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54 million visitors a year can't be wrong. New York City is number one in the world.
Manhattan is the heart of the City of New York. It is often referred to simply as "New York" to stress its primacy over the other boroughs.
Our Manhattan Hotel Listings below are arranged by the various sub-divisions of the city, permitting easy selection of accommodations in a neighborhood whose attractions are particularly appealing.
The West Side
West 14th to West 110th Streets, west meaning west of Fifth Avenue, is the main shopping and entertainment area. It includes Times Square - the Piccadilly Circus of New York - and the nearby theatrical district. Further north is Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, home of the Metropolitan and New York City Opera Companies, the New York City Ballet, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Also on the West Side are the Museum of Modern Art on 53rd Street and Carnegie Hall on Seventh Ave. at 57th. Further uptown you will learn all about dinosaurs and the stars at the Museum of Natural History at 79th.
The East Side
has the important museums, the United Nations, renowned medical centers and plush Park Avenue. A twenty odd blocks long stretch along Fifth Ave. on the Upper East Side is appropriately known as the Museum Mile. You may museum-hop from the Metropolitan between 80th and 84th, to the Guggenheim on 88th, the Jewish Museum on 92nd, the Neue Galerie on 86th, the National Academy Museum at 89th, the Cooper-Hewitt on 91st, the Museum of the City of New York at 104th and El Museo del Bario at 105th. Below the Mile but still close by are the Frick Collection at 70th, the Whitney at 74th and venerable Temple Emanu-El at 65th.
Lower Manhattan
Above 14th, streets are largely arranged in a rectangular grid pattern. Below 14th, in lower Manhattan, street patterns are irregular. It comes as a shock when 4th Street crosses 10th and 11th.
Of the various Lower Manhattan neighborhoods, the Financial District is best known throughout the world because of Wall Street, seat of the New York Stock Exchange and the World Trade Center of 9/11 fame, which is now being rebuilt. Here is where New York originated in the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. Federal Hall, on Broad Street between Wall and Pine, housed the first US Legislature and was the site of President Washington's inauguration.
At the edge of the Financial District, along the East River, is the South Street Seaport Historic District with revolutionary period homes and whaling ships and, at the end of Fulton Street, the South Street Seaport Museum.
Greenwich Village was proverbial for the bohemian lifestyle. Today, the residents are largely upper middle-class. Intellectual activity is still very much alive thanks to off-Broadway theaters and cultural events centered around the local universities.
The Lower East Side was, at one time, a largely Jewish area with flourishing Yiddish theater on Second Ave. Present day reminders of that era are the Tenement Museum and the Museum at Eldridge Street
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Battery Park City is a spectacular planned community built on filled-in land on the Hudson River. It includes extensive residential areas next to the World Financial Center, housing the New York Mercantile Exchange and numerous financial institutions: There are also the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Skyscraper Museum.
Little Italy has shrunk over the years into Mulberry Street between Broome and Canal. The big event here is the Feast of San Gennaro, an 11 day long street fair in September.
Uptown
Harlem, centered around 125th Street but extending, roughly, from 110th to 155th, was, at one time, the black capital of America. Since then other ethnic groups have moved in and the area is being revitalized by new construction and businesses.
West of Lower Harlem is Morningside Heights, home of Columbia University, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Grant's Tomb and the imposing Riverside Church.
North of 135th Street is the Hamilton Heights neighborhood. There you'll find the Hamilton Heights Historic District, the City College of New York (CCNY) and the Dance Theatre of Harlem
North of 155th Street is Washington Heights, which, during the World War II era, served as a haven for refugees from Nazi-Germany. Fittingly it was dubbed the "Fourth Reich." Since then the population has turned largely Latin-American. Near 168th Street is the vast Columbia / Presbyterian medical complex. Further north is gorgeous Fort Tryon Park with The Cloisters, a museum of medieval art. The park was constructed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, a gift from John D. Rockefeller to the city.
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