PLAN  OF  NEW YORK AND   ITS  ENVIRONS
 

POPULATION DENSITY, CENTRAL AREA, 1850

IT IS desirable to get a somewhat closer view of the distribution of population
in the central area and see how this has changed. There is first shown on
page 11 the population per square mile as indicated by the Census of 1850.
The greatest density at that time was, of course, in the lower portion of Man¬
hattan Island, where it reached between 150,000 and 200,000 per square mile.
In Brooklyn the maximum was between 75,000 and 100,000, which was found
in a very small area near Fulton Ferry. At no place north of Twenty-third
Street in the Borough of Manhattan does there appear to have been as many as
5,000 to the square mile, and this density was reached only in very small areas
in Brooklyn, in Jersey City, and in a portion of Newark. All of Manhattan
above Twenty-third Street, all of the Boroughs of the Bronx, Queens, and
Richmond, and what are now the populous Bushwick, Bedford, Flatbush, and
Bay Ridge districts of Brooklyn, were in this same classification.
 

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