What Is Lower Manhattan’s Third Language?

Broadly speaking, New York City has three languages: English, Spanish, and Other. The first two are almost universally applicable, about as prevalent in the northern Bronx as in the stretches of Brooklyn and Staten Island that face the Atlantic Ocean. But the third is the most interesting, because it varies dramatically by location. In Astoria,...
An interactive map of Lower Manhattan showing the third-most common local language in each Census Tract_ with green signifying Chinese_ light blue representing French, and dark blue denoting "other Indo-European languages."

November 22

845 – 845 : The first King of all Brittany, Nominoe defeats the Frankish king Charles the Bald at the Battle of Ballon near Redon. 1794 – Strasbourg Alsace-Lorraine, prohibits circumcision & wearing of beards 1809 – Peregrine Williamson of Baltimore patents a steel pen 1842 – Mount St Helens in Washington, erupts 1919 –...
John F. Kennedy in Dallas

Demography In Action: Young and Old in Lower Manhattan

(Editor’s Note: This is part an occasional series that will seek insights about life in Lower Manhattan by looking at data available from the City’s Data2Go.NYC website. This installment focuses on statistics about age.) Demographic information about age in any residential area is broken into zones called “census tracts,” established by the federal government for...

November 21

1620 – Plymouth Colony settlers sign the Mayflower Compact 1783 – In Paris, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes, make the first untethered hot air balloon flight. 1861 – American Civil War: Confederate President Jefferson Davis appoints Judah Benjamin secretary of war. 1877 – Thomas Edison announces his invention of the phonograph, a...
Group portrait of the Piltdown skull being examined. Note the portrait of Charles Darwin on the wall. Painting by John Cooke, 1915

National Museum of the American Indian Begins Construction of imagiNATIONS Activity Center

Too often people think Manhattan began with the Dutch settlers 400 years ago and it’s rarely acknowledged there was a whole civilization here before us. So it was fitting that at the southern tip of Manhattan, former home of the Lenape Indians, the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) announced the commencement (“starting tomorrow,”...
On hand to celebrate this collaboration were John Haworth, NMAI New York senior executive, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Kevin Gover, NMAI director, Tom Finkelpearl of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and City Council member Margaret Chin

The Thames, It Is a Changin'

After nearly three decades of plans, proposals, and false starts, the West Thames pedestrian bridge broke ground on Tuesday (November 15). At the ceremony, David Emil, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC), which is largely funding the project, said, “I have been working on this for 28 years.” This was a reference to...
Officials ceremonially break ground on the West Thames Bridge. Among those digging in are LMDC president David Emil (left, in green jacket), Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer (center without helmet), BPCA president Shari Hyman (center, with red helmet), State Senator Daniel Squadron (right, without helmet), and City Council member Margaret Chin (far right).