate access to healthy foods, asthma triggers, and lead exposure.[170][169]
Drew Hamilton Houses, a large low-income NYCHA housing project in Central Harlem
Asthma
Asthma is more common in children and adults in Central Harlem, compared to other New York City neighborhoods.[171] The factors that can increase risk of childhood and adult asthma are associated with substandard housing conditions.[172] Substandard housing conditions are water leaks, cracks and holes, inadequate heating, presence of mice or rats, peeling paint and can include the presence of mold, moisture, dust mites.[173] In 2014, Central Harlem tracked worse in regards to home maintenance conditions, compared to the average rates Manhattan and New York City. Twenty percent of homes had cracks or holes; 21% had leaks and 19% had three or more maintenance deficiencies.[171]
Adequate housing is defined as housing that is free from heating breakdowns, cracks, holes, peeling paint and other defects. Housing conditions in Central Harlem reveal that only 37% of its renter-occupied homes were adequately maintained by landlords in 2014. Meanwhile, 25% of Central Harlem households and 27% of adults reported seeing cockroaches (a potential trigger for asthma), a rate higher than the city average. Neighborhood conditions are also indicators of population: in 2014, Central Harlem had 32 per 100,000 people hospitalized due to pedestrian injuries, higher than Manhattan's and the city's average.[171]
The environment also factors into the health of the people of Central Harlem with the neighborhood being found to have levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) at 7.9 micrograms per cubic meter compared to all of NYC at 7.5 micrograms per cubic meter. Poorer neighborhoods have some of the highest levels of air pollution in the city. Adults with asthma emergencies experiencing high rates of poverty visit the emergency department at rates nearly 5 times higher than those neighborhoods with lower levels of poverty. Nearly 3 in 4 deaths related to PM2.5 occurs in adults 65 years or older. The attribution of premature adult mortality rate to exposure of PM2.5 experiencing 77.4-117.7 deaths per 100,000 people.[174]
Additionally, poverty levels can indicate one's risk of vulnerability to asthma. In 2016, Central Harlem saw 565 children aged 5–17 years old per 10,000 residents visiting emergency departments for Asthma emergencies, over twice both Manhattan's and the citywide rates. The rate of childhood asthma hospitalization in 2016 was more than twice that of Manhattan and New York City, with 62 hospitalizations per 10,000 residents.[171] Rates of adult hospitalization due to asthma in Central Harlem trends higher in comparison to other neighborhoods. In 2016, 270 adults per 10,000 residents visited the emergency department due to asthma, close to three times the average rates of both Manhattan and New York City.[171]
Other health problems
Health outcomes for men have generally been worse than those of women. Infant mortality was 124 per thousand in 1928, meaning that 12.4% of infants would die.[175] By 1940, infant mortality in Harlem was 5%, and the death rate from disease generally was twice that of the rest of New York. Tuberculosis was the main killer, and four times as prevalent among Harlem citizens than among the rest of New York's population.[175]
A 1990 study of life expectancy of teenagers in Harlem reported that 15-year-old girls in Harlem had a 65% chance of surviving to the age of 65, about the same as women in Pakistan. Fifteen-year-old men in Harlem, on the other hand, had a 37% chance of surviving to 65, about the same as men in Angola; for men, the survival rate beyond the age of 40 was lower in Harlem than Bangladesh.[176] Infectious diseases and diseases of the circulatory system were to blame, with a variety of contributing factors, including consumption of the deep-fried foods traditional to the South, which may contribute to heart disease.
Post offices and ZIP Codes
Harlem is located within five primary ZIP Codes. From south to north they are 10026 (from 110th to 120th Streets), 10027 (from 120th to 133rd Streets), 10037 (east of Lenox Avenue and north of 130th Street), 10030 (west of Lenox Avenue from 133rd to 145th Streets) and 10039 (from 145th to 155th Streets). Harlem also includes parts of ZIP Codes 10031, 10032, and 10035.[177] The United States Postal Service operates five post offices in Harlem:
Morningside Station – 232 West 116th Street[178]
Manhattanville Station and Morningside Annex – 365 West 125th Street[179]
College Station – 217 West 140th Street[180]
Colonial Park Station – 99 Macombs Place[181]
Lincoln Station – 2266 5th Avenue[182]
Education
Main article: Education in Harlem
Central Harlem generally has a similar rate of college-educated residents to the rest of the city as of 2018. While 42% of residents age 25 and older have a college education or higher, 19% have less than a high school education and 39% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 64% of Manhattan residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher.[3]: 6 The percentage of Central Harlem students excelling in math rose from 21% in 2000 to 48% in 2011, and reading achievement increased from 29% to 37% during the same time period.[183]
Central Harlem's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is higher than the rest of New York City. In Central Harlem, 25% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, more than the citywide average of 20%.[129]: 24 (PDF p. 55) [3]: 6 Additionally, 64% of high school students in Central Harlem graduate on time, less than the citywide average of 75%.[3]: 6
Schools
The New York City Department of Education operates the following public elementary schools in Central Harlem:[184]
PS 76 A Phillip Randolph (grades PK-8)[185]
PS 92 Mary Mcleod Bethune (grades PK-5)[186]
PS 123 Mahalia Jackson (grades PK-8)[187]
PS 149 Sojourner Truth (grades PK-8)[188]
PS 154 Harriet Tubman (grades PK-5)[189]
PS 175 Henry H Garnet (grades PK-5)[190]
PS 185 the Early Childhood Discovery and Design Magnet School (grades PK-2)[191]
PS 194 Countee Cullen (grades PK-5)[192]
PS 197 John B Russwurm (grades PK-5)[193]
PS 200 The James Mccune Smith School (grades PK-5)[194]
PS 242 The Young Diplomats Magnet School (grades PK-5)[195]
Stem Institute of Manhattan (grades K-5)[196]
Thurgood Marshall Academy Lower School (grades K-5)[197]
The following middle and high schools are located in Central Harlem:[184]
Frederick Douglass Academy (grades 6–12)[198]
Frederick Douglass Academy II Secondary School (grades 6–12)[199]
Mott Hall High School (grades 9–12)[200]
Thurgood Marshall Academy For Learning And Social Change (grades 6–12)[201]
Wadleigh Secondary School for the Performing and Visual Arts (grades 6–12)[202]
Harlem has a high rate of charter school enrollment: a fifth of students were enrolled in charter schools in 2010.[203] By 2017, that proportion had increased to 36%, about the same that attended their zoned public schools. Another 20% of Harlem students were enrolled in public schools elsewhere.[204]
Higher education
The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, New York College of Podiatric Medicine, City College of New York, and Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, in addition to a branch of College of New Rochelle, are all located in Harlem. The Morningside Heights and Manhattanville campuses of Columbia University are located just west of Harlem.
Libraries
New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
The New York Public Library (NYPL) operates four circulating branches and one research branch in Harlem, as well as several others in adjacent neighborhoods.
The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research branch, is located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard. It is housed in a Carnegie library structure that opened in 1905, though the branch itself was established in 1925 based on a collection from its namesake, Arturo Alfonso Schomburg. The Schomburg Center is a National Historic Landmark, as well as a city designated landmark and a National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)-listed site.[205]
The Countee Cullen branch is located at 104 West 136th Street. It was originally housed in the building now occupied by the Schomburg Center. The current structure, in 1941, is an annex of the Schomburg building.[206]
The Harry Belafonte 115th Street branch is located at 203 West 115th Street. The three-story Carnegie library, built in 1908, is both a city designated landmark and an NRHP-listed site. It was renamed for the entertainer and Harlem resident Harry Belafonte in 2017.[207]
The Harlem branch is located at 9 West 124th Street. It is one of the oldest libraries in the NYPL system, having operated in Harlem since 1826. The current three-story Carnegie library building was built in 1909 and renovated in 2004.[208]
The Macomb's Bridge branch is located at 2633 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. The branch opened in 1955 at 2650 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard, inside the Harlem River Houses, and was the smallest NYPL branch at 685 square feet (63.6 m2). In January 2020, the branch moved across the street to a larger space.[209]
Other nearby branches include the 125th Street and Aguilar branches in East Harlem; the Morningside Heights branch in Morningside Heights; and the George Bruce and Hamilton Grange branches in western Harlem.[210]
Transportation
Bridges
Bridges spanning the Harlem River between Harlem to the left and the Bronx to the right
Harlem–125th Street station on the Metro-North Railroad
The Harlem River separates the Bronx and Manhattan, necessitating several spans between the two New York City boroughs. Five free bridges connect Harlem and the Bronx: the Willis Avenue Bridge (for northbound traffic only), Third Avenue Bridge (for southbound traffic only), Madison Avenue Bridge, 145th Street Bridge, and Macombs Dam Bridge. In East Harlem, the Wards Island Bridge, also known as the 103rd Street Footbridge, connects Manhattan with Wards Island. The Triborough Bridge is a complex of three separate bridges that offers connections between Queens, East Harlem, and the Bronx.[211]
Public transportation
Public transportation service is provided by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. This includes the New York City Subway and MTA Regional Bus Operations. Some Bronx local routes also serve Manhattan, providing customers with access between both boroughs.[212][213] Metro-North Railroad has a commuter rail station at Harlem–125th Street, serving trains to the Lower Hudson Valley and Connecticut.[214]
Subway
Harlem is served by the following subway lines:
IRT Lenox Avenue Line (2 and 3 trains) between Central Park North–110th Street and Harlem–148th Street[215]
IND Eighth Avenue Line (A, B, C, and D trains) between Cathedral Parkway–110th Street and 155th Street[215]
IND Concourse Line (B and D trains) at 155th Street[215]
In addition, several other lines stop nearby:
IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line (1 train) between Cathedral Parkway–110th Street and 145th Street, serving western Harlem[215]
IRT Lexington Avenue Line (4, 5, 6, and <6> trains) between 96th Street and 125th Street, serving East Harlem[215]
Phase 2 of the Second Avenue Subway is also planned to serve East Harlem, with stops at 106th Street, 116th Street, and Harlem–125th Street.[216][217]
Bus
Harlem is served by numerous local bus routes operated by MTA Regional Bus Operations:[213]
Bx6 and Bx6 SBS along 155th Street
Bx19 along 145th Street
Bx33 along 135th Street
M1 along Fifth/Madison Avenues
M2 along Seventh Avenue, Central Park North, and Fifth/Madison Avenues
M3 along Manhattan Avenue, Central Park North, and Fifth/Madison Avenues
M4 along Broadway, Central Park North, and Fifth/Madison Avenues
M60 SBS, M100, M101 and Bx15 along 125th Street
M7 and M102 along Lenox Avenue and 116th Street
M10 along Frederick Douglass Boulevard
M116 along 116th Street
Routes that run near Harlem, but do not stop in the neighborhood, include:[213]
M5 along Riverside Drive
M11 along Amsterdam Avenue
M35 via Triborough Bridge
M98 and M103 along Third/Lexington Avenues
M104 along Broadway
See also
List of films shot in Harlem
List of people from Harlem
Upper Manhattan is the most northern region of the New York City borough of Manhattan. Its southern boundary has been variously defined, but some of the most common usages are 96th Street, the northern boundary of Central Park (110th Street), 125th Street, or 155th Street.[citation needed] The term Uptown can refer to Upper Manhattan, but is often used more generally for neighborhoods above 59th Street; in the broader definition, Uptown encompasses Upper Manhattan.[1]
Upper Manhattan is generally taken to include the neighborhoods of Marble Hill, Inwood, Washington Heights (including Fort George, Sherman Creek and Hudson Heights), Harlem (including Sugar Hill, Hamilton Heights and Manhattanville), East Harlem, Morningside Heights, and Manhattan Valley (in the Upper West Side).
The George Washington Bridge connects Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan across the Hudson River to Fort Lee, New Jersey, and is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[2][3]
In the late 19th century, the IRT Ninth Avenue Line and other elevated railroads brought people to the previously rustic Upper Manhattan. Until the late 20th century it was less influenced by the gentrification that had taken place in other parts of New York over the previous 30 years.
Tourist attractions
Like other residential areas, Upper Manhattan is not a major center of tourism in New York City, although many tourist attractions lie within it, such as Grant's Tomb, the Apollo Theater, United Palace, and The Cloisters, Sylvia's Restaurant, the Hamilton Grange, the Morris–Jumel Mansion, Minton's Playhouse, Sugar Hill, Riverside Church, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and the Dyckman House, along with Fort Tryon Park, most of Riverside Park, Riverbank State Park, Sakura Park, and other parks.
Gallery
New York, often called New York City[a] or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States. The city is more than twice as populous as Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest city, and has a larger population than 38 of the nation's 50 states. New York City is located at the southern tip of New York state. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the U.S. by both population and urban area. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York City is one of the world's most populous megacities.[10]
New York City is a global cultural, financial, high-tech,[11] entertainment, glamor,[12] and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences,[13] research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York City is an important center for international diplomacy,[14][15] and it is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[16][17]
Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county of the state of New York. The five boroughs, which were created in 1898 when local governments were consolidated into a single municipal entity, are: Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County).[18] As of 2021, the New York metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan economy in the world with a gross metropolitan product of over $2.4 trillion. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world. New York City is an established safe haven for global investors.[19] As of 2023, New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates to live.[20] New York City is home to the highest number of billionaires,[21][22] individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million),[23] and millionaires of any city in the world.[24]
The city and its metropolitan area are the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,[25] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the U.S., the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016.[26] It is the most visited U.S. city by international visitors.[27]
New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw Amsterdam) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under British control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York.[28][29] The city was regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange for one year and three months; the city has been continuously named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790,[30] and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace.[31] In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship,[32] and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity.[33] The New York Times has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media's "newspaper of record".[34] In 2019, New York City was voted the greatest city in the world in a survey of over 30,000 people from 48 cities worldwide, citing its cultural diversity.[35]
Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten-most visited tourist attractions in 2023.[36] A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District,[37] one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections[38] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[39] Many of the city's landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world, and the city's fast pace led to the phrase New York minute. The Empire State Building is a global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures.[40]
New York's residential and commercial real estate markets are the most expensive in the world.[41] Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname The City That Never Sleeps, the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system in the world with 472 passenger rail stations, and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere.[42] The city features over 120 colleges and universities, including some of the world's top universities.[43] Its public urban university system, the City University of New York, is the largest in the nation.[44] Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's leading financial and fintech center[45][46] and the most economically powerful city in the world,[47] and is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.[48][49]
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the historic epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture[50] and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.[51][52] New York City is the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world's art auctions; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art is both the largest and second-most-visited art museum in the United States and hosts the globally focused Met Gala haute couture fashion event annually.[53][54] Governors Island in New York Harbor is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center as a leader in the climate crisis.[55]
Etymology
See also: Nicknames of New York City
In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York, who would become King James II of England.[56] James's elder brother, King Charles II, appointed the Duke as proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when England seized it from Dutch control.[57]
History
Main article: History of New York City
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of New York City.
Early history
Main article: History of New York City (prehistory–1664)
Lenape sites in Lower Manhattan
In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including the areas that would later become the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.[58]
The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown.[59] He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême).[60] A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River'). The Padrón Real of 1527, the first scientific map to show the East Coast of North America continuously, was informed by Gomes' expedition and labeled the northeastern United States as Tierra de Esteban Gómez in his honor.[61]
In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company.[62] He proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Hudson's first mate described the harbor as "a very good Harbour for all windes" and the river as "a mile broad" and "full of fish".[63] Hudson sailed roughly 150 miles (240 km) north,[64] past the site of the present-day New York State capital city of Albany, in the belief that it might be an oceanic tributary before the river became too shallow to continue.[63] He made a ten-day exploration of the area and claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland ('New Netherland').
The first non–Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Juan Rodriguez (transliterated to the Dutch language as Jan Rodrigues), a merchant from Santo Domingo. Born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street in Upper Manhattan, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.[65][66]
Dutch rule
Main article: New Amsterdam
New Amsterdam, centered in what eventually became Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it New York
The Castello Plan, a 1660 map of New Amsterdam (the top right corner is roughly north) in Lower Manhattan
A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States,[67] with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.[68][69] The colony of New Amsterdam was centered on what would ultimately become Lower Manhattan. Its area extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and British raids.[70] In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, acting as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band,[71] for "the value of 60 guilders"[72] (about $900 in 2018).[73] A frequently told but disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.[74][75]
Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly.[29] To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (patroons, or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swaths of land, along with local political autonomy and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.[76]
Since 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).[29][77]
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000.[78][79] Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony; however, he also earned a reputation as a despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups (including Quakers, Jews, and Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship.[80] The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.[81]
English rule
Main article: History of New York City (1665–1783)
The Fall of New Amsterdam by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, part of the Conquest of New Netherland
A painting of a ship firing its cannons in a harbor
Fort George and New York with British Navy ships of the line c. 1731
In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed.[80][81] The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom.[82] In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname (on the northern South American coast) they had gained from the English; and in return, the English kept New Amsterdam. The fledgling settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII), who would eventually be deposed in the Glorious Revolution.[83] After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley. Fort Orange, 150 miles (240 km) north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title.[84] The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the Treaty of Breda, which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War.[85]
On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Dutch captain Anthony Colve seized the colony of New York from the English at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III, the Prince of Orange.[86] The Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.[87][88]
Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670.[89] By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200.[90] New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population to the disease in 1702 alone.[91][92]
Province of New York and slavery
Slave being burned at the stake in N.Y.C. after the 1741 slave revolt. Thirteen slaves were burned.[93]
In the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a trading port while as a part of the colony of New York.[94] It also became a center of slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730, the highest percentage outside Charleston, South Carolina.[95] Most cases were that of domestic slavery, as a New York household then commonly enslaved few or several people. Others were hired out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 of graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.[96]
The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish the freedom of the press in North America.[97] In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[98]
American Revolution
Further information: American Revolution
An illustration of the Battle of Long Island, one of the largest battles of the American Revolutionary War, which took place in Brooklyn on August 27, 1776
The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty organization emerged in the city and skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.[99] The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn.[100] After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown for all fighters. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia.[101] They resettled other freedmen in England and the Caribbean.
The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.[102]
Post-Revolutionary War
Main article: History of New York City (1784–1854)
First inauguration of George Washington in 1789
In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States. As the U.S. capital, New York City hosted several events of national scope in 1789—the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time; and the United States Bill of Rights was drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[103]
In 1790, for the first time, New York City, surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of that year, pursuant to the Residence Act, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia.[104][105]
Late 19th century
Main article: History of New York City (1855–1897)
A painting of a snowy city street with horse-drawn sleds and a 19th-century fire truck under blue sky
Broadway, which follows the Native American Wecquaesgeek Trail through Manhattan, in 1840.[106]
The Great East River Bridge To connect the cities of New York and Brooklyn, Currier & Ives, 1872
Over the course of the nineteenth century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million.[107] Under New York State's abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties.[108][109] Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential United States founders as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children.[110] It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School. New York city's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 by 1840, 16,000 of whom were Black.[111][112]
In the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively.[113] The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.[114] Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants.[115]
Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city.
The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, representing upward of one-quarter of the city's population.[116] There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.[117][118]
American Civil War
Main article: New York City in the American Civil War
A drawing from The Illustrated London News showing armed rioters clashing with Union Army soldiers during the New York City draft riots in 1863
Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called upon the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on.[110] Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to pay a $300 (equivalent to $7,130 in 2022) commutation fee to hire a substitute,[119] led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.[110]
The draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, with more than 200 children escaping harm due to efforts of the New York Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants.[117] At least 120 people were killed.[120] Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee the city for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865, which it had last been in 1820. The White working class had established dominance.[117][120] Violence by longshoremen against Black men was especially fierce in the docks area.[117] It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.[121]
In 1898, the City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens.[122] The opening of the subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together.[123] Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.[124]
Early 20th century
Main articles: History of New York City (1898–1945) and History of New York City (1946–1977)
Manhattan's Little Italy in the Lower East Side, c. 1900
In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board.[125] In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.[126]
New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890.[127] New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had become home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America.[128] The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition.[129] The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline.
A man working on a steel girder high about a city skyline.
A construction worker atop the Empire State Building during its construction in 1930. The Chrysler Building is visible behind him.
New York City became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history.[130] The Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.[131]
Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County as well as similar suburban areas in New Jersey. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.[132]
A two-story building with brick on the first floor, with two arched doorways, and gray stucco on the second floor off of which hang numerous rainbow flags.
Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, was the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement.[133][134][135]
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.[136] They are widely considered to be the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement[133][137][138][139] and the modern fight for LGBT rights.[140][141] Wayne R. Dynes, author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, wrote that drag queens were the only "transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality during the period of the Stonewall riots and thereafter.[142]
In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[143]
Late 20th century to present
Main articles: History of New York City (1978–present) and September 11 attacks
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 that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[144] By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy.[145]
New York City's population reached all-time highs in the 2000, 2010, and 2020 US censuses.
Two tall, gray, rectangular buildings spewing black smoke and flames, particularly from the left of the two.
United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the largest terrorist attack in world history.
