New York City has around 160 distinct neighborhoods, with more than 50 in Manhattan alone. From Alphabet City to Woodhaven, North Riverdale to Spring Creek, there's a Neighborhood for every personality.

Featuring giant skyscrapers, tree-lined streets of brownstones, pastoral former farmlands and quiet family cul-de-sacs, the variety is unending. That's the beauty of living in New York City.

We scoured the five boroughs for some of the city's most interesting and beloved regions to create this list of five Fun Facts about 11 of New York City's most popular neighborhoods.

1. Central Harlem

Few neighborhoods in New York have names that evoke as much imagery as Harlem, from 1920s jazz and zoot suit revolutions of the Harlem Renaissance to the growth of hip and gentrified culture exploding into the 2020s.

Today, Central Harlem – the Uptown Manhattan neighborhood from Central Park to 155th, between St. Nicholas and 5th Avenue — is a diverse community that features cozy streets filled with trees and brownstones, mid-rise luxury rental buildings and broadways vibrant with nightclubs and trendy cafes. Here, professors, activists, artists and musicians mix with students, families, chefs and retirees.

Historic Central Harlem is an in-demand neighborhood of community gardens and ethnic restaurants, landmarks like the Apollo Theater and a reputation for friendly people.

Five Fun Facts about Central Harlem:

• Harlem started as a Dutch village called Nieuw Haarlem, named after a city in the Netherlands. In 1664, the British took over and shortened it by an “a."
• The neighborhood is home to Morris-Jumel Mansion, George Washington's headquarters during the Battle of Harlem Heights and the oldest house in Manhattan.
• The first massive influx of African-American residents happened in 1904 as hundreds were displaced by the construction of Penn Station and compelled to move northward.
• The Harlem Renaissance was a pre-Great Depression, African-American cultural and social movement centered in Harlem but had ripples around the world.
• Famous Harlemers include a diverse group of entertainers like Sean "Diddy Combs, Milton Berle, Harry Belafonte, J.D. Salinger, Sammy Davis, Jr., Moby, Arthur Miller and the Marx Brothers.

2. Chelsea

Is Chelsea in Midtown or Downtown? Ask a mix of residents and you'll get a split of opinions. But while the West Side neighborhood that runs between Sixth Avenue and the Hudson contains distinctly Midtown landmarks as high as 34th Street like Penn Station, having a southern end as low as 14th Street on the edge-of-Downtown puts it firmly in the between column.

But what there's no question about is that Chelsea is one of the most desirable and use-diverse neighborhoods in the city. The list of landmarks and attractions in the district is astonishing.

The gorgeous High Line elevated park snakes through the neighborhood from 34th to the West Village. The Knicks and Rangers both play at Madison Square Garden, the self-proclaimed “world's most famous arena." The brand new Hudson Yards development added nearly 13 million square feet of new office, residential and retail space to the neighborhood.

Chelsea Market is a mixed-use food market and office complex that takes up an entire city block between 15th and 16th Streets, as does the London Terrace, a massive apartment building complex between 23rd and 24th. And with more than 200 art galleries, Chelsea is one of the city's art epicenters.

Five Fun Facts about Chelsea:

• Chelsea Piers along the Hudson was originally a passenger ship port that housed the Lusitania and was the destination for the Titanic.
• Today, Chelsea Piers is a giant entertainment complex which includes the city's largest gymnastics center, the city's only year-round ice skating rinks and production studios where several NBC shows shoot, including "Law & Order: SVU" and "The Blacklist."
• The Chelsea Hotel is where Arthur C. Clarke wrote "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Arthur Miller wrote "The Chelsea Effect," where Dylan Thomas fell deathly ill (in Room 205) and Sid Vicious allegedly murdered his girlfriend (in Room 100) and where Madonna shot photos for her book "Sex" (in Room 822).
• Chelsea Market Food, which houses shopping and office space, is now owned by Google but was originally the site of the Nabisco factory in the 1890s where Oreo's were created and produced.
• Hudson Yards, in the northwest corner of Chelsea, is the largest private real estate development in the nation by area and the 101st-floor deck at 30 Hudson Yards is the highest outdoor observation platform in the Hemisphere.

