In which New York borough would you find Hell’s Kitchen?
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New York City Borough (New York City) Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan
The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. Located at the southern tip of the state of New York, the city is the center of the New York metropolitan area, one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world.    With a U.S. Census Bureau-estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over a land area of just 305 sqmi,  New York is also the most densely populated major city in the United States.  A global power city,  New York City exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment, its fast pace defining the term New York minute. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations,  New York is an important center for international diplomacy  and has been described as the cultural and financial capital of the world.  

Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors,   New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a separate county of New York State.  The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898.  The city and its metropolitan area constitute the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States, and as many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,  making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world.   By 2015 estimates, the New York City metropolitan region remains by a significant margin the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.2 million residents) and the Combined Statistical Area (23.7 million residents). In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of nearly US$1.39 trillion,  while in 2012, the CSA  generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion, both ranking first nationally by a wide margin and behind the GDP of only twelve and eleven countries, respectively. 

New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626.  The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664.   New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the country's largest city since 1790.  The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries  and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy.  In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a global node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance, and environmental sustainability.

Many districts and landmarks in New York City have become well known, and the city received a record of nearly 60 million tourists in 2015, hosting three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013.  Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world.    Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart" and its "Crossroads",  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.  The names of many of the city's bridges, skyscrapers,  and parks are known around the world. Anchored by Wall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world,    and the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world.   Manhattan's Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,   with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city.   Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with  stations in operation.    New York City's higher education network comprises over 120 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 35 in the world.  

History

Etymology and early history

During the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the geologic foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. 

In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by various bands of Algonquian tribes of Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the western portion of Long Island, including the area that would become Brooklyn and Queens; Manhattan; the Bronx; and the Lower Hudson Valley. 

The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown, who sailed his ship La Dauphine into New York Harbor. He claimed the area for France and named it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême). 

A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 aboard the purpose-built caravel La Anunciada and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Rio de San Antonio. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August. The Padrón Real of 1527, the first scientific map to show North America's east coast continuously, was informed by Gomes' expedition and labeled the Northeastern U.S. as Tierra de Esteban Gómez in his honor. 

In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson re-discovered the region when he sailed his ship the Halve Maen ("Half Moon" in Dutch) into 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 150 miles north,  past the site of the present-day Albany, in the belief that it might be an oceanic tributary before the river became to 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 would be claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland (New Netherland).

The first non-Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Dominican trader Juan Rodriguez (transliterated to Dutch as Jan Rodrigues). Born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–1614, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.  

A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 – making New York the 12th oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States   – with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam). [http://tolerancepark.org/_wsn/page5.html Tolerance Park Historic New Amsterdam on Governors Island], Tolerance Park. Accessed May 12, 2007. See Legislative Resolutions Senate No. 5476 and Assembly No. 2708.  The colony of New Amsterdam was centered at the site which would eventually become Lower Manhattan. 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 60 guilders  (about $1,000 in 2006).  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 system in 1628, whereby wealthy Dutchmen ("patroons", or patrons) who brought 50 colonists to New Netherland would be awarded swathes of land in New Netherland, 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 Dutch States General. In 1639–1640, in an effort to bolster economy growth, the Dutch West India Company relinquished its monopoly over the fur trade in New Netherland, leading to growth in the production and trade of food, timber, tobacco, and slaves (particularly with the Dutch West Indies).

In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant began his tenure as the last Director-General of New Netherland. Over his term, the population of New Amsterdam grew from 2,000 to 8,000, and Stuyvesant has been credited with improving law and order in the colony. However, Stuyvesant also earned a reputation as a 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 Lutherans) from establishing houses of worship. The Dutch West India Company would eventually attempt to ease tensions between Stuyvesant and residents of New Amsterdam.

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. The English promptly renamed the fledgling city "New York" after the Duke of York (the future King James II of England).  The transfer was confirmed in 1667 by the 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 England at the behest of Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and rechristened it "New Orange" after William III, the Prince of Orange. However, the Dutch would soon return the island to England under the Treaty of Westminster of November 1674.  

Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemics brought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizable 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.  

New York grew in importance as a trading port while under British rule in the early 1700s. It also became a center of slavery, with 42% of households holding slaves by 1730, more than any other city other than Charleston, South Carolina.  Most slaveholders held a few or several domestic slaves, but others hired them out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banks and shipping tied to the American South. Discovery of the African Burying Ground in the 1990s, during construction of a new federal courthouse near Foley Square, revealed that tens of thousands of Africans had been buried in the area in the colonial years.

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 King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.  The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765 as the Sons of Liberty organized in the city, skirmishing 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 entirely 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 refugees, as well as 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 evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia. They resettled other 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 Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church. 

In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York 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 Constitution of the United States. 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.  By 1790, New York had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.

Under New York State's gradual abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were born to be eventually liberated but were 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 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. The city's black population reached more than 16,000 in 1840. 

In the 19th century, the city was transformed by development relating to its status as a trading center, as well as by European immigration.  The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass 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 and German immigrants. 

Several prominent American 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 landscaped park in an American city.

Modern history

The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants. Over 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 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 on the 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 Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class. The situation 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 blacks for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, but more than 200 children escaped harm due to efforts of the New York City Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants. According to historian James M. McPherson (2001), at least 120 people were killed. In all, eleven black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of blacks to flee the city for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well as 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 civil unrest in American history. 

In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the 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 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 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 from the American South, and by 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition. The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline.

New York became the most populous 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 economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens. 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 demonstrations by members of the 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 in the United States. 

In the 1970s, job losses due to 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 Census and then again in the 2010 Census.

