Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), ethnically descriptive (Chinatown), or abbreviations (TriBeCa, which stands for "Triangle Below Canal Street"). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands.
Some neighborhoods, like SoHo (South of Houston), are commercial in nature and known for upscale shopping. Others, like the Lower East Side and East Village, have been associated with the "Bohemian" subculture, though many artists have relocated to Brooklyn from these neighborhoods. Chelsea is a neighborhood with a large gay population, and also a center of New York's art industry and nightlife. Washington Heights is a vibrant neighborhood of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Manhattan's Chinatown is the largest in the Western hemisphere. The Upper West Side is often characterized as a liberal and family-friendly alternative to the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States.
In Manhattan, uptown means north and downtown means south. (Though even north and south here are relative - north in Manhattan is a logical north, determined by the main axis of the island, and corresponding to the direction of the avenues of the street grid. Uptown is actually more like north-by-northeast.) This usage differs from that of most American cities, where downtown refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and the business district in Midtown. The term uptown refers to the northern part of Manhattan (generally speaking, above 59th Street) and downtown to the southern portion (typically below 23rd Street or 14th Street).
Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street). South of Waverly Place in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. North of 14th Street, nearly all east-west streets use numeric designations, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island.
