A section of New York City in northern Manhattan bordering on the Harlem and East Rivers. Peter Stuyvesant established the Dutch settlement of Nieuw Haarlem here in 1658. A rapid influx of African Americans beginning c. 1910 made it one of the largest black communities in the United States. In the 1920s a flowering of African-American art and literature was known as the Harlem Renaissance. After World War II many Hispanics settled in East (or Spanish) Harlem.