3. Coney Island

Charles Feltman invented the hot dog at Coney Island in 1867. Frustrated ice cream vendors Archie and Elton Correspondent, sick of melting complaints, invented frozen custard here in 1919. And in 1884, LaMarcus Thompson unleashed Coney Island's 600-foot long switchback railway, the first roller coaster in the world.

Sure, you know all about Coney Island the amusement park, boardwalk and beach. But, yes, people actually live full time in this southern Brooklyn neighborhood. In fact, nearly 32,000 Coney Islanders do.

The town offers a variety of beach-style houses, neighborhood single-unit residences, apartment buildings, co-ops, condos and private communities. And like many areas of Brooklyn, after years of sitting in disrepair and downturn, Coney Island is experiencing its own gentrification.

There are plenty of amenities for those residents including a minor league baseball ballpark, the Coney Island Museum, New York Aquarium and the legendary Gargiulo's and Totonno's restaurants to go along with the refurbished Luna amusement park and a revitalized boardwalk.

Five Fun Facts about Coney Island:

• The name Coney Island comes from the Dutch "Conyne Eylandt" which means "Rabbit Island," so-called for the large rabbit population.
• Coney Island is actually no longer an island. Formerly the westernmost Outer Barrier island on Long Island's south shore it became a peninsula when the island was connected to the mainland by landfill in the 1920s.
• America's first bicycle path opened in 1894 from Coney Island to Prospect Park. The route was five miles long with a speed limit of 12 miles per hour.
• Known as the Switchback Railway, the world's first roller coaster opened in Coney Island in the 1880s. The ride topped out at six miles per hour and cost a nickel to ride.
• Legendary folk singer/songwriter Woody Guthrie lived on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island for 11 years and wrote dozens of classic songs while residing in the neighborhood.

4. Fordham

The area of the west Bronx collectively known as Fordham consists of a number of districts, including Fordham Manor, Fordham Heights, Fordham Village, South Fordham and Fordham University.

Fordham was originally part of Westchester and Yonkers until the late 1800s when it was annexed by New York City, becoming a part of Manhattan. In 1914, the region was split off again into the newly-created Bronx County, but still remains part of New York City.

Today, Fordham is a mix of cultures, with large populations of Latin Americans, African Americans, Italians and Albanians, along with college students. Eschewing much of the surrounding gentrification, residences in Fordham are largely low-rise apartments, with taller buildings along Grand Concourse.

Grand Concourse is a dominant, wide thoroughfare that bisects the neighborhood and is the hub of retail activity in Fordham. The Jerome Avenue corridor and Fordham Plaza across from the university are also both major commercial blocks.

A large chunk of Fordham is dominated on its east side by Bronx Park which contains the New York Botanical Garden, Wildlife Conservation Society and the gigantic Bronx Zoo.

Five Fun Facts about Fordham:

• The Kingsbridge Armory is the largest military armory in the world and is under plans to become the largest indoor ice sports center in the world.
• The Edgar Allen Poe Cottage in Poe Park was the poet's final residence before his death in 1849. His wife Virginia died in the house two years prior.
• Barnhill Square, at just 382 square feet, is the smallest park in the Bronx and one of the smallest in New York.
• With more than 4,000 animals spread over 265 acres, The Bronx Zoo is the largest metropolitan zoo in the nation.
• Fordham University's Rose Hill Gym is the oldest continuous-use on-campus Division I basketball arena in the country.

5. Gramercy Park

The name Gramercy Park can refer to both the historic private East Side park and the upscale Victorian neighborhood surrounding it from 14th to 23rd between First Avenue and Park Avenue South.

The green space itself is one of just two private parks in the city, with access granted exclusively to the 383 key owners from surrounding residences, social clubs and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel.

