4 September: Manhattan

On this date in 1609, Navigator Henry Hudson discovered the island of Manhattan. 10 things you might not know about Manhattan.

1. The original inhabitants of the island of Manhattan were Munsee, Lenape and Wappinger tribes. Even in those days it was a busy place. Members of the tribes were fishing for seafood and growing crops. Their movements around the island created pounded down trails, one of which eventually became Broadway.

2. The name of the island comes from a Lenape word which means “the place where we gather wood to make bows”, because there was a grove of hickory trees growing on the island which provided ideal wood for bowmaking.

3. In 1624, the Dutch established a permanent European presence in Manhattan with a trading post. Then, in 1626, according to legend, they bought the island from the Native Americans for goods valued at something like a thousand dollars in today’s Money.

4. Manhattan is 22.7 square miles (59 km²) in area, 13.4 miles long, and 2.3 miles wide at its widest point. It’s also one of the most densely populated locations in the world. In 2020 the population was 1,694,250, or 72,918 residents per square mile.

5. Manhattan has over 520 million square feet of office space. Many offices are housed in the characteristic skyscrapers, made possible by strong and deep bedrock beneath. The Skyscrapers even act like a kind of Stonehenge twice a year when the sunset aligns perfectly with the east-west street grid.

6. The layout of the streets in a grid system was established by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which called for 12 avenues running north-south and 155 streets running east-west. The Borough of Manhattan’s Main Street, however, is located on a different island, Roosevelt Island, across the East River.

7. As for the Traffic Lights, it is possible, if you drive up First Avenue at 28mph, to get a string of green traffic lights. If you’re on foot, pressing the button at a crosswalk is probably pointless – over half of them don’t do anything, because the lights have been automated since the late 1980s. The buttons are still there so you think you have some control over them.

8. It is illegal in Manhattan to put on a puppet show in your window and there was once a fine for flirting with someone on the street. You also need a license to hang out washing on a clothesline.

9. There’s a statistic which says than in Manhattan, you are ten times more likely to get bitten by a human being than by a Shark.

10. Some of the parks in Manhattan are former cemeteries. Washington Square Park is one such; in the 18th century it served as a burial ground for people who couldn’t afford private funerals.