New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.[146] Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. The North Tower became, and remains, the tallest building to ever be destroyed.[147]
The area was rebuilt with a new World Trade Center, the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure.[148] The World Trade Center PATH station, which had opened on July 19, 1909, as the Hudson Terminal, was also destroyed in the attacks. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003. An 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) permanent rail station designed by Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub, was completed in 2016.[149] The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere[150] and the seventh-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m) in reference to the year of U.S. independence.[151][152][153][154]
The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[155]
Manhattan in the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the worst to strike the city since 1700.[156]
New York City was heavily affected by Hurricane Sandy in late October 2012. Sandy's impacts included the flooding of the New York City Subway system, of many suburban communities, and of all road tunnels entering Manhattan except the Lincoln Tunnel. The New York Stock Exchange closed for two consecutive days. Numerous homes and businesses were destroyed by fire, including over 100 homes in Breezy Point, Queens. Large parts of the city and surrounding areas lost electricity for several days. Several thousand people in Midtown Manhattan were evacuated for six days due to a crane collapse at Extell's One57. Bellevue Hospital Center and a few other large hospitals were closed and evacuated. Flooding at 140 West Street and another exchange disrupted voice and data communication in Lower Manhattan. At least 43 people lost their lives in New York City as a result of Sandy, and the economic losses in New York City were estimated to be roughly $19 billion. The disaster spawned long-term efforts towards infrastructural projects to counter climate change and rising seas.[157][158]
In March 2020, the first case of COVID-19 in the city was confirmed in Manhattan.[159] The city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China to become the global epicenter of the pandemic during the early phase, before the infection became widespread across the world and the rest of the nation. As of March 2021, New York City had recorded over 30,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications.
Geography
Main articles: Geography of New York City and Geography of New York–New Jersey Harbor Estuary
Aerial view of the New York City metropolitan area with Manhattan at its center
During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 2,000 feet (610 m) in depth.[160] The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action also left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.[161]
New York City is situated in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.
The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary.[162] The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely freshwater river in the city.[163]
The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.[164] Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.[165]
The city's total area is 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km2); 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km2) of the city is land and 165.841 sq mi (429.53 km2) of this is water.[166][167] The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine.[168] The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.[169]
Boroughs
Main articles: Boroughs of New York City and Neighborhoods in New York City
A map showing five boroughs in different colors.
1. Manhattan
2. Brooklyn
3. Queens
4. The Bronx
5. Staten Island
New York City's five boroughsvte
Jurisdiction Population Land area Density of population GDP †
Borough County Census
(2020) square
miles square
km people/
sq. mile people/
sq. km billions
(2012 US$) 2
The Bronx
Bronx
1,472,654 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482 $38.726
Brooklyn
Kings
2,736,074 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227 $92.300
Manhattan
New York
1,694,251 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872 $651.619
Queens
Queens
2,405,464 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542 $88.578
Staten Island
Richmond
495,747 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327 $14.806
City of New York
8,804,190 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234 $885.958
State of New York
20,215,751 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166 $1,514.779
† GDP = Gross Domestic Product Sources:[170][171][172][173] and see individual borough articles.
New York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the Five Boroughs.[174] Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character.
If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States (Staten Island would be ranked 37th as of 2020); these same boroughs are coterminous with the four most densely populated counties in the United States: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Bronx, and Queens.
Manhattan
Lower and Midtown Manhattan photographed by a SkySat satellite in August 2017
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district
Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as The City.[175] Manhattan's population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km2) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[176]
Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough of Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.[177][178]
Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River and the East River, and its southern tip, at the confluence of the two rivers, represents the birthplace of New York City itself. Several small islands also compose part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randalls and Wards Islands, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into the Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem, bordering the Bronx (Bronx County). Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century until the Great Migration. It was the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The borough of Manhattan also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill, which is contiguous with the Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the Outer Boroughs.
Brooklyn
Panorama of Gowanus Canal, as viewed from Union Street Bridge, Gowanus, Brooklyn
Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the Outer Boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the U.S.[179] Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.[180] Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[181][182] and of postmodern art and design.[182][183]
Queens
The growing skyline of Long Island City in Queens,[184] facing the East River
Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,[185] and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.[186][187] Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Downtown Flushing has become one of the busiest central core neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. Queens is the site of the Citi Field baseball stadium, home of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are in Queens. The third is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey.
The Bronx
The Yankee Stadium in the Bronx
The Bronx (Bronx County) is both New York City's northernmost borough, and the only one that is mostly on the mainland. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively-owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.[188] It is also home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo,[189] which spans 265 acres (1.07 km2) and houses more than 6,000 animals.[190] The Bronx is also the birthplace of hip hop music and its associated culture.[191] Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[192]
Staten Island
St. George, Staten Island
Staten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry, a daily commuter ferry that provides unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2,500 acres (10 km2), including 28 miles (45 km) of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.[193] Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.
Architecture
Further information: Architecture of New York City; List of buildings, sites, and monuments in New York City; List of tallest buildings in New York City; and List of hotels in New York City
The Empire State Building has setbacks, Art Deco details, and a spire. It was the world's tallest building from 1931 to 1970.
The Chrysler Building, built in 1930, is in the Art Deco style, with ornamental hubcaps and a spire.
Landmark 19th-century rowhouses, including brownstones, on tree-lined Kent Street in the Greenpoint Historic District, Brooklyn
Modernist and Gothic Revival architecture in Midtown Manhattan
New York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the Dutch Colonial Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost.[194]
Manhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is universally recognized, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. As of 2019, New York City had 6,455 high-rise buildings, the third most in the world after Hong Kong and Seoul.[195] Of these, as of 2011, 550 completed structures were at least 330 feet (100 m) high, with more than fifty completed skyscrapers taller than 656 feet (200 m). These include the Woolworth Building, an early example of Gothic Revival architecture in skyscraper design, built with massively scaled Gothic detailing; completed in 1913, for 17 years it was the world's tallest building.[196]
The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setbacks in new buildings and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[197] The Art Deco style of the Chrysler Building (1930) and Empire State Building (1931), with their tapered tops and steel spires, reflected the zoning requirements. The buildings have distinctive ornamentation, such as the eagles at the corners of the 61st floor on the Chrysler Building, and are considered some of the finest examples of the Art Deco style.[198] A highly influential example of the International Style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its façade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prominent example of green design in American skyscrapers[199] and has received an award from the American Institute of Architects and AIA New York State for its design.
The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.[200] In contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.[201][202][203]
Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.[204] A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the roof-mounted wooden water tower. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could break municipal water pipes.[205] Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, such as Jackson Heights.[206]
According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in New York City than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based upon a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near the city, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures from an earthquake in the vicinity of the city.[207] Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet of office space as of 2022; the COVID-19 pandemic and hybrid work model have prompted consideration of commercial-to-residential conversion within Midtown Manhattan.[208]
Ten mile (16km) Manhattan skyline panorama from 120th Street to the Battery, taken in February 2018 from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey
Riverside ChurchDeutsche Bank Center220 Central Park SouthCentral Park TowerOne57432 Park Avenue53W53Chrysler BuildingBank of America Tower4 Times SquareThe New York Times BuildingEmpire State BuildingManhattan Westa: 55 Hudson Yards, 14b: 35 Hudson Yards, 14c: 10 Hudson Yards, 14d: 15 Hudson Yards56 Leonard Street8 Spruce StreetWoolworth Building70 Pine StreetFour Seasons Downtown40 Wall Street3 World Trade Center4 World Trade CenterOne World Trade Center
Climate
Main article: Climate of New York City
New York City
Climate chart (explanation)
J
F
M
A
M
J
J
A
S
O
N
D
3.6 4028
3.2 4230
4.3 5036
4.1 6246
4 7155
4.5 8064
4.6 8570
4.6 8369
4.3 7662
4.4 6551
3.6 5442
4.4 4434
█ Average max. and min. temperatures in °F
█ Precipitation totals in inches
Metric conversion
Deep snow in Brooklyn during the Blizzard of 2006 Nor'easter
Under the Köppen climate classification, using the 0 °C (32 °F) isotherm, New York City features a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is thus the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west lie in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates (Dfa).[209][210] By the Trewartha classification, the city is defined as having an oceanic climate (Do).[211][212] Annually, the city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine.[213] The city lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone.[214]
Winters are chilly and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow sea breezes offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachian Mountains keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is 33.3 °F (0.7 °C).[215] Temperatures usually drop to 10 °F (−12 °C) several times per winter,[216] yet can also reach 60 °F (16 °C) for several days even in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from cool to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of 77.5 °F (25.3 °C) in July.[215]
Nighttime temperatures are often enhanced due to the urban heat island effect. Daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F (32 °C) on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F (38 °C), although this is a rare achievement, last occurring on July 18, 2012.[217] Similarly, readings of 0 °F (−18 °C) are also extremely rare, last occurring on February 14, 2016.[218] Extreme temperatures have ranged from −15 °F (−26 °C), recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936;[215] the coldest recorded wind chill was −37 °F (−38 °C) on the same day as the all-time record low.[219] The record cold daily maximum was 2 °F (−17 °C) on December 30, 1917, while, conversely, the record warm daily minimum was 87 °F (31 °C), on July 2, 1903.[217] The average water temperature of the nearby Atlantic Ocean ranges from 39.7 °F (4.3 °C) in February to 74.1 °F (23.4 °C) in August.[220]
The city receives 49.5 inches (1,260 mm) of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1991 and 2020 has been 29.8 inches (76 cm); this varies considerably between years. Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area.[221] Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs.[222] The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.[157][158]
The coldest month on record is January 1857, with a mean temperature of 19.6 °F (−6.9 °C) whereas the warmest months on record are July 1825 and July 1999, both with a mean temperature of 81.4 °F (27.4 °C).[223] The warmest years on record are 2012 and 2020, both with mean temperatures of 57.1 °F (13.9 °C). The coldest year is 1836, with a mean temperature of 47.3 °F (8.5 °C).[223][224] The driest month on record is June 1949, with 0.02 inches (0.51 mm) of rainfall. The wettest month was August 2011, with 18.95 inches (481 mm) of rainfall. The driest year on record is 1965, with 26.09 inches (663 mm) of rainfall. The wettest year was 1983, with 80.56 inches (2,046 mm) of rainfall.[225] The snowiest month on record is February 2010, with 36.9 inches (94 cm) of snowfall. The snowiest season (Jul–Jun) on record is 1995–1996, with 75.6 inches (192 cm) of snowfall. The least snowy season was 2022–2023, with 2.3 inches (5.8 cm) of snowfall.[226] The earliest seasonal trace of snowfall occurred on October 10, in both 1979 and 1925. The latest seasonal trace of snowfall occurred on May 9, in both 2020 and 1977.[227]
vte
Climate data for New York (Belvedere Castle, Central Park), 1991–2020 normals,[b] extremes 1869–present[c]
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)
Average high °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)
Average low °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
Average dew point °F (°C) 18.0
(−7.8) 19.0
(−7.2) 25.9
(−3.4) 34.0
(1.1) 47.3
(8.5) 57.4
(14.1) 61.9
(16.6) 62.1
(16.7) 55.6
(13.1) 44.1
(6.7) 34.0
(1.1) 24.6
(−4.1) 40.3
(4.6)
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
Average ultraviolet index 2 3 4 6 7 8 8 8 6 4 2 1 5
Source 1: NOAA (relative humidity and sun 1961–1990; dew point 1965–1984)[217][229][213][230]
Source 2: Weather Atlas[231]
See Climate of New York City for additional climate information from the outer boroughs.
Sea temperature data for New York
Month Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Year
Average sea temperature °F (°C) 41.7
(5.4) 39.7
(4.3) 40.2
(4.5) 45.1
(7.3) 52.5
(11.4) 64.5
(18.1) 72.1
(22.3) 74.1
(23.4) 70.1
(21.2) 63.0
(17.2) 54.3
(12.4) 47.2
(8.4) 55.4
(13.0)
Source: Weather Atlas[231]
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues.
See or edit raw graph data.
Parks
Main article: List of New York City parks
A spherical sculpture and several attractions line a park during a World's Fair.
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was used in both the 1939 and 1964 New York World's Fair.
The city of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. In its 2018 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the ninth-best park system among the fifty most populous U.S. cities.[232] ParkScore ranks urban park systems by a formula that analyzes median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents. In 2021, the New York City Council banned the use of synthetic pesticides by city agencies and instead required organic lawn management. The effort was started by teacher Paula Rogovin's kindergarten class at P.S. 290.[233]
National parks
Main article: National Park Service
The Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, a global symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty, freedom, and opportunity[31]
Gateway National Recreation Area contains over 26,000 acres (110 km2), most of it in New York City.[234] In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over 9,000 acres (36 km2) of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, it includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park, with beaches, trails, and a marina.
The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Stonewall National Monument; Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial (Grant's Tomb); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark.
State parks
Main article: New York state parks
There are seven state parks within the confines of New York City. Some of them include:
The Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve is a natural area that includes extensive riding trails.
Riverbank State Park is a 28-acre (11 ha) facility that rises 69 feet (21 m) over the Hudson River.[235]
Marsha P. Johnson State Park is a state park in Brooklyn and Manhattan that borders the East River that was renamed in honor of Marsha P. Johnson.[236]
City parks
See also: New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
The Pond and Midtown Manhattan as seen from Gapstow Bridge in Central Park
The Boathouse on the Lullwater in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, almost demolished in 1964
New York City has over 28,000 acres (110 km2) of municipal parkland and 14 miles (23 km) of public beaches.[237] The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[192][238]
Central Park, an 843-acre (3.41 km2)[192] park in middle-upper Manhattan, is the most visited urban park in the United States and one of the most filmed and visited locations in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.[239] The park has a wide range of attractions; there are several lakes and ponds, two ice-skating rinks, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, and the 106-acre (0.43 km2) Jackie Onassis Reservoir.[240] Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, and the historic Carousel. On October 23, 2012, hedge fund manager John A. Paulson announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest ever monetary donation to New York City's park system.[241]
Washington Square Park is a prominent landmark in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park is an iconic symbol of both New York University and Greenwich Village.
Prospect Park in Brooklyn has a 90-acre (36 ha) meadow, a lake, and extensive woodlands. Within the park is the historic Battle Pass, prominent in the Battle of Long Island.[242]
Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, with its 897 acres (363 ha) making it the city's fourth largest park,[243] was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and the 1964 World's Fair[244] and is host to the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center and the annual U.S. Open Tennis Championships tournament.[245]
Over a fifth of the Bronx's area, 7,000 acres (28 km2), is dedicated to open space and parks, including Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York Botanical Gardens.[246]
In Staten Island, the Conference House Park contains the historic Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution which was conducted in September 1775, attended by Benjamin Franklin representing the Americans and Lord Howe representing the British Crown.[247] The historic Burial Ridge, the largest Native American burial ground within New York City, is within the park.[248]
Military installations
Brooklyn is home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within New York City,[249] aside from Coast Guard operations. The facility was established in 1825 on the site of a small battery used during the American Revolution, and it is one of America's longest serving military forts.[250] Today, Fort Hamilton serves as the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers and for the New York City Recruiting Battalion. It also houses the 1179th Transportation Brigade, the 722nd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, and a military entrance processing station. Other formerly active military reservations still used for National Guard and military training or reserve operations in the city include Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Fort Totten in Queens.
Demographics
Historical population
Year Pop. ±%
1698 4,937 —
1712 5,840 +18.3%
1723 7,248 +24.1%
1737 10,664 +47.1%
1746 11,717 +9.9%
1756 13,046 +11.3%
1771 21,863 +67.6%
1790 49,401 +126.0%
1800 79,216 +60.4%
1810 119,734 +51.1%
1820 152,056 +27.0%
1830 242,278 +59.3%
1840 391,114 +61.4%
1850 696,115 +78.0%
1860 1,174,779 +68.8%
1870 1,478,103 +25.8%
1880 1,911,698 +29.3%
1890 2,507,414 +31.2%
1900 3,437,202 +37.1%
1910 4,766,883 +38.7%
1920 5,620,048 +17.9%
1930 6,930,446 +23.3%
1940 7,454,995 +7.6%
1950 7,891,957 +5.9%
1960 7,781,984 −1.4%
1970 7,894,862 +1.5%
1980 7,071,639 −10.4%
1990 7,322,564 +3.5%
2000 8,008,278 +9.4%
2010 8,175,133 +2.1%
2020 8,804,190 +7.7%
Note: Census figures (1790–2010) cover the present area of all five boroughs, before and after the 1898 consolidation. For New York City itself before annexing part of the Bronx in 1874, see Manhattan#Demographics.[251]
Source: U.S. Decennial Census;[252]
1698–1771[253] 1790–1890[251][254]
1900–1990[255] 2000–2010[256][257][258]
2010–2020[259]
Main articles: Demographics of New York City, New York City ethnic enclaves, and Demographic history of New York City
Historical demographics 2020[260] 2010[261] 1990[262] 1970[262] 1940[262]
New York City is the most populous city in the United States,[263] with 8,804,190 residents incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 United States census.[259][264][265] More than twice as many people live in New York City as compared to Los Angeles, the second-most populous U.S. city;[263] and New York has more than three times the population of Chicago, the third-most populous U.S. city. New York City gained more residents between 2010 and 2020 (629,000) than any other U.S. city, and a greater amount than the total sum of the gains over the same decade of the next four largest U.S. cities, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix, Arizona combined.[266][267] New York City's population is about 44% of New York State's population,[268] and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area.[269] The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,538, or 58.4%) were living on Long Island, in Brooklyn, or in Queens.[270] The New York City metropolitan statistical area, has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami.[271]
Population density
In 2020, the city had an estimated population density of 29,302.37 inhabitants per square mile (11,313.71/km2), rendering it the nation's most densely populated of all larger municipalities (those with more than 100,000 residents), with several small cities (of fewer than 100,000) in adjacent Hudson County, New Jersey having greater density, as per the 2010 census.[272] Geographically co-extensive with New York County, the borough of Manhattan's 2017 population density of 72,918 inhabitants per square mile (28,154/km2) makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual American city.[273][274][275] The next three densest counties in the United States, placing second through fourth, are also New York boroughs: Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens respectively.[276]
Race and ethnicity
Further information: African Americans in New York City, Bangladeshis in New York City, Caribbeans in New York City, Chinese in New York City, Dominican Americans in New York City, Filipinos in New York City, Fuzhounese in New York City, Indians in New York City, Irish in New York City, Italians in New York City, Japanese in New York City, Koreans in New York City, Pakistanis in New York City, Puerto Ricans in New York City, Russians in New York City, and Ukrainians in New York City
The city's population in 2020 was 30.9% White (non-Hispanic), 28.7% Hispanic or Latino, 20.2% Black or African American (non-Hispanic), 15.6% Asian, and 0.2% Native American (non-Hispanic).[277] A total of 3.4% of the non-Hispanic population identified with more than one race. Throughout its history, New York has been a major port of entry for immigrants into the United States. More than 12 million European immigrants were received at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954.[278] The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. By 1900, Germans were the largest immigrant group, followed by the Irish, Jews, and Italians.[279] In 1940, Whites represented 92% of the city's population.[262]
Approximately 37% of the city's population is foreign born, and more than half of all children are born to mothers who are immigrants as of 2013.[280][281] In New York, no single country or region of origin dominates.[280] The ten largest sources of foreign-born individuals in the city as of 2011 were the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago,[282] while the Bangladeshi-born immigrant population has become one of the fastest growing in the city, counting over 74,000 by 2011.[26][283]
Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 census, number more than one million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles.[284] New York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper.[285] The New York City borough of Queens is home to the state's largest Asian American population and the largest Andean (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian) populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically and linguistically diverse urban area in the world.[286][187] Tens of thousands of asylum seekers from Venezuela have arrived in New York City since 2022.[287]
Chinatown, Manhattan
Lower Manhattan's Little Italy
Koreatown, Midtown Manhattan
Upper Manhattan's Spanish Harlem
Little Russia, Brooklyn
Little India, Queens
Little Brazil, Manhattan
Little Manila, Queens
The Chinese population is the fastest-growing nationality in New York State. Multiple satellites of the original Manhattan's Chinatown—home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[288] as well as in Brooklyn, and around Flushing, Queens, are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves—while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County[289] on Long Island,[290] as the New York metropolitan region and New York State have become the top destinations for new Chinese immigrants, respectively, and large-scale Chinese immigration continues into New York City and surrounding areas,[271][291][292][293][294][295] with the largest metropolitan Chinese diaspora outside Asia,[26][296] including an estimated 812,410 individuals in 2015.[297]
In 2012, 6.3% of New York City was of Chinese ethnicity, with nearly three-fourths living in either Queens or Brooklyn, geographically on Long Island.[298] A community numbering 20,000 Korean-Chinese (Chaoxianzu or Joseonjok) is centered in Flushing, Queens, while New York City is also home to the largest Tibetan population outside China, India, and Nepal, also centered in Queens.[299] Koreans made up 1.2% of the city's population, and Japanese 0.3%. Filipinos were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group at 0.8%, followed by Vietnamese, who made up 0.2% of New York City's population in 2010. Indians are the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.4% of the city's population, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis at 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.[300] Queens is the preferred borough of settlement for Asian Indians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Malaysians,[301][271] and other Southeast Asians;[302] while Brooklyn is receiving large numbers of both West Indian and Asian Indian immigrants, and Manhattan is the favored destination for Japanese.
