Manhattan beats like a heart. It has sucked in successive waves of immigrants, compressed them together, and then moved them on to make way for the next wave. This constant pulse of humanity has made New York the most multicultural city on Earth. Yet it is also a city that is constantly dividing, fracturing and recombining. Neighbourhoods are overlaid with the tidemarks of successive waves of immigration. Buildings are put to new uses; public spaces are re-imagined; the word on the street and the food on the plate constantly changes. But the echoes of previous residents still reverberate – sometimes in harmony, sometimes in discord – with contemporary New Yorkers.