Washington Heights and Dominican New York
From "Frankfurt on the Hudson" to the city's largest origin group.
Frankfurt on the Hudson, 1940
In the 1930s German-speaking Jewish refugees settled here in such numbers that the neighborhood was nicknamed Frankfurt on the Hudson. In 1940 about one in five people mapped here, 19,000, had roots in Germany, next to Irish, Russian and Black neighbors.
A new Heights, 1980
By 1980 more than half the people mapped here, 57%, were Hispanic. Dominicans, arriving in large numbers after 1965, were becoming the largest group, though the census did not yet count them separately.
Quisqueya Heights, 1990
In 1990, the first year this map can count them, about 88,000 Dominicans lived in Washington Heights and Inwood, four in ten people mapped.
Across the river, today
About 89,000 Dominicans still live in the Heights and Inwood, and the community has spread across the Harlem River: about 163,000 live in the west Bronx, three times the 1990 number. After African Americans, Dominicans, about 712,000, are now the largest group on this map.
Where New York Came From: a map of NYC immigration and ancestry, 1910 to today
All stories
- Harlem and the Great Migration
- From Italian Harlem to El Barrio
- Brooklyn's Nordic waterfront
- Finns, Lithuanians and Estonians
- New York's three Chinatowns
- The Lower East Side
- Jewish New York
- Little Odessa
- Redlining's long shadow
- Italian New York
- Washington Heights and Dominican New York
- German New York
- A century in seven stops