The city and surrounding area suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks when 10 of the 19 terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and later destroyed them, killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers who were in the towers and in the surrounding area.  The rebuilding of the area, has created a new One World Trade Center, and a 9/11 memorial and museum along with other new buildings and infrastructure. The World Trade Center PATH station, which opened on July 19, 1909 as the Hudson Terminal, was also destroyed in the attack. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003. A permanent station, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, is currently under construction.  The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere and the fourth-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1776 ft in reference to the year of American independence.    

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

Geography

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 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 this is water and  is land.  
The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at  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. 

Cityscape

Architecture

New York has architecturally noteworthy buildings in a wide range of styles and from distinct time periods, from the saltbox style Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the oldest section of which dates to 1656, to the modern One World Trade Center, the skyscraper at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan and the most expensive office tower in the world by construction cost. 

Manhattan's skyline, with its many skyscrapers, is universally recognized, and the city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world. , New York City had 5,937 high-rise buildings, of which 550 completed structures were at least 330 ft high, both second in the world after Hong Kong,   with over 50 completed skyscrapers taller than 656 ft. These include the Woolworth Building (1913), an early gothic revival skyscraper built with massively scaled gothic detailing.

The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setbacks in new buildings and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.  The Art Deco style of the Chrysler Building (1930) and Empire State Building (1931), with their tapered tops and steel spires, reflected the zoning requirements. The buildings have distinctive ornamentation, such as the eagles at the corners of the 61st floor on the Chrysler Building, and are considered some of the finest examples of the Art Deco style.  A highly influential example of the international style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its façade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is a prominent example of green design in American skyscrapers and has received an award from the American Institute of Architects as well as AIA New York State for its design.

The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses and townhouses and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.  In contrast, New York City also has neighborhoods that are less densely populated and feature free-standing dwellings. In neighborhoods such as Riverdale (in the Bronx), Ditmas Park (in Brooklyn), and Douglaston (in Queens), large single-family homes are common in various architectural styles such as Tudor Revival and Victorian.   

Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.  A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the wooden roof-mounted water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could break municipal water pipes.  Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, such as Jackson Heights. 

According to the United States Geological Survey, an updated analysis of seismic hazard in July 2014 revealed a "slightly lower hazard for tall buildings" in New York City than previously assessed. Scientists estimated this lessened risk based upon a lower likelihood than previously thought of slow shaking near the city, which would be more likely to cause damage to taller structures from an earthquake in the vicinity of the city. 

Boroughs

New York City is often referred to collectively as the five boroughs, and in turn, there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, many with a definable history and character to call their own. 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) ; 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 (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough and is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers. Manhattan's (New York County's) population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km²) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and 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 United Nations Headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. 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. Several small islands are also 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 Lower, Midtown, and 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. The borough also includes a small neighborhood on the United States mainland, called Marble Hill, which is contiguous with The Bronx. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the outer boroughs.
* Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the only central core neighborhood in the outer boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.  Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.
* Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,  as well as the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Queens is the site of Citi Field, the baseball stadium of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are located in Queens. (The third is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey.)
* Staten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan by way of the free Staten Island Ferry, a daily commuter ferry and popular tourist attraction which provides unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2500 acres, including 28 mi of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.  Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.
* The Bronx (Bronx County) is New York City's northernmost borough and the only New York City borough with a majority of it a part of the mainland United States. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball park of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.  It is also home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo, which spans 265 acre and houses over 6,000 animals.  The Bronx is also the birthplace of rap and hip hop culture.  Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at .

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, New York City features a humid subtropical climate (Cfa), and is thus the northernmost major city on the North American continent with this categorization.   The suburbs to the immediate north and west lie in the transitional zone between humid subtropical and humid continental climates. The city averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually, and averages 57% of possible sunshine annually, accumulating 2,535 hours of sunshine per annum. The city lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone. 

Winters are cold and damp, and prevailing wind patterns that blow offshore minimize the moderating effects of the Atlantic Ocean; yet the Atlantic and the partial shielding from colder air by the Appalachians keep the city warmer in the winter than inland North American cities at similar or lesser latitudes such as Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The daily mean temperature in January, the area's coldest month, is ; however, temperatures usually drop to 10 °F several times per winter,  and reach 60 °F several days in the coldest winter month. Spring and autumn are unpredictable and can range from chilly to warm, although they are usually mild with low humidity. Summers are typically warm to hot and humid, with a daily mean temperature of  in July. Nighttime conditions are often exacerbated by the urban heat island phenomenon, while daytime temperatures exceed 90 °F on average of 17 days each summer and in some years exceed 100 °F. Extreme temperatures have ranged from , recorded on February 9, 1934, up to 106 °F on July 9, 1936.

The city receives  of precipitation annually, which is fairly spread throughout the year.
Average winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010 has been , but this varies considerably from year to year. Hurricanes and tropical storms are rare in the New York area, but are not unheard of and always have the potential to strike the area.  Hurricane Sandy brought a destructive storm surge to New York City on the evening of October 29, 2012, flooding numerous streets, tunnels, and subway lines in Lower Manhattan and other areas of the city and cutting off electricity in many parts of the city and its suburbs.  The storm and its profound impacts have prompted the discussion of constructing seawalls and other coastal barriers around the shorelines of the city and the metropolitan area to minimize the risk of destructive consequences from another such event in the future.  

Parks

The City of New York has a complex park system, with various lands operated by the National Park Service, the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.

In its 2013 ParkScore ranking, the Trust for Public Land reported that the park system in New York City was the second best park system among the 50 most populous US cities, behind the park system of Minneapolis.  ParkScore ranks urban park systems by a formula that analyzes median park size, park acres as percent of city area, the percent of city residents within a half-mile of a park, spending of park services per resident, and the number of playgrounds per 10,000 residents.

