title: Chennai content: birds during the monsoon and winter. Over 300 species of birds have been recorded in the city and its neighbourhood by members of Madras Naturalists' Society since its inception in 1978. Guindy National Park is a protected area within the city limits. Wildlife conservation and research activities take place at Arignar Anna Zoological Park including Olive ridley sea turtle conservation. Madras Crocodile Bank Trust is a herpetology research station, located south of Chennai. It is India's leading institution for herpeto faunal conservation and the first crocodile breeding centre in Asia. The city's tree cover is estimated to be around 64.06


title: Chennai content: sq km. The most dominant tree species is the copper pod, followed by Indian beech and Neem. A total of 121 species of trees belonging to 94 genera and 42 families are found in the city. Chennai has three rivers and many lakes spread across the city. Urbanization has led to shrinkage of water bodies and wetlands. The quantity of wetlands in the city has decreased from 650 to only 27 currently. The Chennai River Restoration trust set up by the government is working on the restoration of Adyar river. Environmentalist Foundation of India is a volunteering group working towards


title: Chennai content: wildlife conservation and habitat restoration. Chennai has a tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen: Aw). The city lies on the thermal equator and is also on the coast, which prevents extreme variation in seasonal temperature. The hottest part of the year is late May to early June, known regionally as "Agni Nakshatram" ("fire star") or as "Kathiri Veyyil", with maximum temperatures around . The coolest part of the year is January, with minimum temperatures around . The lowest recorded temperature was on 11 December 1895 and 29 January 1905. The highest recorded temperature was on 31 May 2003. The average


title: Chennai content: annual rainfall is about . The city gets most of its seasonal rainfall from the north–east monsoon winds, from mid–October to mid–December. Cyclones in the Bay of Bengal sometimes hit the city. The highest annual rainfall recorded is in 2005. Prevailing winds in Chennai are usually southwesterly between April and October and north-easterly during the rest of the year. Historically, Chennai has relied on the annual rains of the monsoon season to replenish water reservoirs, as no major rivers flow through the area. Chennai has a water table at 2 metres for 60 percent of the year. The city of


title: Chennai content: Chennai is located on the east coast of India, which is also known as the Coromandel Coast. Chennai is largely dependent on NE monsoon, since 65% of rains are received in this season. Cyclones and depressions are common features during the season. Cyclones in particular are really unpredictable. They can even move towards Orissa, west Bengal, Bangladesh, and also Myanmar. The season between October and December is referred as the NE monsoon period. Floods are common during this period. In 2015 Chennai received record breaking rains since 1918, which caused massive floods. The entire east coast is vulnerable to cyclones


title: Chennai content: during the monsoon period. For example, in 2007 a major cyclone named "Cyclone Sidr" skipped Chennai and headed towards Bangladesh. The result was a failure of NE monsoon in Chennai, that particular year. Even in the past, there has been many occasions where Cyclones had a great influence in the monsoon. As of 2018, the city had a green cover of 14.9 percent, against the World Health Organization recommendation of 9 square meters of green cover per capita in cities. The city had a built-up area of 71 percent. Waterbodies cover an estimated 6 percent of the total area, and


title: Chennai content: at least 8 percent of the area has classified as open space. As of 2017, the total volume of water harvested was 339 mcft and groundwater recharge was 170 mcft. Chennai city is governed by the Greater Chennai Corporation (formerly "Corporation of Madras"), which was established in 1688. It is the oldest surviving municipal corporation in India and the second oldest surviving corporation in the world. In 2011, the jurisdiction of the Chennai Corporation was expanded from to an area of , dividing into three regions—North, South and Central, which covers 200 wards. The corporation is headed by a mayor,


title: Chennai content: an office presently occupied by Saidai Sa. Duraisamy. The Mayor and councillors of the city are elected through a popular vote by the residents. While the city limit was expanded in 2011, the revised population is yet to be officially announced. The Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) is the nodal agency responsible for planning and development of Chennai Metropolitan Area, which is spread over an area of , covering the Chennai district and parts of Tiruvallur and Kanchipuram districts. The larger suburbs are governed by town municipalities and the smaller ones are governed by town councils called panchayats. Under the


title: Chennai content: gamut of the CMDA are 5 parliamentary and 28 assembly constituencies. The CMDA has drafted an additional Master Plan that aims to develop satellite townships around the city. The city's contiguous satellite towns include Mahabalipuram in the south, Chengalpattu and Maraimalai Nagar in the southwest, and Sriperumpudur, Arakkonam, Kanchipuram and Tiruvallur to the west. Chennai, as the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu, houses the state executive and legislative headquarters primarily in the Secretariat Buildings in the Fort St George campus. The Madras High Court, is the highest judicial authority in the state, whose jurisdiction extends across Tamil Nadu


title: Chennai content: and Puducherry. Chennai has three parliamentary constituencies—Chennai North, Chennai Central and Chennai South—and elects 24 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) to the state legislature. The Greater Chennai Police is the main law enforcement agency in the city, with a jurisdiction of over catering to over 8.5 million people. It consists of 121 police stations and is headed by a commissioner of police. The Greater Chennai Police is a division of the Tamil Nadu Police, and the administrative control lies with the Tamil Nadu Home Ministry. Chennai City Traffic Police (CCTP) is responsible for the traffic management in the city.


title: Chennai content: The metropolitan suburbs are policed by the Chennai Metropolitan Police, headed by the Chennai Police Commissionerate, and the outer district areas of the CMDA are policed by the Kanchipuram and Thiruvallur police departments. In 2009, Madras Central Prison, one of the oldest prisons in India, built over of land, was demolished; the prisoners were moved to Puzhal Central Prison. Since the 19th century, when Western scholars proposed that Dravidian languages, which dominated the southern region of India, formed a different linguistic group to that of the Indo-Aryan languages that are predominant in the north of the subcontinent, the aspects of


title: Chennai content: Tamil nationalism gained prominence. This resulted in the Anti-Hindi agitations in the city and across the state. However, the post-Independence re-organisation of Indian states according to linguistic and ethnic basis has moderated Tamil nationalism, especially the demand for separation from the Indian Union. The Anti-Hindi agitations in mid-1960s made the DMK more popular and more powerful political force in the state. The agitations of the 1960s played a crucial role in the defeat of the Tamil Nadu Congress party in the 1967 elections and the continuing dominance of Dravidian parties in Tamil Nadu politics. Being the capital of the Madras


title: Chennai content: Province that covered a vast area of the Deccan region, Chennai remained the centre of politics in the southern region of India during the British colonial era. After Independence, it remained the centre of political activities of the state of Tamil Nadu. Chennai is the birthplace of the idea of the Indian National Congress, commonly known as the Congress Party. Founded by Indian and British members of the Theosophical Society movement, most notably A.O. Hume, the idea was originally conceived in a private meeting of 17 men after a Theosophical Convention held in the city in December 1884. During the


title: Chennai content: first 50 years of the Indian National Congress, the city played host to its conferences seven times in 1887, 1894, 1898, 1903, 1908, 1914 and 1927, becoming one of the strong bases for the Indian independence movement. After independence, the city hosted the Congress in 1955 in its suburb of Avadi. Chennai is also the birthplace of several regional political movements since the British era. South Indian Welfare Association, one of the earliest regional parties, was founded in 1916, which later came to be known as the Justice Party, which was the main opposition party to the Indian National Congress


title: Chennai content: in the state. In 1944, the party was renamed Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) by E. V. Ramasami (popularly known as 'Periyar'). The party was a non-political party that demanded the establishment of an independent state called Dravida Nadu. However, due to the differences between its two leaders Periyar and C. N. Annadurai, the party was split. Annadurai left the party to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). The DMK decided to enter into politics in 1956. The city's water supply and sewage treatment are managed by the Chennai MetroWater Supply and Sewage Board. Water is drawn from Red Hills Lake and


title: Chennai content: Chembarambakkam Lake, the primary water reservoirs of the city, and treated at water treatment plants located at Kilpauk, Puzhal, Chembarambakkam and supplied to the city through 27 water distribution stations. The city receives 530 million liters per day (mld) of water from Krishna River through Telugu Ganga project, 180 mld of water from the Veeranam lake project and 100 mld of water from the Minjur desalination plant, the country's largest sea water desalination plant. However, Chennai is predicted to face a huge deficit of 713 mld in 2026 as the demand is projected at 2,248 mld and supply estimated at