New York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city. At 2.7 million in 2012, New York's non-Hispanic White population is larger than the non-Hispanic White populations of Los Angeles (1.1 million), Chicago (865,000), and Houston (550,000) combined.[303] The non-Hispanic White population was 6.6 million in 1940.[304] The non-Hispanic White population has begun to increase since 2010.[305]
The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse. According to 2012 census estimates, there were roughly 560,000 Italian Americans, 385,000 Irish Americans, 253,000 German Americans, 223,000 Russian Americans, 201,000 Polish Americans, and 137,000 English Americans. Additionally, Greek and French Americans numbered 65,000 each, with those of Hungarian descent estimated at 60,000 people. Ukrainian and Scottish Americans numbered 55,000 and 35,000, respectively. People identifying ancestry from Spain numbered 30,838 total in 2010.[306]
People of Norwegian and Swedish descent both stood at about 20,000 each, while people of Czech, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent all numbered between 12,000 and 14,000.[307] Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City,[308] with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic White population, enumerating over 30,000, and including more than half of all Central Asian immigrants to the United States,[309] most settling in Queens or Brooklyn. Albanian Americans are most highly concentrated in the Bronx,[310] while Astoria, Queens is the epicenter of American Greek culture as well as the Cypriot community.
New York is also home to the highest Jewish population of any city in the world, numbering 1.6 million in 2022, more than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem combined.[311] In the borough of Brooklyn, an estimated 1 in 4 residents is Jewish.[312] The city's Jewish communities are derived from many diverse sects, predominantly from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and including a rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish population, also the largest outside Israel.[299]
The metropolitan area is also home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least 20 Little India enclaves, and 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns;[257] the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American,[291] Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American[291] and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering 4.8 million;[306] and includes multiple established Chinatowns within New York City alone.[313]
Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, Brazil, and Venezuela are the top source countries from South America for immigrants to the New York City region; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Nigeria, Egypt, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.[314] Amidst a resurgence of Puerto Rican migration to New York City, this population had increased to approximately 1.3 million in the metropolitan area as of 2013.
Since 2010, Little Australia has emerged and is growing rapidly, representing the Australasian presence in Nolita, Manhattan.[315][316][317][318] In 2011, there were an estimated 20,000 Australian residents of New York City, nearly quadruple the 5,537 in 2005.[319][320] Qantas Airways of Australia and Air New Zealand have been planning for long-haul flights from New York to Sydney and Auckland, which would both rank among the longest non-stop flights in the world.[321] A Little Sri Lanka has developed in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of Staten Island.[322] Le Petit Sénégal, or Little Senegal, is based in Harlem. Richmond Hill, Queens is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community,[323] as well as Punjab Avenue (ਪੰਜਾਬ ਐਵੇਨਿਊ), or Little Punjab, for its high concentration of Punjabi people. Little Poland is expanding rapidly in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Sexual orientation and gender identity
Main articles: LGBT culture in New York City, Stonewall riots, NYC Pride March, List of largest LGBT events, and List of LGBT people from New York City
Further information: New York City Drag March, Queens Liberation Front, Queens Pride Parade, Greenwich Village Halloween Parade, and Same-sex marriage in New York
Philippine-born Geena Rocero introducing International Transgender Day of Visibility
Caribbean NYC-LGBTQ Equality Project
The NYC Dyke March, the world's largest celebration of lesbian pride and culture[324]
Spectators at a BDSM street fair in Lower Manhattan
NYC Pride March in Manhattan, the world's largest[35][325]
The Multicultural Festival at the 2018 Queens Pride Parade
New York City has been described as the gay capital of the world and the central node of the LGBTQ+ sociopolitical ecosystem, and is home to one of the world's largest LGBTQ populations and the most prominent.[50] The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying gay and bisexual people, the largest in the United States.[326][327] Same-sex sexual activity between consenting adults has been legal in New York since the New York v. Onofre case in 1980 which invalidated the state's sodomy law.[328] Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011, and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011.[329] Brian Silverman, the author of Frommer's New York City from $90 a Day, wrote the city has "one of the world's largest, loudest, and most powerful LGBT communities", and "Gay and lesbian culture is as much a part of New York's basic identity as yellow cabs, high-rise buildings, and Broadway theatre".[330] LGBT travel guide Queer in the World states, "The fabulosity of Gay New York is unrivaled on Earth, and queer culture seeps into every corner of its five boroughs".[331] LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated metaphorically, "Anyways, not only is New York City the best place in the world because of the queer people here. Let me tell you something, if you can make it here, then you must be queer."[332]
The annual New York City Pride March (or gay pride parade) proceeds southward down Fifth Avenue and ends at Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan; the parade is the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.[333][35] The annual Queens Pride Parade is held in Jackson Heights and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.[334]
Stonewall 50 – WorldPride NYC 2019 was the largest international Pride celebration in history, produced by Heritage of Pride and enhanced through a partnership with the I ❤ NY program's LGBT division, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, with 150,000 participants and five million spectators attending in Manhattan alone.[335] New York City is also home to the largest transgender population in the world, estimated at more than 50,000 in 2018, concentrated in Manhattan and Queens; however, until the June 1969 Stonewall riots, this community had felt marginalized and neglected by the gay community.[334][142] Brooklyn Liberation March, the largest transgender-rights demonstration in LGBTQ history, took place on June 14, 2020, stretching from Grand Army Plaza to Fort Greene, Brooklyn, focused on supporting Black transgender lives, drawing an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 participants.[336][337]
Religion
Religious affiliation (2014)[338][339]
Christian
59%
Catholic
33%
Protestant
23%
Other Christian
3%
Unaffiliated
24%
Jewish
8%
Muslim
4%
Hindu
2%
Buddhist
1%
Other faiths
1%
Religious affiliations in New York City
The landmark Neo-Gothic Roman Catholic St. Patrick's Cathedral, Midtown Manhattan
Central Synagogue, a notable Reform synagogue located at 652 Lexington Avenue
The Islamic Cultural Center of New York in Upper Manhattan, the first mosque built in New York City
Ganesh Temple in Flushing, Queens, the oldest Hindu temple in the U.S.
Christianity
Further information: St. Patrick's Cathedral (Midtown Manhattan), Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, and Christmas in New York
Largely as a result of Western European missionary work and colonialism, Christianity is the largest religion (59% adherent) in New York City,[338] which is home to the highest number of churches of any city in the world.[16] Roman Catholicism is the largest Christian denomination (33%), followed by Protestantism (23%), and other Christian denominations (3%). The Roman Catholic population are primarily served by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Diocese of Brooklyn. Eastern Catholics are divided into numerous jurisdictions throughout the city. Evangelical Protestantism is the largest branch of Protestantism in the city (9%), followed by Mainline Protestantism (8%), while the converse is usually true for other cities and metropolitan areas.[339] In Evangelicalism, Baptists are the largest group; in Mainline Protestantism, Reformed Protestants compose the largest subset. The majority of historically African American churches are affiliated with the National Baptist Convention (USA) and Progressive National Baptist Convention. The Church of God in Christ is one of the largest predominantly Black Pentecostal denominations in the area. Approximately 1% of the population is Mormon. The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and other Orthodox Christians (mainstream and independent) were the largest Eastern Christian groups. The American Orthodox Catholic Church (initially led by Aftimios Ofiesh) was founded in New York City in 1927.
Judaism
Main articles: Judaism in New York City, History of the Jews in New York, and Jewish arrival in New Amsterdam
Judaism, the second-largest religion practiced in New York City, with approximately 1.6 million adherents as of 2022, represents the largest Jewish community of any city in the world, greater than the combined totals of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.[340][341] Nearly half of the city's Jews live in Brooklyn, which is one-quarter Jewish.[342][343] The ethno-religious population makes up 18.4% of the city and its religious demographic makes up 8%.[344] The first recorded Jewish settler was Jacob Barsimson, who arrived in August 1654 on a passport from the Dutch West India Company.[345] Following the assassination of Alexander II of Russia, for which many blamed "the Jews", the 36 years beginning in 1881 experienced the largest wave of Jewish immigration to the United States.[346] In 2012, the largest Jewish denominations were Orthodox, Haredi, and Conservative Judaism.[347] Reform Jewish communities are prevalent through the area. 770 Eastern Parkway is the headquarters of the international Chabad Lubavitch movement, and is considered an icon, while Congregation Emanu-El of New York in Manhattan is the largest Reform synagogue in the world.
Islam
Main article: Islam in New York City
Islam ranks as the third largest religion in New York City, following Christianity and Judaism, with estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers of Islam, including 10% of the city's public school children.[348] Given both the size and scale of the city, as well as its relative proxinity and accessibility by air transportation to the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and South Asia, 22.3% of American Muslims live in New York City, with 1.5 million Muslims in the greater New York metropolitan area, representing the largest metropolitan Muslim population in the Western Hemisphere[349]—and the most ethnically diverse Muslim population of any city in the world.[350] Powers Street Mosque in Brooklyn is one of the oldest continuously operating mosques in the U.S., and represents the first Islamic organization in both the city and the state of New York.[351][352]
Hinduism and other religious affiliations
Further information: Hindu Temple Society of North America
Following these three largest religious groups in New York City are Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, and a variety of other religions. As of 2023, 24% of Greater New Yorkers identified with no organized religious affiliation, including 4% Atheist.[353]
Wealth and income disparity
New York City, like other large cities, has a high degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2017.[354] In the first quarter of 2014, the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[355] In 2022, New York City was home to the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with a total of 107.[21] New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.[356] New York City is one of the relatively few American cities levying an income tax (about 3%) on its residents.[357][358][359] As of 2018, there were 78,676 homeless people in New York City.[360]
Economy
Main article: Economy of New York City
Further information: Economy of Long Island and Economy of New York
Midtown Manhattan, the world's largest central business district[361]
see caption
The Financial District of Lower Manhattan
New York City is a global hub of business and commerce and an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.[362] The term global city was popularized by sociologist Saskia Sassen in her 1991 work, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo.[363] New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care and life sciences,[13] medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, both musical and prose theater, fashion, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal, and accelerating ahead of California seaports in monthly cargo volumes in 2023.[364][365][366]
Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City,[367] as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists.[368][369] New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as Madison Avenue.[370] The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages.[371] The non-profit Partnership for New York City, currently headed by Kathryn Wylde, is the city's pre-eminent private business association, comprising approximately 330 corporate leaders in membership. The fashion industry is based in Midtown Manhattan and is represented by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CDFA), headquartered in Lower Manhattan.
Significant economic sectors also include non-profit institutions, and universities. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. particularly in smaller operations. The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the manufacture of garments, accessories, and finished textiles, although efforts to revive the industry were underway,[372] and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as Seventh Avenue.[373]
Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with up to $234 million worth of exports each year.[374] Godiva, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, is headquartered in Manhattan,[375] and an unofficial chocolate district in Brooklyn is home to several chocolate makers and retailers.[376] Food processing is a $5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents.
In 2017, there were 205,592 employer firms in New York City.[261] Of those firms, 64,514 were owned by minorities, and 125,877 were shown to be owned by non-minorities. Veterans owned 5,506 of those firms.[261]
View of Midtown Manhattan from New Jersey, taken in September 2021
Wall Street
Main article: Wall Street
A large flag is stretched over Roman style columns on the front of a large building.
The New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, the world's largest stock exchange per total market capitalization of its listed companies[377][378]
New York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S. financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. The city's securities industry continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and is an important economic engine. Many large financial companies are headquartered in New York City, and the city is also home to a burgeoning number of financial startup companies.
Lower Manhattan is home to the New York Stock Exchange, at 11 Wall Street, and the Nasdaq, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013.[377][378] Investment banking fees on Wall Street totaled approximately $40 billion in 2012,[379] while in 2013, senior New York City bank officers who manage risk and compliance functions earned as much as $324,000 annually.[380] In fiscal year 2013–14, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.[381]
New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S. economy.[382]: 31–32 [383] New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment managers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers.[382]: 34–35 New York is also the principal commercial banking center of the United States.[384]
Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are also based in the city. Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2018,[385] making it the largest office market in the United States,[386] while Midtown Manhattan, with 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2018,[385] is the largest central business district in the world.[387]
Tech and biotech
Further information: Tech:NYC, Tech companies in New York City, Biotech companies in New York City, and Silicon Alley
View from the Empire State Building looking southward (downtown) at the central Flatiron District, the cradle of Silicon Alley, now metonymous for the New York metropolitan region's high tech sector
The Cornell Tech at the Roosevelt Island
New York is a top-tier global technology hub.[11] Silicon Alley, once a metonym for the sphere encompassing the metropolitan region's high technology industries,[388] is no longer a relevant moniker as the city's tech environment has expanded dramatically both in location and in its scope. New York City's current tech sphere encompasses a universal array of applications involving artificial intelligence, the internet, new media, financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency, biotechnology, game design, and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments.
Technology-driven startup companies and entrepreneurial employment are growing in New York City and the region. The technology sector has been claiming a greater share of New York City's economy since 2010.[389] Tech:NYC, founded in 2016, is a non-profit organization which represents New York City's technology industry with government, civic institutions, in business, and in the media, and whose primary goals are to further augment New York's substantial tech talent base and to advocate for policies that will nurture tech companies to grow in the city.[390]
The biotechnology sector is also growing in New York City, based upon the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a $2 billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.[391][392] By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than $30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than 700,000 square feet (65,000 m2) on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions. The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed a minimum of $100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology.[393]
Real estate
Deutsche Bank Center as seen from Central Park West
Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$1.072 trillion for the 2017 fiscal year, an increase of 10.6% from the previous year, with 89% of the increase coming from market effects.[394]
In 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten ZIP codes in the United States by median housing price.[395] Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commands the highest retail rents in the world, at $3,000 per square foot ($32,000/m2) in 2017.[396] In 2019, the most expensive home sale ever in the United States achieved completion in Manhattan, at a selling price of $238 million, for a 24,000 square feet (2,200 m2) penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park.[397] In 2022, one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan rented at a median monthly price of US$3,600.00, one of the world's highest. New York City real estate is a safe haven for global investors.[19]
Tourism
Main article: Tourism in New York City
Times Square, the hub of the Broadway theater district and a global media center, is one of the world's leading tourist attractions with 50 million tourists annually.[38]
The I Love New York logo designed by Milton Glaser in 1977
Tourism is a vital industry for New York City, and NYC & Company represents the city's official bureau of tourism. New York has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, reflecting over 60 million visitors to the city per year, the world's busiest tourist destination.[16] Approximately 12 million visitors to New York City have been from outside the United States, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. Multiple sources have called New York the most photographed city in the world.[398][399][400]
I Love New York (stylized I ❤ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,[401] and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo, owned by New York State Empire State Development,[402] appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the city and state, some licensed, many not. The song is the state song of New York.
The majority of the most high-profile tourist destinations to the city are situated in Manhattan. These include Times Square; Broadway theater productions; the Empire State Building; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; the United Nations headquarters; the World Trade Center (including the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and One World Trade Center); the art museums along Museum Mile; green spaces such as Central Park, Washington Square Park, the High Line, and the medieval gardens of The Cloisters; the Stonewall Inn; Rockefeller Center; ethnic enclaves including the Manhattan Chinatown, Koreatown, Curry Hill, Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Little Italy, and Little Australia; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Brooklyn Bridge (shared with Brooklyn); the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree; the St. Patrick's Day Parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at SummerStage.[403]
Points of interest have also developed in the city outside Manhattan and have made the outer boroughs tourist destinations in their own right. These include numerous ethnic enclaves; the Unisphere, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and Downtown Flushing in Queens; Downtown Brooklyn, Coney Island, Williamsburg, Park Slope, and Prospect Park in Brooklyn; the Bronx Zoo, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Grand Concourse in the Bronx; and the Staten Island Ferry shuttling passengers between Staten Island and the South Ferry Terminal bordering Battery Park in Lower Manhattan, at the historical birthplace of New York City.
Media and entertainment
Main article: Media in New York City
Further information: New Yorkers in journalism
Rockefeller Center, one of Manhattan's leading media and entertainment hubs
Times Square Studios on Times Square is sometimes called the "Crossroads of the World".
New York City has been described as the entertainment[16][404][405] and digital media capital of the world.[406] The city is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there.[407] As of 2019, New York City was the second-largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals. The filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly $9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015.[408] By volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production—one-third of all American independent films are produced there.[409][410] The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is also based in New York.[411] In the first five months of 2014 alone, location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013,[412] with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013–2014 cycle.[413]
New York City is the center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America.[414] Some of the city's media conglomerates and institutions include Warner Bros. Discovery, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corp, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, Fox Corporation, and Paramount Global. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.[415] Two of the top three record labels' headquarters are in New York: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group also has offices in New York. New media enterprises are contributing an increasingly important component to the city's central role in the media sphere.
More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city,[410] and the publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[416] Two of the three national daily newspapers with the largest circulations in the United States are published in New York: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times (NYT). Nicknamed "the Grey Lady", the NYT has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and is considered the U.S. media's newspaper of record.[34] Tabloid newspapers in the city include the New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson,[417] and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.[418] At the local news end of the media spectrum, Patch Media is also headquartered in Manhattan.
New York City also has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[419] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[420] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African American newspaper. The Village Voice, historically the largest alternative newspaper in the United States, announced in 2017 that it would cease publication of its print edition and convert to a fully digital venture.[421] The television and radio industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The three major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Many cable networks are based in the city as well, including CNN, MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Food Network, AMC, and Comedy Central. News 12 Networks operated News 12 The Bronx and News 12 Brooklyn. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.
New York is also a major center for non-commercial educational media. NYC Media is the official public radio, television, and online media network and broadcasting service of New York City,[422] and this network has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[423] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[424]
Climate resiliency
As an oceanic port city, New York City is vulnerable to the long-term manifestations of global warming and rising seas. Climate change has spawned the development of a significant climate resiliency and environmental sustainability economy in the city. Governors Island is slated to host a US$1 billion research and education center intended to establish New York's role as the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[425]
Education
Main article: Education in New York City
Butler Library at Columbia University, described as one of the most beautiful college libraries in the United States[426]
The Washington Square Arch, an unofficial icon of both New York University and the Greenwich Village neighborhood that surrounds it
Fordham University's Keating Hall in the Bronx
New York City has the largest educational system of any city in the world.[16] The city's educational infrastructure spans primary education, secondary education, higher education, and research.
Primary and secondary education
The New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in more than 1,700 separate primary and secondary schools.[427] The city's public school system includes nine specialized high schools to serve academically and artistically gifted students. The city government pays the Pelham Public Schools to educate a very small, detached section of the Bronx.[428]
The New York City Charter School Center assists the setup of new charter schools.[429] There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools in the city.[430]
Higher education and research
More than a million students, the highest number of any city in the United States,[431] are enrolled in New York City's more than 120 higher education institutions, with more than half a million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone as of 2020, including both degree and professional programs.[432] According to Academic Ranking of World Universities, New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any global city.[433]
The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation, comprising 25 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system includes campuses in New York City, including SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY Maritime College, and SUNY College of Optometry.
New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Rockefeller University, and Yeshiva University; several of these universities are ranked among the top universities in the world,[434][435] while some of the world's most prestigious institutions like Princeton University and Yale University remain in the New York metropolitan area.
The city also hosts other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as Pace University, St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, Adelphi University - Manhattan, Mercy College (New York), The College of Mount Saint Vincent, Parsons School of Design, The New School, Pratt Institute, New York Film Academy, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, Marymount Manhattan College, and Wagner College.
Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. In 2019, the New York metropolitan area ranked first on the list of cities and metropolitan areas by share of published articles in life sciences.[436] New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, and in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City.[437] There are 127 Nobel laureates with roots in local institutions as of 2004.[438]
Major biomedical research institutions include Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College, being joined by the Cornell University/Technion-Israel Institute of Technology venture on Roosevelt Island. The graduates of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx earned the highest average annual salary of any university graduates in the United States, $144,000 as of 2017.[439]
Human resources
Public health
Main articles: New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
New York-Presbyterian Hospital, affiliated with Columbia University and Cornell University, is the largest hospital and largest private employer in New York City and one of the world's busiest hospitals.[440]
The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) operates the public hospitals and outpatient clinics in New York City. A public benefit corporation with As of 2021, HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States with $10.9 billion in annual revenues,[441] HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States serving 1.4 million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents.[442] HHC was created in 1969 by the New York State Legislature as a public benefit corporation (Chapter 1016 of the Laws 1969).[443] HHC operates 11 acute care hospitals, five nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the poor and working class. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of the New York area's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance and is the plan of choice for nearly half a million New Yorkers.[444]
HHC's facilities annually provide millions of New Yorkers services interpreted in more than 190 languages.[445] The most well-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the President of the United States and other world leaders if they become sick or injured while in New York City.[446] The president of HHC is Ramanathan Raju, MD, a surgeon and former CEO of the Cook County health system in Illinois.[447] In August 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed legislation outlawing pharmacies from selling cigarettes once their existing licenses to do so expired, beginning in 2018.[448]
Public safety
Police and law enforcement
Main articles: New York City Police Department and Law enforcement in New York City
Further information: Police surveillance in New York City and Crime in New York City
The New York Police Department (NYPD), the largest police force in the United States
NYPD police officers in Brooklyn
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has been the largest police force in the United States by a significant margin, with more than 35,000 sworn officers.[449] Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, New York's Finest.
