# NYC Boundaries, Districts & Zones — Census Geography and the ZIP/Jurisdiction Theme

**Research note for the Fictiv educational exhibit** · Compiled 2026-10-13
**Raw doc:** `raw/'Boundaries, Districts, and Zones in New York City - Census Boundaries.md'` (NYPL Research Guide capture + appended Brownstoner article on Brooklyn's wards)
**Related raw doc:** `raw/'NYC - NYS - UN or UNITED CHEROKEE NATIONS.md'` (ties into the UN headquarters-district section, §2.7 below)
**Site lane:** extends reinventionnewyork.com's existing ZIP-code legal-theories exhibit. Every number below was verified against a cited source during this session unless tagged **[verify]** (standard history, worth a quick check before print).

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## 1. CONTENT MAP — what the raw doc covers

The capture has two parts:

**Part A — NYPL Research Guide: "Census Boundaries"** (a *how-to-find-maps* guide, not a history):
- **Why census boundaries matter:** genealogy, demographic studies, city planning, policy analysis all require deciphering ward / assembly-district / election-district / enumeration-district labels on census records.
- **Defining ED, AD/ED, and wards:** federal-census **ED = Enumeration District** (NARA definition quoted: "an area that an enumerator could completely cover within two weeks in cities and within four weeks in rural areas"). NYS-census **AD/ED pair = Assembly District + Election District**, *not* to be confused with the federal ED; pairs used for the 1890 Police Census and the 1892, 1905, 1915, 1925 NYS censuses. (On the 1892 census, the AD number refers to the ward.)
- **Four finding-aids sections** (Wards · Election Districts · Enumeration Districts · Assembly Districts), each with: catalog keyword searches for NYPL's Online Research Catalog ("Cartographic" format filter), a selection of NYPL maps/atlases (e.g., the 1903–09 *Atlas of the borough of Brooklyn … first twenty eight wards*, whose index plates mark ward boundaries in red lines and triangles), current-district map sources (NYC Planning "Maps & Geography"; Board of Elections "Current NYC District Maps" — note: on BOE maps "New York City" means Manhattan districts only), and pointers to NARA's *Enumeration District and Related Maps, 1880–1990* digitized collection.
- **Credit trail:** the guide leans on Stephen Morse's One-Step AD/ED FAQ; page images are NYPL Digital Collections items (1930 census-taker photo, ID 732277F; Brooklyn atlas plates 1695478/1695479; Hillman's 1900 Manhattan/Bronx ED map, ID 56738463; an 1869 Kings County assembly-district map, ID 4056204).

**Part B — appended Brownstoner article**, Hannah Frishberg, "Brooklyn's Forgotten Electoral Districts: The Lost History of the Ward System" (5/17/2016):
- Brooklyn's wards as "invisible, forgotten lines"; historic equivalents of today's electoral districts.
- Growth arc: **9 wards in 1839 → 32 wards by 1898**; 1915 examples (Bed-Stuy = 23rd + parts of 7th and 9th; Greenpoint spread over 8, 14, 15, 17; Brooklyn Heights in 1 and 3).
- 1894 *Brooklyn Daily Eagle* coverage: Gravesend (31st ward) annexed before New Utrecht (30th); Flatlands waiting until 1896 — the staggering driven by the **constitutional debt limit**.
- "Brooklyn stopped using wards in the early 20th century, and the system was formally abolished in 1938"; replaced by electoral + assembly districts; "Today, Brooklyn has 21 assembly districts."

**What the doc does NOT cover** (and this note supplies): census *tracts*, 1898 consolidation mechanics, HOLC redlining maps, ZIP codes, special districts (BIDs, historic districts), and the UN headquarters district. The guide is a cartographic finding aid; it makes no legal claims about boundaries.

