Manhattan, NY

Welcome to Manhattan

A global center of culture, finance and education, Manhattan was originally home to Lenape, Delaware and Algonquin peoples. Incorporated as the City of New Amsterdam in 1653, the nascent city was renamed New York City when the Dutch ceded control to the British in 1664.

As an economic and cultural hub, Manhattan displays a variety of impressive statement architecture in a multitude of typologies, including civic buildings like Grand Central Terminal, Gilded-Age mansions like the Carnegie Mansion and corporate headquarters like the Seagram Building. The borough is also home to Central Park, which is among the nation’s first planned urban parks. Opened in 1859 and now receiving 25 million visitors annually, the Olmsted & Vaux-designed park incorporates naturalistic landscapes, formal gardens, and architectural flourishes.

The borough also served as a center of American immigrant life in the 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly in the Lower East Side, which saw successive waves of German, Jewish, Italian, Irish and Slavic émigrés establish communities, often living in crowded tenement buildings.

Some of the many major artistic, literary and intellectual movements incubated in the borough include the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 30s, the Ashcan School, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art and the Beats. World-renowned cultural institutions in the borough include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Frick Collection and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, along with performance spaces like the Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall.