From Italian Harlem to El Barrio
One neighborhood, two great migrations.
Italian Harlem, 1910
East Harlem was one of the biggest Italian communities in America: about 67,000 people of Italian stock lived here, next to almost 60,000 with roots in the Russian Empire.
The peak, 1930
By 1930 nearly half of everyone mapped here, 47%, was of Italian stock. Jewish families had moved on to the Bronx and Brooklyn.
El Barrio, 1970
After the war, Puerto Ricans arrived by the hundreds of thousands. In 1970 about 48,000 Puerto Ricans lived here, and with African Americans they made up nearly nine in ten people mapped.
El Barrio today
Mexicans and Dominicans have joined the neighborhood. About 15,000 Puerto Ricans remain, a third of the 1970 number.
Where New York Came From: a map of NYC immigration and ancestry, 1910 to today