20 Facts About Spanish 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 Spanish Harlem includes the area formerly known as Italian Spanish Harlem, in which the remnants of a once predominantly Italian community remain.

East Spanish 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 Spanish 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 Spanish 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 Spanish Harlem was stymied by the incline created by Duffy's Hill at 103rd Street, one of the steepest grades in Manhattan.

East Spanish 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 Spanish 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".

The 1930 census showed that 81 percent of the population of Italian Spanish Harlem consisted of first- or second-generation Italian Americans, somewhat less than the concentration of Italian Americans in the Lower East Side's Little Italy with 88 percent; Italian Spanish Harlem's total population was three times that of Little Italy.

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

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

East Spanish 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 Spanish 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 Spanish Harlem was around the intersection of 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, where there were 39 felony assaults.

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

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

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

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

The 96th Street branch is located at 112 East 96th Street, at the border with the Upper East Side, while the Spanish Harlem branch is located at 9 West 124th Street, near the border with Spanish Harlem.