NYC Turtlepond

New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, education, politics, tourism, dining, art, fashion, and sports. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy, an established safe haven for global investors, and is sometimes described as the capital of the world.

Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors and extending into the Atlantic Ocean, New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coextensive with a respective county of the state of New York. The five boroughs—Brooklyn (Kings County), Queens (Queens County), Manhattan (New York County), the Bronx (Bronx County), and Staten Island (Richmond County)—were created when local governments were consolidated into a single municipal entity in 1898. The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. New York City is home to more than 3.2 million residents born outside the United States, the largest foreign-born population of any city in the world as of 2016. , the New York metropolitan area is estimated to produce a gross metropolitan product of over $2.1 trillion, ranking it first worldwide. If the New York metropolitan area were a sovereign state, it would have the eighth-largest economy in the world. , New York is home to the highest number of billionaires and millionaires of any city and, in 2017, was the wealthiest city in the world.

New York City traces its origins to a trading post founded on the southern tip of Manhattan Island by Dutch colonists in approximately 1624. The settlement was named New Amsterdam ( nl, Nieuw Amsterdam, link=yes) in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York. The city was regained by the Dutch in July 1673 and was renamed New Orange for one year and three months; the city has been continuously named New York since November 1674. New York City was the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790, and has been the largest U.S. city since 1790. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the U.S. by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is a symbol of the U.S. and its ideals of liberty and peace. In the 21st century, New York City has emerged as a global node of creativity, entrepreneurship, and environmental sustainability, and as a symbol of freedom and cultural diversity. ''The New York Times'' has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism and remains the U.S. media's " newspaper of record". In 2019, New York City was voted the greatest city in the world per a survey of over 30,000 people from 48 cities worldwide, citing its cultural diversity.

Many districts and monuments in New York City are major landmarks, including three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013. A record 66.6 million tourists visited New York City in 2019. Times Square is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District, one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections, and a major center of the world's entertainment industry. Many of the city's landmarks, skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world, as is the city's fast pace, spawning the term '' New York minute''. The Empire State Building has become the global standard of reference to describe the height and length of other structures.Multiple sources:
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The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the historic epicenter of LGBTQ+ culture and the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world. Providing continuous 24/7 service and contributing to the nickname ''The City That Never Sleeps'', the New York City Subway is the largest single-operator rapid transit system worldwide, with passenger rail stations; and Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan is the busiest transportation hub in the Western Hemisphere. The city has over 120 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, New York University, and the City University of New York system, which is the largest urban public university system in the United States. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the world's leading financial center and the most powerful city in the world, and is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. New York City is the headquarters of the global art market, with numerous art galleries and auction houses collectively hosting half of the world’s art auctions.

Etymology

In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York, who would become King James II of England. James's elder brother, King Charles II, appointed the Duke proprietor of the former territory of New Netherland, including the city of New Amsterdam, when England seized it from Dutch control.

History

Early history

In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquian Native Americans, including the Lenape. Their homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including the areas that would later become the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.

The first documented visit into New York Harbor by a European was in 1524 by Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano, an explorer from Florence in the service of the French crown. He claimed the area for France and named it ''Nouvelle Angoulême'' (New Angoulême). A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named ('Saint Anthony's River'). The Padrón Real of 1527, the first scientific map to show the East Coast of North America continuously, was informed by Gomes' expedition and labeled the northeastern United States as ''Tierra de Esteban Gómez'' in his honor.

In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company. He proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the ''Mauritius'' after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Hudson's first mate described the harbor as "a very good Harbour for all windes" and the river as "a mile broad" and "full of fish". Hudson sailed roughly north, past the site of the present-day New York State capital city of Albany, in the belief that it might be an oceanic tributary before the river became too shallow to continue. He made a ten-day exploration of the area and claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and called ('New Netherland').

The first non–Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Juan Rodriguez (transliterated to Dutch as ''Jan Rodrigues''), a merchant from Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, Santo Domingo. Born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street in Upper Manhattan, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.

Dutch rule

A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624—making New York the 12th List of North American cities by year of foundation, oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States—with the founding of a Dutch Fur trade, fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), Fort Amsterdam, later called ''Nieuw Amsterdam'' (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan, Manhattan Island.GovIsland Park-to-Tolerance: through Broad Awareness and Conscious Vigilance
Tolerance Park. Retrieved February 9, 2017. See Legislative Resolutions Senate No. 5476 and Assembly No. 2708. The colony of New Amsterdam was centered on what would ultimately be known as Lower Manhattan. It extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern day Wall Street, where a 12-foot wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and British raids. In 1626, the Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit, acting as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the ''Canarsie'', a small Lenape band, for "the value of 60 Dutch guilder, guilders" (about $900 in 2018). A disproved legend claims that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.