National parks

Gateway National Recreation Area contains over 26000 acres in total, most of it surrounded by New York City,  including the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. In Brooklyn and Queens, the park contains over 9000 acre of salt marsh, wetlands, islands, and water, including most of Jamaica Bay. Also in Queens, the park includes a significant portion of the western Rockaway Peninsula, most notably Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden. In Staten Island, Gateway National Recreation Area includes Fort Wadsworth, with historic pre-Civil War era Battery Weed and Fort Tompkins, and Great Kills Park, with beaches, trails, and a marina.

The Statue of Liberty National Monument and Ellis Island Immigration Museum are managed by the National Park Service and are in both the states of New York and New Jersey. They are joined in the harbor by Governors Island National Monument, in New York. Historic sites under federal management on Manhattan Island include Castle Clinton National Monument; Federal Hall National Memorial; Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site; General Grant National Memorial ("Grant's Tomb"); African Burial Ground National Monument; and Hamilton Grange National Memorial. Hundreds of private properties are listed on the National Register of Historic Places or as a National Historic Landmark such as, for example, the Stonewall Inn, part of the Stonewall National Monument in Greenwich Village, as the catalyst of the modern gay rights movement.   |

State parks

There are seven state parks within the confines of New York City, including Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve, a natural area that includes extensive riding trails, and Riverbank State Park, a 28 acre facility that rises 69 ft over the Hudson River. 

City parks

New York City has over 28000 acre of municipal parkland and 14 mi of public beaches.  The largest municipal park in the city is Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx, with 2765 acres. 
* Central Park, an 883 acre park in middle-upper Manhattan, is the most visited urban park in the United States as well as one of the most filmed locations in the world, with 40 million visitors in 2013.  The park contains a myriad of attractions; there are several lakes and ponds, two ice-skating rinks, the Central Park Zoo, the Central Park Conservatory Garden, and the 106 acre Jackie Onassis Reservoir. Indoor attractions include Belvedere Castle with its nature center, the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater, and the historic Carousel. On October 23, 2012, hedge fund manager John A. Paulson announced a $100 million gift to the Central Park Conservancy, the largest ever monetary donation to New York City's park system. 
* Washington Square Park is a prominent landmark in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan. The Washington Square Arch at the northern gateway to the park is an iconic symbol of both New York University and Greenwich Village.
* Prospect Park in Brooklyn has a 90 acre meadow, a lake, and extensive woodlands. Within the park is the historic Battle Pass, prominent in the Battle of Long Island. 
* Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, the city's third largest park, was the setting for the 1939 World's Fair and the 1964 World's Fair  and is host to the annual United States Open Tennis Championships tournament.
* Over a fifth of the Bronx's area, 7000 acre, is given over to open space and parks, including Pelham Bay Park, Van Cortlandt Park, the Bronx Zoo, and the New York Botanical Gardens. 
* In Staten Island, the Conference House Park contains the historic Conference House, site of the only attempt of a peaceful resolution to the American Revolution, attended by Benjamin Franklin representing the Americans and Lord Howe representing the British Crown. The historic Burial Ridge, the largest Native American burial ground within New York City, is within the park.

Military installations

New York City is home to Fort Hamilton, the U.S. military's only active duty installation within the city.  Established in 1825 in Brooklyn on the site of a small battery utilized during the American Revolution, it is one of America's longest serving military forts.  Today Fort Hamilton serves as the headquarters of the North Atlantic Division of the United States Army Corps of Engineers as well as for the New York City Recruiting Battalion. It also houses the 1179th Transportation Brigade, the 722nd Aeromedical Staging Squadron, and a military entrance processing station. Other formerly active military reservations still utilized for National Guard and military training or reserve operations in the city include Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and Fort Totten in Queens.

Demographics

New York City is the most-populous city in the United States, with an estimated record high of 8,550,405 residents , incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 United States Census.  More than twice as many people live in New York City as in the second-most populous U.S. city (Los Angeles), and within a smaller area. New York City gained more residents between April 2010 and July 2014 (316,000) than any other U.S. city. New York City's population amounts to about 40% of New York State's population and a similar percentage of the New York metropolitan area population.

Population density

In 2015, the city had an estimated population density of 28,053 people per square mile (10,756/km²), rendering it the most densely populated of all municipalities housing over 100,000 residents in the United States; however, several small cities (of fewer than 100,000) in adjacent Hudson County, New Jersey are more dense overall, as per the 2000 Census.  Geographically co-extensive with New York County, the borough of Manhattan's 2015 population density of 72,033 people per square mile  (27,812/km²) makes it the highest of any county in the United States  and higher than the density of any individual American city. 

Race and ethnicity

The city's population in 2010 was 44% white (33.3% non-Hispanic white), 25.5% black (23% non-Hispanic black), 0.7% Native American, and 12.7% Asian. Hispanics of any race represented 28.6% of the population, while Asians constituted the fastest-growing segment of the city's population between 2000 and 2010; the non-Hispanic white population declined 3 percent, the smallest recorded decline in decades; and for the first time since the Civil War, the number of blacks declined over a decade. 

Throughout its history, the city has been a major port of entry for immigrants into the United States; more than 12 million European immigrants were received at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1924.  The term "melting pot" was first coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. By 1900, Germans constituted the largest immigrant group, followed by the Irish, Jews, and Italians.  In 1940, whites represented 92% of the city's population. 

Approximately 37% of the city's population is foreign born.  In New York, no single country or region of origin dominates. The ten largest sources of foreign-born individuals in the city  were the Dominican Republic, China, Mexico, Guyana, Jamaica, Ecuador, Haiti, India, Russia, and Trinidad and Tobago,  while the Bangladeshi immigrant population has since become one of the fastest growing in the city, counting over 74,000 by 2013. 