title: Chennai content: only 1,535 mld. The city's sewer system was designed in 1910, with some modifications in 1958. There are 714 public toilets in the city managed by the city corporation, and 2,000 more have been planned by the corporation. The corporation also owns 52 community halls across the city. The Corporation of Chennai provides civic services to the city. Garbage collection in some of the wards is contracted to Ramky Enviro Engineers Limited, a private company, while the Corporation looks after the removal and processing of solid waste in the others, with a superintendent engineer managing the channels. , 8 transfer


title: Chennai content: stations exist within the city for treating the waste. Garbage is dumped in two dump-yards in the city—One in Kodungaiyur and another in Pallikaranai, with a major portion of the latter covering the Pallikaranai marshland. In market areas, the conservancy work is done during the night. Electricity is distributed by the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board. Fire services are handled by the Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services. The city, along with the suburbs, has 33 operating fire stations. The Chennai City Region has 568 post offices, of which nearly 460 operate from rented premises. With the history of many neighbourhoods


title: Chennai content: of the city such as Mylapore, Triplicane, and Tiruvanmiyur antedating that of the city, the architecture of Chennai ranges in a wide chronology. The oldest buildings in the city dates from the 7th and 8th centuries CE, which include the Kapaleeshwarar Temple in Mylapore and the Parthasarathy Temple in Triplicane, built in the Dravidian architecture. This architecture includes various styles, such as those of the Pallavas, the Cholas, and the Vijayanagara empires. The associated "Agraharam" architecture, which consists of traditional row houses surrounding a temple, can still be seen in these areas. The heritage temples at Mamallapuram at the outskirts


title: Chennai content: of the city are some of the examples of the Pallava architecture. Chennai ranks second to Kolkata of Indian heritage buildings. With the advent of the Mugals and the British, the city saw a rise in a blend of Hindu, Islamic and Gothic revival styles, resulting in the distinct Indo-Saracenic style. The architecture for several early institutions such as banking and commerce, railways, press and education, chiefly through the colonial rule, followed the earlier directions of the Neo-Classical and the Indo-Saracenic. The Chepauk Palace in the city, designed by Paul Benfield, is said to be the first Indo-Saracenic building in


title: Chennai content: India. Since then, many of the colonial-era buildings in the city were designed in this style of architecture, which is most apparent around the Fort St. George built in 1640. Most of these were designed by English architects Robert Fellowes Chisholm and Henry Irwin. The best examples of this style include the Madras High Court (built in 1892), Southern Railway headquarters, Ripon Building, Government Museum, Senate House of the University of Madras, Amir Mahal, Bharat Insurance Building, Victoria Public Hall and the College of Engineering. The Triumph of Labour, also known as the Labour statue, at the Marina Beach is


title: Chennai content: an important landmark of Chennai. The construction of the National Art Gallery in Madras was completed in 1909. The new building, with a stunning façade, was built of pink sandstone brought from Sathyavedu, and formed part of the Madras Museum campus. It was opened, on 23 January 1909, by the Governor of Fort St. George, Sir Arthur Lawley, and called the Victoria Memorial Hall after the Queen-Empress Victoria. The residential architecture in the city was based on the bungalow or the continuous row house prototypes. Gothic revival style buildings include the Chennai Central and Chennai Egmore railway stations. The Santhome


title: Chennai content: Church, which was originally built by the Portuguese in 1523 and is believed to house the remains of the apostle St. Thomas, was rebuilt in 1893 in neo-Gothic style. By the early 20th century, the art deco too made its entry upon the city's urban landscape. From the 1930s onwards, many buildings in George Town were built in this style, including the United India building (presently housing LIC) and the Burma Shell building (presently the Chennai House), both built in the 1930s, and the Dare House, built in 1940. Other examples include the Bombay Mutual building (presently housing LIC) and


title: Chennai content: the South Indian Chamber of Commerce building. After Independence, the city witnessed a rise in the Modernism style of architecture. The completion of the LIC Building in 1959, the tallest building in the country at that time, marked the transition from lime-and-brick construction to concrete columns in the region. The presence of the weather radar at the Chennai Port, however, prohibited the construction of buildings taller than 60 m around a radius of 10 km for several decades that followed. In addition, the floor-area ratio (FAR) in the central business district is also 1.5, much less than that of smaller


title: Chennai content: cities of the country. This resulted in the city expanding horizontally, unlike other metropolitan cities where vertical growth is prominent. On the contrary, the peripheral regions, especially on the southern and south-western sides, are experiencing vertical growth with the construction of buildings up to 60 floors. A resident of Chennai is called a "Chennaite". According to 2011 census, the city had a population of 4,646,732, within the area administered by the Municipal Corporation; that had 11 lakh households, with 51% of them living in rented houses. The city's limits were expanded later in 2011 and its population reached 7,088,000 with


title: Chennai content: Chennai Municipal Corporation being renamed as Greater Chennai Corporation. Tamils form the majority of Chennai's population. English is spoken largely by white-collar workers, often mixed into Tamil. In 2001, out of the 2,937,000 migrants (33.8% of its population) in the city, 61.5% were from other parts of the state, 33.8% were from rest of India and 3.7% were from outside the country. As per the 2001 census, the number of speakers mother tongue wise are as follows, Tamil is spoken by 3,424,107 (78.8%), followed by Telugu by 419,209 (9.7%), Urdu by 180,245 (4.1%), Malayalam by 113,828 (2.6%), Hindi by 104,084


title: Chennai content: (2.4%), and Kannada by 22,250 (0.5%). Korean, Japanese, French, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, German and Spanish are some of the languages spoken by the 2,50,000 foreign expatriates residing in the city. Chennai, along with Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi, is one of the few Indian cities that are home to a diverse population of ethno-religious communities. Minorities include Telugus, Marwaris, Gujaratis, Parsis, Sindhis, Odias, Goans, Kannadigas, Anglo-Indians, Bengalis, Punjabi, and Malayalees. As per the religious census of 2011, Chennai's population was 80.7% Hindu, 9.5% Muslim, 7.7% Christian, 1.1% Jain, 0.1% Sikh, 0.1% Buddhist, <0.1% following other religions and 0.8% following no religion


title: Chennai content: or did not indicate any religious preference. In a 2013 survey titled 'Emerging trends in real estate in Asia Pacific 2014', Chennai emerged in the top 25 real estate destinations list in the Asia Pacific region. The city ranked 22nd in the list. There are about 1,240 slums in Chennai home to about 900,000 people. Per 2011 census, there are 1.1 million households in the city and the residential housing stock available is 1,150,000 – a surplus of about 50,000 houses. About 43,700 of them are kept vacant. In the suburbs of Chennai located in Tiruvallur and Kancheepuram districts, the


title: Chennai content: figures of vacant houses 56,000 and 71,000, respectively. Of the existing housing stock in the city, about 200,000 houses are not in good condition, necessitating either to rebuild or build new units. About 26,000 households live in houses without any room and another 427,000 families (with an average size of five members) live in small dwelling units with only one room. An earlier estimate shows that there is a need to generate about 420,000 units for low-income groups by 2016. , an estimated population of 11,116 (0.16 percent) were homeless. Per Supreme Court guidelines, the city needs 65 shelters for


title: Chennai content: the homeless. However, it has only 15, of which 8 are functioning and two are under renovation. As of 2017, there are more than 2.2 million households, with 40 percent of the residents without owning a house. Chennai is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The city also has one of the oldest Museum and Art Gallery in the countryGovernment Museum, Chennai and The National Art Gallery (Chennai), established in the early 18th century. The city also hosts


title: Chennai content: two art festivals annually. The "Fort Museum" inside the premises of Fort St. George is an important museum having a noteworthy collection of objects of the British era in its collection. The museum is managed by the Archaeological Survey of India and has in its possession, the first Flag of India hoisted at Fort St George after the declaration of India's Independence on 15 August 1947. Chennai is a major centre for music, art and culture in India. The city is known for its classical dance shows. In 1930, for the first time in India, Madras University introduced a course


title: Chennai content: of music, as part of the Bachelor of Arts curriculum. The "Madras Music Season", initiated by Madras Music Academy in 1927, is celebrated every year during the month of December. It features performances of traditional Carnatic music by many artists in and around the city. An arts festival called the Chennai Sangamam, which showcases not only various arts of Tamil Nadu but also from the neighbouring states, like kalari (from Kerala), which is a major attraction, is held in January every year. The Speciality of Chennai Sangamam is that the various programmes are held near or at the various famous


title: Chennai content: landmarks in the city so that everyone in the city has access to the programmes and there is no fee charged for entry for any of the programmes. "Pookolam", a form of art that uses coloured flour to create patterns and designs, comes from Kerala, but can be seen in abundance at the time of Onam. The city has a diverse theatre scene and is one of the important centres for Bharata Natyam, a classical dance form that originated in Tamil Nadu and is the oldest dance of India. An important cultural centre for Bharata Natyam is Kalakshetra, on the