Following the purchase, New Amsterdam grew slowly. To attract settlers, the Dutch instituted the Patroon, patroon system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen (''patroons'', or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swaths of land, along with local political autonomy and rights to participate in the lucrative fur trade. This program had little success.

Since 1621, the Dutch West India Company had operated as a monopoly in New Netherland, on authority granted by the States General of the Netherlands, Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economic growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Netherlands Antilles, Dutch West Indies).

In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Amsterdam, Director-General of New Netherland. During his tenure, the population of New Netherland grew from 2,000 to 8,000. Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony; however, he also earned a reputation as a despotism, despotic leader. He instituted regulations on liquor sales, attempted to assert control over the Dutch Reformed Church, and blocked other religious groups (including Quakers, Jews, and Lutheranism, Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship. The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.

English rule

In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed. The terms of the surrender permitted Dutch residents to remain in the colony and allowed for religious freedom. In 1667, during negotiations leading to the Treaty of Breda (1667), Treaty of Breda after the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch decided to keep the nascent plantation colony of what is now Suriname (on the northern South American coast) they had gained from the English; and in return, the English kept New Amsterdam. The fledgling settlement was promptly renamed "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II and VII), who would eventually be deposed in the Glorious Revolution. After the founding, the duke gave part of the colony to proprietors George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, John Berkeley. Fort Orange, north on the Hudson River, was renamed Albany after James's Scottish title. The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the Treaty of Breda (1667), Treaty of Breda, which concluded the Second Anglo-Dutch War.

On August 24, 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, Dutch captain Anthony Colve seized the colony of New York from the English at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III of England, William III, the Prince of Orange. The Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster (1674), Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.

Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizeable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670. By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200. New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population to the disease in 1702 alone.

Province of New York and slavery

In the early 18th century, New York grew in importance as a port, trading port while as a part of the Province of New York, colony of New York. It also became a center of Slavery in the colonial United States, slavery, with 42% of households enslaving Africans by 1730, the highest percentage outside Charleston, South Carolina, Charleston, Province of South Carolina, South Carolina. Most cases were that of House slave, domestic slavery, as a New York household then commonly enslaved few or several people. Others were hired out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banking and shipping industries trading with the Southern United States, American South. During construction in Foley Square in the 1990s, the African Burying Ground was discovered; the cemetery included 10,000 to 20,000 of graves of colonial-era Africans, some enslaved and some free.

The 1735 trial and acquittal in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger, who had been accused of seditious libel after criticizing colonial governor William Cosby, helped to establish the freedom of the press in North America. In 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain, King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.

American Revolution

The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765, as the Sons of Liberty, organized in the city, skirmished over the next ten years with British troops stationed there. The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn. After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, the British made the city their military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist (American Revolution), Loyalist refugees and escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown for all fighters. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces Evacuation Day (New York), evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia. They resettled other Freedman, freedmen in England and the Caribbean.

The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe, Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York (1776), Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side (Manhattan), West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church (New York City), Trinity Church.

In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the United States Constitution, Constitution of the United States. New York City as the U.S. capital hosted several events of national scope in 1789—the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time; and the United States Bill of Rights was drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street. In 1790, New York surpassed Philadelphia as the nation's largest city. At the end of that year, pursuant to the Residence Act, the national capital was moved to Philadelphia.

Nineteenth century

Over the course of the nineteenth century, New York City's population grew from 60,000 to 3.43 million. Under New York State's Abolition of slavery in the United States, abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were to be eventually liberated but to be held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties. Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-Black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential Founding Fathers of the United States, United States founders as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate Black children. It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free Blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School. New York city's population jumped from 123,706 in 1820 to 312,710 by 1840, 16,000 of whom were Black.

In the 19th century, the city was transformed by both commercial and residential development relating to its status as a national and International trade, international trading center, as well as by European immigration, respectively. The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city Grid plan#Early United States, street grid to encompass almost all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish diaspora, Irish and German diaspora, German immigrants.

Several prominent American Writer, literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first Landscape design, landscaped park in an American city.

The Great Famine (Ireland), Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants; more than 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, upwards of a quarter of the city's population. There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.

Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Wood called upon the Alderman, aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on. Anger at new military conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to pay a $300 () commutation fee to hire a substitute, led to the New York Draft Riots, Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.

The New York City draft riots, draft riots deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on Black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and Black people for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, with more than 200 children escaping harm due to efforts of the New York City Police Department, New York Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants. At least 120 people were killed. Eleven Black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of Blacks to flee the city for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. The Black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865, which it had last been in 1820. The White working class had established dominance. Violence by longshoremen against Black men was especially fierce in the docks area. It was one of the worst incidents of List of incidents of civil unrest in the United States, civil unrest in American history.

