18 Facts About East Harlem

East Harlem, known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fifth Avenue to the west, and the East and Harlem Rivers to the east and north.

East Harlem includes the area formerly known as Italian Harlem, in which the remnants of a once predominantly Italian community remain.

East Harlem has historically suffered from many social issues, such as a high crime rate, the highest jobless rate in New York City, teenage pregnancy, AIDS, drug abuse, homelessness, and an asthma rate five times the national average.

In February 2016, East Harlem was one of four neighborhoods featured in an article in The New York Times about "New Hot Neighborhoods", and the city was considering re-zoning the area.

East Harlem is part of Manhattan Community District 11, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10029 and 10035.

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The extension of cable cars up Lexington Avenue into East Harlem was stymied by the incline created by Duffy's Hill at 103rd Street, one of the steepest grades in Manhattan.

East Harlem was first populated by poor German, Irish, Scandinavian, and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, with the Jewish population standing at 90,000 around 1917.

East Harlem consisted of pockets of ethnically-sorted settlements – Italian, German, Irish, and Jewish – which were beginning to press up against each other, with the spaces still between them occupied by "gasworks, stockyards and tar and garbage dumps".

Italian community in East Harlem remained strong into the 1980s, but it has slowly diminished since then.

Until 2006, property values in East Harlem climbed along with those in the rest of New York City, leading to gentrification and changes to area demographics.

East Harlem has the highest concentration of shelters and facilities in Manhattan, with eight homeless shelters, 36 drug and alcohol treatment facilities and 37 mental health treatment facilities.

East Harlem is dominated by public housing complexes of various types, with a high concentration of older tenement buildings between these developments.

In 2019, the highest concentration of felony assaults in East Harlem was around the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, where there were 39 felony assaults.

East Harlem is served by four New York City Fire Department fire stations:.

In East Harlem, there were 108 preterm births per 1,000 live births, and 10.

East Harlem has a low population of residents who are uninsured.

Citizens of East Harlem are likely to buy food from grocery stores that have a limited supply of fruits and vegetables, which are often of poor quality and generally more expensive than the same products sold at supermarkets.

East Harlem generally has a lower rate of college-educated residents than the rest of the city as of 2018.