Manhattan Neighborhoods

Manhattan had reached its peak population in the first decade of the twentieth century. Between 1910 and 1930 as the city's population continued to rise, Manhattan lost 500,000 residents. It was the tenement districts, which lost about 60 percent of their population. mostly to the outer boroughs, that accounted for much of the out-migration. In part this was a familiar phenomenon as the first generation or their children moved up the economic ladder. But marginally better housing also was available for the working poor in Brooklyn or the Bronx, now accessible by subway, which accelerated the outflow. In the past, a new set of immigrants would have replaced those who had left, but in the 1920s restrictive immigration laws went into effect specifically aimed at curbing the flow from Eastern and Southern Europe, the very people who were populating the tenement districts at the time. African Americans had been coming north for decades but had their own segregated ghettos. In Manhattan that meant Harlem but the black population of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn was growing rapidly in 1946. The flow from Puerto Rico was only beginning at this time and East Harlem was still largely Italian .

As the working poor moved out in the 1920s some of the tenements in fringe neighborhoods had been torn down to make way for the burgeoning white collar class in the 1920s, mostly singles and young couples. The city's middle class families increasingly also were moving to the outer boroughs where they could get bigger apartments and even a house with a yard. Manhattan was becoming the home of the very rich, the poor, the creative class and singles and young married couples.

Manhattan's population stabilized in the 1930s. Then the War brought newcomers to the city causing an acute shortage of affordable, decent housing that continued into postwar New York until white flight accelerated in the 1950s. In 1946 the city was planning a new burst of housing construction. The residents of the old Gashouse District. north of 14th Street on the East Side had been evicted and demolition was underway for the construction of Stuyvesant Town, a middle income project meant to house veterans and their families.

The Village , which was still seen as the capital of politically radical Bohemia by much of the rest of the city, actually had become increasingly middle class during the 1920s but in the immediate postwar period the Abstract Expressionists and the literary crowd that would become known later as the Beats were reinvigorating the neighborhood's creative scene.

Times Square drew throngs to the movie palaces, restaurants and Broadway theaters that lined the streets, but it was not the Disneyfied playground of present times. Forty-Second Street was already acquiring a reputation as a rowdy boulevard not safe for a respectable, unescorted woman to stroll at night.

New York City was still a major manufacturing center and port. Washington Market on the lower west side, south of the West Village where TriBeCa now stands, was the country's largest wholesale produce district. It bustled with activity through the late night and early morning hours.