[1] The Northeast is known as being home to a large and diverse working class population, including Polish, German, Jewish, Russian, African American, Brazilian, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Guatemalan, Ukrainian, Indian, Chinese, Irish, and Vietnamese neighborhoods.

[5] They were followed by English Quakers, including Thomas Holme, who came to begin the settlement of William Penn's Pennsylvania colony in the late 1680s.

Before consolidation with the City, what is now the Northeast consisted of the townships of Byberry, Delaware, Lower Dublin, Moreland, and Oxford, (largely rural areas); and the boroughs of Bridesburg, Frankford, and White Hall, which were more urbanized.

[6] In spite of the political incorporation, the Northeast retained its old development patterns for a time, and the dense populations and urban style of housing that marked older, more traditional sections of the city had not yet found their way there.

[10] These demographic changes, along with the building of the Market-Frankford Line train and new arterial highways, such as the Roosevelt Boulevard, brought new middle class populations to the lower half of the Northeast.

[11] After World War II, newer arrivals, armed with the mortgage benefits of the GI Bill, brought the baby boom to the Northeast.

This was especially true in Philadelphia, in which much of the city's North, West and South sections lost population, factories, jobs and commerce.

During the postwar period, the Northeast experienced a heavy influx of growing middle-class families, and had become an almost exclusively white community.

That racial imbalance was ultimately addressed by the upward mobility enjoyed by many of the graduates of the Northeast's excellent public and parochial school systems, who made their way out of the Northeast and into the suburbs from the 1980s onward, making room for new arrivals from the city's Latino, African American and Asian populations.

In addition to the racial differences mentioned above, the political climate in the Northeast was balanced evenly between Republicans and Democrats, while the rest of the city almost uniformly voted for the latter party.

[17] This discontent grew to give rise to a secessionist movement, led by State Senator Frank "Hank" Salvatore, among others.

[17] As the Philadelphia economy grew stronger, and most discontented people fled to the suburbs, and a new, more popular mayor, Ed Rendell, was elected, the call for secession waned, and the section settled back into life as a part of the city.

During the housing boom of the first decade of the 21st century, property tax advantages granted to new construction within the city limits led to a growth in residential units and an escalation of existing home prices in the Northeast.

[21] Although there are Irish in almost every area of the city, they still are predominantly located within Northeast Philadelphia,[2] especially in neighborhoods such as Kensington, Fishtown, and Mayfair.

[26] The Northeast is split among several State House districts, including those of Democrats Ed Neilson, Kevin Boyle, Pat Gallagher, Jared Solomon, Jason Dawkins, Anthony Bellmon, and Joseph Hohenstein, and Republican Martina White.

[33] Also present in the Northeast are two nationally recognized medical establishments, Friends Hospital[34] and Fox Chase Cancer Center.

The park's 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of woodlands span the width of the Northeast, and serve as a natural oasis amid urban development.

The park is home to the oldest stone arch bridge still in use in the United States, built in 1697 on what is now Frankford Avenue.