The blocks encircling the park are a rare quiet and safe enclave of busy Midtown. Residences consist of historic townhouses with large backyards inhabited by some of the cultural elite, as well as smaller apartments and co-ops. The largest private house in the district is a 42-room mansion on Gramercy Park South.

The residences around 19th between Third and Irving Place are known as “Block Beautiful" for their charm and architecture. But it's not just homes that populate Gramercy, with retail and nightlife lining the sidewalks of 23rd and along Third Avenue.

Five Fun Facts about Gramercy Park:

• The name Gramercy comes from the Dutch phrase Krom Moerasie, which translates to “little crooked swamp."
• The residence at 34 Gramercy Park East is the oldest existing co-op apartment building in New York.
• The statue in the center of the park is Gramercy resident Edwin Booth, a famous 19th-century Shakespearean actor who happened to be the brother of Presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth.
• Pete's Tavern on Irving Place is said to be New York City's oldest saloon, dating back to 1829, and where O. Henry penned "The Gift of the Magi," according to legend.
• The neighborhood has been home to a slew of celebrities including Julia Roberts, Vincent Astor, John Barrymore, James Cagney, John Steinbeck, Karl Lagerfeld, Uma Thurman, Chelsea Clinton and Oscar Wilde.

6. Hell's Kitchen

Thankfully, the West Side neighborhood of Hell's Kitchen — in Midtown between 34th and 59th from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson — is no longer the rough-and-tumble vision its gritty name conjures. The suggestive name most likely comes from labels long ago affixed to either an infamous 1890s shanty house development at 39th & 10th or a notorious tenement building on 54th.

While residents cherish the historic name, developers have (unsuccessfully) pushed for more serene names for the neighborhood such as Clinton and Midtown West.

But Hell's Kitchen — the modern version — features some of New York's most beloved landmarks, such as the Javits Convention Center, Intrepid Museum, Upright Citizens Brigade, the Actors' Studio, The New Yorker hotel and some of off-Broadway's most respected theaters.

Residents, living mostly in large, gleaming apartment towers and upscale condos can enjoy the cafes of Ninth Avenue and restaurants of 46th Street and green spaces like De Witt Clinton Park.

Five Fun Facts about Hell's Kitchen:

• In the 19th century, the neighborhood lived up to its name quite nicely as residents became known for tossing bricks and rocks from tenement windows at interlopers below with frightening accuracy.
• The neighborhood is the location of the last four remaining horse and carriage stables in the city, all located off 11th Avenue including Clinton Park Stables, the city's largest.
• Hell's Kitchen is the fictional home of Marvel superhero Daredevil, as well as the setting of “West Side Story," “Gangs of New York" and several Damon Runyon stories.
• The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum not only displays the eponymous World War II aircraft carrier, but also a Concorde jet, Lockheed A-12 supersonic plane, cruise missile submarine and the Space Shuttle Enterprise.
• The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center is the busiest convention center in the U.S., with more than 2 million visitors annually.

7. Jamaica

In the heart of Queens, Jamaica is probably best known as the busy transportation hub that connects Manhattan and Brooklyn to J.F.K. Airport. But Jamaica is much more than Jamaica Station, the third-busiest train depot in America.

Jamaica, named for the Lenape word for beaver (not for the Caribbean nation), is a large commercial and retail hub. Hundreds of Indian, Caribbean and Nigerian eateries and groceries, small retail shops, pubs and cafes intermingle with national chains and big box stores among the corridors along Jamaica, Hillside and Liberty Avenues, as well as the bustling Sutphin Boulevard.

Rental prices are much more moderate in Jamaica compared to similar neighborhoods in Manhattan or Brooklyn despite its convenience to those locales. Penn Station, in fact, is just 20 minutes away via the Long Island Railroad.

