Washington Heights is a neighborhood of northern Manhattan, New York City. The area was inhabited by the Wecquaesgeek Native Americans before the arrival of the Dutch, and, while the two peoples initially engaged in trade, they eventually entered into conflict, and the Native Americans remained in the area even after Kieft's War, although the Dutch paid them a settlement for their last land claims in 1715. The Dutch called the area "Long Hill", and Long Hill became a suburb of Lower Manhattan which was inhabited by wealthy landowners from the village of Harlem. During the American Revolutionary War, the Continental Army established Fort Washington in the area, giving Washington Heights its modern name. After the British captured the fort in 1776, they renamed it to Fort Knyphausen. During the late 19th century, row and wood-frame houses were built in the Heights amid the increasing expansion of New York City, and the IRT built subway stations in Uptown Manhattan from 1904 to 1906, leading to its continued development. Five and six-story tenements were built in Washington Heights to house immigrants from the Lower East Side; by 1920, half of Washington Heights' residents were Protestant, while the remainder were Jewish and Catholic immigrants and their families. From 1925 to 1950, a construction boom led to the neighborhood's population doubling. By 1930, nearly a quarter of Manhattan's Jewish community lived in the Heights, and an influx of German-Jewish refugees during the 1930s and 1940s led to the neighborhood being nicknamed "Frankfurt-on-the-Hudson". The Jewish community in Washington Heights was targeted by Irish youth gangs and anti-Semitic organizations, but, by 1944, the local Catholic clergy were pressured to speak out against the anti-Semitic violence. After World War II, the Jewish community began to dwindle due to an influx of African-Americans to Harlem, leading to white flight; during the 1950s, Washington Heights was defined as beginning wherever (predominantly-Black) Harlem ended. During the 1960s, an exodus of white residents from Washington Heights was met with an influx of Hispanic immigrants, with Cuban and Dominican immigrants overtaking Puerto Rican immigrants in number by 1965. Cubans made up the majority of Latino business owners in Washington Heights, and, by the 1970s, most kosher stores and Jewish bakeries had been replaced by stores with Spanish signage. During Joaquin Balaguer's presidency in the Dominican Republic, the Dominican government freely granted passports to Dominicans seeking to emigrate due to high employment and the Dominican Civil War, leading to an exodus of Dominicans to Washington Heights; they mostly came to America for economic opportunities, while retaining a strong Dominican identity. By 2000, Dominicans made up the majority of Washington Heights' population, but the loss of manufacturing jobs in the 1970s to 1980s led to 36% of Dominicans in New York living under the poverty line. In addition, Soviet-Jewish refugees, Mexicans, and Ecuadorians began to arrive in Washington Heights in large numbers, plus smaller immigrant communities of Central Americans, Colombians, and Chinese. By 2010, the neighborhood's Black population had declined to a tenth of the total. The Heights was adversely affected by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s, and, in 1989, the New York Times labelled the Washington Heights as "the crack capital of America". However, from 1990 to 2020, reported crimes in the Heights dropped by 80%, while assaults, larcenies, and rapes fell by over 50% as the NYPD established a new precinct in the neighborhood and engaged in "broken windows policing", community institutions such as parks were revived, and more locals attended college. During the 2000s, the neighborhood was faced with gentrification as 5,000 whites moved in and 17,000 Hispanics and 3,000 Blacks moved out. In 2010, Washington Heights had a population of 151,574 people, 70.6% of whom were Hispanic, 17.7% white, 7.6% Black, 2.6% Asian, and 2.5% others.