title: Chennai content: beach in the south of the city. In 2012, a group of five Bharatha Natyam dancers from Chennai performed at the "India Campaign" during the 2012 Summer Olympics. Chennai has been featured in UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) list since October 2017 for its century-old musical tradition. Chennai is also home to some choirs, who during the Christmas season stage various carol performances across the city in Tamil and English. Madras is divided into four broad regions: North, Central, South and West. North Madras is primarily an industrial area. South Madras and West Madras, previously mostly residential, are fast becoming


title: Chennai content: commercial, home to a growing number of information technology firms, financial companies and call centres. The city is expanding quickly along the Old Mahabalipuram Road and the Grand Southern Trunk Road (GST Road) in the south and towards Ambattur, Koyambedu and Sriperumbdur in the west. Central Madras comprises residential elements, but is primarily home to the downtown area, and surrounding areas, the most visited by travellers to the city. The financial district is also located here. With temples, beaches and centres of historical and cultural significance, including the UNESCO Heritage Site of Mahabalipuram, Chennai is one of the most visited


title: Chennai content: cities in India. The city serves as the gateway to the southern part of India with tourists landing in the city and starting their trip to the rest of the region. Chennai was the most visited Indian city by foreign tourists in 2009 and issued the third highest number of visas on arrival in 2014. In 2011, Chennai was ranked 41st in global top 100 city destination ranking, with 3,174,500 tourists, a 14 percent increase from 2010. About 830,620 domestic tourists arrived in Chennai in March 2011. Top foreign nationals visiting the city include those from Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore,


title: Chennai content: United Kingdom, France and United States. In 2015, the city received 4,243,700 foreign tourists making it the 3rd most visited city in India after Delhi and Mumbai and 43rd most visited city in the world by foreign tourists. , the city had 21 luxury hotels in the five-star category, with over 4,500 rooms in the inventory. Chennai is the base for the Tamil film industry, known as Kollywood. Many film personalities have gone on to become politicians including C.N.Annadurai, M. Karunanidhi, M.G. Ramachandran and J. Jayalalithaa. Chennai hosts major film studios, including AVM Productions, the oldest surviving studio in India.


title: Chennai content: , there are 120 cinema screens and multiplexes. Major multiplexes include Sathyam Cinemas, Escape cinemas, Devi, Abirami complex and Mayajaal. Chennai's expansive theatre network stages many Tamil plays of many genres: political satire, slapstick comedy, history, mythology and drama. English plays are popular in the city, along with the more common Tamil-language plays. Zoo, beaches, and wildlife parks form the primary recreation areas of the city. Chennai has a total coast length of more than 19 km. Marina Beach runs for , spanning along the shoreline of the city between the deltas of Cooum and Adyar, and is the second


title: Chennai content: longest urban beach in the world. Elliot's Beach lies south of the Adyar delta. Covelong beach lies along the coromandal coast. Madras Crocodile Bank Trust is a reptile zoo located south of the city covering an area of and had over 450,000 visitors in 2007. The center has one of the world's largest collections of reptiles and has bred 14 of the 23 existing species of crocodiles and alligators. The Arignar Anna Zoological Park, one of the largest zoological parks in the world, attracts nearly 2 million visitors per year. The city boasts two popular beaches, the Marina and Elliot's.


title: Chennai content: Guindy National Park, a protected area of Tamil Nadu, has a children's park and a snake park, which gained statutory recognition as a medium zoo from the Central Zoo Authority of India in 1995. Chennai is one of the few cities in the world that accommodates a national park, the Guindy National Park, within its limits. The city has an estimated 4.5 percent of its area under green cover. This enables Chennai residents to go birding. The seven zones of the old corporation limits has about 260 parks, many of which suffer poor maintenance. The city has a per capita


title: Chennai content: park space of 0.41 sq m, which is the least among all metros in India. The eight zones in the newly added areas of the city have about 265 locations that have been identified for development of new parks. The largest among the parks is the 358-acre Tholkappia Poonga, developed to restore the fragile ecosystem of the Adyar estuary. The horticulture department-owned Semmozhi Poonga is a 20-acre botanical garden located in the downtown. Chennai houses several theme parks, namely MGM Dizzee World and Queens Land. The safety of several amusement parks has been questioned after several fatal accidents occurred. Wonderla


title: Chennai content: is planning to open an amusement park in 2017. Other important recreation centres include Madras Boat Club, which is over 140 years old, and Gymkhana Club, which is famous for its 18-hole golf courses. Built in 1867, Madras Boat Club is the second oldest surviving Indian rowing club. Chennai is home to several malls, due to its status as an IT hub. Major ones include Express Avenue (EA), Citi Centre, Abirami mega mall, Spencer Plaza, Ampa Skywalk, Phoenix Market City and Forum Vijaya Mall. Chennai is an important gold market in India contributing to 45 percent of the 800-tonne annual


title: Chennai content: national gold uptake. The city is also the base to the World Gold Council's India operations. The city's retail industry is majorly concentrated in T. Nagar which accounts for major share jewellery and clothes sold in Chennai. According to the 2012 report by property consultant Cushman & Wakefield, "Main Streets Across the World", Khader Nawaz Khan Road at Nungambakkam ranked 10th position in the list of 'Top 10 Global Highest Retail Rental Growth Markets 2012', with 36.7 percent jump in rents. Recent estimates of the economy of the entire Chennai Metropolitan Area range from $78.6 to $86 billion (PPP GDP),


title: Chennai content: ranking it from fourth- to sixth-most productive metro area of India. Chennai has a broad industrial base in the automobile, computer, technology, hardware manufacturing and healthcare sectors. , the city is India's second largest exporter of information technology (IT) and business process outsourcing (BPO) services. A major part of India's automobile industry is located in and around the city thus earning it the nickname "Detroit of India". It is known as the Cultural Capital of South India and is the third most visited city in India by international tourists according to Euromonitor. The city also serves as the location of


title: Chennai content: the Madras Stock Exchange, India's fourth stock exchange, one of four permanently recognised by SEBI, and India's third-largest by trading volume, ranked behind the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India. Industrialisation in the city dates back to the 16th century, when textile mills manufactured goods which were exported to British during its war with France. According to "Forbes" magazine, Chennai is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and is rated in the "Forbes-Top 10 Fastest Growing Cities in the World". It is ranked 4th in hosting the maximum number of "Fortune" 500 companies


title: Chennai content: of India, next only to Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. It also is home to 24 Indian companies having a net worth of more than US$1 billion. , the city has about 34,260 identified companies in its 15 zones, of which 5,196 companies have a paid-up the capital of over 50 lakh. Chennai has a diversified economic base anchored by the automobile, software services, hardware manufacturing, health care and financial services industries. According to the Confederation of Indian Industry, Chennai is estimated to grow to a US$100–billion economy, 2.5 times its present size, by the year 2025. , with 1 lakh


title: Chennai content: crore investment in the pipeline over 5 years, the city is poised for major industrial investment. Chennai is classified as a global city by GaWC, with a ranking of Beta based on the extent of global reach and financial influence. The city is base to around 40 percent of India's automobile industry and 45 percent of auto components industry. A large number of automotive companies including Royal enfield, Hyundai, Renault, Robert Bosch, Nissan Motors, Ashok Leyland, Yamaha Motor, Daimler AG, Caterpillar Inc., Komatsu Limited, BharatBenz, Ford, BMW and Mitsubishi have manufacturing plants in Chennai. The Heavy Vehicles Factory at Avadi


title: Chennai content: produces military vehicles, including India's main battle tank: "Arjun MBT". The Integral Coach Factory manufactures railway coaches and other rolling stock for Indian Railways. The Ambattur–Padi industrial zone houses many textile manufacturers, and a special economic zone (SEZ) for apparel and footwear manufacturing has been set up in the southern suburbs of the city. Chennai contributes more than 50 percent of India's leather exports. Many software and software services companies have development centres in Chennai, which contributed 14 percent of India's total software exports of 14,42,140 lakh during 2006–07, making it the second largest Indian city software exporter following Bangalore.