Crime overall has trended downward in New York City since the 1990s.[450] In 2012, the NYPD came under scrutiny for its use of a stop-and-frisk program,[451][452][453] which has undergone several policy revisions since then. In 2014, New York City had the third-lowest murder rate among the largest U.S. cities,[454] having become significantly safer after a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s.[455] Violent crime in New York City decreased more than 75% from 1993 to 2005, and continued decreasing during periods when the nation as a whole saw increases.[456] By 2002, New York City was ranked 197th in crime among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000.[456] In 1992, the city recorded 2,245 murders.[457] In 2005, the homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1966,[458] and in 2009, the city recorded fewer than 461 homicides for the first time ever since crime statistics were first published in 1963.[457] New York City has stricter gun laws than most other cities in the U.S.—a license to own any firearm is required in New York City, and the NY SAFE Act of 2013 banned assault weapons—and New York state had the fifth lowest gun death rate of the fifty states in 2020.[459] New York City recorded 491 murders in 2021.[460] In 2017, 60.1% of violent crime suspects were Black, 29.6% Hispanic, 6.5% White, 3.6% Asian and 0.2% American Indian.[461]
Sociologists and criminologists have not reached consensus on the explanation for the dramatic long-term decrease in the city's crime rate. Some attribute the phenomenon to new tactics used by the NYPD,[462] including its use of CompStat and the broken windows theory.[463] Others cite the end of the crack epidemic and demographic changes,[464] including from immigration.[465] Another theory is that widespread exposure to lead pollution from automobile exhaust, which can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s.[466] Another theory cited to explain New York City's falling homicide rate is the inverse correlation between the number of murders and the increasingly wet climate in the city.[467]
Organized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points neighborhood in the 1820s, followed by the Tongs in the same neighborhood, which ultimately evolved into Chinatown, Manhattan. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades.[468] The Mafia and gang presence has declined in the city in the 21st century.[469][470]
Firefighting
Main article: New York City Fire Department
The Fire Department of New York (FDNY), the largest municipal fire department in the United States
The Fire Department of New York (FDNY) provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services for the five boroughs of New York City. The FDNY is the largest municipal fire department in the United States and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department. The FDNY employs approximately 11,080 uniformed firefighters and more than 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics. The FDNY's motto is New York's Bravest.
The fire department faces multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, the FDNY also responds to fires that occur in the New York City Subway.[471] Secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires, also present challenges.
The FDNY is headquartered at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn,[472] and the FDNY Fire Academy is on the Randalls Island.[473] There are three Bureau of Fire Communications alarm offices which receive and dispatch alarms to appropriate units. One office, at 11 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, houses Manhattan/Citywide, Brooklyn, and Staten Island Fire Communications; the Bronx and Queens offices are in separate buildings.
Public library system
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Headquarters Building of the New York Public Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
The New York Public Library (NYPL), which has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States.[474] Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library (QPL), the nation's second-largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) serves Brooklyn.[474]
In 2013, the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library announced that they would merge their technical services departments into a new department called BookOps. This proposed merger anticipated a savings of $2 million for the Brooklyn Public Library and $1.5 million for the New York Public Library. Although not currently part of the merger, it is expected that the Queens Public Library will eventually share some resources with the other city libraries.[475][476]
Culture and contemporary life
Main article: Culture of New York City
Further information: Broadway theatre, LGBT culture in New York City, List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City, Music of New York City, List of nightclubs in New York City, List of LGBT people from New York City, List of people from New York City, New York Fashion Week, and Met Gala
New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world by Manhattan's Baruch College.[477] A book containing a series of essays titled New York, Culture Capital of the World, 1940–1965 has also been published as showcased by the National Library of Australia.[478] In describing New York, author Tom Wolfe said, "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather."[479]
Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States.[480][481] The city became the center of stand-up comedy in the early 20th century, jazz[482] in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of hip-hop in the 1970s.[483] The city's punk[484] and hardcore[485] scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s. New York has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.
The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting; and hip-hop,[191] punk, salsa, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, certain forms of jazz, and (along with Philadelphia) disco in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.[486][487] The city is also frequently the setting for novels, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.[488][489] New York has also frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor.[490]
Pace
Midtown Manhattan in January 2020
One of the most common traits attributed to New York City is its fast pace,[491][492][493] which spawned the term New York minute.[494] Journalist Walt Whitman characterized New York's streets as being traversed by "hurrying, feverish, electric crowds".[493]
Resilience
New York City's residents are prominently known for their resilience historically, and more recently related to their management of the impacts of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic.[495][496][497] New York was voted the world's most resilient city in 2021 and 2022 per Time Out's global poll of urban residents.[496]
Arts
New York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries.[498] The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts.[498] Wealthy business magnates in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which have become internationally renowned. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions, and in the 1880s, New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition. New York City itself is the subject or background of many plays and musicals.
Performing arts
Main articles: Broadway theatre and Music of New York City
The corner of a lit up plaza with a fountain in the center and the ends of two brightly lit buildings with tall arches on the square.
Lincoln Center in Manhattan
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, part of Museum Mile, is one of the largest museums in the world.[499]
Broadway theatre is one of the premier forms of English-language theatre in the world, named after Broadway, the major thoroughfare that crosses Times Square,[500] also sometimes referred to as "The Great White Way".[501][502][503] Forty-one venues in Midtown Manhattan's Theatre District, each with at least 500 seats, are classified as Broadway theatres. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an 11.4% increase from $1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season. Attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.[504] Performance artists displaying diverse skills are ubiquitous on the streets of Manhattan.
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents free music concerts in Central Park.[505]
Visual arts
Main article: List of museums and cultural institutions in New York City
New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites. Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan,[506] in an area sometimes called Upper Carnegie Hill.[507] Nine museums occupy the length of this section of Fifth Avenue, making it one of the densest displays of culture in the world.[508] Its art museums include the Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Neue Galerie New York, and The Africa Center, which opened in late 2012. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation.[509] Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in New York City.[510][511]
Cuisine
Main articles: Cuisine of New York City, List of restaurants in New York City, and List of Michelin starred restaurants in New York City
People crowd around white tents in the foreground next to a red brick wall with arched windows. Above and to the left is a towering stone bridge.
Smorgasburg, which opened in 2011 as an open-air food market, is part of the Brooklyn Flea.[512]
New York City's food culture includes an array of international cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Central and Eastern European immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from those regions, brought bagels, cheesecake, hot dogs, knishes, and delicatessens (delis) to the city. Italian immigrants brought New York-style pizza and Italian cuisine into the city, while Jewish immigrants and Irish immigrants brought pastrami[513] and corned beef,[514] respectively. Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses are ubiquitous throughout the city. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs[515] examples of modern New York street food. The city is home to "nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world", according to Michelin.[516] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's restaurants based upon their inspection results.[517] As of 2019, there were 27,043 restaurants in the city, up from 24,865 in 2017.[518] The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park attracts more than ten thousand people nightly to sample food from more than 85 countries.[519]
Parades
The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the world's largest parade[520]
The annual Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village, the world's largest Halloween parade[521]
The ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts on August 13, 1969
The annual Philippine Independence Day Parade, the largest outside the Philippines
New York City is well known for its street parades, which celebrate a broad array of themes, including holidays, nationalities, human rights, and major league sports team championship victories. The majority of parades are held in Manhattan. The primary orientation of the annual street parades is typically from north to south, marching along major avenues. The annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is the world's largest parade,[520] beginning alongside Central Park and processing southward to the flagship Macy's Herald Square store;[522] the parade is viewed on telecasts worldwide and draws millions of spectators in person.[520] Other notable parades including the annual New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade in March, the NYC LGBT Pride March in June, the LGBT-inspired Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in October, and numerous parades commemorating the independence days of many nations. Ticker-tape parades celebrating championships won by sports teams as well as other heroic accomplishments march northward along the Canyon of Heroes on Broadway from Bowling Green to City Hall Park in Lower Manhattan.
Accent and dialect
Main articles: New York City English and New York accent
The New York area is home to a distinctive regional accent and speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It has generally been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[523]
The traditional New York area speech pattern is known for its rapid delivery, and its accent is characterized as non-rhotic so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; therefore the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk."[524] There is no [ɹ] in words like park [pɑək] or [pɒək] (with vowel backed and diphthongized due to the low-back chain shift), butter [bʌɾə], or here [hiə]. In another feature called the low back chain shift, the [ɔ] vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, chocolate, and coffee and the often homophonous [ɔr] in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American English. In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like "girl" and of words like "oil" became a diphthong [ɜɪ]. This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a reversal of the er and oy sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street" (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet).[524] The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s television sitcom All in the Family was an example of this pattern of speech.
The classic version of the New York City dialect is generally centered on middle- and working-class New Yorkers. The influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect,[524] and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent among general New Yorkers as it has been in the past.[524]
Sports
Main article: Sports in the New York metropolitan area
Three runners in a race down a street where onlookers are cheering behind barriers.
The New York Marathon, held annually in November, is the largest marathon in the world.[525]
A tennis stadium pack with fans watching a grass court.
The U.S. Open Tennis Championships are held every August and September in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens.
A baseball stadium from behind home plate in the evening.
Citi Field, also in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, has been home to the New York Mets since 2009.
Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan is home to the New York Knicks, New York Rangers, and St. John's Red Storm.
New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,[526] Major League Baseball,[527] the National Basketball Association,[528] the National Hockey League,[529] and Major League Soccer.[530] The New York metropolitan area hosts the most sports teams in the first four major North American professional sports leagues with nine, one more than Los Angeles, and has 11 top-level professional sports teams if Major League Soccer is included, also one more than Los Angeles. Participation in professional sports in the city predates all professional leagues.
The city has played host to more than 40 major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are in the New York metropolitan area.[531] Madison Square Garden, its predecessor, the original Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, are sporting venues in New York City, the latter two having been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps. New York was the first of eight American cities to have won titles in all four major leagues (MLB, NHL, NFL and NBA), having done so following the Knicks' 1970 title. In 1972, it became the first city to win titles in five sports when the Cosmos won the NASL final.
American football
The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,[532] which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014.[533]
Baseball
New York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball".[534] There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas to host two Major League Baseball teams, the others being Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and until the Athletics depart Oakland, California, the San Francisco Bay Area. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in 2000. No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in 1906, St. Louis in 1944, and the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989).
The city's two Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field in Queens,[535] and the New York Yankees, who play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. These teams compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has also come to be called the Subway Series. The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,[536] while the Mets have won the World Series twice.[537] The city also was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,[538] and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.[539] There is also one Minor League Baseball team in the city, the Mets-affiliated Brooklyn Cyclones,[540] and the city gained a club in the independent Atlantic League when the Staten Island FerryHawks began play in 2022.[541]
Basketball
The city's National Basketball Association teams are the Brooklyn Nets (previously known as the New York Nets and New Jersey Nets as they moved around the metropolitan area) and the New York Knicks, while the New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association team. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.[542] The city is well known for its links to basketball, which is played in nearly every park in the city by local youth, many of whom have gone on to play for major college programs and in the NBA.
Ice hockey
The metropolitan area is home to three National Hockey League teams. The New York Rangers, the traditional representative of the city itself and one of the league's Original Six, play at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. The New York Islanders, traditionally representing Nassau and Suffolk Counties of Long Island, play in UBS Arena in Elmont, New York, and played in Brooklyn's Barclays Center from 2015 to 2020. The New Jersey Devils play at Prudential Center in nearby Newark, New Jersey and traditionally represent the counties of neighboring New Jersey which are coextensive with the boundaries of the New York metropolitan area and media market.
Soccer
In soccer, New York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium[543] and the New York Red Bulls, who play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.[544] NJ/NY Gotham FC also plays their home games in Red Bull Arena, representing the metropolitan area in the National Women's Soccer League. Historically, the city is known for the New York Cosmos, the highly successful former professional soccer team which was the American home of Pelé. A new version of the New York Cosmos was formed in 2010, and most recently played in the third-division National Independent Soccer Association before going on hiatus in January 2021. New York was a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup[545] and will be one of eleven US host cities for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.[546]
Tennis and other
The annual United States Open Tennis Championships is one of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, Queens.[547] The New York City Marathon, which courses through all five boroughs, is the world's largest running marathon,[525] with 51,394 finishers in 2016[548] and 98,247 applicants for the 2017 race.[525] The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.[549] The city is also considered the host of the Belmont Stakes, the last, longest and oldest of horse racing's Triple Crown races, held just over the city's border at Belmont Park on the first or second Sunday of June. The city also hosted the 1932 U.S. Open golf tournament and the 1930 and 1939 PGA Championships, and has been host city for both events several times, most notably for nearby Winged Foot Golf Club. The Gaelic games are played in Riverdale, Bronx at Gaelic Park, home to the New York GAA, the only North American team to compete at the senior inter-county level.
International events
In terms of hosting multi-sport events, New York City hosted the 1984 Summer Paralympics and the 1998 Goodwill Games. New York City's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics was one of five finalists, but lost out to London.[550]
Environment
Main article: Environmental issues in New York City
Two yellow taxis on a narrow street lined with shops.
As of 2012, New York City had about 6,000 hybrid taxis in service, the largest number of any city in North America.[551]
Environmental issues in New York City are affected by the city's size, density, abundant public transportation infrastructure, and its location at the mouth of the Hudson River. For example, it is one of the country's biggest sources of pollution and has the lowest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions rate and electricity usage. Governors Island is planned to host a US$1 billion research and education center to make New York City the global leader in addressing the climate crisis.[552]
Environmental impact reduction
New York City has focused on reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint.[553] Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in the United States. Also, by 2010, the city had 3,715 hybrid taxis and other clean diesel vehicles, representing around 28% of New York's taxi fleet in service, the most of any city in North America.[554] New York City is the host of Climate Week NYC, the largest Climate Week to take place globally and regarded as major annual climate summit.
New York's high rate of public transit use, more than 200,000 daily cyclists as of 2014,[555] and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States.[556] Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally the rate for metro regions is about 8%.[557] In both its 2011 and 2015 rankings, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States,[558][559][560] and in 2018, Stacker ranked New York the most walkable U.S. city.[561] Citibank sponsored the introduction of 10,000 public bicycles for the city's bike-share project in the summer of 2013.[562] New York City's numerical "in-season cycling indicator" of bicycling in the city had hit an all-time high of 437 when measured in 2014.[563]
The city government was a petitioner in the landmark Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency Supreme Court case forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. The city is a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green office buildings, including the Hearst Tower among others.[199] Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2014 and 2050 to reduce the city's contributions to climate change, beginning with a comprehensive "Green Buildings" plan.[553]
Water purity and availability
Main articles: Food and water in New York City and New York City water supply system
The New York City drinking water supply is extracted from the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.[564] As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification through water treatment plants.[565] The city's municipal water system is the largest in the United States, moving over one billion gallons of water per day;[566] a leak in the Delaware aqueduct results in some 20 million gallons a day being lost under the Hudson River.[567] The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a $3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.[568] The ongoing expansion of New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city's history,[569] with segments serving Manhattan and the Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020.[570] In 2018, New York City announced a $1 billion investment to protect the integrity of its water system and to maintain the purity of its unfiltered water supply.[566]
Air quality
According to the 2016 World Health Organization Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database,[571] the annual average concentration in New York City's air of particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or less (PM2.5) was 7.0 micrograms per cubic meter, or 3.0 micrograms within the recommended limit of the WHO Air Quality Guidelines for the annual mean PM2.5.[572] The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, in partnership with Queens College, conducts the New York Community Air Survey to measure pollutants at about 150 locations.[573]
Environmental revitalization
Newtown Creek, a 3.5-mile (6-kilometer) a long estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, has been designated a Superfund site for environmental clean-up and remediation of the waterway's recreational and economic resources for many communities.[574] One of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey, it had been one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the country,[575] containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 million US gallons (110,000 m3) of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City's sewer system,[575] and other accumulation.
Government and politics
Main articles: Government of New York City, Politics of New York City, and Elections in New York City
Government
New York City Hall is the oldest City Hall in the United States that still houses its original governmental functions.
New York County Courthouse houses the New York Supreme Court and other governmental offices.
Eric Adams, the current and 110th Mayor of New York City
New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a Strong mayor–council form of government[576] since its consolidation in 1898. In New York City, the city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.
The mayor and council members are elected to four-year terms. The City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.[577] Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit,[578] which is reset after a four-year break. The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and the City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.[579][580]
Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are also several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System.
Uniquely among major American cities, New York is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square near City Hall in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are also based in New York, also on Foley Square in Manhattan.
Politics
The present mayor is Eric Adams. He was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote, and assumed office on January 1, 2022.
The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of April 2016, 69% of registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10% are Republicans.[581] New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential election since President Calvin Coolidge won the five boroughs in 1924. A Republican candidate for statewide office has not won all five boroughs of the city since it was incorporated in 1898. In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of any party to receive more than 80% of the overall vote in New York City, sweeping all five boroughs. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development, and labor politics are of importance in the city. Thirteen out of 26 U.S. congressional districts in the state of New York include portions of New York City.[582]
New York City is the most important geographical source of political fundraising in the United States. At least four of the top five ZIP Codes in the nation for political contributions were in Manhattan for the 2004, 2006, and 2008 elections. The top ZIP Code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry.[583] The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more than it receives back). City residents and businesses also sent an additional $4.1 billion in the 2009–2010 fiscal year to the state of New York than the city received in return.[584]
Transportation
Main article: Transportation in New York City
A row of yellow taxis in front of a multi-story ornate stone building with three huge arched windows.
New York City is home to the two busiest train stations in the U.S., Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.
New York City's comprehensive transportation system is both complex and extensive.
The front end of a subway train, with a red E on a LED display on the top. To the right of the train is a platform with a group of people waiting for their train.
The New York City Subway, the world's largest rapid transit system by number of stations
Rapid transit
Mass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the United States, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City metropolitan area.[585][586]
Rail
The New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with 472, and by length of routes. Nearly all of New York's subway system is open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to systems in most cities, including Hong Kong,[587][588] London, Paris, Seoul,[589][590] and Tokyo. The New York City Subway is also the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere, with 1.76 billion passenger rides in 2015,[591] while Grand Central Terminal, also referred to as "Grand Central Station", is the world's largest railway station by number of train platforms.
Public transport is widely used in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit.[592] This is in contrast to the rest of the United States, where 91% of commuters travel in automobiles to their workplace.[593] According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in the New York City area spend an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities.[594] New York is the only U.S. city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car.[595] Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19 billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans.[596]
New York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America.[585] The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines.[585] In Queens, the elevated AirTrain people mover system connects 24 hours a day JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road; a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.[597][598] For inter-city rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, and long-distance train service to other North American cities.[599]
The Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day. The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH train) links Midtown and Lower Manhattan to northeastern New Jersey, primarily Hoboken, Jersey City, and Newark. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day; meaning three of the six rapid transit systems in the world which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York (the others are a portion of the Chicago "L", the PATCO Speedline serving Philadelphia, and the Copenhagen Metro).
Multibillion-dollar heavy rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway, and the East Side Access project.[600]
Buses
Port Authority Bus Terminal, the world's busiest bus station, at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street[601]
New York City's public bus fleet runs 24/7 and is the largest in North America.[602] The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the main intercity bus terminal of the city, serves 7,000 buses and 200,000 commuters daily, making it the busiest bus station in the world.[601]
Air
Five jumbo airplanes wait in a line on a runway next to a small body of water. Behind them in the distance is the airport and control tower.
John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, the busiest international airport to the United States with over 12 million inbound and outbound flights as of 2021
New York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air transportation corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area include John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport; 130.5 million travelers used these three airports in 2016.[603] JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2012; as of 2011, JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.[604]
Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.[605] Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities.[606] Other commercial airports in or serving the New York metropolitan area include Long Island MacArthur Airport, Trenton–Mercer Airport and Westchester County Airport. The primary general aviation airport serving the area is Teterboro Airport.
Ferries
Staten Island Ferry shuttles commuters between Manhattan and Staten Island.
The Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry route, carrying more than 23 million passengers from July 2015 through June 2016 on the 5.2-mile (8.4 km) route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24 hours a day.[607] Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area.
NYC Ferry, a NYCEDC initiative with routes planned to travel to all five boroughs, was launched in 2017, with second graders choosing the names of the ferries.[608] Meanwhile, Seastreak ferry announced construction of a 600-passenger high-speed luxury ferry in September 2016, to shuttle riders between the Jersey Shore and Manhattan, anticipated to start service in 2017; this would be the largest vessel in its class.[609]
Taxis, vehicles for hire, and trams
See also: Taxis of New York City
Yellow medallion taxicabs are a widely recognized icon of New York City.
Other features of the city's transportation infrastructure encompass 13,587 yellow taxicabs;[610] other vehicle for hire companies;[611][612] and the Roosevelt Island Tramway, an aerial tramway that transports commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Island.
Streets and highways
8th Avenue in Manhattan looking north (uptown)
Despite New York's heavy reliance on its vast public transit system, streets are a defining feature of the city. The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 greatly influenced the city's physical development. Several of the city's streets and avenues, including Broadway,[613] Wall Street,[614] Madison Avenue,[370] and Seventh Avenue are also used as metonyms for national industries there: the theater, finance, advertising, and fashion organizations, respectively.
New York City also has an extensive web of freeways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other and to North Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through various bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is quite common for motorists to be stranded for hours in traffic congestion that are a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour.[615][616] Congestion pricing in New York City will go into effect in 2022 at the earliest.[617][618][619]
New York City is also known for its rules regarding turning at red lights. Unlike the rest of the United States, New York State prohibits right or left turns on red in cities with a population greater than one million, to reduce traffic collisions and increase pedestrian safety. In New York City, therefore, all turns at red lights are illegal unless a sign permitting such maneuvers is present.[620]
River crossings
The George Washington Bridge, connecting Upper Manhattan (background) and Fort Lee, New Jersey across the Hudson River, is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge.[621][622]
New York City is located on one of the world's largest natural harbors,[623] and the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are primarily coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are at the west end of the larger Long Island, and the Bronx is on New York State's mainland. This situation of boroughs separated by water led to the development of an extensive infrastructure of bridges and tunnels.