Asian Americans in New York City, according to the 2010 Census, number more than one million, greater than the combined totals of San Francisco and Los Angeles.  New York contains the highest total Asian population of any U.S. city proper.  The New York City borough of Queens is home to the state's largest Asian American population and the largest Andean (Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian, and Bolivian) populations in the United States, and is also the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. The Chinese population constitutes the fastest-growing nationality in New York State; multiple satellites of the original Manhattan Chinatown (紐約華埠), in Brooklyn (布鲁克林華埠), and around Flushing, Queens (法拉盛華埠), are thriving as traditionally urban enclaves, while also expanding rapidly eastward into suburban Nassau County (拿騷縣)  on Long Island (長島),  as the New York metropolitan region and New York State have become the top destinations for new Chinese immigrants, respectively, and large-scale Chinese immigration continues into New York City and surrounding areas.    In 2012, 6.3% of New York City was of Chinese ethnicity, with nearly three-fourths living in either Queens or Brooklyn, geographically on Long Island.  A community numbering 20,000 Korean-Chinese (Chaoxianzu (Chinese: 朝鲜族) or Joseonjok (Hangul: 조선족)) is centered in Flushing, Queens, while New York City is also home to the largest Tibetan population outside China, India, and Nepal, also centered in Queens. Koreans made up 1.2% of the city's population, and Japanese 0.3%. Filipinos were the largest Southeast Asian ethnic group at 0.8%, followed by Vietnamese, who made up 0.2% of New York City's population in 2010. Indians are the largest South Asian group, comprising 2.4% of the city's population, with Bangladeshis and Pakistanis at 0.7% and 0.5%, respectively.  Queens is the preferred borough of settlement for Asian Indians, Koreans, and Filipinos,  as well as Malaysians and other Southeast Asians;  while Brooklyn is receiving large numbers of both West Indian as well as Asian Indian immigrants.

New York City has the largest European and non-Hispanic white population of any American city. At 2.7 million in 2012, New York's non-Hispanic white population is larger than the non-Hispanic white populations of Los Angeles (1.1 million), Chicago (865,000), and Houston (550,000) combined.  The European diaspora residing in the city is very diverse. According to 2012 Census estimates, there were roughly 560,000 Italian Americans, 385,000 Irish Americans, 253,000 German Americans, 223,000 Russian Americans, 201,000 Polish Americans, and 137,000 English Americans. Additionally, Greek and French Americans numbered 65,000 each, with those of Hungarian descent estimated at 60,000 people. Ukrainian and Scottish Americans numbered 55,000 and 35,000, respectively. People identifying ancestry from Spain numbered 30,838 total in 2010. People of Norwegian and Swedish descent both stood at about 20,000 each, while people of Czech, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Scotch-Irish, and Welsh descent all numbered between 12,000–14,000 people.  Arab Americans number over 160,000 in New York City,  with the highest concentration in Brooklyn. Central Asians, primarily Uzbek Americans, are a rapidly growing segment of the city's non-Hispanic white population, enumerating over 30,000, and including over half of all Central Asian immigrants to the United States,  most settling in Queens or Brooklyn. Albanian Americans are most highly concentrated in the Bronx. 

The wider New York City metropolitan statistical area, with over 20 million people, about 50% greater than the second-place Los Angeles metropolitan area in the United States, is also ethnically diverse,  with the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami, the next most popular gateway regions. It is home to the largest Jewish as well as Israeli communities outside Israel, with the Jewish population in the region numbering over 1.5 million in 2012 and including many diverse Jewish sects from around the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The metropolitan area is also home to 20% of the nation's Indian Americans and at least 20 Little India enclaves, as well as 15% of all Korean Americans and four Koreatowns;   the largest Asian Indian population in the Western Hemisphere; the largest Russian American, Italian American, and African American populations; the largest Dominican American, Puerto Rican American, and South American and second-largest overall Hispanic population in the United States, numbering 4.8 million; and includes at least 6 established Chinatowns within New York City alone,  with the urban agglomeration comprising a population of 779,269 overseas Chinese  Census estimates,  the largest outside of Asia.

Ecuador, Colombia, Guyana, Peru, and Brazil were the top source countries from South America for legal immigrants to the New York City region in 2013; the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Haiti, and Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean; Egypt, Ghana, and Nigeria from Africa; and El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala in Central America.  Amidst a resurgence of Puerto Rican migration to New York City, this population had increased to approximately 1.3 million in the metropolitan area .

Sexual and gender orientation

The New York metropolitan area is home to a self-identifying gay and bisexual community estimated at nearly 570,000 individuals, the largest in the United States and one of the world's largest. Same-sex marriages in New York were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place beginning 30 days thereafter.  New York City is also home to the largest transgender population in the United States, estimated at 25,000 in 2016. 

Religion

Christianity (59%), made up of Roman Catholicism (33%), Protestantism (23%), and other Christians (3%), was the most prevalently practiced religion in New York ,[http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/07/29/major-u-s-metropolitan-areas-differ-in-their-religious-profiles/ Major U.S. metropolitan areas differ in their religious profiles], Pew Research Center, Accessed July 30, 2015. followed by Judaism, with approximately 1.1 million Jews in New York City,   over half living in Brooklyn. Islam ranks third in New York City, with official estimates ranging between 600,000 and 1,000,000 observers and including 10% of the city's public schoolchildren,  followed by Hinduism, Buddhism, and a variety of other religions, as well as atheism. In 2014, 24% self-identified with no organized religious affiliation.

Income

New York City has a high degree of income disparity as indicated by its Gini Coefficient of 0.5 for the city overall and 0.6 for Manhattan.  The disparity is driven by wage growth in high-income brackets, while wages have stagnated for middle and lower-income brackets. In the first quarter of 2014, the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.  In 2016, Beijing overtook New York City to become the city with the most billionaires in the world, 100 to 95,   including former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.  Lower Manhattan has been experiencing a baby boom, with the area south of Canal Street witnessing 1,086 births in 2010, 12% greater than 2009 and over twice the number born in 2001. 