title: Chennai content: The Tidel Park in Chennai was billed as Asia's largest IT park when it was built. Major software companies have their offices set up here, with some of them making Chennai their largest base. Prominent financial institutions, including the World Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, ABN AMRO, Bank of America, The Royal Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, ING Group, Allianz, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Asian Development Bank, Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas Fortis, Irevna, Deutsche Bank and Citibank have back office and development centre operations in the city. Chennai is home


title: Chennai content: to the national level commercial banks Indian Bank and Indian Overseas Bank and many state level co–operative banks, finance and insurance companies. Telecom and Electronics manufacturers based in and around Chennai include Samsung, Nokia Siemens, Motorola, Lenovo, Dell, Force10, Wipro, Flextronics and Siemens among others. Chennai is currently the largest electronics hardware exporter in India, accounting for 45% of the total exports in 2010–11. Telecom giants Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer and chemicals giant Dow Chemicals have research and development facilities in Chennai. The TICEL bio–tech park at Taramani and Golden Jubilee bio–tech park at Siruseri houses biotechnology companies


title: Chennai content: and laboratories. Chennai has a stock exchange called the Madras Stock Exchange. A study conducted by the National Housing Bank on the residential price index of Indian cities showed that Chennai experienced the highest growth after the 2008–2012 global financial crisis. Medical tourism is an important part of Chennai's economy with 45 percent of total medical tourists to India making to Chennai. The Tamil film industry and the Tamil television industry are also significant parts of Chennai's economy. The city also has a permanent exhibition complex in Nandambakkam called the Chennai Trade Centre. With 385 ultra-rich living in the city,


title: Chennai content: Chennai is positioned in the sixth place among Indian cities that are home to the country's super-rich. The city is the third largest market in India for luxury cars. Chennai is one of four Indian cities connected to the rest of the world by undersea fibre-optic cables, the other three being Mumbai, Kochi, and Tuticorin. The city is the landing point of major submarine telecommunication cable networks such as SMW (connecting India with Western Europe, Middle East and Southeast Asia), i2i (connecting India with Singapore), TIC (connecting India with Singapore), and BRICS (connecting India with Brasil, Russia, China and South


title: Chennai content: Africa). The 3,175-km-long, 8-fiber-paired i2i has the world's largest design capacity of 8.4 terabits per second. , eight mobile phone service companies operate seven GSM networks including Airtel, Aircel, BSNL, Vodafone, Tata Docomo GSM, Idea, Reliance GSM and three CDMA networks including MTS, Relaince CDMA, Tata Docomo CDMA in the city. 2G Mobile internet connections are provided by all the operators and 4G, 3G mobile broadband are provided by few operators in the city. There are four land line companies providing Commercial and domestic broadband Internet services. Chennai was the first Indian city to deploy Wi-Fi internet access in a


title: Chennai content: widespread manner. , there were 9.8 million mobile phone users in Chennai. In 2010, Chennai had the fourth highest number of active Internet users in India, with 2.2 million users. As of 2018, the city topped in broadband speed among Indian cities, with a recorded download speed of 32.67 Mbit/s. Major power plants in the city include North Chennai Thermal Power Station, GMR Vasavi Diesel Power Plant, Ennore Thermal Power Station, Basin Bridge Gas Turbine Power Station, Madras Atomic Power Station and Vallur Thermal Power Project. According to the Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Corporation Limited (TANGEDCO), , the city


title: Chennai content: consumes about 20 percent of the electricity in the state of Tamil Nadu. The peak evening demand of the city is 1,500 MW which is about 50 percent of the state's peak evening demand of 3,000 megawatt. This includes 37 percent consumption by the industrial sector, 30 percent by the domestic sector, 18 percent by the agricultural sector, and 11.5 percent by the commercial sector. The peak power consumption is for four months between May and August, with the city consuming the highest during June because it is when the summer peaks. On 20 June 2013, the city consumed the


title: Chennai content: highest of 52,785 MU. , the city consumes around 3.83 crore units of power a day or 1,400 crore units annually. Hourly consumption of power in the city is about 2,000 to 3,000 MW. Availability of power in the city has become a concern in recent years due to increasing demand and slow paced addition of power plants, due to which scheduled power cuts have become increasingly common. However, this situation was eradicated by the end of 2014. , the total electricity consumption by the street lamps in the city is 27 MW, costing about per month. The 426 sq


title: Chennai content: km of the city has over 248,000 streetlights, including 88,000 in the newly expanded areas. The Reserve Bank of India ranked Chennai as third largest deposit centre and third largest credit centre nationwide as of June 2012. Prior to the advent of modern commercial banks, the banking services in the city were offered to the public by "Nattukottai Chettiars" or "Nagarathars", chiefly in and around the neighbourhood of George Town, who offered loans as well as accepted money deposits from the public, in addition to offering loans to the agricultural labourers. Even today, many of the banking offices are housed


title: Chennai content: in heritage structures belonging to the colonial era that are chiefly clustered around Rajaji road in George Town. Chennai is home to the first European-style banking system in India with the establishment of the 'Madras Bank' on 21 June 1683, almost a century before the establishment of the first commercial banks, such as the Bank of Hindustan and the General Bank of India, which were established in 1770 and 1786, respectively. Upon the recommendation of the British Finance Committee on the formation of a government bank, the Madras Bank, then known as the 'Government Bank', started functioning again from 1806.


title: Chennai content: In 1843, the bank merged with the Carnatic Bank (1788), the British Bank of Madras (1795) and the Asiatic Bank (1804) and became the Bank of Madras, which was one of the three Presidency banks of India, the other two being the Bank of Bengal and the Bank of Bombay. In 1921, the three Presidency banks merged to form the Imperial Bank of India, which later became the State Bank of India in 1955. Chennai is the headquarters of the Indian Bank, the Indian Overseas Bank and the erstwhile Bharat Overseas Bank, which merged with the Indian Overseas Bank in


title: Chennai content: 2007. The city is home to the south zonal office of the Reserve Bank of India, the country's central bank, along with its zonal training centre and Reserve Bank Staff College, one of the two colleges of the bank. The city also houses the permanent back office of the World Bank, which is one of the largest buildings owned by the bank outside its headquarters in Washington, DC. The Chennai office handles corporate financial, accounting, administrative and IT services of the bank, in addition to several value-added operations of the bank that were earlier handled only in its Washington, DC


title: Chennai content: office, including the bank's analytical work in bond valuation which is estimated to be US$100 billion. Several foreign banks have established their branches in the city. The first Sri Lankan Bank in India was established when the Bank of Ceylon opened its branch in Madras on 31 October 1995. Chennai has world-class medical facilities, including both government-run and private hospitals. The government-aided hospitals include General Hospital, Adyar Cancer Institute, TB Sanatorium, and National Institute of Siddha. The National Institute of Siddha is one of the seven apex national-level educational institutions that promote excellence in Indian system of medicine and Ayurveda.


title: Chennai content: Major hospitals in Chennai include Apollo Hospitals, Apollo Speciality Hospital, SRM Medical College Hospital and Research Centre, Chettinad Health City, MIOT Hospitals, Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Fortis Malar Hospital, Lifeline Hospitals, Vasan Healthcare, Dr Mehta Hospitals, Global Hospitals & Health City, Sankara Nethralaya and Vijaya Medical & Educational Trust. Chennai attracts about 45 percent of health tourists from abroad and 30 percent to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. The city has been termed "India's health capital". The city has more than 12,500 beds in its hospitals, including about 5,000 in multi-specialty hospitals in the private sector


title: Chennai content: and over 6,000 beds in the public sector. This works to 2.1 beds per 1,000 population against the national average of less than 1 bed per 1,000 population and the World Health Organization's norms of 3 beds per 1,000 persons, higher than any other city in the country. The city generates 4,500 tonnes of garbage every day of which 429 tonnes are plastic waste. The city has three dumpyards, one each at Perungudi, Kodungaiyur, and Pallikaranai. The corporation has planned to close these yards and create four new dumpyards at Malaipattu, Minjur, Vallur and Kuthambakkam villages, ranging in size from


title: Chennai content: to . The civic body also spends 400 crore a year on solid waste management. The Chennai International Airport is the fourth busiest in India in terms of passenger traffic behind New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It handled about 15.2 million passengers in 2013–2014; in terms of international passengers, Chennai is the third busiest airport behind Indira Gandhi International Airport, Delhi, and Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai. Chennai handles 400 flights a day, again placing it fourth among Indian airports. The city is connected to major hubs across Asia, Europe, and North America through more than 30 national and international


title: Chennai content: carriers. The existing airport is undergoing further modernisation and expansion with an addition of , while a new greenfield airport is to be constructed at an estimated cost of 2,000 crore in Sriperumbudur on of land. The new airport is said to be likely to handle cargo spillover traffic from the existing one. Chennai hosts the headquarters of the Southern Railway. The city has four main railway terminals. Chennai Central, Chennai Egmore, Chennai Beach and Tambaram. Chennai Central station, the city's largest, provides access to other major cities as well as many other smaller towns across India, whereas Chennai Egmore