The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge,[621][622] connecting Manhattan to Bergen County, New Jersey. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest.[624][625] The Brooklyn Bridge is an icon of the city itself. The towers of the Brooklyn Bridge are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement, and their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. This bridge was also the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and is the first steel-wire suspension bridge. The Queensboro Bridge is an important piece of cantilever architecture. The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges, and its design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges around the world; the Manhattan Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, Triborough Bridge, and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge are all examples of structural expressionism.[626][627]
Manhattan Island is linked to New York City's outer boroughs and to New Jersey. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.[628] The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the world's first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.[629][630] The Queens–Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.[631] President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.[632] The Brooklyn–Battery Tunnel (officially known as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel) runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn.
Cycling network
Main article: Cycling in New York City
Cycling in New York City is associated with mixed cycling conditions that include urban density, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and many pedestrians. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; cycling clubs for recreational cyclists; and an increasing number of commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City; in 2017 there were approximately 450,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 daily bike trips in 2005.[633] As of 2017, New York City had 1,333 miles (2,145 km) of bike lanes, compared to 513 miles (826 km) of bike lanes in 2006.[633] As of 2019, there are 126 miles (203 km) of segregated or "protected" bike lanes citywide.[634]
People
Main article: List of people from New York City
Global outreach
Main article: List of sister cities of New York City
In 2006, the sister city Program of the City of New York, Inc.[635] was restructured and renamed New York City Global Partners. Through this program, New York City has expanded its international outreach to a network of cities worldwide, promoting the exchange of ideas and innovation between their citizenry and policymakers. New York's historic sister cities are denoted below by the year they joined New York City's partnership network.[636]
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in an estimated 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, massacres, and disease. In the wake of the Axis defeat, Germany and Japan were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.
The causes of World War II are debated, but contributing factors included the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Spanish Civil War, Second Sino-Japanese War, Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, the rise of fascism in Europe, and European tensions in the aftermath of World War I. World War II is generally considered to have begun on 1 September 1939, when Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland. The United Kingdom and France subsequently declared war on Germany on 3 September. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union had partitioned Poland and marked out their "spheres of influence" across Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, in a military alliance with Italy, Japan and other countries called the Axis. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, and the fall of France in mid-1940, the war continued primarily between the European Axis powers and the British Empire, with war in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz of the United Kingdom, and the Battle of the Atlantic. On 22 June 1941, Germany led the European Axis powers in an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the Eastern Front, the largest land theatre of war in history.
Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with the Republic of China by 1937. In December 1941, Japan attacked American and British territories with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific, including an attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor which resulted in the United States and United Kingdom declaring war against Japan. The European Axis powers declared war on the United States in solidarity. Japan soon captured much of the western Pacific, but its advances were halted in 1942 after losing the critical Battle of Midway; later, Germany and Italy were defeated in North Africa and at Stalingrad in the Soviet Union. Key setbacks in 1943—including a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and the Italian mainland, and Allied offensives in the Pacific—cost the Axis powers their initiative and forced them into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and pushed Germany and its allies back. During 1944 and 1945, Japan suffered reversals in mainland Asia, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key western Pacific islands. The war in Europe concluded with the liberation of German-occupied territories and the invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the Fall of Berlin to Soviet troops, Hitler's suicide, and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the refusal of Japan to surrender on the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (issued 26 July 1945), the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on 6 August and Nagasaki on 9 August. Faced with an imminent invasion of the Japanese archipelago, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, and the Soviet Union's declared entry into the war against Japan on the eve of invading Manchuria, Japan announced on 10 August its intention to surrender, signing a surrender document on 2 September 1945.
World War II changed the political alignment and social structure of the globe and set the foundation for the international order of the world's nations for the rest of the 20th century and into the present day. The United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts, with the victorious great powers—China, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—becoming the permanent members of its Security Council. The Soviet Union and the United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century-long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia. Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic recovery and expansion. Political and economic integration, especially in Europe, began as an effort to forestall future hostilities, end pre-war enmities, and forge a sense of common identity.
Start and end dates
See also: List of timelines of World War II
Timelines of World War II
Chronological
Prelude
(in Asiain Europe)
1939194019411942
194319441945 onwards
By topic
Diplomacy
Declarations of war
EngagementsOperations
Battle of Europe air operations
Eastern FrontManhattan Project
United Kingdom home front
Surrender of the Axis armies
vte
It is generally considered that, in Europe, World War II started on 1 September 1939,[1][2] beginning with the German invasion of Poland and the United Kingdom and France's declaration of war on Germany two days later on 3 September 1939. Dates for the beginning of the Pacific War include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937,[3][4] or the earlier Japanese invasion of Manchuria, on 19 September 1931.[5][6] Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred simultaneously, and the two wars became World War II in 1941.[7] Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935.[8] The British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the forces of Mongolia and the Soviet Union from May to September 1939.[9] Others view the Spanish Civil War as the start or prelude to World War II.[10][11]
The exact date of the war's end is also not universally agreed upon. It was generally accepted at the time that the war ended with the armistice of 15 August 1945 (V-J Day), rather than with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945, which officially ended the war in Asia. A peace treaty between Japan and the Allies was signed in 1951.[12] A 1990 treaty regarding Germany's future allowed the reunification of East and West Germany to take place and resolved most post–World War II issues.[13] No formal peace treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union was ever signed,[14] although the state of war between the two countries was terminated by the Soviet–Japanese Joint Declaration of 1956, which also restored full diplomatic relations between them.[15]
History
Background
Main article: Causes of World War II
Aftermath of World War I
World War I had radically altered the political European map with the defeat of the Central Powers—including Austria-Hungary, Germany, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—and the 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power in Russia, which led to the founding of the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, the victorious Allies of World War I, such as France, Belgium, Italy, Romania, and Greece, gained territory, and new nation-states were created out of the collapse of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman and Russian Empires.
The League of Nations assembly, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 1930
To prevent a future world war, the League of Nations was created during the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The organisation's primary goals were to prevent armed conflict through collective security, military and naval disarmament, and settling international disputes through peaceful negotiations and arbitration.[16]
Despite strong pacifist sentiment after World War I,[17] irredentist and revanchist nationalism emerged in several European states in the same period. These sentiments were especially marked in Germany because of the significant territorial, colonial, and financial losses imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Under the treaty, Germany lost around 13 percent of its home territory and all its overseas possessions, while German annexation of other states was prohibited, reparations were imposed, and limits were placed on the size and capability of the country's armed forces.[18]
Germany
The German Empire was dissolved in the German Revolution of 1918–1919, and a democratic government, later known as the Weimar Republic, was created. The interwar period saw strife between supporters of the new republic and hardline opponents on both the right and left. Italy, as an Entente ally, had made some post-war territorial gains; however, Italian nationalists were angered that the promises made by the United Kingdom and France to secure Italian entrance into the war were not fulfilled in the peace settlement. From 1922 to 1925, the Fascist movement led by Benito Mussolini seized power in Italy with a nationalist, totalitarian, and class collaborationist agenda that abolished representative democracy, repressed socialist, left-wing and liberal forces, and pursued an aggressive expansionist foreign policy aimed at making Italy a world power, and promising the creation of a "New Roman Empire".[19]
Adolf Hitler at a German Nazi political rally in Nuremberg, August 1933
Adolf Hitler, after an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the German government in 1923, eventually became the Chancellor of Germany in 1933 when Paul Von Hindenburg and the Reichstag appointed him. Following Hindenburg's death in 1934, Hitler proclaimed himself Führer of Germany and abolished democracy, espousing a radical, racially motivated revision of the world order, and soon began a massive rearmament campaign.[20] Meanwhile, France, to secure its alliance, allowed Italy a free hand in Ethiopia, which Italy desired as a colonial possession. The situation was aggravated in early 1935 when the Territory of the Saar Basin was legally reunited with Germany, and Hitler repudiated the Treaty of Versailles, accelerated his rearmament programme, and introduced conscription.[21]
European treaties
The United Kingdom, France and Italy formed the Stresa Front in April 1935 in order to contain Germany, a key step towards military globalisation; however, that June, the United Kingdom made an independent naval agreement with Germany, easing prior restrictions. The Soviet Union, concerned by Germany's goals of capturing vast areas of Eastern Europe, drafted a treaty of mutual assistance with France. Before taking effect, though, the Franco-Soviet pact was required to go through the bureaucracy of the League of Nations, which rendered it essentially toothless.[22] The United States, concerned with events in Europe and Asia, passed the Neutrality Act in August of the same year.[23]
Hitler defied the Versailles and Locarno Treaties by remilitarising the Rhineland in March 1936, encountering little opposition due to the policy of appeasement.[24] In October 1936, Germany and Italy formed the Rome–Berlin Axis. A month later, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined the following year.[25]
Asia
The Kuomintang (KMT) party in China launched a unification campaign against regional warlords and nominally unified China in the mid-1920s, but was soon embroiled in a civil war against its former Chinese Communist Party allies[26] and new regional warlords. In 1931, an increasingly militaristic Empire of Japan, which had long sought influence in China[27] as the first step of what its government saw as the country's right to rule Asia, staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria and establish the puppet state of Manchukuo.[28]
China appealed to the League of Nations to stop the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after being condemned for its incursion into Manchuria. The two nations then fought several battles, in Shanghai, Rehe and Hebei, until the Tanggu Truce was signed in 1933. Thereafter, Chinese volunteer forces continued the resistance to Japanese aggression in Manchuria, and Chahar and Suiyuan.[29] After the 1936 Xi'an Incident, the Kuomintang and communist forces agreed on a ceasefire to present a united front to oppose Japan.[30]
Pre-war events
Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935)
Main article: Second Italo-Ethiopian War
Benito Mussolini inspecting troops during the Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935
The Second Italo-Ethiopian War was a brief colonial war that began in October 1935 and ended in May 1936. The war began with the invasion of the Ethiopian Empire (also known as Abyssinia) by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Italy (Regno d'Italia), which was launched from Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.[31] The war resulted in the military occupation of Ethiopia and its annexation into the newly created colony of Italian East Africa (Africa Orientale Italiana, or AOI); in addition it exposed the weakness of the League of Nations as a force to preserve peace. Both Italy and Ethiopia were member nations, but the League did little when the former clearly violated Article X of the League's Covenant.[32] The United Kingdom and France supported imposing sanctions on Italy for the invasion, but the sanctions were not fully enforced and failed to end the Italian invasion.[33] Italy subsequently dropped its objections to Germany's goal of absorbing Austria.[34]
Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)
Main article: Spanish Civil War
The bombing of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, sparked fears abroad in Europe that the next war would be based on bombing of cities with very high civilian casualties.
When civil war broke out in Spain, Hitler and Mussolini lent military support to the Nationalist rebels, led by General Francisco Franco. Italy supported the Nationalists to a greater extent than the Nazis did: altogether Mussolini sent to Spain more than 70,000 ground troops and 6,000 aviation personnel, as well as about 720 aircraft.[35] The Soviet Union supported the existing government of the Spanish Republic. More than 30,000 foreign volunteers, known as the International Brigades, also fought against the Nationalists. Both Germany and the Soviet Union used this proxy war as an opportunity to test in combat their most advanced weapons and tactics. The Nationalists won the civil war in April 1939; Franco, now dictator, remained officially neutral during World War II but generally favoured the Axis.[36] His greatest collaboration with Germany was the sending of volunteers to fight on the Eastern Front.[37]
Japanese invasion of China (1937)
Main article: Second Sino-Japanese War
Japanese Imperial Army soldiers during the Battle of Shanghai, 1937
In July 1937, Japan captured the former Chinese imperial capital of Peking after instigating the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which culminated in the Japanese campaign to invade all of China.[38] The Soviets quickly signed a non-aggression pact with China to lend materiel support, effectively ending China's prior co-operation with Germany. From September to November, the Japanese attacked Taiyuan, engaged the Kuomintang Army around Xinkou,[39][unreliable source?] and fought Communist forces in Pingxingguan.[40][41] Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek deployed his best army to defend Shanghai, but after three months of fighting, Shanghai fell. The Japanese continued to push the Chinese forces back, capturing the capital Nanking in December 1937. After the fall of Nanking, tens or hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians and disarmed combatants were murdered by the Japanese.[42][43]
In March 1938, Nationalist Chinese forces won their first major victory at Taierzhuang, but then the city of Xuzhou was taken by the Japanese in May.[44][unreliable source?] In June 1938, Chinese forces stalled the Japanese advance by flooding the Yellow River; this manoeuvre bought time for the Chinese to prepare their defences at Wuhan, but the city was taken by October.[45] Japanese military victories did not bring about the collapse of Chinese resistance that Japan had hoped to achieve; instead, the Chinese government relocated inland to Chongqing and continued the war.[46][47]
Soviet–Japanese border conflicts
Main article: Soviet–Japanese border conflicts
Red Army artillery unit during the Battle of Lake Khasan, 1938
In the mid-to-late 1930s, Japanese forces in Manchukuo had sporadic border clashes with the Soviet Union and Mongolia. The Japanese doctrine of Hokushin-ron, which emphasised Japan's expansion northward, was favoured by the Imperial Army during this time. With the Japanese defeat at Khalkin Gol in 1939, the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War[48] and ally Nazi Germany pursuing neutrality with the Soviets, this policy would prove difficult to maintain. Japan and the Soviet Union eventually signed a Neutrality Pact in April 1941, and Japan adopted the doctrine of Nanshin-ron, promoted by the Navy, which took its focus southward, eventually leading to its war with the United States and the Western Allies.[49][50]
European occupations and agreements
Chamberlain, Daladier, Hitler, Mussolini, and Ciano pictured just before signing the Munich Agreement, 29 September 1938
In Europe, Germany and Italy were becoming more aggressive. In March 1938, Germany annexed Austria, again provoking little response from other European powers.[51] Encouraged, Hitler began pressing German claims on the Sudetenland, an area of Czechoslovakia with a predominantly ethnic German population. Soon the United Kingdom and France followed the appeasement policy of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and conceded this territory to Germany in the Munich Agreement, which was made against the wishes of the Czechoslovak government, in exchange for a promise of no further territorial demands.[52] Soon afterwards, Germany and Italy forced Czechoslovakia to cede additional territory to Hungary, and Poland annexed the Trans-Olza region of Czechoslovakia.[53]
Although all of Germany's stated demands had been satisfied by the agreement, privately Hitler was furious that British interference had prevented him from seizing all of Czechoslovakia in one operation. In subsequent speeches Hitler attacked British and Jewish "war-mongers" and in January 1939 secretly ordered a major build-up of the German navy to challenge British naval supremacy. In March 1939, Germany invaded the remainder of Czechoslovakia and subsequently split it into the German Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and a pro-German client state, the Slovak Republic.[54] Hitler also delivered an ultimatum to Lithuania on 20 March 1939, forcing the concession of the Klaipėda Region, formerly the German Memelland.[55]
German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (right) and the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, after signing the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, 23 August 1939
Greatly alarmed and with Hitler making further demands on the Free City of Danzig, the United Kingdom and France guaranteed their support for Polish independence; when Italy conquered Albania in April 1939, the same guarantee was extended to the Kingdoms of Romania and Greece.[56] Shortly after the Franco-British pledge to Poland, Germany and Italy formalised their own alliance with the Pact of Steel.[57] Hitler accused the United Kingdom and Poland of trying to "encircle" Germany and renounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and the German–Polish Non-Aggression Pact.[58]
The situation reached a general crisis in late August as German troops continued to mobilise against the Polish border. On 23 August, when tripartite negotiations about a military alliance between France, the United Kingdom and Soviet Union stalled,[59] the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Germany.[60] This pact had a secret protocol that defined German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (western Poland and Lithuania for Germany; eastern Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Bessarabia for the Soviet Union), and raised the question of continuing Polish independence.[61] The pact neutralised the possibility of Soviet opposition to a campaign against Poland and assured that Germany would not have to face the prospect of a two-front war, as it had in World War I. Immediately after that, Hitler ordered the attack to proceed on 26 August, but upon hearing that the United Kingdom had concluded a formal mutual assistance pact with Poland and that Italy would maintain neutrality, he decided to delay it.[62]
In response to British requests for direct negotiations to avoid war, Germany made demands on Poland, which only served as a pretext to worsen relations.[63] On 29 August, Hitler demanded that a Polish plenipotentiary immediately travel to Berlin to negotiate the handover of Danzig, and to allow a plebiscite in the Polish Corridor in which the German minority would vote on secession.[63] The Poles refused to comply with the German demands, and on the night of 30–31 August in a confrontational meeting with the British ambassador Nevile Henderson, Ribbentrop declared that Germany considered its claims rejected.[64]
Course of the war
For a chronological guide, see List of timelines of World War II.