Economy

Overview of New York City's economy

New York is a global hub of international business and commerce. In 2012, New York City topped the first Global Economic Power Index, published by The Atlantic (to be differentiated from a namesake list published by the Martin Prosperity Institute), with cities ranked according to criteria reflecting their presence on similar lists as published by other entities.  The city is a major center for banking and finance, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media as well as traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, theater, fashion, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's broad-spectrum high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is also a major economic engine, handling record cargo volume in the first half of 2014. 

Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City,  as are a large number of foreign corporations. One out of ten private sector jobs in the city is with a foreign company.  New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists.   This ability to attract foreign investment helped New York City top the FDi Magazine American Cities of the Future ranking for 2013. 

Real estate is a major force in the city's economy, as the total value of all New York City property was assessed at US$914.8 billion for the 2015 fiscal year.  The Time Warner Center is the property with the highest-listed market value in the city, at US$1.1 billion in 2006. New York City is home to some of the nation's—and the world's—most valuable real estate. 450 Park Avenue was sold on July 2, 2007 for US$510 million, about $1,589 per square foot ($17,104/m²), breaking the barely month-old record for an American office building of $1,476 per square foot ($15,887/m²) set in the June 2007 sale of 660 Madison Avenue.  According to Forbes, in 2014, Manhattan was home to six of the top ten zip codes in the United States by median housing price. 

, the global advertising agencies of Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group, both based in Manhattan, had combined annual revenues of approximately US$21 billion, reflecting New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry, which is metonymously referred to as "Madison Avenue". The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages. 

Other important sectors include medical research and technology, non-profit institutions, and universities. Manufacturing accounts for a significant but declining share of employment, although the city's garment industry is showing a resurgence in Brooklyn.  Food processing is a US$5 billion industry that employs more than 19,000 residents.

Chocolate is New York City's leading specialty-food export, with up to US$234 million worth of exports each year.  Entrepreneurs were forming a "Chocolate District" in Brooklyn ,  while Godiva, one of the world's largest chocolatiers, continues to be headquartered in Manhattan. 

Wall Street

New York City's most important economic sector lies in its role as the headquarters for the U.S.financial industry, metonymously known as Wall Street. The city's securities industry, enumerating 163,400 jobs in August 2013, continues to form the largest segment of the city's financial sector and an important economic engine, accounting in 2012 for 5 percent of the city's private sector jobs, 8.5 percent (US$3.8 billion) of its tax revenue, and 22 percent of the city's total wages, including an average salary of US$360,700.  Many large financial companies are headquartered in New York City, and the city is also home to a burgeoning number of financial startup companies.

Lower Manhattan is the third-largest central business district in the United States and is home to the New York Stock Exchange, on Wall Street, and the NASDAQ, at 165 Broadway, representing the world's largest and second largest stock exchanges, respectively, when measured both by overall average daily trading volume and by total market capitalization of their listed companies in 2013. Investment banking fees on Wall Street totaled approximately $40 billion in 2012,  while in 2013, senior New York City bank officers who manage risk and compliance functions earned as much as $324,000 annually.  In fiscal year 2013–14, Wall Street's securities industry generated 19% of New York State's tax revenue.  New York City remains the largest global center for trading in public equity and debt capital markets, driven in part by the size and financial development of the U.S. economy.  In July 2013, NYSE Euronext, the operator of the New York Stock Exchange, took over the administration of the London interbank offered rate from the British Bankers Association.  New York also leads in hedge fund management; private equity; and the monetary volume of mergers and acquisitions. Several investment banks and investment mangers headquartered in Manhattan are important participants in other global financial centers. New York is also the principal commercial banking center of the United States. 

Many of the world's largest media conglomerates are also based in the city. Manhattan contained over 500 million square feet (46.5 million m2) of office space in 2015, making it the largest office market in the United States,  while Midtown Manhattan, with nearly 400 million square feet (37.2 million m2) in 2015, is the largest central business district in the world. 

Silicon Alley

Silicon Alley, centered in Manhattan, has evolved into a metonym for the sphere encompassing the New York City metropolitan region's high technology industries  involving the Internet, new media, telecommunications, digital media, software development, biotechnology, game design, financial technology ("fintech"), and other fields within information technology that are supported by its entrepreneurship ecosystem and venture capital investments. In 2015, Silicon Alley generated over US$7.3 billion in venture capital investment across a broad spectrum of high technology enterprises, most based in Manhattan, with others in Brooklyn, Queens, and elsewhere in the region. High technology startup companies and employment are growing in New York City and the region, bolstered by the city's position in North America as the leading Internet hub and telecommunications center, including its vicinity to several transatlantic fiber optic trunk lines,  New York's intellectual capital, and its extensive outdoor wireless connectivity.  Verizon Communications, headquartered at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, was at the final stages in 2014 of completing a US$3 billion fiberoptic telecommunications upgrade throughout New York City.  , New York City hosted 300,000 employees in the tech sector.  

The biotechnology sector is also growing in New York City, based upon the city's strength in academic scientific research and public and commercial financial support. On December 19, 2011, then Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced his choice of Cornell University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology to build a US$2 billion graduate school of applied sciences called Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island with the goal of transforming New York City into the world's premier technology capital.   By mid-2014, Accelerator, a biotech investment firm, had raised more than US$30 million from investors, including Eli Lilly and Company, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, for initial funding to create biotechnology startups at the Alexandria Center for Life Science, which encompasses more than  on East 29th Street and promotes collaboration among scientists and entrepreneurs at the center and with nearby academic, medical, and research institutions. The New York City Economic Development Corporation's Early Stage Life Sciences Funding Initiative and venture capital partners, including Celgene, General Electric Ventures, and Eli Lilly, committed a minimum of US$100 million to help launch 15 to 20 ventures in life sciences and biotechnology. 