Five Fun Facts about Jamaica, Queens:

• The Tabernacle of Prayer church occupies the space formerly known as The Valencia Movie House, a baroque style theater opened in 1929 and converted to a house of worship in 1977 while keeping the detailed and ornate Spanish decor.
• Jamaica Station LIRR and JFK AirTrain hub is the second-busiest commuter-only train station in North America with 200,000 passengers riding every week.
• Jamaica's King Manor was the residence of Rufus King, a signer of the Constitution and the last Federalist Party presidential nominee.
• The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge features over 300 species of birds, along with reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, horseshoe crabs and more than 60 species of butterfly.
• Celebs who can call Jamaica their birthplace include 50 Cent, Mario Cuomo, Russell Simmons, Debi Mazar, Rocco DiSpirito, Lamar Odom and President Donald Trump, born in 1946 at Jamaica Hospital.

8. Long Island City

Bustling, bright Long Island City is the westernmost neighborhood in Queens, which makes it feel much more like living in Manhattan than bucolic Long Island. Lying at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge to the Upper East Side, Long Island City is a vibrant urban neighborhood filled with museums, art studios and high quality of life.

The former industrial area across the East River from the United Nations has become one of the most desirable in the city filled with gleaming residential and business towers, artist enclaves and families.

L.I.C., as it's known, resembles Midtown in its glitz and glitter, but its newness offers a cleanliness, openness and community vibe that residents feel gives the neighborhood an advantage over Manhattan.

The neighborhood offers a plethora of green space with numerous parks, playgrounds, bike paths, dog runs and pedestrian piers. But as L.I.C. is new, it isn't cheap. More than 75 percent of residential buildings in the district are luxury high-rises.

Five Fun Facts about Long Island City:

• The Queensboro Bridge is colloquially known as the 59th Street Bridge, made famous in the eponymous Simon & Garfunkel song subtitled "Feelin' Groovy."
• The L.I.C. neighborhood of Steinway is named for Steinway & Sons who opened their piano factory there in the 1870s.
• Founded in 1971, the MoMA PS1 museum is one of the oldest and largest non-profit contemporary art institutions in the nation. It has been affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art since 2001.
• The four-acre Socrates Sculpture Park is the largest outdoor sculpture exhibit space in New York City.
• Queensbridge Houses, with 7,000 residents in 3,101 apartments spread among 26 six-story buildings, is the largest public housing unit in New York City.

9. Pelham Bay

Unlike swanky bordering neighborhoods like Eastchester and Country Club and nearby high-income lower Westchester County, Pelham Bay offers a gorgeous location outside the bustle of the city while maintaining middle-class affordability.

The residential neighborhood is easily accessible from the city via the Number 6 train and by car along I-95 and sits just a few blocks from beautiful Eastchester Bay. Yet, it remains an inexpensive holdout in the up-and-coming east Bronx neighborhood that feels like you're living in a quaint Long Island hamlet.

Along with single-family homes, duplexes and a number of rental units around the MTA station, Pelham Bay also contains Pelham Bay Park, the largest public park in New York City. The park features miles of hiking and biking trail, two full-sized golf courses, an equestrian center and Orchard Beach, a one-plus-mile-long beach with a nature center, athletic courts and retail shops.

Five Fun Facts about Pelham Bay:

• Not only is Pelham Bay Park the largest park in New York City, it's more than three times the size of Central Park.
• The 1973 novel "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three" revolves around the hijacking of the Number 6 subway train departing Pelham Bay Park station at 1:23 p.m. Three film adaptations of the book were released: A 1974 version starring Walter Matthau, one in 1998 with Edward James Olmos and a Denzel Washington and John Travolta-led take in 2009.
• Among its many offerings, Pelham Bay Park features a man-made, 1.1-mile-long beach on Hunter Island created from sand dredged out of the bay. Often called “The Bronx Riviera," Orchard Beach is the only beach in the Bronx.
• The body of water for which Pelham Bay is named is actually not a bay but a sound. It sits between City and Hunter Islands, with about a third of it having been filled in the 1930s to create Orchard Beach.
• The Aileen B. Ryan Recreational Complex was built on the site of Rice Stadium. Opened in 1923 and demolished in 1989, the only remaining vestige of the old stadium is the American Boy statue, which previously sat atop the large Greek architecture style grandstand gate.