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## 2. THE RECORD — verified deep history with citations

### 2.1 Wards (1683–1938)

- **1683–1791:** NYC's first six wards created **December 8, 1683** (five in the lower-Manhattan built-up city plus the "Out Ward" covering the rest); the **Dongan Charter (1686)** confirmed them, each electing an alderman and assistant; the **Montgomerie Charter (1731)** added Montgomerie Ward. Wards received **numbers in 1791**; new wards were added northward as the city grew and old ones subdivided as population rose. *(Wikipedia, "Wards of New York City," with charter citations; NYT F.Y.I. 1/3/1999 citing historian James F. Richardson in* The Encyclopedia of New York City*.)*
- **Wards were genuine municipal political units** — the smallest in the city: each elected an alderman (and assistant/constables, tax collectors locally), and the "ward boss" was the operative unit of Tammany Hall power. *(Steve Morse / bklyn-genealogy FAQ cited by the NYPL guide; NYT F.Y.I.)*
- **Brooklyn:** by **1839 it had nine wards**; **26 by 1889** (used to construct congressional and assembly districts); **32 by 1898**. Ward numbering grew scrambled as annexed towns came in — Gravesend became the 31st ward before New Utrecht the 30th, the annexations staggered because of the **state constitutional debt limit** (*Brooklyn Daily Eagle*, 1894, via Brownstoner). **[verify]** Brooklyn's city-incorporation year: accounts conflict (Brownstoner implies wards by 1839; other references give incorporation 1834, ward division 1837 — see §3).
- **Demise:** ward politics declined from 1900; wards' electoral function was replaced by assembly and election districts under the 1898 Charter's reformed municipal legislature (Board of Aldermen elected largely by assembly district; Brooklyn's council seats ran on ward lines; Richmond's five wards each mapped a pre-consolidation town). The wards "were never formally abolished" in one sense — the **City Charter continued to define their boundaries until 1938**, when the revised charter dropped them. *(NYT F.Y.I. 1999, citing Richardson; Wikipedia "Wards of New York City": "Ward politics declined in the early 20th century, and wards were abolished in 1938"; Brownstoner: "formally abolished in 1938 according to Brooklyn Genealogy.")*
- **Residue:** New Orleans' Ninth Ward and Houston's six historic wards kept the vocabulary alive elsewhere; in Brooklyn barely a trace remains (the defunct 3rd Ward art space; Brownstoner's examples). Staten Island's five consolidation-era wards = the five old towns (Castleton/New Brighton, Middletown, Northfield, Southfield, Westfield) — the town names still circulate. *(1910 Census Bulletin 374; newyorkfamilyhistory.org)*

### 2.2 Assembly, election, and senate districts

- **Assembly Districts (ADs)** are New York State legislature units; each AD is subdivided into **Election Districts (EDs)** — the smallest electoral unit, the unit poll books are organized by. The NYPL guide documents AD/ED map searches back to an **1869 map of Kings County assembly districts** (NYPL Image ID 4056204).
- **The AD/ED pair was the NYS census's census geography** for the 1890 Police Census and the 1892, 1905, 1915 and 1925 state censuses — the equivalent of the federal enumeration district (on the 1892 census the "AD" figure is actually the ward). *(NYPL guide, citing Stephen Morse's One-Step FAQ.)*
- The federal census used its own EDs *within* the ward/AD frame: 1910 Census **Bulletin 374** arranges New York City's enumeration districts "with respect to wards for Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Richmond Boroughs, and with respect to assembly districts for Bronx and Queens Boroughs." *(census.gov, Bulletin 374 PDF.)*
- **Today:** current State Assembly, State Senate, and City Council maps are published by NYC Planning (Maps & Geography) and the Board of Elections ("Current NYC District Maps," organized by borough — with the quirk that "New York City" on those maps means Manhattan). Brownstoner (2016) gives **21 Assembly districts in Brooklyn**; **[verify]** NYC's usual share of the 150-seat Assembly is cited as 65 districts, and the Council has **51 districts** (post-1991 charter) — quick checks before print.