Tourism

Tourism is a vital industry for New York City, which has witnessed a growing combined volume of international and domestic tourists, receiving a sixth consecutive record of nearly 60 million visitors in 2015. Tourism had generated an all-time high US$61.3 billion in overall economic impact for New York City in 2014, pending 2015 statistics. Approximately 12 million visitors to New York City were from outside the United States, with the highest numbers from the United Kingdom, Canada, Brazil, and China. New York is the most popular destination in the United States for international travelers.

I Love New York (stylized I ❤ NY) is both a logo and a song that are the basis of an advertising campaign and have been used since 1977 to promote tourism in New York City,  and later to promote New York State as well. The trademarked logo, owned by New York State Empire State Development,  appears in souvenir shops and brochures throughout the city and state, some licensed, many not. The song is the state song of New York.

Major tourist destinations include Times Square; Broadway theater productions; the Empire State Building; the Statue of Liberty; Ellis Island; the United Nations Headquarters; museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art; greenspaces such as Central Park and Washington Square Park; Rockefeller Center; the Manhattan Chinatown; luxury shopping along Fifth and Madison Avenues; and events such as the Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village; the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade; the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree; the St. Patrick's Day parade; seasonal activities such as ice skating in Central Park in the wintertime; the Tribeca Film Festival; and free performances in Central Park at Summerstage.  Major attractions in the boroughs outside Manhattan include Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and the Unisphere in Queens; the Bronx Zoo; Coney Island, Brooklyn; and the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. The New York Wheel, a 630-foot ferris wheel, was under construction at the northern shore of Staten Island in 2015,  overlooking the Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, and the Lower Manhattan skyline. 

Manhattan was on track to have an estimated 90,000 hotel rooms at the end of 2014, a 10% increase from 2013.  In October 2014, the Anbang Insurance Group, based in China, purchased the Waldorf Astoria New York for US$1.95 billion, making it the world's most expensive hotel ever sold. 

Media and entertainment

New York is a prominent location for the American entertainment industry, with many films, television series, books, and other media being set there.  , New York City was the second largest center for filmmaking and television production in the United States, producing about 200 feature films annually, employing 130,000 individuals; the filmed entertainment industry has been growing in New York, contributing nearly US$9 billion to the New York City economy alone as of 2015,  and by volume, New York is the world leader in independent film production  – one-third of all American independent films are produced in New York City.  The Association of Independent Commercial Producers is also based in New York.  In the first five months of 2014 alone, location filming for television pilots in New York City exceeded the record production levels for all of 2013,  with New York surpassing Los Angeles as the top North American city for the same distinction during the 2013/2014 cycle. 

New York City is additionally a center for the advertising, music, newspaper, digital media, and publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America.  Some of the city's media conglomerates and institutions include Time Warner, the Thomson Reuters Corporation, the Associated Press, Bloomberg L.P., the News Corporation, The New York Times Company, NBCUniversal, the Hearst Corporation, AOL, and Viacom. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks have their headquarters in New York.  Two of the top three record labels' headquarters are in New York: Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group. Universal Music Group also has offices in New York. New media enterprises are contributing an increasingly important component to the city's central role in the media sphere.

More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city, and the publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.  Two of the three national daily newspapers in the United States are New York papers: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, which has won the most Pulitzer Prizes for journalism. Major tabloid newspapers in the city include: The New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson  and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton.  The city also has a comprehensive ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.  El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.  The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African American newspaper.
The Village Voice is the largest alternative newspaper.

The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The three major American broadcast networks are all headquartered in New York: ABC, CBS, and NBC. Many cable networks are based in the city as well, including MTV, Fox News, HBO, Showtime, Bravo, Food Network, AMC, and Comedy Central. The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, NYCTV,  that has produced several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods and city government.

New York is also a major center for non-commercial educational media. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.  WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary source of national Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) television programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States. 

Human resources

Education and scholarly activity

Primary and secondary education

The New York City Public Schools system, managed by the New York City Department of Education, is the largest public school system in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in more than 1,700 separate primary and secondary schools.  The city's public school system includes nine specialized high schools to serve academically and artistically gifted students. The city government pays the Pelham Public Schools to educate a very small, detached section of the Bronx. 

The New York City Charter School Center assists the setup of new charter schools.  There are approximately 900 additional privately run secular and religious schools in the city. 

Higher education and research

Over 600,000 students are enrolled in New York City's over 120 higher education institutions, the highest number of any city in the United States, including over half million in the City University of New York (CUNY) system alone in 2014.  In 2005, three out of five Manhattan residents were college graduates, and one out of four had a postgraduate degree, forming one of the highest concentrations of highly educated people in any American city.  New York City is home to such notable private universities as Barnard College, Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University, New York Institute of Technology, Pace University, and Yeshiva University. The public CUNY system is one of the largest universities in the nation, comprising 24 institutions across all five boroughs: senior colleges, community colleges, and other graduate/professional schools. The public State University of New York (SUNY) system also serves New York City, as well as the rest of the state. The city also has other smaller private colleges and universities, including many religious and special-purpose institutions, such as St. John's University, The Juilliard School, Manhattan College, The College of Mount Saint Vincent, The New School, Pratt Institute, The School of Visual Arts, The King's College, and Wagner College.

