Night draws to a close. Bands are still playing behind the closed doors
of half a dozen night clubs. The river wind lifts yesterday's paper the
length of a block. A water wagon rolls by. A solitary taxi tracks the wet
paving. Goodnight darling, goodnight, goodnight.

A blast from the far-off Narrows whispers through the dead streets;
spruce from Norway, asbestos from South Africa, German, Austrian,
Polish, Italian refugees.

Facts About Manhattan

It's a tight little island, 12 1/2 miles at its longest, 2 1/2 at its widest,
covering 14,211 acres, rising from its surrounding rivers to a height of
about 268 feet near Fort Tryon Park, and standing at about latitude
40° N, longitude 73° W. 1,688,769 persons were listed as living here in
1938. 217,976,370 commuters in 1936 traveled into and out of town by
way of Manhattan's 20 bridges, 18 tunnels, and 17 ferries, while an aver-
age of 115,000 noncommuting visitors are said to pour into town daily
through the great railway terminals. For the accommodation of these
visitors there are 326 hotels which have a total assessed valuation of
$479,793,500.

Transportation within Manhattan is furnished by rapid transit systems
of subways and elevated lines (owned by the city but operated both
municipally and privately), which in the year ending June 30, 1938,
carried 1,038,499,269 passengers; by street surface railways, which in the
same year carried 70,936,650 passengers; by busses carrying 312,426,522
and by the 6,893 taxicabs licensed to operate in the borough in 1938.

Two districts, the first lying between the Battery and City Hall, the
second bounded by Twenty-third and Fiftieth Streets and lying approxi-
mately between Ninth and Park Avenues, contain a high percentage of
blocks in which a population of more than 5,000 work during the day.
It was estimated in 1936 that 62.6 per cent of Manhattan's land was
used for residential purposes and 22.9 per cent for nonresidential. Nearly
all the remainder, 14.25 per cent, is given over to parks, of which there
are 93 with a combined area of 2,303.897 acres.

In 1937, 24,550 Manhattanites were born, 29,441 couples were mar-
ried, and 25,228 died. The number of church members was estimated as
853,972. The foreign-born white population was set at 641,618 in 1930.
In 1927 there were 465,000 Jewish residents, or 25.71 per cent of the
total population. Negroes in 1930 numbered 224,670; Italians, 117,740;
Free State Irish, 86,548; Russians, 69,685; Germans, 69,111; Poles,