### 2.3 Enumeration districts and census tracts

- **Enumeration districts** (federal): the area one enumerator could cover — two weeks urban, four rural (NARA's definition, quoted in the raw doc). ED maps and descriptions 1880–1990 are digitized at NARA ("Enumeration District and Related Maps, 1880–1990" — Search Within Set, filter to digitized records). The 1940 and 1950 ED maps/descriptions are the gold standard for locating a household.
- **Census tracts were invented for New York.** **1906:** Dr. **Walter Laidlaw**, director of the Population Research Bureau of the New York Federation of Churches, proposed "a convenient and scientific city map system" — small *permanent* areas with boundaries that would *not* change election to election, unlike wards/ADs (a 1905 redrawing of AD boundaries had wrecked his 1900-based neighborhood comparisons). **1910:** the Census Bureau first tabulated by these small "districts" — initially called **"sanitary areas"** because health departments helped draw them — in **New York and seven other cities** (Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis). NYC counted **706 units** in 1910; in 1915 the city's Health Commissioner asked Laidlaw to subdivide to permanent ~40-acre units (map completed May 1918; 1,627 neighborhood tabulations published 1923). The term **"census tracts"** became standard by the mid-1930s; the Bureau published its **first tract criteria in 1934**. *(Census Bureau, "History of Census Tracts and Blocks"; Krieger, "A Century of Census Tracts: Health & the Body Politic (1906–2006),"* J Urban Health */ PMC2527201; Federal Register 73 FR 13836 (Mar. 14, 2008); Laidlaw, *Census Tracts in American Cities* front matter, degruyter PDF.)* So the shorthand "1910: first census tracts, New York City" is right — conceived 1906, first used in the 1910 count.

### 2.4 1898 consolidation — the five boroughs

- The **"City of Greater New York" took effect January 1, 1898**, under the 1897 Greater New York Charter, joining: **Manhattan** (New York County), **the Bronx** (then still part of New York County; the west-side towns of Morrisania, West Farms and Kingsbridge had been annexed in 1874 as Wards 23–24, the "Annexed District," the eastern Bronx — town of Westchester, parts of Eastchester and Pelham — came in with the 1898 act; **Bronx County** was separated from New York County effective 1914 **[verify]**), **Brooklyn** (Kings County), **Queens** (Queens County: Long Island City + the towns of Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica, and the Rockaway part of Hempstead — organized into five wards, one per old jurisdiction; **Nassau County** was split off in 1899), and **Staten Island** (Richmond County → Borough of Richmond, renamed Staten Island in 1975; its five wards = the five old towns). *(Census Bulletin 374, 1910 — which spells out all of the above; newyorkfamilyhistory.org, "Before the Five-borough City"; Wikipedia "Wards of New York City.")* Consolidation was ratified by referendum in 1894 **[verify]**, and championed by Andrew Haswell Green, the "Father of Greater New York" **[verify]**.
- Key structural fact for the exhibit: **boroughs = counties** (except the Bronx/Borough split from New York County until 1914). A borough is not a separate incorporated municipality — all five are one city corporation; the borough presidents and borough halls are administrative layers, not sovereigns.

### 2.5 HOLC "residential security" maps and the legacy of redlining

- **HOLC** (Home Owners' Loan Corporation, created **June 1933** under the New Deal's Home Owners' Loan Act) refinanced distressed mortgages. Around **1935**, its parent, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, launched a systematic "mortgage security" appraisal of **239 cities**, produced with local real-estate people: the **"residential security maps."** Grades: **A "Best" (green), B "Still Desirable" (blue), C "Definitely Declining" (yellow), D "Hazardous" (red)** — the origin of the term **redlining**. Area descriptions recorded "% Negro" and "% foreign families" among the grading variables; New York City got borough maps dated **1937–1938** (Manhattan 1937; the Brooklyn map is dated April 1938). *(PMC9387904, "Persistence of mortgage lending bias… 80 years after HOLC"; Cambridge* Journal of Economic History*, "The HOLC Maps: How Race and Poverty Influenced Real Estate Professionals' Evaluation of Lending Risk in the 1930s"; NYC DOHMH Environment & Health Data Portal, "A brief history of redlining"; NYC Civil Rights History project, HOLC map page; BTAA geoportal Manhattan 1937 record; Commons file metadata for the Brooklyn map.)*
- **Legacy:** the NYC DOHMH data story — redlined neighborhoods still show higher poverty "nearly 90 years later"; per the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, **3 of 4** redlined neighborhoods nationally are still low-to-moderate income and **2 of 3** are predominantly people of color; from 1934 to 1968, **over 98% of FHA-insured loans went to white purchasers** (NYC Civil Rights History). Redlining in this sense was outlawed by the **Fair Housing Act of 1968**.
- **Historians' nuance (important for accuracy, see §3):** the HOLC maps were compiled *after* ~90% of HOLC's own refinancing was done, were not widely circulated to lenders, and HOLC itself charged all races the same rates; the **FHA's** underwriting standards and its own block-level "economic area" maps (1935 onward) did more to institutionalize discrimination. Recent econometric work (Aaronson/Hartley/Mazumder; Faber; Appel & Nickerson; Jacob) still finds D-grade boundaries correlate with lower homeownership, values, and long-run segregation. *(Cambridge JoEH article; PMC9387904.)* Digitized maps + area descriptions: **Mapping Inequality** (University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab).