Much of the scientific research in the city is done in medicine and the life sciences. New York City has the most post-graduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, with 127 Nobel laureates having roots in local institutions ;  while in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City.  Major biomedical research institutions include Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and Weill Cornell Medical College, being joined by the Cornell University/Technion-Israel Institute of Technology venture on Roosevelt Island.

Public library system

The New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the United States, serves Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island.  Queens is served by the Queens Borough Public Library, the nation's second largest public library system, while the Brooklyn Public Library serves Brooklyn.

Public health

The New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation (HHC) operates the public hospitals and clinics in New York City. A public benefit corporation with $6.7 billion in annual revenues, HHC is the largest municipal healthcare system in the United States serving 1.4 million patients, including more than 475,000 uninsured city residents.  HHC was created in 1969 by the New York State Legislature as a public benefit corporation (Chapter 1016 of the Laws 1969).   It is similar to a municipal agency but has a Board of Directors. HHC operates 11 acute care hospitals, five nursing homes, six diagnostic and treatment centers, and more than 70 community-based primary care sites, serving primarily the poor and working class. HHC's MetroPlus Health Plan is one of the New York area's largest providers of government-sponsored health insurance and is the plan of choice for nearly half million New Yorkers. 

Each year HHC's facilities provide about 225,000 admissions, one million emergency room visits and five million clinic visits to New Yorkers. HHC facilities treat nearly one-fifth of all general hospital discharges and more than one third of emergency room and hospital-based clinic visits in New York City. 

The most well-known hospital in the HHC system is Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States. Bellevue is the designated hospital for treatment of the President of the United States and other world leaders if they become sick or injured while in New York City.  The president of HHC is Ramanathan Raju, MD, a surgeon and former CEO of the Cook County health system in Illinois. 

Public safety

Police and law enforcement

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has been the largest police force in the United States by a significant margin, with over 35,000 sworn officers.  Members of the NYPD are frequently referred to by politicians, the media, and their own police cars by the nickname, New York's Finest.

In 2012, New York City had the lowest overall crime rate and the second lowest murder rate among the largest U.S. cities,  having become significantly safer after a spike in crime in the 1970s through 1990s.  Violent crime in New York City decreased more than 75% from 1993 to 2005, and continued decreasing during periods when the nation as a whole saw increases.  By 2002, New York City's crime rate was similar to that of Provo, Utah, and was ranked 197th in crime among the 216 U.S. cities with populations greater than 100,000. In 2005 the homicide rate was at its lowest level since 1966,  and in 2007 the city recorded fewer than 500 homicides for the first time ever since crime statistics were first published in 1963.  In the first six months of 2010, 95.1% of all murder victims and 95.9% of all shooting victims in New York City were black or Hispanic; additionally, 90.2 percent of those arrested for murder and 96.7 percent of those arrested for shooting someone were black or Hispanic.  New York experienced a record low of 328 homicides in 2014 and has a far lower murder rate than other major American cities. 

Sociologists and criminologists have not reached consensus on the explanation for the dramatic decrease in the city's crime rate. Some attribute the phenomenon to new tactics used by the NYPD,  including its use of CompStat and the broken windows theory.  Others cite the end of the crack epidemic and demographic changes,  including from immigration.  Another theory is that widespread exposure to lead pollution from automobile exhaust, which can lower intelligence and increase aggression levels, incited the initial crime wave in the mid-20th century, most acutely affecting heavily trafficked cities like New York. A strong correlation was found demonstrating that violent crime rates in New York and other big cities began to fall after lead was removed from American gasoline in the 1970s.  Another theory cited to explain New York City's falling homicide rate is the inverse correlation between the number of murders and the increasingly wetter climate in the city. 

In 2012 the NYPD came under scrutiny for its use of a stop-and-frisk program.   

Organized crime has long been associated with New York City, beginning with the Forty Thieves and the Roach Guards in the Five Points in the 1820s. The 20th century saw a rise in the Mafia, dominated by the Five Families, as well as in gangs, including the Black Spades.  The Mafia presence has declined in the city in the 21st century. 

Firefighting

The New York City Fire Department (FDNY), provides fire protection, technical rescue, primary response to biological, chemical, and radioactive hazards, and emergency medical services for the five boroughs of New York City. The New York City Fire Department is the largest municipal fire department in the United States and the second largest in the world after the Tokyo Fire Department. The FDNY employs approximately 11,080 uniformed firefighters and over 3,300 uniformed EMTs and paramedics. The FDNY's motto is New York's Bravest.

The New York City Fire Department faces highly multifaceted firefighting challenges in many ways unique to New York. In addition to responding to building types that range from wood-frame single family homes to high-rise structures, there are many secluded bridges and tunnels, as well as large parks and wooded areas that can give rise to brush fires. New York is also home to one of the largest subway systems in the world, consisting of hundreds of miles of tunnel with electrified track.

The FDNY headquarters is located at 9 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn,  and the FDNY Fire Academy is located on Randalls Island.  There are three Bureau of Fire Communications alarm offices which receive and dispatch alarms to appropriate units. One office, at 11 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn, houses Manhattan/Citywide, Brooklyn, and Staten Island Fire Communications. The Bronx and Queens offices are in separate buildings.

Culture and contemporary life

New York City has been described as the cultural capital of the world by the diplomatic consulates of Iceland and Latvia and by New York's Baruch College. A book containing a series of essays titled New York, Culture Capital of the World, 1940–1965 has also been published as showcased by the National Library of Australia. In describing New York, author Tom Wolfe said, "Culture just seems to be in the air, like part of the weather." 

Numerous major American cultural movements began in the city, such as the Harlem Renaissance, which established the African-American literary canon in the United States.   The city was a center of jazz in the 1940s, abstract expressionism in the 1950s, and the birthplace of hip hop in the 1970s. The city's punk  and hardcore  scenes were influential in the 1970s and 1980s. New York has long had a flourishing scene for Jewish American literature.