title: Chennai content: provides access to destinations primarily within Tamil Nadu; however, it also handles a few inter–state trains. The Chennai suburban railway network, one of the oldest in the country, facilitates transportation within the city. It consists of four broad gauge sectors terminating at two locations in the city, namely Chennai Central and Chennai Beach. While three sectors are operated on-grade, the fourth sector is majorly an elevated corridor, which links Chennai Beach to Velachery and is interlinked with the remaining rail network. Chennai Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city and was partially commenced on 29 June 2015. To


title: Chennai content: improve the city's public transportation system and prepare the city for the future commuting needs, the Chennai Metro was planned and approved by the state cabinet during 2007 for which construction began on 2009. The Phase I of the Chennai Metro network consists of 2 lines (Blue Line and Green Line) covering a length of 45.1 kilometres (28.0 mi) consisting of 40 stations with Alandur and Chennai Central serving as interchanges. 55% of the corridors in Phase-I are underground and the rest are elevated. The first stretch of Phase-I, covering 7 stations from Koyambedu to Alandur over a distance of


title: Chennai content: , began operation on 29 June 2015. As of May 2018, covering 26 stations from Chennai Central to Alandur on the Green line and AG-DMS to Chennai International Airport on Blue line are commercially operational which brings the total operational network over 35 km. The entire phase-I is scheduled to be operational by end of 2018. In December 2016, it was announced by Chennai Metro Rail Limited (CMRL) that Phase-2 of Chennai Metro is set to be for a length of 104 km consisting of 104 stations which is subject to approval from the state and central governments. In Jun


title: Chennai content: 2018 they had 45,000 daily commuters. Chennai is one of the cities in India that is connected by the Golden Quadrilateral system of National Highways. It is connected to other Indian cities by four major National Highways (NH) that originate in the city. They are NH 4 to Mumbai (via Bangalore, Pune), NH 5 to Kolkata (linked via NH 6) (via Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar), NH 45 to Theni (via Villupuram, Tiruchirapalli, Dindigul) and NH 205 to Madanapalle (via Tirupati). Chennai is connected to other parts of the state and the Union Territory of Puducherry by state highways. The government has constructed


title: Chennai content: grade separators and flyovers at major intersections, and built Inner Ring Road and Outer Ring Road. The Gemini flyover, built in 1973 crosses over the arterial road, and eases the traffic movements towards Anna Salai and towards the Kathipara Flyover. , according to the Transport Department, there were 25.8 lakh two–wheelers and 5.6 lakh four–wheelers in the city, and the Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) bus fleet were 3,421, which was 0.1% of the total vehicular population of the city. When opened, the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT) was the largest bus station in Asia. It is the main intercity bus


title: Chennai content: station of Chennai, administered by 7 government-owned transport corporations, which operate intercity and interstate bus services. There are many private bus companies that provide similar transport services. The MTC provides an exclusive intracity bus service, consisting of 3,421 buses on 724 routes, which provides transportation to 55.2 lakh passengers daily. The Tamil Nadu State Transport Corporation operates Volvo air-conditioned services from Chennai to nearby cities like Pondicherry, Vellore, Hosur and Trichy. The other means of road transport in the city include vans, regionally known as "Maxi Cabs", auto rickshaws, on-call metered taxis and tourist taxis. Chennai outer ring road is


title: Chennai content: 62.3 km long connecting NH 45 (GST Road) at Perungalathur, NH 4 (GWT Road) at Nazarathpet, NH 205 (CTH Road) at Nemilicherry(Thiruninravur), NH 5 (GNT Road) at Nallur and TPP road at Minjur under the process by Chennai Metropolitan Area. The city is served by two major ports, Chennai Port, one of the largest artificial ports in India, and Ennore Port. The Chennai port is the largest in Bay of Bengal, with an annual cargo tonnage of 6.146 crore (2010–2011), and second largest containerise hub in India, with an annual container volume of 15.23 lakh TEUs (2010–2011). The port handles


title: Chennai content: transportation of automobiles, motorcycles and general industrial cargo. The Ennore Port with an annual cargo tonnage of 1.101 crore (2010–2011) handles cargo such as coal, ore and other bulk and rock mineral products. Royapuram fishing harbour is used by fishing boats and Kattupalli Shipyard near Ennore Port was inaugurated in January 2013. Newspaper publishing started in Chennai with the launch of a weekly, "The Madras Courier", in 1785. It was followed by the weeklies "The Madras Gazette" and "The Government Gazette" in 1795. "The Spectator", founded in 1836, was the first English newspaper in Chennai to be owned by an


title: Chennai content: Indian and became the city's first daily newspaper in 1853. The first Tamil newspaper, "Swadesamitran", was launched in 1899. The major English dailies published in Chennai are "The Hindu", "The New Indian Express", "The Deccan Chronicle" and "The Times of India" and many more. The evening dailies are, "The Trinity Mirror" and "The News Today". , "The Hindu" was the city's most read English newspaper, with a daily circulation of 267,349. The major business dailies published from the city are "The Economic Times", "The Hindu Business Line", "Business Standard", "Mint" and "The Financial Express". The major Tamil dailies include the


title: Chennai content: "Dina Thanthi", "Dinakaran", "Dina Mani", "Dina Malar", "The Hindu Tamil", "Tamil Murasu", "Makkal Kural" and "Malai Malar". "Malayala Manorama" and "Mathrubhumi" are the major Malayalam dailies while major Telugu dailies include "Eenadu", "Vaartha", "Andhra Jyothi" and "Sakshi". The one and only Hindi Newspaper published from Chennai is the "Rajasthan Patrika". The Local weekly Newspapers circulated to residents are T.Nagar Times, Pillar Times, Arcot Road Talk, Chrompet Times. Chennai's First Corporate Leisure Newspaper, "The Shopping Express". Magazines published from Chennai include "Ananda Vikatan", "Kumudam", "Kalki", "Kungumam", "Puthiya Thalaimurai","Thuglak", "Frontline" and "Sportstar" Doordarshan runs two terrestrial television channels and two satellite television


title: Chennai content: channels from its Chennai centre, which was set up in 1974. Private Tamil satellite television networks such as Sun TV, Raj TV, Zee Tamizh, Star Vijay, Jaya TV, Makkal TV, Vasanth TV, Kalaignar TV, Captain TV and PuthiyaThalaimurai TV broadcast out of Chennai. The Sun Network one of India's largest broadcasting companies is based in the city. While the cable TV service is entirely controlled by the state government, direct–to–home (DTH) is available via DD Direct Plus, Dish TV, Tata Sky, Videocon DTH, Sun direct DTH, Reliance Big TV and Digital TV. Chennai is the first city in India to


title: Chennai content: have implemented the Conditional Access System for cable television. Radio broadcasting began in 1924 by the Madras Presidency Radio Club. The radio station at the Rippon Buildings complex was founded in 1930 and was then shifted to All India Radio in 1938. The city has 4 AM and 11 FM radio stations operated by All India Radio, Anna University and Suryan FM, Radio Mirchi, BIG FM, Hello FM, Radio City, Radio One among others. Chennai ranks second among Indian metropolitan city centres with a 90.33 percent literacy rate. Chennai has a mix of public and private schools, some of which


title: Chennai content: also receive financial support from the government. The public school system is managed by the Chennai Corporation with an enrolment of 142,387 students in over 330 schools. Tamil and English are the primary medium of instruction, though some schools also use Telugu and Urdu as medium of instruction in their schools. Public schools run by the Chennai Corporation are all affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board, while private schools may be affiliated with either of the Tamil Nadu Board of Secondary Education or the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). A few schools are affiliated with the Council for


title: Chennai content: the Indian School Certificate Examinations, the National Institute of Open Schooling (NIOS) board or the Montessori system. Education in Chennai starts with two years of Kindergarten from age three onward and then follows the Indian 10+2+3 plan, ten years of school, two years of higher secondary education, and three years of undergraduate education. English is the medium of instruction in the majority of institutions for higher education. The University of Madras, founded in 1857, is one of the India's first three modern universities. Colleges for science, arts and commerce degrees are typically affiliated with the University of Madras, which has


title: Chennai content: six campuses in the city. The Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) and the College of Engineering, Guindy, Anna University are two well known centres for engineering education in the city. The Indian Army's Officers Training Academy is also headquartered in the city. Chennai has a plethora of libraries, including British Council Library, American Library, Connemara Public Library, and Anna Centenary Library. The Connemara Public Library is one of four National Depository Centres in India that receive a copy of all newspapers and books published in the country. The Anna Centenary Library is the largest library in Asia. Chennai


