A century of New Yorkers, mapped
Where New York Came From is an interactive dot map of New York City from 1910 to today. Every dot stands for 25 people, placed where they lived and colored by where their families came from: Italian, Irish, German, Russian and Eastern European, Nordic and Baltic, Puerto Rican, Caribbean and Latin American, Asian, African American and more. Drag through twelve censuses to watch Little Italy, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Chinatown, Little Odessa, Flushing and every other neighborhood form, move and change.
Beyond origins, the map shows how crowded the city was, who was born abroad, which languages were spoken at home, what people paid in rent, what families earned and who owned their home, along with the 1938 redlining maps and a timeline of the events that reshaped the city.
Stories
- Harlem and the Great Migration: How Harlem became the capital of Black America, and how it is changing again.
- From Italian Harlem to El Barrio: One neighborhood, two great migrations.
- Brooklyn's Nordic waterfront: Little Norway in Sunset Park and Bay Ridge, and what came after.
- Finns, Lithuanians and Estonians: The smaller Nordic and Baltic communities, from Finntown to the Estonian House.
- New York's three Chinatowns: From a few crowded blocks to Flushing and Sunset Park.
- The Lower East Side: The most crowded place on earth, and who came after.
- Jewish New York: The census never asked about religion. Birthplace and the Yiddish language still trace a century of Jewish New York.
- Little Odessa: Brighton Beach, from summer resort to Soviet emigre capital.
- Redlining's long shadow: The 1938 mortgage maps, and what they still predict.
About the data
Census tract data from IPUMS NHGIS, University of Minnesota, 1910 to the 2020-2024 American Community Survey, aggregated to hexagons. The 1938 redlining maps come from Mapping Inequality, University of Richmond. Archive photographs come from the Library of Congress, the New York Public Library and the National Archives via Wikimedia Commons. A Lab project by Valev Laube. Also available in Estonian.