- published: 30 Apr 2009
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Coordinates: 40°47′25″N 73°57′35″W / 40.79028°N 73.95972°W / 40.79028; -73.95972
Manhattan (/mænˈhætən/, /mənˈhætən/) is one of the five boroughs of New York City, in the state of New York in the United States. The borough is coterminous with New York County, founded on November 1, 1683 as one of the state's original counties. The borough consists mostly of Manhattan Island, bounded by the East, Hudson, and Harlem Rivers, and also includes several small adjacent islands and Marble Hill, a small neighborhood on the mainland.
Manhattan is often said to be the economic and cultural center of the United States and 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 the borough. Historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626, for the equivalent of US$1050, 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.
Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is traditionally considered to be bordered by 34th Street in the south, 59th Street in the north, Eighth Avenue in the east, and the Hudson River to the west. The area provides transport, medical, and warehouse infrastructure support to Manhattan's Midtown business district.
Once a bastion of poor and working-class Irish Americans, Hell's Kitchen's proximity to Midtown has changed its personality since the 1970s. The 1969 City Planning Commission's 1969 Plan for New York City reported that development pressures related to its Midtown location were driving people of modest means from the area, and the gritty reputation that Hell's Kitchen developed afterward kept real estate prices below those of most other areas of Manhattan. Since the early 1990s, the area has been gentrifying, and rents skyrocketed. Located close to both Broadway theatres and Actors Studio training school, Hell's Kitchen has long been a home to learning and practicing actors.