### 2.6 ZIP codes (1963) — a routing tool, not a jurisdiction

- The **Zone Improvement Plan (ZIP Code)** launched **July 1, 1963**, as part of the Post Office Department's Nationwide Improved Mail Service: a five-digit code — first digit = national region (0 East → 9 West), first three = major city / **sectional center** (553 designated), last two = post office or city delivery unit. It replaced the **1943-era one- and two-digit postal zones** used in ~124 large cities ("Washington 18, D.C." → 20018). **ZIP+4** followed in **1983**. Promotion leaned on the cartoon mascot **Mr. ZIP** (created by AT&T and its agency Cunningham & Walsh) and celebrity pitches (Ethel Merman). *(Library of Congress, "ZIP Code Introduced — This Month in Business History"; USPS Postal Facts, "Introduction of the ZIP Code";* Postal Bulletin*, June 27, 1963 (Vol. 84) — primary text: "The primary purpose of ZIP Code … is to make available a standard code for voluntary use by large mailers…"; Smithsonian National Postal Museum, "Numbering the Nation.")*
- **Legal character:** ZIP codes are **USPS mail-routing designations** — voluntary-use postal codes with **no statutory, jurisdictional, or sovereignty effect**. They don't define municipalities, school, tax, police, or voting districts; they can straddle county, city, and even borough lines and get revised for mail efficiency. The Congressional Research Service primer (*Postal Primer: ZIP Codes and Boundary Review Process*, IF12132) treats them purely as postal geography subject to USPS boundary review. **This is the load-bearing fact for the site's ZIP exhibit: a ZIP code cannot ground a jurisdictional or legal claim — it is a sorting label.** At the same time, ZIPs became de facto *statistical* neighborhoods (demographics, insurance pricing, epidemiology) — which is where their cultural power comes from.

### 2.7 Special districts: BIDs and historic districts

- **Historic districts:** Mayor Robert F. Wagner signed **Local Law 46 of 1965** (April 19, 1965), creating the permanent **Landmarks Preservation Commission** (after a 1962–65 "Temporary" commission with advisory powers only; the push included the Brooklyn Heights Association's draft legislation). Six months later, on **November 23, 1965**, the LPC designated **Brooklyn Heights as the city's first historic district** (LP-0099; hearing Nov. 17, 1965, 40+ supporters, none opposed — excepting the Watchtower Society's request to exclude its properties). Designation controls building **exteriors** within mapped boundaries. The Supreme Court upheld the scheme in **Penn Central Transportation Co. v. New York City, 438 U.S. 104 (1978)** **[verify cite]**. *(LPC designation report LP-0099 (s-media.nyc.gov PDF); NYT, "Brooklyn Heights Now a Landmark," Dec. 2, 1965; NYC Municipal Archives, "Landmarks at Sixty" (2025); LPC map PDF.)*
- **BIDs:** precursors were **Special Assessment Districts** (state statutes per district), the first being **Fulton Mall, Brooklyn (1976)**. **New York State's BID enabling law passed 1981** (one secondary source says 1980 — see §3), with the City's local law **1982**; the **first NYC BID was 14th Street–Union Square (1984)**. Today's BIDs are created under **NYS General Municipal Law Article 19-A**: a district plan (map, boundaries, budget, assessment formula), owner-objection window (51% of owners or of assessed valuation kills it), City Council local law, state comptroller review. A BID levies a **special assessment on benefited real property** to fund sanitation, security, marketing — it is a limited-purpose assessment district run by a nonprofit "district management association," **not a government**, not a taxing sovereignty, and not a boundary any other law must follow. Grand Central Partnership (est. 1988, ~68 blocks) and Times Square BID (1992) are the famous examples; **[verify]** the current count is roughly 76 citywide. *(NYC Global Partners, "Best Practice: Business Improvement Districts" PDF; CDFA reproductions of GML Art. 19-A §980-a and BID case studies.)*

