Unlike most American cities, which make up only a part of a particular county, New York is made up of five separate counties, which are called boroughs. Originally the city included only the borough of Manhattan, located on an island between the Hudson and East rivers. In 1898 a number of surrounding communities were incorporated into the city as the boroughs of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. The Bronx is the only borough on the mainland of the United States. Manhattan and Staten Island are surrounded by water, while Queens and Brooklyn are part of Long Island.

Queens is the largest of the five boroughs. Covering 109.2 sq mi at the western end of Long Island, Queens is separated from Brooklyn by Newtown Creek and from the rest of the city by the East River and Long Island Sound. It stretches to the Atlantic Ocean on the south and borders Nassau County on the east. It is overwhelmingly residential and probably the most ethnically diverse community in the world. In 2000 Queens had 1,951,598 residents and was second in population only to Brooklyn among the five boroughs.

Brooklyn is the second largest and most populous of the five boroughs. It is located on the southwestern tip of Long Island west of Queens and situated across the Upper Bay and the East River from Manhattan. The borough has a land area of 70.6 sq mi. Brooklyn had 2,300,664 residents in 2000, more than any other U.S. city, with the exception of the entire city of New York and the cities of Los Angeles and Chicago. Indeed, as a separate municipality before 1898, it was the third largest city in the United States.

Brooklyn retains a strong separate identity. It has an important central business district and dozens of varied and clearly identifiable neighborhoods, including Bedford Stuyvesant, the largest black community in the United States, and Williamsburgh, Crown Heights, and Borough Park, all of which have large populations of Orthodox Jews.

Staten Island is the third largest and least populous of the five boroughs. It is located at the juncture of Upper New York Bay and Lower New York Bay. The island is physically closer to New Jersey, to which it is connected by four bridges, than to the rest of New York City, to which it is connected only by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the world-famous Staten Island Ferry. Staten Island encompasses 58.5 sq mi. The southernmost of the five boroughs, Staten Island had 378,977 inhabitants in 2000, or about 5 percent of the population of the entire city.

Overwhelmingly white, Staten Island has dozens of distinct neighborhoods or towns, and it has the highest proportion of single-family housing and owner-occupied housing in the city. Staten Island has many homes dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. Of special interest are the Conference House (1680), where futile peace negotiations were held between the British and American representatives in 1776 during the American Revolution (1775-1783), and the Voorlezer’s House (1695), the nation’s oldest surviving elementary school building.

The Bronx is the fourth largest and the northernmost of the five boroughs, and the only one on the American mainland. Even so, it is surrounded by water on three sides: Long Island Sound on the east, the Harlem and East rivers on the south, and Hudson River on the west. Encompassing 42 sq mi, it had 1,203,789 inhabitants in 2000.

Largely residential, the Bronx includes dozens of vibrant neighborhoods. Fieldston is particularly elegant, with great stone houses set among spacious lawns and privately-maintained streets, while Belmont has become the city’s most authentically Italian section. The areas along Pelham Parkway and the northern reaches of the Grand Concourse are particularly prized, because the apartment buildings are well kept and the public parks are easily accessible. City Island retains the charm of a small fishing village.

Parts of the Bronx, however, fell victim to decay and abandonment, especially between 1970 and 1980, when the population of the borough fell by 20 percent. The low point occurred in 1976, when future U.S. president Jimmy Carter compared the South Bronx to the bombed-out German city of Dresden after World War II (1939-1945). Since 1980 the process has again reversed and self-help groups have begun to rehabilitate most of the most devastated blocks.

Manhattan, or New York County, is the smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough consists principally of the island of Manhattan, but also includes Governors Island, Randalls Island, Wards Island, Roosevelt Island, U Thant Island, and Marble Hill, a small enclave on the edge of the Bronx mainland. Its land area is 23 sq mi. Manhattan’s population peaked in 1910 with 2.3 million people, after which it began a slow decline to 1.4 million in 1980. Since then, the population has again begun to increase, reaching 1,487,536 in 2000.

Manhattan is the glittering heart of the metropolis. It is the site of virtually all of the hundreds of skyscrapers that are the symbol of the city. It is the center of New York’s cultural life. Numerous stage and motion picture theaters are located around Broadway in Midtown, which includes Times Square. The borough is the home of prominent music and dance organizations, such as the New York City Opera Company, the Metropolitan Opera Association, the Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, American Ballet Theatre, and the New York City Ballet.

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