title: Chennai content: has two CSIR research institutions namely Central Leather Research Institute and Structural Engineering Research Centre. Chennai Book Fair, an annual book fair organised in Chennai by the Booksellers and Publishers Association of South India (BAPASI), is the largest exhibition for Tamil book publishers to display their books. The fair is typically held for about 10 days between the last week of December and the third week of January. The forty-first edition of the fair was held in 2018. Chennai also has Indian Maritime University to impart quality education in maritime management, engineering and different pre sea courses. This is the


title: Chennai content: only central university, headquartered in Chennai to impart maritime education in India. Cricket is the most popular sport in Chennai. It was introduced in 1864 with the foundation of the Madras Cricket Club. The M.A. Chidambaram Stadium established in 1916 is among the oldest cricket stadium in India. The stadium was also one of the venues of the 1987,1996 and 2011 ICC Cricket World Cups. Chemplast Cricket Ground located at the IIT Madras campus is another important venue for cricket matches. Prominent cricketers from the city include former cricket captains S. Venkataraghavan and Kris Srikkanth. A cricket fast bowling academy


title: Chennai content: called the MRF Pace Foundation, whose coaches include T. A. Sekhar and Glenn Mcgrath, is based in Chennai. Being home to the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket team Chennai Super Kings, the city hosted the finals of the IPL's 2011 and 2012 series. The city's football team Chennaiyin FC competes in the Indian Super League, the country's association football league associated with Asian Football Federation and recognized by FIFA. The club uses the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium nicknamed the Marina Arena as their home ground and are champions of the Indian Super League in 2015 and 2018. Chennai was the venue


title: Chennai content: of the 1995 South Asian Games. Chennai is home to a World Series Hockey (WSH) team, the Chennai Cheetahs. The Mayor Radhakrishnan Stadium is associated with hockey and was venue for the international hockey tournament the 2005 Men's Champions Trophy and the 2007 Men's Asia Cup. The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium is associated for hosting Football and athletic competitions, it also houses a multi–purpose indoor complex for competition in volleyball, basketball and table tennis. Water sports are played in the Velachery Aquatic Complex. Tennis sport is popularising among the city youths, Since 1997 Chennai has been host to the only ATP


title: Chennai content: World Tour event held in India, the Chennai Open which has been shifted to Pune as Maharashtra Open from 2017. Vijay Amritraj, Mahesh Bhupathi Ramesh Krishnan and Somdev Devvarman are tennis players from Chennai. Chennai is home to Chennai Slam, two-time national champion of India's top professional basketball division, the UBA Pro Basketball League. Madras Boat Club (founded in 1846) and the Royal Madras Yacht Club (founded by Sir Francis Spring in 1911) promote the sailing sports in Chennai, and organise national and international sailing events. Automobile racing in India has been closely connected with Chennai since its beginnings shortly


title: Chennai content: after independence. Motor racing events are held on a special purpose track in Irungattukottai, Sriperumbudur, which has also been the venue for several international competitions. Formula One driver Karun Chandhok was born in Chennai. Horse racing is held at the Guindy Race Course, while rowing competitions are hosted at the Madras Boat Club. The city has two 18–hole golf courses, the Cosmopolitan Club and the Gymkhana Club, both established in the late nineteenth century. The city has a rugby union team called the Chennai Cheetahs. Previous world chess champion Viswanathan Anand grew up in Chennai. Other sports persons of repute


title: Chennai content: from Chennai include table tennis players Sharath Kamal and two–time world carrom champion, Maria Irudayam. Chennai was the host of the World Chess Championship 2013 match between Viswanathan Anand and Magnus Carlsen. The consular presence in the city dates back to 1794, when William Abbott was appointed US consular agent for South India. , there were 43 foreign representations in Chennai, including consulates general, deputy high commissions and honorary consulates. The American Consulate in Chennai is one of the top adjudication posts in the world and the number one in processing employment-based visas. It was ranked among the top globally


title: Chennai content: in issuing 'L' and 'H' category visas for workers and professionals and was ranked eighth globally in terms of all category of visas being issued. The Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), which is the office of the field officers in charge of immigration and registration activities in the city, is located at Shastri Bhavan at Haddows Road. Chennai has sister city relationships with the following cities of the world: Chennai Chennai (; also known by its former name Madras or ) is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Located on the Coromandel Coast off the Bay of


title: "Environmental movement" content: crops and livestock, synthetic biology is also on the rise and environmentalists argue that these also contain risks, if these organisms were ever to end up in nature. This, as unlike with genetically modified organisms, synthetic biology even uses base pairs that do not exist in nature. Beginning in the conservation movement at the beginning of the 20th century, the contemporary environmental movement's roots can be traced back to Murray Bookchin's "Our Synthetic Environment", Paul R. Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, and Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". American environmentalists have campaigned against nuclear weapons and nuclear power in 1960s and 1970s, acid


title: Manhattan content: Manhattan Manhattan (), often referred to locally as the City, is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson, East, and Harlem rivers; several small adjacent islands; and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood now on the U.S. mainland, physically connected to the Bronx and separated from the rest of Manhattan by the Harlem River. Manhattan Island is divided


title: Manhattan content: into three informally bounded components, each aligned with its long axis: Lower, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan. Manhattan is often described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, and the borough hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world, and Manhattan is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization: the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in Manhattan,


title: Manhattan content: and the borough has been the for numerous books, films, and television shows. Manhattan is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders, which equals roughly US$ in current terms. Manhattan real estate has since become among the most expensive in the world, with the value of Manhattan Island, including real estate, estimated to exceed US$3 trillion in 2013; median residential property sale prices in Manhattan approximated US as of 2018, with Fifth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan commanding the highest retail rents in the world, at US in 2017. Manhattan traces


title: Manhattan content: its origins to a trading post founded by colonists from the Dutch Republic in 1624 on Lower Manhattan; the post was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The territory and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed "New York" after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. New York, based in present-day Manhattan, served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries


title: Manhattan content: and is a world symbol of the United States and its ideals of liberty and peace. Manhattan became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898. New York County is the United States' second-smallest county by land area (larger only than Kalawao County, Hawaii), and is also the most densely populated U.S. county. It is also one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a census-estimated 2017 population of 1,664,727 living in a land area of , or 72,918 residents per square mile (28,154/km), higher than the density of any individual U.S. city. On


title: Manhattan content: business days, the influx of commuters increases this number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile (65,600/km). Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York City's five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and is the smallest borough in terms of land area. Many districts and landmarks in Manhattan are well known, as New York City received a record 62.8 million tourists in 2017, and Manhattan hosts three of the world's 10 most-visited tourist attractions in 2013: Times Square, Central Park, and Grand Central Terminal. The borough hosts many prominent bridges, such as the Brooklyn Bridge;


title: Manhattan content: skyscrapers such as the Empire State Building; and parks, such as Central Park. Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, and the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. The City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the city's government. Numerous colleges and universities are located in Manhattan, including Columbia University, New York University, Cornell Tech, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Rockefeller University, which have


title: Manhattan content: been ranked among the top 40 in the world. The name "Manhattan" derives from the word "Manna-hata", as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht "Halve Maen" ("Half Moon"). A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "the place where we get bows" or "place for gathering the (wood to make) bows", from the Munsee dialect of the Lenape language 'manaháhtaan' (where 'manah-' means "gather", '-aht-' means "bow" and


title: Manhattan content: '-aan' is an abstract element used to form verb stems). According to a Munsee tradition recorded in the 19th century, the island was named so for a grove of hickory trees at the lower end that was considered ideal for the making of bows. Alternative folk etymologies include "island of many hills", "the island where we all became intoxicated" and simply "island", as well as a phrase descriptive of the whirlpool at Hell Gate. The area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of


title: Manhattan content: King Francis I of France – became the first documented European to visit the area that would become New York City. He entered the tidal strait now known as The Narrows and named the land around Upper New York Harbor ""New Angoulême"", in reference to the family name of King Francis I that was derived from Angoulême in France; he sailed far enough into the harbor to sight the Hudson River, which he referred to in his report to the French king as a "very big river"; and he named the "Bay of Santa Margarita" – what is now Upper


title: Manhattan content: New York Bay – after Marguerite de Navarre, the elder sister of the king. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present-day Albany. A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was


title: Manhattan content: started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam ("Nieuw Amsterdam"), in what is now Lower Manhattan. The 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. According to a letter by Pieter Janszoon Schagen, Peter Minuit and Dutch colonists acquired Manhattan on May 24, 1626, from unnamed Native American people, who are believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Lenape, in exchange for traded goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth US$24. The figure of 60 guilders comes from