### 2.8 UN headquarters district — extraterritoriality myth vs. treaty reality

*(Ties into the raw doc "NYC - NYS - UN or UNITED CHEROKEE NATIONS," which mentions the UN only as NYC being "headquarters of the United Nations′, situs of international citizen diplomacy.")*
- The GA resolved on **December 14, 1946** to seat the UN in New York; the **Agreement between the United Nations and the United States of America regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations** was **signed at Lake Success, June 26, 1947** (Trygve Lie for the UN; George C. Marshall for the US), **approved by the General Assembly October 31, 1947**, and **brought into force November 21, 1947** by an exchange of notes under Section 28 (as authorized by an Act of Congress). *(UNTS Vol. 11 No. 147, treaties.un.org; Wikisource text of the Agreement — primary source, verified this session.)*
- What it actually says about territory:
  - **§7(a)-(b):** the HQ district is "under the control and authority of the United Nations *as provided in this agreement*," and — the key clause — "**Except as otherwise provided … the federal, state and local law of the United States shall apply within the headquarters district.**"
  - **§7(c):** US **federal, state and local courts retain jurisdiction** over acts done and transactions taking place in the district.
  - **§8:** the UN may make regulations necessary for its functions; inconsistent US law is inapplicable **to the extent of the inconsistency**, with disputes resolved via §21 (arbitration), not by unilateral UN decree.
  - **§9(a):** the district is "**inviolable**" — US officers enter to perform official duties, and legal process (including seizure of property) is served, **only with the Secretary-General's consent**.
  - **§9(b):** the UN **must prevent the district becoming a refuge** for fugitives, extradition targets, or process-dodgers.
  - **§23:** the seat stays unless the UN itself decides to move it.
- **Reality:** this is **functional immunity and inviolability under a treaty**, not extraterritoriality. The land is US territory (Turtle Bay, Manhattan — the ~18-acre site bought with a Rockefeller donation, in NYC **[verify]**), laws of the US/NY apply, crimes there are prosecutable in NY and federal courts, and individual immunities attach to specific persons ( diplomats under the 1946 General Convention) rather than to the ground. The popular claim — "the UN is sovereign territory / not part of the United States / a foreign country inside Manhattan" — is flatly wrong against the Agreement's own text, and §9(b) exists precisely to close the fugitive-asylum loophole such a reading would open.

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## 3. CORRECTIONS / RED FLAGS — things that misstate how boundaries work legally