10. SoHo

Believe it or not, the name SoHo is in reference to the neighborhood south of Houston (and north of Canal) wasn't coined until the early 1960s. This is the case mostly because the Lower Manhattan neighborhood was nearly entirely industrial until that time.

In the early 1960s, post-beatnik, pre-hippie artists and musicians looking for open and affordable (or free) housing and studio space began to squat in the empty lofts above Soho's large manufacturing buildings. For a decade, the city looked the other way at these interlopers until 1971 when the lofts were designated "joint living and work quarters," allowing the residents who had brought character and culture to the industrial neighborhood to remain legally, solidified in the 1982 Loft Law.

Thanks to those laws, gentrification and loose zoning, today SoHo is a mixture of legacy loft studio spaces and art galleries, apartments above retail, upscale residences, luxury boutiques, trendy cafes and brewpubs, street vendors, music venues and tourists along the busy streets and cobblestone roads.

Five Fun Facts about SoHo:

• Houston Street is pronounced “HOW-stun" rather than “HUGH-stun," as it was christened for Georgia congressional delegate William Houstoun, the son-in-law of the developer who named the street.
• Several buildings along Houston have large walls along the sidewalks rather than windows and doors. This was the result of the widening of the road and subsequent demolition of streetside buildings, which exposed facades that were never meant to be viewed.
• The SoHo Cast Iron Historic District is a protected area that includes a massive 26 blocks and more than 500 buildings constructed from cast iron metal.
• Because much of SoHo is part of the historic district, most street name signs are brown — to designate the district — rather than the traditional green.
• While SoHo is camel-cased in reference to the South of Houston abbreviation, it is also named in respect to the London West End neighborhood of Soho, which is not an abbreviation and therefore is not similarly camel-cased.

11. Williamsburg

Williamsburg, in northern Brooklyn, has achieved a national reputation as both the poster child for urban gentrification and typecast hipster culture. But while bohemian culture and its associated art, music and fashion scene is fundamental to the aesthetic of Williamsburg, the historic district has much to offer across a range of ages and backgrounds.

The neighborhood began its conversion from a manufacturing and light industry hamlet to an arts and entertainment enclave early in the millennium as artists and musicians flooded in for cheap rents and bigger spaces.

But that honeymoon period was short-lived as rezoning and investment caused a boom in new construction and rents alike. Despite high prices, Williamsburg has maintained its cachet as the coolest neighborhood in New York, only now populated by professionals, young families and relocated Manhattanites.

Along with its plethora of trendy art galleries, cafes, breweries and vintage stores, Williamsburg is also known for its vibrant live music scene. The neighborhood offers some of the best music clubs and concert venues in the city including Brooklyn Steel, Music Hall of Williamsburg, The Knitting Factory, Baby's All Right, Rough Trade, The Well, Pete's Candy Store and Brooklyn Bowl.

Five Fun Facts about Williamsburg:

• Williamsburg was purchased by the Dutch West India Company in 1638 from the same Native Americans that sold them Manhattan. The Dutch paid more for Williamsburg than they did for Manhattan Island.
• Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company on Metropolitan Avenue was the first building in the world to install air conditioning, invented in 1902 by Willis Carrier, to keep the presses working in the high humidity.
• Williamsburg was named for Colonel Jonathan Williams, politician, military figure, businessperson, writer and grand-nephew of Benjamin Franklin. The area was originally called Cripplebush, from the Dutch word for “scrub oak." Until 1855, the neighborhood was spelled “Williamsburgh."
• While well known for gentrification and as a capital of hipster culture, Williamsburg is also the second-largest Hassidic neighborhood in America behind Crown Heights, with a Hassidic population of 73,000.
• At 7,308 feet, the main span of the Williamsburg Bridge was the longest in the world for its first 21 years of existence. The highway sign above the bridge when leaving Brooklyn for Manhattan reads “Leaving Brooklyn: Oy Vey."

The post 55 Fun Facts About New York City’s Most Popular Neighborhoods appeared first on Apartment Living Tips - Apartment Tips from ApartmentGuide.com.