title: Manhattan content: a letter by a representative of the Dutch Estates General and member of the board of the Dutch West India Company, Pieter Janszoon Schagen, to the Estates General in November 1626. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 (or 60 guilders) to US$23. "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, according to the Institute for Social History of


title: Manhattan content: Amsterdam. Based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. Historians James and Michelle Nevius revisited the issue in 2014, suggesting that using the prices of beer and brandy as monetary equivalencies, the price Minuit paid would have the purchasing power of somewhere between $2,600 and $15,600 in current dollars. According to the writer Nathaniel Benchley, Minuit conducted the transaction with Seyseys, chief of the Canarsees, who were willing to accept valuable merchandise in exchange for the island that was mostly controlled by the Weckquaesgeeks. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed


title: Manhattan content: as the last Dutch Director General of the colony. New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II. The Dutch, under Director General Stuyvesant, successfully negotiated with the English to produce 24 articles of provisional transfer, which sought to retain for the extant citizens of New Netherland their previously attained liberties (including freedom of religion) under new colonial English rulers. The Dutch Republic regained the city in August 1673, renaming it "New


title: Manhattan content: Orange". New Netherland was ultimately ceded to the English in November 1674 through the Treaty of Westminster. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British military and political center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war. The military center for the colonists was established in New Jersey. British


title: Manhattan content: occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city. From January 11, 1785, to the fall of 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals of the United States under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789, to August 12, 1790, at Federal Hall. Federal Hall was also the site where the United States Supreme Court met


title: Manhattan content: for the first time, the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, and where the Northwest Ordinance was adopted, establishing measures for adding new states to the Union. New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Alexander Hamilton's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada. By 1810, New York City, then confined to Manhattan, had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the


title: Manhattan content: United States. Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped public park in an American city. New York City played a complex role in the American Civil War. The city's strong commercial ties to the southern United States existed for many reasons, including the industrial power of the Hudson River harbor, which allowed trade


title: Manhattan content: with stops such as the West Point Foundry, one of the great manufacturing operations in the early United States; and the city's Atlantic Ocean ports, rendering New York City the American powerhouse in terms of industrial trade between the northern and southern United States. New York's growing immigrant population, which had originated largely from Germany and Ireland, began in the late 1850s to include waves of Italians and Central and Eastern European Jews flowing in en masse. Anger arose about conscription, with resentment at those who could afford to pay $300 to avoid service leading to resentment against Lincoln's war


title: Manhattan content: policies and fomenting paranoia about free Blacks taking the poor immigrants' jobs, culminating in the three-day-long New York Draft Riots of July 1863. These intense war-time riots are counted among the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history, with an estimated 119 participants and passersby massacred. The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and Manhattan became the first stop for millions seeking a new life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France. The new European


title: Manhattan content: immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city became a hotbed of revolution (including anarchists and communists among others), syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization. In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a road connection to Brooklyn, across the East River. In 1874 the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County from Westchester County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed. In 1898, when New York City consolidated with three neighboring counties to form "the City


title: Manhattan content: of Greater New York", Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York State Legislature created Bronx County, and New York County was reduced to its present boundaries. The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did additional bridges to Brooklyn. In the 1920s Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the southern United States, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included


title: Manhattan content: new skyscrapers competing for the skyline. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century. Manhattan's majority white ethnic group declined from 98.7% in 1900 to 58.3% by 1990. On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers. The disaster eventually led to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations. The period between the World Wars saw the election of reformist mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after 80 years of political dominance.


title: Manhattan content: As the city's demographics stabilized, labor unionization brought new protections and affluence to the working class, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under La Guardia. Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom, which led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, the largest being Peter Cooper


title: Manhattan content: Village-Stuyvesant Town, which opened in 1947. In 1951–1952, the United Nations relocated to a new headquarters the East Side of Manhattan. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States. In the 1970s job losses due to


title: Manhattan content: industrial restructuring caused New York City, including Manhattan, to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through the decade and into the beginning of the 1990s. The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and Manhattan reclaimed its role at the center of the worldwide financial industry. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter. The organizations Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to


title: Manhattan content: Unleash Power (ACT UP) were founded to advocate on behalf of those stricken with the disease. By the 1990s crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Murder rates that had reached 2,245 in 1990 plummeted to 537 by 2008, and the crack epidemic and its associated drug-related violence came under greater control. The outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and


title: Manhattan content: Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in Manhattan's economy. On September 11, 2001, two of four hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the original World Trade Center, and the towers subsequently collapsed. 7 World Trade Center collapsed due to fires and structural damage caused by heavy debris falling from the collapse of the Twin Towers. The other buildings within the World Trade Center complex were damaged beyond repair and soon after demolished. The collapse of the Twin Towers caused extensive damage to other


title: Manhattan content: surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 people, in addition to those on the planes. Since 2001, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored, although there has been controversy surrounding the rebuilding. Many rescue workers and residents of the area developed several life-threatening illnesses that have led to some of their subsequent deaths. A memorial at the site was opened to the public on September 11, 2011, and the museum opened in 2014. In 2014, the new One World Trade Center, at and formerly known as the Freedom Tower, became the tallest building


title: Manhattan content: in the Western Hemisphere, while other skyscrapers were under construction at the site. The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide. On October 29 and 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy caused extensive destruction in the borough, ravaging portions of Lower Manhattan with record-high storm surge from New York Harbor, severe flooding, and high winds, causing power outages for hundreds of thousands of city residents and leading to gasoline shortages and disruption of mass transit systems.


title: Manhattan content: The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the borough and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future. Around 15 percent of the borough is considered to be in flood-risk zones. On October 31, 2017, a terrorist took a rental pickup truck and deliberately drove down a bike path alongside the West Side Highway in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people and injuring a dozen others before crashing into a school bus. The borough consists of Manhattan Island,


title: Manhattan content: Marble Hill, and several small islands, including Randalls Island and Wards Island, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor. According to the United States Census Bureau, New York County has a total area of , of which is land and (32%) is water. The northern segment of Upper Manhattan represents a geographic panhandle. Manhattan Island is in area, long and wide, at its widest (near 14th Street). Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Downtown (Lower Manhattan), Midtown (Midtown Manhattan), and Uptown (Upper Manhattan), with Fifth Avenue dividing


title: Manhattan content: Manhattan's east and west sides. Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan Island from the Bronx and the mainland United States. Early in the 19th century, landfill was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street. When building the World Trade Center in 1968, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m³) of material was excavated from the site. Rather than dumping the spoil at sea or in landfills, the fill material was used to


title: Manhattan content: expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City, The result was a 700-foot (210-m) extension into the river, running six blocks or , covering , providing a riverfront esplanade and over of parks; Hudson River Park was subsequently opened in stages beginning in 1998. One neighborhood of New York County is contiguous with the U.S. mainland – Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan as an island between the Bronx and


title: Manhattan content: the remainder of Manhattan. Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from The Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland. Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times, and much of the natural variation in its topography has been evened out. In New York Harbor, there are three smaller islands: Other smaller islands, in the East River, include (from north to south): The bedrock underlying


title: Manhattan content: much of Manhattan is a mica schist known as "Manhattan schist" of the Manhattan Prong physiographic region. It is a strong, competent metamorphic rock created when Pangaea formed. It is well suited for the foundations of tall buildings. In Central Park, outcrops of Manhattan Schist occur and Rat Rock is one rather large example. Geologically, a predominant feature of the substrata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near Midtown Manhattan, dips down lower between 29th Street and Canal Street, then rises toward the surface again in Lower Manhattan. It


title: Manhattan content: has been widely believed that the depth to bedrock was the primary underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial District areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas. However, research has shown that economic factors played a bigger part in the locations of these skyscrapers. According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in Manhattan than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based upon a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near


title: Manhattan content: New York City, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures from an earthquake in the vicinity of the city. Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), or the far more recent vintages NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly"). and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park"). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands. Alphabet City comprises Avenues


title: Manhattan content: A, B, C, and D, to which its name refers. Some have simple folkloric names, such as Hell's Kitchen, alongside their more official but lesser used title (in this case, Clinton). Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, which is mixed use, are known for upscale shopping as well as residential use. Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the Bohemian subculture. Chelsea is one of several Manhattan neighborhoods with large gay populations and has become a center of both the international art industry and New York's nightlife. Washington


title: Manhattan content: Heights is a primary destination for immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Chinatown has the highest concentration of people of Chinese descent outside of Asia. Koreatown is roughly bounded by 6th and Madison Avenues, between 31st and 33rd Streets, where Hangul (한글) signage is ubiquitous. Rose Hill features a growing number of Indian restaurants and spice shops along a stretch of Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th Streets which has become known as "Curry Hill". In Manhattan, "uptown" means north (more precisely north-northeast, which is the direction the island and its street grid system are oriented) and "downtown" means south (south-southwest).