See also: Diplomatic history of World War II
War breaks out in Europe (1939–1940)
Main article: European theatre of World War II
Soldiers of the German Wehrmacht tearing down the border crossing into Poland, 1 September 1939
On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland after having staged several false flag border incidents as a pretext to initiate the invasion.[65] The first German attack of the war came against the Polish defenses at Westerplatte.[66] The United Kingdom responded with an ultimatum to Germany to cease military operations, and on 3 September, after the ultimatum was ignored, Britain and France declared war on Germany,[67] followed by Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada. During the Phoney War period, the alliance provided no direct military support to Poland, outside of a cautious French probe into the Saarland.[68] The Western Allies also began a naval blockade of Germany, which aimed to damage the country's economy and the war effort.[69] Germany responded by ordering U-boat warfare against Allied merchant and warships, which would later escalate into the Battle of the Atlantic.[70]
Soldiers of the Polish Army during the defence of Poland, September 1939
On 8 September, German troops reached the suburbs of Warsaw. The Polish counter-offensive to the west halted the German advance for several days, but it was outflanked and encircled by the Wehrmacht. Remnants of the Polish army broke through to besieged Warsaw. On 17 September 1939, two days after signing a cease-fire with Japan, the Soviet Union invaded Poland[71] under the pretext that the Polish state had ostensibly ceased to exist.[72] On 27 September, the Warsaw garrison surrendered to the Germans, and the last large operational unit of the Polish Army surrendered on 6 October. Despite the military defeat, Poland never surrendered; instead, it formed the Polish government-in-exile and a clandestine state apparatus remained in occupied Poland.[73] A significant part of Polish military personnel evacuated to Romania and Latvia; many of them later fought against the Axis in other theatres of the war.[74]
Germany annexed the western and occupied the central part of Poland, and the Soviet Union annexed its eastern part; small shares of Polish territory were transferred to Lithuania and Slovakia. On 6 October, Hitler made a public peace overture to the United Kingdom and France but said that the future of Poland was to be determined exclusively by Germany and the Soviet Union. The proposal was rejected,[64] and Hitler ordered an immediate offensive against France,[75] which was postponed until the spring of 1940 due to bad weather.[76][77][78]
Finnish machine gun nest aimed at Soviet Red Army positions during the Winter War, February 1940
After the outbreak of war in Poland, Stalin threatened Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania with military invasion, forcing the three Baltic countries to sign pacts that stipulated the creation of Soviet military bases in these countries. In October 1939, significant Soviet military contingents were moved there.[79][80][81] Finland refused to sign a similar pact and rejected ceding part of its territory to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union invaded Finland in November 1939,[82] and was subsequently expelled from the League of Nations for this crime of aggression.[83] Despite overwhelming numerical superiority, Soviet military success during the Winter War was modest,[84] and the Finno-Soviet war ended in March 1940 with some Finnish concessions of territory.[85]
In June 1940, the Soviet Union occupied the entire territories of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania,[80] and the Romanian regions of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region. In August 1940, Hitler imposed the Second Vienna Award on Romania which led to the transfer of Northern Transylvania to Hungary.[86] In September 1940, Bulgaria demanded Southern Dobruja from Romania with German and Italian support, leading to the Treaty of Craiova.[87] The loss of one-third of Romania's 1939 territory caused a coup against King Carol II, turning Romania into a fascist dictatorship under Marshal Ion Antonescu with a course set firmly towards the Axis in the hopes of a German guarantee.[88] Meanwhile, German-Soviet political rapprochement and economic co-operation[89][90] gradually stalled,[91][92] and both states began preparations for war.[93]
Western Europe (1940–1941)
Main article: Western Front (World War II)
German advance into Belgium and Northern France, 10 May – 4 June 1940, swept past the Maginot Line (shown in dark red)
In April 1940, Germany invaded Denmark and Norway to protect shipments of iron ore from Sweden, which the Allies were attempting to cut off.[94] Denmark capitulated after six hours, and Norway was conquered within two months[95] despite Allied support. British discontent over the Norwegian campaign led to the resignation of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who was replaced by Winston Churchill on 10 May 1940.[96]
On the same day, Germany launched an offensive against France. To circumvent the strong Maginot Line fortifications on the Franco-German border, Germany directed its attack at the neutral nations of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.[97] The Germans carried out a flanking manoeuvre through the Ardennes region,[98] which was mistakenly perceived by Allies as an impenetrable natural barrier against armoured vehicles.[99][100] By successfully implementing new Blitzkrieg tactics, the Wehrmacht rapidly advanced to the Channel and cut off the Allied forces in Belgium, trapping the bulk of the Allied armies in a cauldron on the Franco-Belgian border near Lille. The United Kingdom was able to evacuate a significant number of Allied troops from the continent by early June, although abandoning almost all their equipment.[101]
On 10 June, Italy invaded France, declaring war on both France and the United Kingdom.[102] The Germans turned south against the weakened French army, and Paris fell to them on 14 June. Eight days later France signed an armistice with Germany; it was divided into German and Italian occupation zones,[103] and an unoccupied rump state under the Vichy Regime, which, though officially neutral, was generally aligned with Germany. France kept its fleet, which the United Kingdom attacked on 3 July in an attempt to prevent its seizure by Germany.[104]
London seen from St. Paul's Cathedral after the German Blitz, 29 December 1940
The air Battle of Britain[105] began in early July with Luftwaffe attacks on shipping and harbours.[106] The United Kingdom rejected Hitler's peace offer,[107] and the German air superiority campaign started in August but failed to defeat RAF Fighter Command, forcing the indefinite postponement of the proposed German invasion of Britain. The German strategic bombing offensive intensified with night attacks on London and other cities in the Blitz, but failed to significantly disrupt the British war effort[106] and largely ended in May 1941.[108]
Using newly captured French ports, the German Navy enjoyed success against an over-extended Royal Navy, using U-boats against British shipping in the Atlantic.[109] The British Home Fleet scored a significant victory on 27 May 1941 by sinking the German battleship Bismarck.[110]
In November 1939, the United States was taking measures to assist China and the Western Allies and amended the Neutrality Act to allow "cash and carry" purchases by the Allies.[111] In 1940, following the German capture of Paris, the size of the United States Navy was significantly increased. In September the United States further agreed to a trade of American destroyers for British bases.[112] Still, a large majority of the American public continued to oppose any direct military intervention in the conflict well into 1941.[113] In December 1940, Roosevelt accused Hitler of planning world conquest and ruled out any negotiations as useless, calling for the United States to become an "arsenal of democracy" and promoting Lend-Lease programmes of military and humanitarian aid to support the British war effort, which was later extended to the other Allies, including the Soviet Union after it was invaded by Germany.[107] The United States started strategic planning to prepare for a full-scale offensive against Germany.[114]
At the end of September 1940, the Tripartite Pact formally united Japan, Italy, and Germany as the Axis powers. The Tripartite Pact stipulated that any country, with the exception of the Soviet Union, which attacked any Axis Power would be forced to go to war against all three.[115] The Axis expanded in November 1940 when Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania joined.[116] Romania and Hungary later made major contributions to the Axis war against the Soviet Union, in Romania's case partially to recapture territory ceded to the Soviet Union.[117]
Mediterranean (1940–1941)
Main article: Mediterranean and Middle East theatre of World War II
Soldiers of the British Commonwealth forces from the Australian Army's 9th Division during the siege of Tobruk; North African campaign, September 1941
In early June 1940, the Italian Regia Aeronautica attacked and besieged Malta, a British possession. From late summer to early autumn, Italy conquered British Somaliland and made an incursion into British-held Egypt. In October, Italy attacked Greece, but the attack was repulsed with heavy Italian casualties; the campaign ended within months with minor territorial changes.[118] Germany started preparation for an invasion of the Balkans to assist Italy, to prevent the British from gaining a foothold there, which would be a potential threat for Romanian oil fields, and to strike against the British dominance of the Mediterranean.[119]
In December 1940, British Empire forces began counter-offensives against Italian forces in Egypt and Italian East Africa.[120] The offensives were highly successful; by early February 1941, Italy had lost control of eastern Libya, and large numbers of Italian troops had been taken prisoner. The Italian Navy also suffered significant defeats, with the Royal Navy putting three Italian battleships out of commission by means of a carrier attack at Taranto, and neutralising several more warships at the Battle of Cape Matapan.[121]
German Panzer III of the Afrika Korps advancing across the North African desert, April–May 1941
Italian defeats prompted Germany to deploy an expeditionary force to North Africa and at the end of March 1941, Rommel's Afrika Korps launched an offensive which drove back the Commonwealth forces.[122] In under a month, Axis forces advanced to western Egypt and besieged the port of Tobruk.[123]
By late March 1941, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite Pact; however, the Yugoslav government was overthrown two days later by pro-British nationalists. Germany responded with simultaneous invasions of both Yugoslavia and Greece, commencing on 6 April 1941; both nations were forced to surrender within the month.[124] The airborne invasion of the Greek island of Crete at the end of May completed the German conquest of the Balkans.[125] Although the Axis victory was swift, bitter and large-scale partisan warfare subsequently broke out against the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia, which continued until the end of the war.[126]
In the Middle East in May, Commonwealth forces quashed an uprising in Iraq which had been supported by German aircraft from bases within Vichy-controlled Syria.[127] Between June and July, British-led forces invaded and occupied the French possessions of Syria and Lebanon, assisted by the Free French.[128]
Axis attack on the Soviet Union (1941)
Main article: Eastern Front (World War II)
European theatre of World War II animation map, 1939–1945 – Red: Western Allies and the Soviet Union after 1941; Green: Soviet Union before 1941; Blue: Axis powers
With the situation in Europe and Asia relatively stable, Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union made preparations for war. With the Soviets wary of mounting tensions with Germany and the Japanese planning to take advantage of the European War by seizing resource-rich European possessions in Southeast Asia, the two powers signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1941.[129] By contrast, the Germans were steadily making preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union, massing forces on the Soviet border.[130]
Hitler believed that the United Kingdom's refusal to end the war was based on the hope that the United States and the Soviet Union would enter the war against Germany sooner or later.[131] On 31 July 1940, Hitler decided that the Soviet Union should be eliminated and aimed for the conquest of Ukraine, the Baltic states and Byelorussia.[132] However, other senior German officials like Ribbentrop saw an opportunity to create a Euro-Asian bloc against the British Empire by inviting the Soviet Union into the Tripartite Pact.[133] In November 1940, negotiations took place to determine if the Soviet Union would join the pact. The Soviets showed some interest but asked for concessions from Finland, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Japan that Germany considered unacceptable. On 18 December 1940, Hitler issued the directive to prepare for an invasion of the Soviet Union.[134]
German soldiers during the invasion of the Soviet Union by the Axis powers, 1941
On 22 June 1941, Germany, supported by Italy and Romania, invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, with Germany accusing the Soviets of plotting against them. They were joined shortly by Finland and Hungary.[135] The primary targets of this surprise offensive[136] were the Baltic region, Moscow and Ukraine, with the ultimate goal of ending the 1941 campaign near the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, from the Caspian to the White Seas. Hitler's objectives were to eliminate the Soviet Union as a military power, exterminate Communism, generate Lebensraum ("living space")[137] by dispossessing the native population[138] and guarantee access to the strategic resources needed to defeat Germany's remaining rivals.[139]
Although the Red Army was preparing for strategic counter-offensives before the war,[140] Operation Barbarossa forced the Soviet supreme command to adopt a strategic defence. During the summer, the Axis made significant gains into Soviet territory, inflicting immense losses in both personnel and materiel. By mid-August, however, the German Army High Command decided to suspend the offensive of a considerably depleted Army Group Centre, and to divert the 2nd Panzer Group to reinforce troops advancing towards central Ukraine and Leningrad.[141] The Kiev offensive was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in encirclement and elimination of four Soviet armies, and made possible further advance into Crimea and industrially developed Eastern Ukraine (the First Battle of Kharkov).[142]
Russian civilians leaving destroyed houses after a German bombardment during the Battle of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), 10 December 1942
The diversion of three quarters of the Axis troops and the majority of their air forces from France and the central Mediterranean to the Eastern Front[143] prompted the United Kingdom to reconsider its grand strategy.[144] In July, the UK and the Soviet Union formed a military alliance against Germany[145] and in August, the United Kingdom and the United States jointly issued the Atlantic Charter, which outlined British and American goals for the post-war world.[146] In late August the British and Soviets invaded neutral Iran to secure the Persian Corridor, Iran's oil fields, and preempt any Axis advances through Iran toward the Baku oil fields or India.[147]
By October, Axis operational objectives in Ukraine and the Baltic region were achieved, with only the sieges of Leningrad[148] and Sevastopol continuing.[149] A major offensive against Moscow was renewed; after two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather, the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops[150] were forced to suspend their offensive.[151] Large territorial gains were made by Axis forces, but their campaign had failed to achieve its main objectives: two key cities remained in Soviet hands, the Soviet capability to resist was not broken, and the Soviet Union retained a considerable part of its military potential. The blitzkrieg phase of the war in Europe had ended.[152]
By early December, freshly mobilised reserves[153] allowed the Soviets to achieve numerical parity with Axis troops.[154] This, as well as intelligence data which established that a minimal number of Soviet troops in the East would be sufficient to deter any attack by the Japanese Kwantung Army,[155] allowed the Soviets to begin a massive counter-offensive that started on 5 December all along the front and pushed German troops 100–250 kilometres (62–155 mi) west.[156]
War breaks out in the Pacific (1941)
Main article: Pacific War
Following the Japanese false flag Mukden Incident in 1931, the Japanese shelling of the American gunboat USS Panay in 1937, and the 1937–38 Nanjing Massacre, Japanese-American relations deteriorated. In 1939, the United States notified Japan that it would not be extending its trade treaty and American public opinion opposing Japanese expansionism led to a series of economic sanctions, the Export Control Acts, which banned U.S. exports of chemicals, minerals and military parts to Japan and increased economic pressure on the Japanese regime.[107][157][158] During 1939 Japan launched its first attack against Changsha, a strategically important Chinese city, but was repulsed by late September.[159] Despite several offensives by both sides, the war between China and Japan was stalemated by 1940. To increase pressure on China by blocking supply routes, and to better position Japanese forces in the event of a war with the Western powers, Japan invaded and occupied northern Indochina in September 1940.[160]
Japanese soldiers entering Hong Kong, 8 December 1941
Chinese nationalist forces launched a large-scale counter-offensive in early 1940. In August, Chinese communists launched an offensive in Central China; in retaliation, Japan instituted harsh measures in occupied areas to reduce human and material resources for the communists.[161] The continued antipathy between Chinese communist and nationalist forces culminated in armed clashes in January 1941, effectively ending their co-operation.[162] In March, the Japanese 11th army attacked the headquarters of the Chinese 19th army but was repulsed during Battle of Shanggao.[163][unreliable source?] In September, Japan attempted to take the city of Changsha again and clashed with Chinese nationalist forces.[164][unreliable source?]
German successes in Europe encouraged Japan to increase pressure on European governments in Southeast Asia. The Dutch government agreed to provide Japan with some oil supplies from the Dutch East Indies, but negotiations for additional access to their resources ended in failure in June 1941.[165] In July 1941 Japan sent troops to southern Indochina, thus threatening British and Dutch possessions in the Far East. The United States, the United Kingdom, and other Western governments reacted to this move with a freeze on Japanese assets and a total oil embargo.[166][167] At the same time, Japan was planning an invasion of the Soviet Far East, intending to capitalise off the German invasion in the west, but abandoned the operation after the sanctions.[168]
Since early 1941, the United States and Japan had been engaged in negotiations in an attempt to improve their strained relations and end the war in China. During these negotiations, Japan advanced a number of proposals which were dismissed by the Americans as inadequate.[169] At the same time the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands engaged in secret discussions for the joint defence of their territories, in the event of a Japanese attack against any of them.[170] Roosevelt reinforced the Philippines (an American protectorate scheduled for independence in 1946) and warned Japan that the United States would react to Japanese attacks against any "neighboring countries".[170]
The USS Arizona was a total loss in the Japanese surprise air attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Sunday 7 December 1941.
Frustrated at the lack of progress and feeling the pinch of the American–British–Dutch sanctions, Japan prepared for war. Emperor Hirohito, after initial hesitation about Japan's chances of victory,[171] began to favour Japan's entry into the war.[172] As a result, Prime Minister Fumimaro Konoe resigned.[173][174] Hirohito refused the recommendation to appoint Prince Naruhiko Higashikuni in his place, choosing War Minister Hideki Tojo instead.[175] On 3 November, Nagano explained in detail the plan of the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Emperor.[176] On 5 November, Hirohito approved in imperial conference the operations plan for the war.[177] On 20 November, the new government presented an interim proposal as its final offer. It called for the end of American aid to China and for lifting the embargo on the supply of oil and other resources to Japan. In exchange, Japan promised not to launch any attacks in Southeast Asia and to withdraw its forces from southern Indochina.[169] The American counter-proposal of 26 November required that Japan evacuate all of China without conditions and conclude non-aggression pacts with all Pacific powers.[178] That meant Japan was essentially forced to choose between abandoning its ambitions in China, or seizing the natural resources it needed in the Dutch East Indies by force;[179][180] the Japanese military did not consider the former an option, and many officers considered the oil embargo an unspoken declaration of war.[181]
Japan planned to seize European colonies in Asia to create a large defensive perimeter stretching into the Central Pacific. The Japanese would then be free to exploit the resources of Southeast Asia while exhausting the over-stretched Allies by fighting a defensive war.[182][183] To prevent American intervention while securing the perimeter, it was further planned to neutralise the United States Pacific Fleet and the American military presence in the Philippines from the outset.[184] On 7 December 1941 (8 December in Asian time zones), Japan attacked British and American holdings with near-simultaneous offensives against Southeast Asia and the Central Pacific.[185] These included an attack on the American fleets at Pearl Harbor and the Philippines, as well as invasions of Guam, Wake Island, Malaya,[185] Thailand, and Hong Kong.[186]
The Japanese invasion of Thailand led to Thailand's decision to ally itself with Japan and the other Japanese attacks led the United States, United Kingdom, China, Australia, and several other states to formally declare war on Japan, whereas the Soviet Union, being heavily involved in large-scale hostilities with European Axis countries, maintained its neutrality agreement with Japan.[187] Germany, followed by the other Axis states, declared war on the United States[188] in solidarity with Japan, citing as justification the American attacks on German war vessels that had been ordered by Roosevelt.[135][189]
Axis advance stalls (1942–1943)
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British PM Winston Churchill seated at the Casablanca Conference, January 1943
On 1 January 1942, the Allied Big Four[190]—the Soviet Union, China, the United Kingdom, and the United States—and 22 smaller or exiled governments issued the Declaration by United Nations, thereby affirming the Atlantic Charter,[191] and agreeing not to sign a separate peace with the Axis powers.[192]
During 1942, Allied officials debated on the appropriate grand strategy to pursue. All agreed that defeating Germany was the primary objective. The Americans favoured a straightforward, large-scale attack on Germany through France. The Soviets were also demanding a second front. The British, on the other hand, argued that military operations should target peripheral areas to wear out German strength, leading to increasing demoralisation, and bolster resistance forces. Germany itself would be subject to a heavy bombing campaign. An offensive against Germany would then be launched primarily by Allied armour without using large-scale armies.[193] Eventually, the British persuaded the Americans that a landing in France was infeasible in 1942 and they should instead focus on driving the Axis out of North Africa.[194]
At the Casablanca Conference in early 1943, the Allies reiterated the statements issued in the 1942 Declaration and demanded the unconditional surrender of their enemies. The British and Americans agreed to continue to press the initiative in the Mediterranean by invading Sicily to fully secure the Mediterranean supply routes.[195] Although the British argued for further operations in the Balkans to bring Turkey into the war, in May 1943, the Americans extracted a British commitment to limit Allied operations in the Mediterranean to an invasion of the Italian mainland and to invade France in 1944.[196]
Pacific (1942–1943)
Map of Japanese military advances through mid-1942
By the end of April 1942, Japan and its ally Thailand had almost fully conquered Burma, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, Singapore, and Rabaul, inflicting severe losses on Allied troops and taking a large number of prisoners.[197] Despite stubborn resistance by Filipino and U.S. forces, the Philippine Commonwealth was eventually captured in May 1942, forcing its government into exile.[198] On 16 April, in Burma, 7,000 British soldiers were encircled by the Japanese 33rd Division during the Battle of Yenangyaung and rescued by the Chinese 38th Division.[199] Japanese forces also achieved naval victories in the South China Sea, Java Sea, and Indian Ocean,[200] and bombed the Allied naval base at Darwin, Australia. In January 1942, the only Allied success against Japan was a Chinese victory at Changsha.[201] These easy victories over the unprepared U.S. and European opponents left Japan overconfident, as well as overextended.[202]
In early May 1942, Japan initiated operations to capture Port Moresby by amphibious assault and thus sever communications and supply lines between the United States and Australia. The planned invasion was thwarted when an Allied task force, centred on two American fleet carriers, fought Japanese naval forces to a draw in the Battle of the Coral Sea.[203] Japan's next plan, motivated by the earlier Doolittle Raid, was to seize Midway Atoll and lure American carriers into battle to be eliminated; as a diversion, Japan would also send forces to occupy the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.[204] In mid-May, Japan started the Zhejiang-Jiangxi campaign in China, with the goal of inflicting retribution on the Chinese who aided the surviving American airmen in the Doolittle Raid by destroying Chinese air bases and fighting against the Chinese 23rd and 32nd Army Groups.[205][206] In early June, Japan put its operations into action, but the Americans, having broken Japanese naval codes in late May, were fully aware of the plans and order of battle, and used this knowledge to achieve a decisive victory at Midway over the Imperial Japanese Navy.[207]
U.S. Marines during the Guadalcanal Campaign, in the Pacific theatre, 1942
With its capacity for aggressive action greatly diminished as a result of the Midway battle, Japan chose to focus on a belated attempt to capture Port Moresby by an overland campaign in the Territory of Papua.[208] The Americans planned a counter-attack against Japanese positions in the southern Solomon Islands, primarily Guadalcanal, as a first step towards capturing Rabaul, the main Japanese base in Southeast Asia.[209]
Both plans started in July, but by mid-September, the Battle for Guadalcanal took priority for the Japanese, and troops in New Guinea were ordered to withdraw from the Port Moresby area to the northern part of the island, where they faced Australian and United States troops in the Battle of Buna–Gona.[210] Guadalcanal soon became a focal point for both sides with heavy commitments of troops and ships in the battle for Guadalcanal. By the start of 1943, the Japanese were defeated on the island and withdrew their troops.[211] In Burma, Commonwealth forces mounted two operations. The first, an offensive into the Arakan region in late 1942, went disastrously, forcing a retreat back to India by May 1943.[212] The second was the insertion of irregular forces behind Japanese front-lines in February which, by the end of April, had achieved mixed results.[213]
Eastern Front (1942–1943)
Red Army soldiers on the counterattack during the Battle of Stalingrad, February 1943
Despite considerable losses, in early 1942 Germany and its allies stopped a major Soviet offensive in central and southern Russia, keeping most territorial gains they had achieved during the previous year.[214] In May, the Germans defeated Soviet offensives in the Kerch Peninsula and at Kharkov,[215] and then launched their main summer offensive against southern Russia in June 1942, to seize the oil fields of the Caucasus and occupy the Kuban steppe, while maintaining positions on the northern and central areas of the front. The Germans split Army Group South into two groups: Army Group A advanced to the lower Don River and struck south-east to the Caucasus, while Army Group B headed towards the Volga River. The Soviets decided to make their stand at Stalingrad on the Volga.[216]
By mid-November, the Germans had nearly taken Stalingrad in bitter street fighting. The Soviets began their second winter counter-offensive, starting with an encirclement of German forces at Stalingrad,[217] and an assault on the Rzhev salient near Moscow, though the latter failed disastrously.[218] By early February 1943, the German Army had taken tremendous losses; German troops at Stalingrad had been defeated,[219] and the front-line had been pushed back beyond its position before the summer offensive. In mid-February, after the Soviet push had tapered off, the Germans launched another attack on Kharkov, creating a salient in their front line around the Soviet city of Kursk.[220]
Western Europe/Atlantic and Mediterranean (1942–1943)
American 8th Air Force Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bombing raid on the Focke-Wulf factory in Germany, 9 October 1943