1. **"ZIP code = neighborhood/jurisdiction" — no.** A ZIP code is a USPS mail-routing label (1963, see §2.6). It creates no municipality, no tax district, no police jurisdiction, and its lines change for mail efficiency. Any exhibit claim that a ZIP confers or defeats a legal status fails at step one; the only defensible ZIP statements are statistical (demographic aggregates) or postal. *Watch for this in the site's ZIP exhibit lane.*
2. **"The UN is extraterritorial."** No — §7(b)–(c) applies US federal/state/local law and courts inside the HQ district; §9 grants conditional inviolability keyed to the Secretary-General's consent, and §9(b) expressly bars fugitive refuge. "Headquarters *district*" is a treaty term of art, not a sovereignty. (The Agreement is a treaty *of the United States*, registered by its own Secretariat in UNTS Vol. 11.)
3. **"Wards still exist" / "my ward's boundaries control."** Wards ended as political units generations ago; the 1938 Charter was the last to even define their boundaries. Citing a ward as a current jurisdiction is an anachronism (the raw doc's Brownstoner article gets this right).
4. **Census geography is statistical, not jurisdictional.** EDs, AD/ED pairs, tracts, and block groups exist to count people. Tract boundaries are deliberately redrawn (Laidlaw's 40-acre permanence failed in practice; the Bureau's 1934 criteria began managed revisions; 2020 tracts were re-delineated wholesale). A boundary that changes every decade cannot anchor a legal claim to land or status.
5. **HOLC maps were never boundaries of anything.** They were risk appraisals by a federal refinancing agency — and the current scholarship (§2.5 nuance) shows HOLC's own lending did *not* redline, the maps postdated most of its lending, and the FHA's separate block-level system drove actual discrimination. Overstating "the map made banks refuse loans here" invites a fact-check; the accurate claim is that the maps codified and visualize racist appraisal, and the FHA regime institutionalized it.
6. **BIDs and historic districts are limited-purpose.** A BID's power stops at levying assessments for its plan under GML Art. 19-A; LPC jurisdiction stops at building exteriors in designated areas. Neither is a general government, and neither alters the underlying city/county/borough structure. (Related red flag in the site's broader lane: "special district" ≠ "separate sovereign.")
7. **Borough ≠ county ≠ city.** The five boroughs are administrative subdivisions of *one* municipal corporation; each (except the Bronx until 1914) is coterminous with a state county. Claims that a borough is "its own country" or that consolidation was void invert the 1897 Charter and the 1898 act.
8. **Source conflicts to flag in the exhibit copy (do not paper over):**
   - *Brooklyn ward-count dates:* Brownstoner says "In 1839, Brooklyn had nine wards"; Wikipedia's wards page says Brooklyn "incorporated as a city in 1837 and divided into nine wards"; standard Brooklyn histories give the city charter as **1834**. Exhibit-safe phrasing: "Brooklyn had nine wards by the late 1830s and thirty-two by 1898."
   - *BID enabling date:* NYC's own best-practices PDF says 1981 (state) / 1982 (city) / first BID 1984; a CDFA casebook says "In 1980, the New York State Legislature passed enabling legislation." Use NYC's version.
   - *The raw doc's census captions:* the "New York City voting places, 1855 / Gertrude A. Barber" item is a genealogist's compilation map, not an official 1855 election map — caption accordingly if reused.
   - *The guide's "AD = Ward" note applies only to the 1892 NYS census* — a natural trap for exhibit copy.
   - *The companion raw doc ("NYC - NYS - UN or UNITED CHEROKEE NATIONS")* is a sovereign-citizen-style compilation; its implied move — treating asserted indigenous or UN-flavored "jurisdiction" as overriding municipal boundaries — fails for the same structural reasons as §3.1–3.2: NYC contains **no Indian-country land** (Indian country requires federally recognized reservation/dependent-community/allotment land per 18 U.S.C. § 1151, quoted within the doc itself), and no boundary in this note confers personal status by residence.

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## 4. WHAT'S WORTH ADDING — best rabbit holes

1. **Mapping Inequality (University of Richmond)** — every NYC HOLC map *and* the full area-description forms with their verbatim racist justifications ("infiltration of Negroes"); the transcriptions are damning exhibit text. Pair a 1938 D-grade polygon with a present-day DOHMH poverty map of the same area.
2. **NARA's Enumeration District and Related Maps, 1880–1990** — pull the actual 1940/1950 ED maps for one block and show the same block across ward → ED → tract → modern census geography: four non-jurisdictional lines over one piece of land. (Stephen Morse's One-Step AD/ED tools, cited by the NYPL guide, make the look-up one-click.)
3. **The 1894 consolidation referendum + Andrew Haswell Green** — the "Father of Greater New York" (murdered 1903) makes a great narrative spine for the 1898 map; Brooklyn's *Daily Eagle* anti-consolidation broadsides are digitized.
4. **Laidlaw's "sanitary areas" → census tracts** — an exhibit-friendly irony: today's standard demographic unit was invented by *churches* counting congregations, and first called "sanitary areas." (Krieger 2006, PMC2527201, is the one-stop source.)
5. **Mr. ZIP and the 1963 rollout** — the Postal Bulletin checklists (Mr. ZIP standees, satchel decals, "Santa's ZIP is 99701") are charming period graphics; the LOC business-history guide has the campaign details.
6. **Brooklyn Heights LP-0099** — the designation report's literal metes-and-bounds ("…rear lot lines of 10 Monroe Place through 48 Monroe Place…") shows how a *legal* boundary is actually written, vs. the fiction of ZIP lines; plus *Penn Central* (1978) as the Supreme Court's word on whether such districts "take" property.
7. **The 1938 Charter and the death of the wards** — NYC Municipal Library/Archives hold the charter-revision files; NYT F.Y.I. (1999) gives the one-paragraph version with the Richardson citation.
8. **Queens's five consolidation wards = the old towns** — a tidy map: town lines (pre-1898) vs. ward lines (1898–1938) vs. community-district lines (1975 charter **[verify]**) vs. today's 51 Council districts, all stacked on the same borough. That stack is the exhibit's thesis in one image: the lines are many, changeable, and purpose-built — none of them jurisdictional magic.

