Washington Heights is a neighborhood in the northern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The area, with over 150,000 inhabitants as of 2010, is named for Fort Washington, a fortification constructed at the highest point on the island of Manhattan by Continental Army troops during the American Revolutionary War, to defend the area from the British forces. Washington Heights is bordered by Harlem to the south, along 155th Street, Inwood to the north along Dyckman Street or Hillside Avenue, the Hudson River to the west, and the Harlem River and Coogan's Bluff to the east.

In 2011, Washington Heights was the fourth-safest neighborhood in Manhattan, according to one analysis of police records. Its "Crime and Safety Report", which ranks every neighborhood in the five boroughs, found that the drop in crime in Upper Manhattan led the neighborhood nearly to the top; Inwood ranked third, while Greenwich Village ranked 68th. Nevertheless, in 2016, the New York Post listed one part of the neighborhood – the block of Frederick Douglass Boulevard between West 155th Street and the Harlem River Drive – as one of "the most dangerous blocks in the city" because police crime statistics for 2015 showed that 18 robberies had been reported there, more than for any other city block.

source: wikipedia.org