Exploiting poor American naval command decisions, the German navy ravaged Allied shipping off the American Atlantic coast.[221] By November 1941, Commonwealth forces had launched a counter-offensive, Operation Crusader, in North Africa, and reclaimed all the gains the Germans and Italians had made.[222] In North Africa, the Germans launched an offensive in January, pushing the British back to positions at the Gazala line by early February,[223] followed by a temporary lull in combat which Germany used to prepare for their upcoming offensives.[224] Concerns the Japanese might use bases in Vichy-held Madagascar caused the British to invade the island in early May 1942.[225] An Axis offensive in Libya forced an Allied retreat deep inside Egypt until Axis forces were stopped at El Alamein.[226] On the Continent, raids of Allied commandos on strategic targets, culminating in the disastrous Dieppe Raid,[227] demonstrated the Western Allies' inability to launch an invasion of continental Europe without much better preparation, equipment, and operational security.[228][page needed]
In August 1942, the Allies succeeded in repelling a second attack against El Alamein[229] and, at a high cost, managed to deliver desperately needed supplies to the besieged Malta.[230] A few months later, the Allies commenced an attack of their own in Egypt, dislodging the Axis forces and beginning a drive west across Libya.[231] This attack was followed up shortly after by Anglo-American landings in French North Africa, which resulted in the region joining the Allies.[232] Hitler responded to the French colony's defection by ordering the occupation of Vichy France;[232] although Vichy forces did not resist this violation of the armistice, they managed to scuttle their fleet to prevent its capture by German forces.[232][233] The Axis forces in Africa withdrew into Tunisia, which was conquered by the Allies in May 1943.[232][234]
In June 1943, the British and Americans began a strategic bombing campaign against Germany with a goal to disrupt the war economy, reduce morale, and "de-house" the civilian population.[235] The firebombing of Hamburg was among the first attacks in this campaign, inflicting significant casualties and considerable losses on infrastructure of this important industrial centre.[236]
Allies gain momentum (1943–1944)
U.S. Navy SBD-5 scout plane flying patrol over USS Washington and USS Lexington during the Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, 1943
After the Guadalcanal campaign, the Allies initiated several operations against Japan in the Pacific. In May 1943, Canadian and U.S. forces were sent to eliminate Japanese forces from the Aleutians.[237] Soon after, the United States, with support from Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Islander forces, began major ground, sea and air operations to isolate Rabaul by capturing surrounding islands, and breach the Japanese Central Pacific perimeter at the Gilbert and Marshall Islands.[238] By the end of March 1944, the Allies had completed both of these objectives and had also neutralised the major Japanese base at Truk in the Caroline Islands. In April, the Allies launched an operation to retake Western New Guinea.[239]
In the Soviet Union, both the Germans and the Soviets spent the spring and early summer of 1943 preparing for large offensives in central Russia. On 5 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge. Within a week, German forces had exhausted themselves against the Soviets' deeply echeloned and well-constructed defences,[240] and for the first time in the war, Hitler cancelled an operation before it had achieved tactical or operational success.[241] This decision was partially affected by the Western Allies' invasion of Sicily launched on 9 July, which, combined with previous Italian failures, resulted in the ousting and arrest of Mussolini later that month.[242]
Red Army troops in a counter-offensive on German positions at the Battle of Kursk, July 1943
On 12 July 1943, the Soviets launched their own counter-offensives, thereby dispelling any chance of German victory or even stalemate in the east. The Soviet victory at Kursk marked the end of German superiority,[243] giving the Soviet Union the initiative on the Eastern Front.[244][245] The Germans tried to stabilise their eastern front along the hastily fortified Panther–Wotan line, but the Soviets broke through it at Smolensk and by the Lower Dnieper Offensive.[246]
On 3 September 1943, the Western Allies invaded the Italian mainland, following Italy's armistice with the Allies and the ensuing German occupation of Italy.[247] Germany, with the help of fascists, responded to the armistice by disarming Italian forces that were in many places without superior orders, seizing military control of Italian areas,[248] and creating a series of defensive lines.[249] German special forces then rescued Mussolini, who then soon established a new client state in German-occupied Italy named the Italian Social Republic,[250] causing an Italian civil war. The Western Allies fought through several lines until reaching the main German defensive line in mid-November.[251]
German operations in the Atlantic also suffered. By May 1943, as Allied counter-measures became increasingly effective, the resulting sizeable German submarine losses forced a temporary halt of the German Atlantic naval campaign.[252] In November 1943, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met with Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo and then with Joseph Stalin in Tehran.[253] The former conference determined the post-war return of Japanese territory[254] and the military planning for the Burma campaign,[255] while the latter included agreement that the Western Allies would invade Europe in 1944 and that the Soviet Union would declare war on Japan within three months of Germany's defeat.[256]
Ruins of the Benedictine monastery, during the Battle of Monte Cassino, Italian Campaign, May 1944
From November 1943, during the seven-week Battle of Changde, the Chinese forced Japan to fight a costly war of attrition, while awaiting Allied relief.[257][258][259][unreliable source?] In January 1944, the Allies launched a series of attacks in Italy against the line at Monte Cassino and tried to outflank it with landings at Anzio.[260]
On 27 January 1944, Soviet troops launched a major offensive that expelled German forces from the Leningrad region, thereby ending the most lethal siege in history.[261] The following Soviet offensive was halted on the pre-war Estonian border by the German Army Group North aided by Estonians hoping to re-establish national independence. This delay slowed subsequent Soviet operations in the Baltic Sea region.[262] By late May 1944, the Soviets had liberated Crimea, largely expelled Axis forces from Ukraine, and made incursions into Romania, which were repulsed by the Axis troops.[263] The Allied offensives in Italy had succeeded and, at the expense of allowing several German divisions to retreat, Rome was captured on June 4.[264]
The Allies had mixed success in mainland Asia. In March 1944, the Japanese launched the first of two invasions, an operation against Allied positions in Assam, India,[265] and soon besieged Commonwealth positions at Imphal and Kohima.[266] In May 1944, British and Indian forces mounted a counter-offensive that drove Japanese troops back to Burma by July,[266] and Chinese forces that had invaded northern Burma in late 1943 besieged Japanese troops in Myitkyina.[267] The second Japanese invasion of China aimed to destroy China's main fighting forces, secure railways between Japanese-held territory and capture Allied airfields.[268] By June, the Japanese had conquered the province of Henan and begun a new attack on Changsha.[269]
Allies close in (1944)
American troops approaching Omaha Beach during the invasion of Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944
On 6 June 1944 (known as D-Day), after three years of Soviet pressure,[270] the Western Allies invaded northern France. After reassigning several Allied divisions from Italy, they also attacked southern France.[271] These landings were successful and led to the defeat of the German Army units in France. Paris was liberated on 25 August by the local resistance assisted by the Free French Forces, both led by General Charles de Gaulle,[272] and the Western Allies continued to push back German forces in western Europe during the latter part of the year. An attempt to advance into northern Germany spearheaded by a major airborne operation in the Netherlands failed.[273] After that, the Western Allies slowly pushed into Germany, but failed to cross the Rur river in a large offensive. In Italy, Allied advance also slowed due to the last major German defensive line.[274]
German SS soldiers from the Dirlewanger Brigade, tasked with suppressing the Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, August 1944
On 22 June, the Soviets launched a strategic offensive in Belarus ("Operation Bagration") that almost completely destroyed the German Army Group Centre.[275] Soon after that, another Soviet strategic offensive forced German troops from Western Ukraine and Eastern Poland. The Soviets formed the Polish Committee of National Liberation to control territory in Poland and combat the Polish Armia Krajowa; the Soviet Red Army remained in the Praga district on the other side of the Vistula and watched passively as the Germans quelled the Warsaw Uprising initiated by the Armia Krajowa.[276] The national uprising in Slovakia was also quelled by the Germans.[277] The Soviet Red Army's strategic offensive in eastern Romania cut off and destroyed the considerable German troops there and triggered a successful coup d'état in Romania and in Bulgaria, followed by those countries' shift to the Allied side.[278]
In September 1944, Soviet troops advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of German Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off.[279] By this point, the communist-led Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito, who had led an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the occupation since 1941, controlled much of the territory of Yugoslavia and engaged in delaying efforts against German forces further south. In northern Serbia, the Soviet Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on 20 October. A few days later, the Soviets launched a massive assault against German-occupied Hungary that lasted until the fall of Budapest in February 1945.[280] Unlike impressive Soviet victories in the Balkans, bitter Finnish resistance to the Soviet offensive in the Karelian Isthmus denied the Soviets occupation of Finland and led to a Soviet-Finnish armistice on relatively mild conditions,[281] although Finland was forced to fight their former German allies.[282]
General Douglas MacArthur returns to the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte, 20 October 1944
By the start of July 1944, Commonwealth forces in Southeast Asia had repelled the Japanese sieges in Assam, pushing the Japanese back to the Chindwin River[283] while the Chinese captured Myitkyina. In September 1944, Chinese forces captured Mount Song and reopened the Burma Road.[284] In China, the Japanese had more successes, having finally captured Changsha in mid-June and the city of Hengyang by early August.[285] Soon after, they invaded the province of Guangxi, winning major engagements against Chinese forces at Guilin and Liuzhou by the end of November[286] and successfully linking up their forces in China and Indochina by mid-December.[287]
In the Pacific, U.S. forces continued to press back the Japanese perimeter. In mid-June 1944, they began their offensive against the Mariana and Palau islands and decisively defeated Japanese forces in the Battle of the Philippine Sea. These defeats led to the resignation of the Japanese Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo, and provided the United States with air bases to launch intensive heavy bomber attacks on the Japanese home islands. In late October, American forces invaded the Filipino island of Leyte; soon after, Allied naval forces scored another large victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the largest naval battles in history.[288]
Axis collapse and Allied victory (1944–1945)
Yalta Conference held in February 1945, with Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin
On 16 December 1944, Germany made a last attempt on the Western Front by using most of its remaining reserves to launch a massive counter-offensive in the Ardennes and along the French-German border to split the Western Allies, encircle large portions of Western Allied troops and capture their primary supply port at Antwerp to prompt a political settlement.[289] By 16 January 1945, the offensive had been repulsed with no strategic objectives fulfilled.[289] In Italy, the Western Allies remained stalemated at the German defensive line. In mid-January 1945, the Red Army attacked in Poland, pushing from the Vistula to the Oder river in Germany, and overran East Prussia.[290] On 4 February Soviet, British, and U.S. leaders met for the Yalta Conference. They agreed on the occupation of post-war Germany, and on when the Soviet Union would join the war against Japan.[291]
In February, the Soviets entered Silesia and Pomerania, while the Western Allies entered western Germany and closed to the Rhine river. By March, the Western Allies crossed the Rhine north and south of the Ruhr, encircling the German Army Group B.[292] In early March, in an attempt to protect its last oil reserves in Hungary and to retake Budapest, Germany launched its last major offensive against Soviet troops near Lake Balaton. In two weeks, the offensive had been repulsed, the Soviets advanced to Vienna, and captured the city. In early April, Soviet troops captured Königsberg, while the Western Allies finally pushed forward in Italy and swept across western Germany capturing Hamburg and Nuremberg. American and Soviet forces met at the Elbe river on 25 April, leaving several unoccupied pockets in southern Germany and around Berlin.
Ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, 3 June 1945.
Soviet troops stormed and captured Berlin in late April.[293] In Italy, German forces surrendered on 29 April. On 30 April, the Reichstag was captured, signalling the military defeat of Nazi Germany,[294] and the Berlin garrison surrendered on 2 May.
Major changes in leadership occurred on both sides during this period. On 12 April, President Roosevelt died and was succeeded by his vice president, Harry S. Truman. Benito Mussolini was killed by Italian partisans on 28 April.[295] On 30 April, Hitler committed suicide in his headquarters, and he was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels. Total and unconditional surrender in Europe was signed on 7 and 8 May, to be effective by the end of 8 May.[296] German Army Group Centre resisted in Prague until 11 May.[297]
In the Pacific theatre, American forces accompanied by the forces of the Philippine Commonwealth advanced in the Philippines, clearing Leyte by the end of April 1945. They landed on Luzon in January 1945 and recaptured Manila in March. Fighting continued on Luzon, Mindanao, and other islands of the Philippines until the end of the war.[298] Meanwhile, the United States Army Air Forces launched a massive firebombing campaign of strategic cities in Japan in an effort to destroy Japanese war industry and civilian morale. A devastating bombing raid on Tokyo of 9–10 March was the deadliest conventional bombing raid in history.[299]
In May 1945, Australian troops landed in Borneo, overrunning the oilfields there. British, American, and Chinese forces defeated the Japanese in northern Burma in March, and the British pushed on to reach Rangoon by 3 May.[300] Chinese forces started a counterattack in the Battle of West Hunan that occurred between 6 April and 7 June 1945. American naval and amphibious forces also moved towards Japan, taking Iwo Jima by March, and Okinawa by the end of June.[301] At the same time, a naval blockade by submarines was strangling Japan's economy and drastically reducing its ability to supply overseas forces.[302][303]
Japanese foreign affairs minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signs the Japanese Instrument of Surrender on board USS Missouri, 2 September 1945.
On 11 July, Allied leaders met in Potsdam, Germany. They confirmed earlier agreements about Germany,[304] and the American, British and Chinese governments reiterated the demand for unconditional surrender of Japan, specifically stating that "the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction".[305] During this conference, the United Kingdom held its general election, and Clement Attlee replaced Churchill as Prime Minister.[306]
The call for unconditional surrender was rejected by the Japanese government, which believed it would be capable of negotiating for more favourable surrender terms.[307] In early August, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Between the two bombings, the Soviets, pursuant to the Yalta agreement, invaded Japanese-held Manchuria and quickly defeated the Kwantung Army, which was the largest Japanese fighting force.[308] These two events persuaded previously adamant Imperial Army leaders to accept surrender terms.[309] The Red Army also captured the southern part of Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands. On the night of 9–10 August 1945, Emperor Hirohito announced his decision to accept the terms demanded by the Allies in the Potsdam Declaration.[310] On 15 August, the Emperor communicated this decision to the Japanese people through a speech broadcast on the radio (Gyokuon-hōsō, literally "broadcast in the Emperor's voice").[311] On 15 August 1945, Japan surrendered, with the surrender documents finally signed at Tokyo Bay on the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945, ending the war.[312]
Aftermath
Main articles: Aftermath of World War II and Consequences of Nazism
Ruins of Warsaw in 1945, after the deliberate destruction of the city by the occupying German forces
The Allies established occupation administrations in Austria and Germany, both initially divided between western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, respectively. However, their paths soon diverged. In Germany, the western and eastern occupation zones controlled by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union officially ended in 1949, with the respective zones becoming separate countries, West Germany and East Germany.[313] In Austria, however, occupation continued until 1955, when a joint settlement between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union permitted the reunification of Austria as a neutral democratic state, officially non-aligned with any political bloc (although in practice having better relations with the Western Allies). A denazification program in Germany led to the prosecution of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg trials and the removal of ex-Nazis from power, although this policy moved towards amnesty and re-integration of ex-Nazis into West German society.[314]
Germany lost a quarter of its pre-war (1937) territory. Among the eastern territories, Silesia, Neumark and most of Pomerania were taken over by Poland,[315] and East Prussia was divided between Poland and the Soviet Union, followed by the expulsion to Germany of the nine million Germans from these provinces,[316][317] as well as three million Germans from the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. By the 1950s, one-fifth of West Germans were refugees from the east. The Soviet Union also took over the Polish provinces east of the Curzon line,[318] from which 2 million Poles were expelled;[317][319] north-east Romania,[320][321] parts of eastern Finland,[322] and the three Baltic states were annexed into the Soviet Union.[323][324]
Defendants at the Nuremberg trials, where the Allied forces prosecuted prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany for crimes against humanity
In an effort to maintain world peace,[325] the Allies formed the United Nations,[326] which officially came into existence on 24 October 1945,[327] and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 as a common standard for all member nations.[328] The great powers that were the victors of the war—France, China, the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States—became the permanent members of the UN's Security Council.[329] The five permanent members remain so to the present, although there have been two seat changes, between the Republic of China and the People's Republic of China in 1971, and between the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The alliance between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union had begun to deteriorate even before the war was over.[330]
Post-war border changes in Central Europe and creation of the Communist Eastern Bloc
Besides Germany, the rest of Europe was also divided into Western and Soviet spheres of influence.[331] Most eastern and central European countries fell into the Soviet sphere, which led to establishment of Communist-led regimes, with full or partial support of the Soviet occupation authorities. As a result, East Germany,[332] Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania[333] became Soviet satellite states. Communist Yugoslavia conducted a fully independent policy, causing tension with the Soviet Union.[334] A Communist uprising in Greece was put down with Anglo-American support and the country remained aligned with the West.[335]
Post-war division of the world was formalised by two international military alliances, the United States-led NATO and the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.[336] The long period of political tensions and military competition between them, the Cold War, would be accompanied by an unprecedented arms race and number of proxy wars throughout the world.[337]
In Asia, the United States led the occupation of Japan and administered Japan's former islands in the Western Pacific, while the Soviets annexed South Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands.[338] Korea, formerly under Japanese colonial rule, was divided and occupied by the Soviet Union in the North and the United States in the South between 1945 and 1948. Separate republics emerged on both sides of the 38th parallel in 1948, each claiming to be the legitimate government for all of Korea, which led ultimately to the Korean War.[339]
David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the Israeli Declaration of Independence at the Independence Hall, 14 May 1948
In China, nationalist and communist forces resumed the civil war in June 1946. Communist forces were victorious and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, while nationalist forces retreated to Taiwan in 1949.[340] In the Middle East, the Arab rejection of the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine and the creation of Israel marked the escalation of the Arab–Israeli conflict. While European powers attempted to retain some or all of their colonial empires, their losses of prestige and resources during the war rendered this unsuccessful, leading to decolonisation.[341][342]
The global economy suffered heavily from the war, although participating nations were affected differently. The United States emerged much richer than any other nation, leading to a baby boom, and by 1950 its gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers, and it dominated the world economy.[343] The Allied occupational authorities pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany from 1945 to 1948.[344] Due to international trade interdependencies, this policy led to an economic stagnation in Europe and delayed European recovery from the war for several years.[345][346]
At the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, the Allied nations drew up an economic framework for the post-war world. The agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), which later became part of the World Bank Group. The Bretton Woods system lasted until 1973.[347] Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the U.S Marshall Plan economic aid (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused.[348][349] The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miracle.[350] Italy also experienced an economic boom[351] and the French economy rebounded.[352] By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin,[353] and although receiving a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country,[354] it continued in relative economic decline for decades.[355] The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era,[356] having seized and transferred most of Germany's industrial plants and exacted war reparations from its satellite states.[b][357] Japan recovered much later.[358] China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952.[359]
Impact
Main article: Historiography of World War II
Casualties and war crimes
Main article: World War II casualties
Further information: List of war crimes committed during World War II
World War II deaths
Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded.[360] Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians.[361][362][363] Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation.
The Soviet Union alone lost around 27 million people during the war,[364] including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths.[365] A quarter of the total people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed.[366] Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany.[367]
An estimated 11[368] to 17 million[369] civilians died as a direct or as an indirect result of Hitler's racist policies, including mass killing of around 6 million Jews, along with Roma, homosexuals, at least 1.9 million ethnic Poles[370][371] and millions of other Slavs (including Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), and other ethnic and minority groups.[372][369] Between 1941 and 1945, more than 200,000 ethnic Serbs, along with gypsies and Jews, were persecuted and murdered by the Axis-aligned Croatian Ustaše in Yugoslavia.[373] Concurrently, Muslims and Croats were persecuted and killed by Serb nationalist Chetniks,[374] with an estimated 50,000–68,000 victims (of which 41,000 were civilians).[375] Also, more than 100,000 Poles were massacred by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Volhynia massacres, between 1943 and 1945.[376] At the same time, about 10,000–15,000 Ukrainians were killed by the Polish Home Army and other Polish units, in reprisal attacks.[377]
Bodies of Chinese civilians killed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Nanking Massacre in December 1937
In Asia and the Pacific, the number of people killed by Japanese troops remains contested. According to R.J. Rummel, the Japanese killed between 3 million and more than 10 million people, with the most probable case of almost 6,000,000 people.[378] According to the British historian M. R. D. Foot, civilian deaths are between 10 million and 20 million, whereas Chinese military casualties (killed and wounded) are estimated to be over five million.[379] Other estimates say that up to 30 million people, most of them civilians, were killed.[380][381] The most infamous Japanese atrocity was the Nanking Massacre, in which fifty to three hundred thousand Chinese civilians were raped and murdered.[382] Mitsuyoshi Himeta reported that 2.7 million casualties occurred during the Sankō Sakusen. General Yasuji Okamura implemented the policy in Heipei and Shantung.[383]
Axis forces employed biological and chemical weapons. The Imperial Japanese Army used a variety of such weapons during its invasion and occupation of China (see Unit 731)[384][385] and in early conflicts against the Soviets.[386] Both the Germans and the Japanese tested such weapons against civilians,[387] and sometimes on prisoners of war.[388]
The Soviet Union was responsible for the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers,[389] and the imprisonment or execution of hundreds of thousands of political prisoners by the NKVD secret police, along with mass civilian deportations to Siberia, in the Baltic states and eastern Poland annexed by the Red Army.[390] Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany.[391][392] The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in the hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million,[393] while figures for women raped by German soldiers in the Soviet Union go as far as ten million.[394][395]
The mass bombing of cities in Europe and Asia has often been called a war crime, although no positive or specific customary international humanitarian law with respect to aerial warfare existed before or during World War II.[396] The USAAF bombed a total of 67 Japanese cities, killing 393,000 civilians, including from the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and destroying 65% of built-up areas.[397]
Genocide, concentration camps, and slave labour
Main articles: The Holocaust, Nazi concentration camps, Extermination camp, Forced labour under German rule during World War II, Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany, Nazi human experimentation, Soviet war crimes § World War II, and Japanese war crimes
Schutzstaffel (SS) female camp guards removing prisoners' bodies from lorries and carrying them to a mass grave, inside the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, 1945
Nazi Germany, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, was responsible for murdering about 6 million Jews in what is now known as the Holocaust. They also murdered an additional 4 million others who were deemed "unworthy of life" (including the disabled and mentally ill, Soviet prisoners of war, Romani, homosexuals, Freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses) as part of a program of deliberate extermination, in effect becoming a "genocidal state".[398] Soviet POWs were kept in especially unbearable conditions, and 3.6 million Soviet POWs out of 5.7 million died in Nazi camps during the war.[399][400] In addition to concentration camps, death camps were created in Nazi Germany to exterminate people on an industrial scale. Nazi Germany extensively used forced labourers; about 12 million Europeans from German-occupied countries were abducted and used as a slave work force in German industry, agriculture and war economy.[401]
The Soviet Gulag became a de facto system of deadly camps during 1942–43, when wartime privation and hunger caused numerous deaths of inmates,[402] including foreign citizens of Poland and other countries occupied in 1939–40 by the Soviet Union, as well as Axis POWs.[403] By the end of the war, most Soviet POWs liberated from Nazi camps and many repatriated civilians were detained in special filtration camps where they were subjected to NKVD evaluation, and 226,127 were sent to the Gulag as real or perceived Nazi collaborators.[404]
Prisoner identity photograph taken by the German SS of a Polish Catholic girl who was murdered in Auschwitz.[405] Approximately 230,000 children were held prisoner and used in forced labour and Nazi medical experiments.
Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, many of which were used as labour camps, also had high death rates. The International Military Tribunal for the Far East found the death rate of Western prisoners was 27 percent (for American POWs, 37 percent),[406] seven times that of POWs under the Germans and Italians.[407] While 37,583 prisoners from the UK, 28,500 from the Netherlands, and 14,473 from the United States were released after the surrender of Japan, the number of Chinese released was only 56.[408]
At least five million Chinese civilians from northern China and Manchukuo were enslaved between 1935 and 1941 by the East Asia Development Board, or Kōain, for work in mines and war industries. After 1942, the number reached 10 million.[409] In Java, between 4 and 10 million rōmusha (Japanese: "manual labourers"), were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in Southeast Asia, and only 52,000 were repatriated to Java.[410]
Occupation
Main articles: German-occupied Europe, Resistance during World War II, Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Collaboration with Imperial Japan, and Nazi plunder
Polish civilians wearing blindfolds photographed just before their execution by German soldiers in Palmiry forest, 1940
In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichsmarks (27.8 billion U.S. dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods.[411] Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.[412]
Soviet partisans hanged by the German army. The Russian Academy of Sciences reported in 1995 that civilian victims in the Soviet Union at German hands totalled 13.7 million dead, twenty percent of the 68 million people in the occupied Soviet Union.
In the East, the intended gains of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders.[413] Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the "inferior people" of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions.[414] The Nazis killed an estimated 2.77 million ethnic Poles during the war in addition to Polish-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.[415][better source needed] Although resistance groups formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East[416] or the West[417] until late 1943.
In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples.[418] Although Japanese forces were sometimes welcomed as liberators from European domination, Japanese war crimes frequently turned local public opinion against them.[419] During Japan's initial conquest, it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m3) of oil (~550,000 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces; and by 1943, was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m3) of oil (~6.8 million tonnes), 76 percent of its 1940 output rate.[419]
Home fronts and production
Main articles: Military production during World War II and Home front during World War II
Graphs are temporarily unavailable due to technical issues.
Allies to Axis GDP ratio between 1938 and 1945
In Europe, before the outbreak of the war, the Allies had significant advantages in both population and economics. In 1938, the Western Allies (United Kingdom, France, Poland and the British Dominions) had a 30 percent larger population and a 30 percent higher gross domestic product than the European Axis powers (Germany and Italy); if colonies are included, the Allies had more than a 5:1 advantage in population and a nearly 2:1 advantage in GDP.[420] In Asia at the same time, China had roughly six times the population of Japan but only an 89 percent higher GDP; this is reduced to three times the population and only a 38 percent higher GDP if Japanese colonies are included.[420]
The United States produced about two-thirds of all the munitions used by the Allies in World War II, including warships, transports, warplanes, artillery, tanks, trucks, and ammunition.[421] Though the Allies' economic and population advantages were largely mitigated during the initial rapid blitzkrieg attacks of Germany and Japan, they became the decisive factor by 1942, after the United States and Soviet Union joined the Allies, as the war largely settled into one of attrition.[422] While the Allies' ability to out-produce the Axis is often attributed[by whom?] to the Allies having more access to natural resources, other factors, such as Germany and Japan's reluctance to employ women in the labour force,[423] Allied strategic bombing,[424] and Germany's late shift to a war economy[425] contributed significantly. Additionally, neither Germany nor Japan planned to fight a protracted war, and had not equipped themselves to do so.[426] To improve their production, Germany and Japan used millions of slave labourers;[427] Germany used about 12 million people, mostly from Eastern Europe,[401] while Japan used more than 18 million people in Far East Asia.[409][410]
Advances in technology and its application
Main article: Technology during World War II
B-29 Superfortress strategic bombers on the Boeing assembly line in Wichita, Kansas, 1944
Aircraft were used for reconnaissance, as fighters, bombers, and ground-support, and each role developed considerably. Innovations included airlift (the capability to quickly move limited high-priority supplies, equipment, and personnel);[428] and strategic bombing (the bombing of enemy industrial and population centres to destroy the enemy's ability to wage war).[429] Anti-aircraft weaponry also advanced, including defences such as radar and surface-to-air artillery. The use of the jet aircraft was pioneered and, though late introduction meant it had little impact, it led to jets becoming standard in air forces worldwide.[430]
Advances were made in nearly every aspect of naval warfare, most notably with aircraft carriers and submarines. Although aeronautical warfare had relatively little success at the start of the war, actions at Taranto, Pearl Harbor, and the Coral Sea established the carrier as the dominant capital ship (in place of the battleship).[431][432][433] In the Atlantic, escort carriers became a vital part of Allied convoys, increasing the effective protection radius and helping to close the Mid-Atlantic gap.[434] Carriers were also more economical than battleships because of the relatively low cost of aircraft[435] and their not requiring to be as heavily armoured.[436] Submarines, which had proved to be an effective weapon during the First World War,[437] were expected by all combatants to be important in the second. The British focused development on anti-submarine weaponry and tactics, such as sonar and convoys, while Germany focused on improving its offensive capability, with designs such as the Type VII submarine and wolfpack tactics.[438][better source needed] Gradually, improving Allied technologies such as the Leigh light, hedgehog, squid, and homing torpedoes proved effective against German submarines.[439]
A V-2 rocket launched from a fixed site in Peenemünde, 21 June 1943
Land warfare changed from the static front-lines of trench warfare of World War I, which had relied on improved artillery that outmatched the speed of both infantry and cavalry, to increased mobility and combined arms. The tank, which had been used predominantly for infantry support in the First World War, had evolved into the primary weapon.[440] In the late 1930s, tank design was considerably more advanced than it had been during World War I,[441] and advances continued throughout the war with increases in speed, armour and firepower.[442][443] At the start of the war, most commanders thought enemy tanks should be met by tanks with superior specifications.[444] This idea was challenged by the poor performance of the relatively light early tank guns against armour, and German doctrine of avoiding tank-versus-tank combat. This, along with Germany's use of combined arms, were among the key elements of their highly successful blitzkrieg tactics across Poland and France.[440] Many means of destroying tanks, including indirect artillery, anti-tank guns (both towed and self-propelled), mines, short-ranged infantry antitank weapons, and other tanks were used.[444] Even with large-scale mechanisation, infantry remained the backbone of all forces,[445] and throughout the war, most infantry were equipped similarly to World War I.[446] The portable machine gun spread, a notable example being the German MG 34, and various submachine guns which were suited to close combat in urban and jungle settings.[446] The assault rifle, a late war development incorporating many features of the rifle and submachine gun, became the standard post-war infantry weapon for most armed forces.[447]
Nuclear Gadget being raised to the top of the detonation "shot tower", at Alamogordo Bombing Range; Trinity nuclear test, New Mexico, July 1945
Most major belligerents attempted to solve the problems of complexity and security involved in using large codebooks for cryptography by designing ciphering machines, the most well known being the German Enigma machine.[448] Development of SIGINT (signals intelligence) and cryptanalysis enabled the countering process of decryption. Notable examples were the Allied decryption of Japanese naval codes[449] and British Ultra, a pioneering method for decoding Enigma benefiting from information given to the United Kingdom by the Polish Cipher Bureau, which had been decoding early versions of Enigma before the war.[450] Another aspect of military intelligence was the use of deception, which the Allies used to great effect, such as in operations Mincemeat and Bodyguard.[449][451]
Other technological and engineering feats achieved during, or as a result of, the war include the world's first programmable computers (Z3, Colossus, and ENIAC), guided missiles and modern rockets, the Manhattan Project's development of nuclear weapons, operations research, the development of artificial harbours and oil pipelines under the English Channel.[452] Penicillin was first developed, mass-produced and used during the war.[453]
See also
World War II portal
World portal
Lists of World War II topics
Opposition to World War II
Outline of World War II
Lists of World War II military equipment
Notes
While various other dates have been proposed as the date on which World War II began or ended, this is the time span most frequently cited.
Reparations were exacted from East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. The USSR also instituted trading arrangements deliberately designed to favour the country. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin. Historian Mark Kramer concludes: "The net outflow of resources from eastern Europe to the Soviet Union was approximately $15 billion to $20 billion in the first decade after World War II, an amount roughly equal to the total aid provided by the United States to western Europe under the Marshall Plan."
The Farm Security Administration (FSA) was a New Deal agency created in 1937 to combat rural poverty during the Great Depression in the United States. It succeeded the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937).[1]
The FSA is famous for its small but highly influential photography program, 1935–44, that portrayed the challenges of rural poverty. The photographs in the FSA/Office of War Information Photograph Collection form an extensive pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. This U.S. government photography project was headed for most of its existence by Roy Stryker, who guided the effort in a succession of government agencies: the Resettlement Administration (1935–1937), the Farm Security Administration (1937–1942), and the Office of War Information (1942–1944). The collection also includes photographs acquired from other governmental and nongovernmental sources, including the News Bureau at the Offices of Emergency Management (OEM), various branches of the military, and industrial corporations.[2]
In total, the black-and-white portion of the collection consists of about 175,000 black-and-white film negatives, encompassing both negatives that were printed for FSA-OWI use and those that were not printed at the time. Color transparencies also made by the FSA/OWI are available in a separate section of the catalog: FSA/OWI Color Photographs.[2]
The FSA stressed "rural rehabilitation" efforts to improve the lifestyle of very poor landowning farmers, and a program to purchase submarginal land owned by poor farmers and resettle them in group farms on land more suitable for efficient farming.
Reactionary critics, including the Farm Bureau, strongly opposed the FSA as an alleged experiment in collectivizing agriculture—that is, in bringing farmers together to work on large government-owned farms using modern techniques under the supervision of experts. After the Conservative coalition took control of Congress, it transformed the FSA into a program to help poor farmers buy land, and that program continues to operate in the 21st century as the Farmers Home Administration.
Arthur Rothstein photograph "Dust Bowl Cimarron County, Oklahoma" of a farmer and two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma (1936)
Dorothea Lange photograph of an Arkansas squatter of three years near Bakersfield, California (1935)
The projects that were combined in 1935 to form the Resettlement Administration (RA) started in 1933 as an assortment of programs tried out by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The RA was headed by Rexford Tugwell, an economic advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[3] However, Tugwell's goal moving 650,000 people into 100,000,000 acres (400,000 km2) of exhausted, worn-out land was unpopular among the majority in Congress.[3] This goal seemed socialistic to some and threatened to deprive powerful farm proprietors of their tenant workforce.[3] The RA was thus left with only enough resources to relocate a few thousand people from 9 million acres (36,000 km2) and build several greenbelt cities,[3] which planners admired as models for a cooperative future that never arrived.[3]
The main focus of the RA was to now build relief camps in California for migratory workers, especially refugees from the drought-stricken Dust Bowl of the Southwest.[3] This move was resisted by a large share of Californians, who did not want destitute migrants to settle in their midst.[3] The RA managed to construct 95 camps that gave migrants unaccustomed clean quarters with running water and other amenities,[3] but the 75,000 people who had the benefit of these camps were a small share of those in need and could only stay temporarily.[3] After facing enormous criticism for his poor management of the RA, Tugwell resigned in 1936.[3] On January 1, 1937,[4] with hopes of making the RA more effective, the RA was transferred to the Department of Agriculture through executive order 7530.[4]
On July 22, 1937,[5] Congress passed the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[5] This law authorized a modest credit program to assist tenant farmers to purchase land,[5] and it was the culmination of a long effort to secure legislation for their benefit.[5] Following the passage of the act, Congress passed the Farm Security Act into law. The Farm Security Act officially transformed the RA into the Farm Security Administration (FSA).[3] The FSA expanded through funds given by the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act.[3]
One of the activities performed by the RA and FSA was the buying out of small farms that were not economically viable, and the setting up of 34 subsistence homestead communities, in which groups of farmers lived together under the guidance of government experts and worked a common area. They were not allowed to purchase their farms for fear that they would fall back into inefficient practices not guided by RA and FSA experts.[6]
The Dust Bowl in the Great Plains displaced thousands of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and laborers, many of whom (known as "Okies" or "Arkies") moved on to California. The FSA operated camps for them, such as Weedpatch Camp as depicted in The Grapes of Wrath.
The RA and the FSA gave educational aid to 455,000 farm families during the period 1936-1943. In June, 1936, Roosevelt wrote: "You are right about the farmers who suffer through their own fault... I wish you would have a talk with Tugwell about what he is doing to educate this type of farmer to become self-sustaining. During the past year, his organization has made 104,000 farm families practically self-sustaining by supervision and education along practical lines. That is a pretty good record!"[7]
The FSA's primary mission was not to aid farm production or prices. Roosevelt's agricultural policy had, in fact, been to try to decrease agricultural production to increase prices. When production was discouraged, though, the tenant farmers and small holders suffered most by not being able to ship enough to market to pay rents. Many renters wanted money to buy farms, but the Agriculture Department realized there already were too many farmers, and did not have a program for farm purchases. Instead, they used education to help the poor stretch their money further. Congress, however, demanded that the FSA help tenant farmers purchase farms, and purchase loans of $191 million were made, which were eventually repaid. A much larger program was $778 million in loans (at effective rates of about 1% interest) to 950,000 tenant farmers. The goal was to make the farmer more efficient so the loans were used for new machinery, trucks, or animals, or to repay old debts. At all times, the borrower was closely advised by a government agent. Family needs were on the agenda, as the FSA set up a health insurance program and taught farm wives how to cook and raise children. Upward of a third of the amount was never repaid, as the tenants moved to much better opportunities in the cities.[8]
The FSA was also one of the authorities administering relief efforts in the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico during the Great Depression. Between 1938 and 1945, under the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, it oversaw the purchase of 590 farms with the intent of distributing land to working and middle-class Puerto Ricans.[9]
The FSA resettlement communities appear in the literature as efforts to ameliorate the wretched condition of southern sharecroppers and tenants, but those evicted to make way for the new settlers are virtually invisible in the historic record. The resettlement projects were part of larger efforts to modernize rural America. The removal of former tenants and their replacement by FSA clients in the lower Mississippi alluvial plain—the Delta—reveals core elements of New Deal modernizing policies. The key concepts that guided the FSA's tenant removals were: the definition of rural poverty as rooted in the problem of tenancy; the belief that economic success entailed particular cultural practices and social forms; and the commitment by those with political power to gain local support. These assumptions undergirded acceptance of racial segregation and the criteria used to select new settlers. Alternatives could only become visible through political or legal action—capacities sharecroppers seldom had. In succeeding decades, though, these modernizing assumptions created conditions for Delta African Americans on resettlement projects to challenge white supremacy.[10]
The documentary photography genre describes photographs that would work as a time capsule for evidence in the future or a certain method that a person can use for a frame of reference. Facts presented in a photograph can speak for themselves after the viewer gets time to analyze it. The motto of the FSA was simply, as Beaumont Newhall insists, "not to inform us, but to move us."[citation needed] Those photographers wanted the government to move and give a hand to the people, as they were completely neglected and overlooked, thus they decided to start taking photographs in a style that we today call "documentary photography." The FSA photography has been influential due to its realist point of view, and because it works as a frame of reference and an educational tool from which later generations could learn. Society has benefited and will benefit from it for more years to come, as this photography can unveil the ambiguous and question the conditions that are taking place.[11]
The RA and FSA are well known for the influence of their photography program, 1935–1944. Photographers and writers were hired to report and document the plight of poor farmers. The Information Division (ID) of the FSA was responsible for providing educational materials and press information to the public. Under Roy Stryker, the ID of the FSA adopted a goal of "introducing America to Americans." Many of the most famous Depression-era photographers were fostered by the FSA project. Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks were three of the most famous FSA alumni.[12] The FSA was also cited in Gordon Parks' autobiographical novel, A Choice of Weapons.
The FSA's photography was one of the first large-scale visual documentations of the lives of African-Americans.[13] These images were widely disseminated through the Twelve Million Black Voices collection, published in October 1941, which combined FSA photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam and text by author and poet Richard Wright.
Fifteen photographers (ordered by year of hire) would produce the bulk of work on this project. Their diverse, visual documentation elevated government's mission from the "relocation" tactics of a Resettlement Administration to strategic solutions which would depend on America recognizing rural and already poor Americans, facing death by depression and dust. FSA photographers: Arthur Rothstein (1935), Theodor Jung (1935), Ben Shahn (1935), Walker Evans (1935), Dorothea Lange (1935), Carl Mydans (1935), Russell Lee (1936), Marion Post Wolcott (1936), John Vachon (1936, photo assignments began in 1938), Jack Delano (1940), John Collier (1941), Marjory Collins (1941), Louise Rosskam (1941), Gordon Parks (1942) and Esther Bubley (1942).
With America's entry into World War II, FSA would focus on a different kind of relocation as orders were issued for internment of Japanese Americans. FSA photographers would be transferred to the Office of War Information during the last years of the war and completely disbanded at the war's end. Photographers like Howard R. Hollem, Alfred T. Palmer, Arthur Siegel and OWI's Chief of Photographers John Rous were working in OWI before FSA's reorganization there. As a result of both teams coming under one unit name, these other individuals are sometimes associated with RA-FSA's pre-war images of American life. Though collectively credited with thousands of Library of Congress images, military ordered, positive-spin assignments like these four received starting in 1942, should be separately considered from pre-war, depression triggered imagery. FSA photographers were able to take time to study local circumstances and discuss editorial approaches with each other before capturing that first image. Each one talented in her or his own right, equal credit belongs to Roy Stryker who recognized, hired and empowered that talent.
John Collier Jr.
John Collier Jr.
These 15 photographers, some shown above, all played a significant role, not only in producing images for this project, but also in molding the resulting images in the final project through conversations held between the group members. The photographers produced images that breathed a humanistic social visual catalyst of the sort found in novels, theatrical productions, and music of the time. Their images are now regarded as a "national treasure" in the United States, which is why this project is regarded as a work of art.[14]
Together with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (not a government project) and documentary prose (for example Walker Evans and James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men), the FSA photography project is most responsible for creating the image of the Depression in the United States. Many of the images appeared in popular magazines. The photographers were under instruction from Washington, DC, as to what overall impression the New Deal wanted to portray. Stryker's agenda focused on his faith in social engineering, the poor conditions among tenant cotton farmers, and the very poor conditions among migrant farm workers; above all, he was committed to social reform through New Deal intervention in people's lives. Stryker demanded photographs that "related people to the land and vice versa" because these photographs reinforced the RA's position that poverty could be controlled by "changing land practices." Though Stryker did not dictate to his photographers how they should compose the shots, he did send them lists of desirable themes, for example, "church", "court day", and "barns". Stryker sought photographs of migratory workers that would tell a story about how they lived day-to-day. He asked Dorothea Lange to emphasize cooking, sleeping, praying, and socializing.[15] RA-FSA made 250,000 images of rural poverty. Fewer than half of those images survive and are housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The library has placed all 164,000 developed negatives online.[16] From these, some 77,000 different finished photographic prints were originally made for the press, plus 644 color images, from 1600 negatives.
The RA also funded two documentary films by Pare Lorentz: The Plow That Broke the Plains, about the creation of the Dust Bowl, and The River, about the importance of the Mississippi River. The films were deemed "culturally significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
During World War II, the FSA was assigned to work under the purview of the Wartime Civil Control Administration, a subagency of the War Relocation Authority. These agencies were responsible for relocating Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast to Internment camps. The FSA controlled the agricultural part of the evacuation. Starting in March 1942 they were responsible for transferring the farms owned and operated by Japanese Americans to alternate operators. They were given the dual mandate of ensuring fair compensation for Japanese Americans, and for maintaining correct use of the agricultural land. During this period, Lawrence Hewes Jr was the regional director and in charge of these activities.[17]
After the war started and millions of factory jobs in the cities were unfilled, no need for FSA remained.[citation needed] In late 1942, Roosevelt moved the housing programs to the National Housing Agency, and in 1943, Congress greatly reduced FSA's activities. The photographic unit was subsumed by the Office of War Information for one year, then disbanded. Finally in 1946, all the social reformers had left and FSA was replaced by a new agency, the Farmers Home Administration, which had the goal of helping finance farm purchases by tenants—and especially by war veterans—with no personal oversight by experts. It became part of Lyndon Johnson's war on poverty in the 1960s, with a greatly expanded budget to facilitate loans to low-income rural families and cooperatives, injecting $4.2 billion into rural America.[18]
The Great Depression began in August 1929, when the United States economy first went into an economic recession. Although the country spent two months with declining GDP, the effects of a declining economy were not felt until the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, and a major worldwide economic downturn ensued.
Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future and a reduction in living standards for most ordinary Americans. The market crash highlighted a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits for industrial firms, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth.[19]