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## 5. IMAGES — downloaded to `../images/` + appended to `images/manifest.json`

Six public-domain / freely-licensed images downloaded from Wikimedia Commons (license verified via Commons extmetadata at download time; files verified as valid JPEGs):

| File | Subject | Date | License |
|---|---|---|---|
| `greater-new-york-1897-map.jpg` | "Map of New York City ('Greater New York')" — Merchants' Association/Colton consolidation-era map | 1897 | Public domain |
| `manhattan-wards-1870-map.jpg` | Map of New York County showing wards and police precincts (Valentine's Manual) — the ward system | 1870 | Public domain |
| `nyc-brooklyn-ward-map-1866-mitchell.jpg` | S.A. Mitchell Jr. plan of NYC & Brooklyn — early Brooklyn wards | pub. 1866 | Public domain |
| `brooklyn-holc-redlining-1938.jpg` | HOLC "Residential Security" map of Brooklyn — green/blue/yellow/red grades | 1938 | CC BY-SA 4.0 (Mapping Inequality scan) |
| `census-enumerator-1930.jpg` | Census enumerator taking a household interview (U.S. Census Bureau photo) | 1930 | Public domain |
| `us-zip-code-1963-poster.jpg` | "Use ZIP Code" USPOD promo with mascot Mr. ZIP | May 1963 | Public domain |

All six are **appended** (not overwritten) to `images/manifest.json`, following the existing entry schema (`id`, `file`, `description`, `source_url`, `direct_url`, `credit`, `license`, `notes`). The manifest's first six entries (Lenape/Penn-Treaty images from a parallel research task) were left untouched. Note for the web team: the HOLC file is a 1280px derivative of a very large scan (7840×11524 original linked in the manifest) — use the full-res direct URL for zoomable exhibit use, and keep the CC BY-SA 4.0 attribution line for that one image; the other five are public domain.

### Primary-source shortlist (all visited this session)
- NYPL guide (raw doc) · Brownstoner, Frishberg (2016) (raw doc) · NYT F.Y.I. (1/3/1999) · Wikipedia "Wards of New York City" · stevemorse.org bklyn-genealogy ward FAQ
- U.S. Census Bureau: "History of Census Tracts and Blocks" · Bulletin 374 (1910 NYC by ED) · Federal Register 73 FR 13836 · Krieger, PMC2527201 · Laidlaw front matter (degruyter)
- NARA Enumeration District Maps 1880–1990 (via NYPL guide)
- newyorkfamilyhistory.org "Before the Five-borough City"
- NYC DOHMH "A brief history of redlining" · NYC Civil Rights History HOLC page · PMC9387904 · *J. Econ. History* HOLC article · BTAA Manhattan 1937 record
- LOC "ZIP Code Introduced" · USPS Postal Facts · *Postal Bulletin* 6/27/1963 · Smithsonian NPM "Numbering the Nation" · CRS IF12132
- LPC LP-0099 (Brooklyn Heights, 11/23/1965) · NYT 12/2/1965 · NYC Municipal Archives "Landmarks at Sixty" · NYC Global Partners BID best-practices PDF · GML Art. 19-A §980-a
- **UN–US Headquarters Agreement (1947)** — UNTS No. 147 (treaties.un.org PDF) and full text via Wikisource (§§1, 7, 8, 9, 23 verified verbatim)