Modern history

In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the City of Greater New York, consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens. The opening of the New York City Subway, subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.

In 1904, the steamship ''PS General Slocum, General Slocum'' caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.

New York's non-White population was 36,620 in 1890. New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration (African American), Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City had become home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance of literary and Culture of New York City, cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition in the United States, Prohibition. The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline.

New York became the most populous urban area#United States, urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history. The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall of Tammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.

Returning World War II veterans created a post-war Business cycle, economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens and Nassau County, New York, Nassau County as well as similar suburban areas in New Jersey. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations Headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.

The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent protests by members of the LGBT community, gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights by country or territory, LGBT rights. Wayne R. Dynes, author of the Encyclopedia of Homosexuality, wrote that drag queens were the only "transgender folks around" during the June 1969 Stonewall riots. The transgender community in New York City played a significant role in fighting for LGBT equality during the period of the Stonewall riots and thereafter.

In the 1970s, job losses due to Deindustrialization, industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates. While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s. By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy. New York's population reached all-time highs in the 2000 United States Census, 2000 census and then again in the 2010 census.

New York City suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, September 11, 2001, attacks. Two of the four airliners hijacked that day were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, destroying the towers and killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers. The North Tower became the tallest building ever to be destroyed anywhere then or subsequently.

World Trade Center site#Planning for the new World Trade Center, The area was rebuilt with a new One World Trade Center, a National September 11 Memorial & Museum, 9/11 memorial and museum, and other new buildings and infrastructure. The World Trade Center (PATH station), World Trade Center PATH station, which had opened on July 19, 1909, as the Hudson Terminal, was also destroyed in the attacks. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003. An permanent rail station designed by Santiago Calatrava, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, the city's third-largest hub, was completed in 2016. The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere and the List of tallest buildings in the world, seventh-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic in reference to the year of United States Declaration of Independence, U.S. independence.

The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District (Manhattan), Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and popularizing the Occupy movement against Social inequality, social and economic inequality worldwide.

In March 2020, the first case of Coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19 in the city was confirmed in Manhattan. The city rapidly replaced Wuhan, China to become the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, pandemic during the early phase, before the infection became widespread across the world and the rest of the nation. As of March 2021, New York City had recorded COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, over 30,000 deaths from COVID-19-related complications. In 2022, the LGBT culture in New York City, LGBT community in New York City became the epicenter of the monkeypox outbreak in the Western Hemisphere, prompting New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams declared corresponding public health emergency (United States), public health emergencies in the state and city, respectively, in July 2022.

Geography

During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over in depth. The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action also left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid Foundation (engineering), foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

New York City is situated in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary. The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely fresh water, freshwater river in the city.

The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.

The city's total area is ; of the city is land and of this is water.New York State Gazetteer from 2010 United States Census
United States Census Bureau. Retrieved February 9, 2017. The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at Above mean sea level, above sea level, is the highest point on the eastern seaboard south of Maine. The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.

Boroughs

is sometimes referred to collectively as the ''Five Boroughs''. Each borough is coextensive with a respective Administrative divisions of New York (state)#County, county of New York State, making New York City one of the List of U.S. municipalities in multiple counties, U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. There are :Neighborhoods in New York City, hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character.

If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States (Staten Island would be ranked 37th as of 2020); these same boroughs are coterminous with the four most densely populated counties in the United States: New York (Manhattan), Kings (Brooklyn), Bronx, and Queens.

Manhattan

Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough. It is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers, and is sometimes locally known as ''The City''. Manhattan's population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km) in 2015 makes it the County statistics of the United States#Population density, highest of any county in the United States and List of United States cities by population density#New York City boroughs, higher than the density of any individual American city.

Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the Headquarters of the United Nations, United Nations Headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. The borough of Manhattan is often described as the financial and cultural center of the world.

Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River and the East River, and its southern tip, at the confluence of the two rivers, represents the birthplace of New York City itself. Several small islands also compose part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randall's Island, Wards Island, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island and Liberty Island to the south in New York Harbor.

Manhattan Island is loosely divided into the Lower Manhattan, Lower, Midtown Manhattan, Midtown, and Upper Manhattan, Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem, bordering the Bronx (Bronx County).

Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century until the Great Migration (African American), Great Migration. It was the center of the Harlem Renaissance.

The borough of Manhattan also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill, Manhattan, Marble Hill, which is contiguous with the Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the ''Outer Boroughs''.

Brooklyn

Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, soc