title: Manhattan content: This usage differs from that of most American cities, where "downtown" refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term "uptown" also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 72nd Street and "downtown" to the southern portion below 14th Street, with "Midtown" covering the area in between, though definitions can be rather fluid depending on the situation. Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street); street addresses


title: Manhattan content: start at Fifth Avenue and increase heading away from Fifth Avenue, at a rate of 100 per block on most streets. South of Waverly Place, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. Although the grid does start with 1st Street, just north of Houston Street (the southernmost street divided in west and east portions; pronounced HOW-stin), the grid does not fully take hold until north of 14th Street, where nearly all east-west streets are numerically identified, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island. Streets in Midtown are usually


title: Manhattan content: one-way, with the few exceptions generally being the busiest cross-town thoroughfares (14th, 23rd, 34th, and 42nd Streets, for example), which are bidirectional across the width of Manhattan Island. The rule of thumb is that odd-numbered streets run west, while even-numbered streets run east. Under the Köppen climate classification, using the isotherm, New York City features a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa"), and is thus the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization. The suburbs to the immediate north and west lie in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates ("Dfa"). The city averages 234


title: Manhattan content: days with at least some sunshine annually. The city lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone. Winters are cold and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore temper the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachians keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is ; temperatures usually drop to several times per winter, and reach several days in the coldest


title: Manhattan content: winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically warm to hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of in July. Nighttime conditions are often exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, while daytime temperatures exceed on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed . Extreme temperatures have ranged from , recorded on February 9, 1934, up to on July 9, 1936. Summer evening temperatures are elevated by the urban heat island effect, which causes heat absorbed during the


title: Manhattan content: day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as when winds are slow. Manhattan receives of precipitation annually, which is relatively evenly spread throughout the year. Average winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010 has been ; this varies considerably from year to year. At the 2010 Census, there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% since 2000. Since 2010, Manhattan's population was estimated by the Census Bureau to have increased 5.0% to 1,664,727 , representing 19.3% of New York City's population of 8,622,698 and 8.4% of New York State's population of 19,849,399. As


title: Manhattan content: of the 2017 Census estimates, the population density of New York County was around 72,918 people per square mile (28,154/km²), the highest population density of any county in the United States. In 1910, at the height of European immigration to New York, Manhattan's population density reached a peak of 101,548 people per square mile (39,208/km²). According to 2012 Census estimates, 65.2% of the population was White, 18.4% Black or African American, 1.2% American Indian and Alaska Native, 12.0% Asian, and 3.1% of two or more races. 25.8% of Manhattan's population was of Hispanic or Latino origin, of any race. Manhattan


title: Manhattan content: has the second highest percentage of non-Hispanic Whites (48%) of New York City's boroughs, after Staten Island (64%). In 2006, the New York City Department of City Planning projected that Manhattan's population would increase by 289,000 people between 2000 and 2030, an increase of 18.8% over the period. However, since then, Lower Manhattan has been experiencing a baby boom, well above the overall birth rate in Manhattan, with the area south of Canal Street witnessing 1,086 births in 2010, 12% greater than 2009 and over twice the number born in 2001. The Financial District alone has witnessed growth in its


title: Manhattan content: population to approximately 43,000 , nearly double the 23,000 recorded at the 2000 Census. The southern tip of Manhattan became the fastest growing part of New York City between 1990 and 2014. According to the 2009 American Community Survey, the average household size was 2.11, and the average family size was 3.21. Approximately 59.4% of the population over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher. Approximately 27.0% of the population is foreign-born, and 61.7% of the population over the age of 5 speak only English at home. People of Irish ancestry make up 7.8% of the population,


title: Manhattan content: while Italian Americans make up 6.8% of the population. German Americans and Russian Americans make up 7.2% and 6.2% of the population respectively. Manhattan is one of the highest-income places in the United States with a population greater than one million. , Manhattan's cost of living was the highest in the United States, but the borough also contained the country's most profound level of income inequality. Manhattan is also the United States county with the highest per capita income, being the sole county whose per capita income exceeded $100,000 in 2010. However, from 2011–2015 Census data of New York County,


title: Manhattan content: the per capita income was recorded in 2015 dollars as $64,993, with the median household income at $72,871, and poverty at 17.6%. In 2012, "The New York Times" reported that inequality was higher than in most developing countries, stating, "The wealthiest fifth of Manhattanites made more than 40 times what the lowest fifth reported, a widening gap (it was 38 times, the year before) surpassed by only a few developing countries". Manhattan is religiously diverse. In 2000, the largest religious affiliation was the Catholic Church, whose adherents constituted 564,505 persons (more than 36% of the population) and maintained 110 congregations.


title: Manhattan content: Jews comprised the second largest religious group, with 314,500 persons (20.5%) in 102 congregations. They were followed by Protestants, with 139,732 adherents (9.1%) and Muslims, with 37,078 (2.4%). Other religious affiliations including Hinduism, as well as Atheism and irreligion, composed the majority of the remainder. , 59.98% (902,267) of Manhattan residents, aged five and older, spoke only English at home, while 23.07% (347,033) spoke Spanish, 5.33% (80,240) Chinese, 2.03% (30,567) French, 0.78% (11,776) Japanese, 0.77% (11,517) Russian, 0.72% (10,788) Korean, 0.70% (10,496) German, 0.66% (9,868) Italian, 0.64% (9,555) Hebrew, and 0.48% (7,158) spoke African languages at home. In total, 40.02%


title: Manhattan content: (602,058) of Manhattan's population, aged five and older, spoke a language other than English at home. Broadway and the Theater District surrounding Times Square, Central Park, Chinatown, the Chrysler Building, Columbia University, the Empire State Building, the Flatiron Building, Fulton Center, Grand Central Terminal, Harlem, the High Line, Koreatown, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Little Italy, Madison Square Garden, Museum Mile on Fifth Avenue, the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street, New York University and the Washington Square Arch in Greenwich Village, One World Trade Center, Penn Station, the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Radio City Music Hall, Rockefeller


title: Manhattan content: Center, Stonewall Inn, Trump Tower, gateways to numerous iconic river-crossing bridges, and an emerging number of supertall skyscrapers, are all located on densely populated Manhattan Island; the Statue of Liberty rests on a pedestal on Liberty Island, an exclave of Manhattan. The borough has many energy-efficient green office buildings, such as the Hearst Tower, the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center, and the Bank of America Tower—the first skyscraper designed to attain a Platinum LEED Certification. The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From


title: Manhattan content: 1890 to 1973, the title of world's tallest building resided continually in Manhattan (with a gap between 1901 and 1908, when the title was held by Philadelphia City Hall), with nine different buildings holding the title. The New York World Building on Park Row, was the first to take the title in 1890, standing until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing high took the title in 1899. The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine


title: Manhattan content: manufacturer, stood high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice. The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at . Structures such as the Equitable Building of 1915, which rises vertically forty stories from the sidewalk, prompted the passage of the 1916 Zoning Resolution, requiring new buildings to withdraw progressively at a defined angle from the street as they rose, in order


title: Manhattan content: to preserve a view of the sky at street level. The Roaring Twenties saw a race to the sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown. At , 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in only eleven months as the headquarters of the Bank of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title. At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed


title: Manhattan content: plans to build the structure's trademark spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929. Both buildings were soon surpassed with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower reaching at the top of the building. The high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to . The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At , the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972 until they were surpassed


title: Manhattan content: by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears Tower, located in Chicago). One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere. In 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex. Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead & White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New


title: Manhattan content: York City. Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. The loss of Penn Station—called "an act of irresponsible public vandalism" by historian Lewis Mumford—led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage". The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including nearly 1,000 in New York City. In 2017, a multibillion-dollar rebuilding plan was unveiled to restore the historic grandeur of


title: Manhattan content: Penn Station, in the process of upgrading the landmark's status as a critical transportation hub. Parkland composes 17.8% of the borough, covering a total of . Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively (Fifth Avenue retains its name along the eastern border). The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The


title: Manhattan content: park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 pm, when automobile traffic is banned. While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most


title: Manhattan content: massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs. Almost 70% of Manhattan's space devoted to parks is located outside of Central Park, including 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts, and many other amenities. The African Burial Ground National Monument at Duane Street preserves a site containing the remains of over 400 Africans buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. The remains were found in 1991 during the construction of the Foley Square