The city is the birthplace of many cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art; abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting; and hip hop, punk, salsa, disco, freestyle, Tin Pan Alley, and jazz in music. New York City has been considered the dance capital of the world.    The city is also widely celebrated in popular lore, frequently the setting for books, movies (see List of films set in New York City), and television programs. New York Fashion Week is one of the world's preeminent fashion events and is afforded extensive coverage by the media.  
New York has also frequently been ranked the top fashion capital of the world on the annual list compiled by the Global Language Monitor. 

Arts

New York City has more than 2,000 arts and cultural organizations and more than 500 art galleries of all sizes.  The city government funds the arts with a larger annual budget than the National Endowment for the Arts. Wealthy business magnates in the 19th century built a network of major cultural institutions, such as the famed Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, that would become internationally established. The advent of electric lighting led to elaborate theater productions, and in the 1880s, New York City theaters on Broadway and along 42nd Street began featuring a new stage form that became known as the Broadway musical. Strongly influenced by the city's immigrants, productions such as those of Harrigan and Hart, George M. Cohan, and others used song in narratives that often reflected themes of hope and ambition.

Performing arts

Forty of the city's theaters, with more than 500 seats each, are collectively known as Broadway, after the major thoroughfare that crosses the Times Square Theater District,  sometimes referred to as "The Great White Way".    According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately US$1.27 billion worth of tickets in the 2013–2014 season, an 11.4% increase from US$1.139 billion in the 2012–2013 season. Attendance in 2013–2014 stood at 12.21 million, representing a 5.5% increase from the 2012–2013 season's 11.57 million.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, anchoring Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is home to numerous influential arts organizations, including the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, New York Philharmonic, and New York City Ballet, as well as the Vivian Beaumont Theater, the Juilliard School, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Alice Tully Hall. The Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute is in Union Square, and Tisch School of the Arts is based at New York University, while Central Park SummerStage presents performances of free plays and music in Central Park. 

In April 2015, New York hosted the annual Cardistry-Con, a three-day cardistry convention and interactive conference for cardists all over the world. 

Visual arts

New York City is home to hundreds of cultural institutions and historic sites, many of which are internationally known.
Museum Mile is the name for a section of Fifth Avenue running from 82nd to 105th streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, in an area sometimes called Upper Carnegie Hill.  The Mile, which contains one of the densest displays of culture in the world, is actually three blocks longer than one mile (1.6 km). Ten museums occupy the length of this section of Fifth Avenue. The tenth museum, the Museum for African Art, joined the ensemble in 2009, although its museum at 110th Street, the first new museum constructed on the Mile since the Guggenheim in 1959,  opened in late 2012. In addition to other programming, the museums collaborate for the annual Museum Mile Festival, held each year in June, to promote the museums and increase visitation.  Many of the world's most lucrative art auctions are held in New York City.

Cuisine

New York City's food culture includes a variety of international cuisines influenced by the city's immigrant history. Central European and Italian immigrants originally made the city famous for bagels, cheesecake, and New York-style pizza, while Chinese and other Asian restaurants, sandwich joints, trattorias, diners, and coffeehouses have become ubiquitous. Some 4,000 mobile food vendors licensed by the city, many immigrant-owned, have made Middle Eastern foods such as falafel and kebabs  popular examples of modern New York street food. The city is also home to nearly one thousand of the finest and most diverse haute cuisine restaurants in the world, according to Michelin.  The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene assigns letter grades to the city's 24,000 restaurants based upon their inspection results. 

Accent and dialect

The New York area is home to a distinctive regional speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It has generally been considered one of the most recognizable accents within American English.  The classic version of this dialect is centered on middle and working-class people of European descent. However, the influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect, and the traditional form of this speech pattern is no longer as prevalent among general New Yorkers as in the past.

The traditional New York area accent is characterized as non-rhotic, so that the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; hence the pronunciation of the city name as "New Yawk." There is no in words like park or (with vowel backed and diphthongized due to the low-back chain shift), butter, or here. In another feature called the low back chain shift, the vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, chocolate, and coffee and the often homophonous in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American. In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like "girl" and of words like "oil" became a diphthong. This would often be misperceived by speakers of other accents as a reversal of the er and oy sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street" (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet). The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s sitcom All in the Family (played by Carroll O'Connor) was a notable example of having used this pattern of speech, which continues to fade in its overall presence.

Sports

New York City is home to the headquarters of the National Football League,  Major League Baseball,  the National Basketball Association,  the National Hockey League,  and Major League Soccer.  The New York metropolitan area hosts the most sports teams in these five professional leagues. Participation in professional sports in the city predates all professional leagues, and the city has been continuously hosting professional sports since the birth of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1882. The city has played host to over forty major professional teams in the five sports and their respective competing leagues, both current and historic. Four of the ten most expensive stadiums ever built worldwide (MetLife Stadium, the new Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden, and Citi Field) are located in the New York metropolitan area.  Madison Square Garden, its predecessor, as well as the original Yankee Stadium and Ebbets Field, are some of the most famous sporting venues in the world, the latter two having been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps.

New York has been described as the "Capital of Baseball".  There have been 35 Major League Baseball World Series and 73 pennants won by New York teams. It is one of only five metro areas (Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore–Washington, and the San Francisco Bay Area being the others) to have two baseball teams. Additionally, there have been 14 World Series in which two New York City teams played each other, known as a Subway Series and occurring most recently in . No other metropolitan area has had this happen more than once (Chicago in , St. Louis in , and the San Francisco Bay Area in ). The city's two current Major League Baseball teams are the New York Mets, who play at Citi Field in Queens,  and the New York Yankees, who play at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.  who compete in six games of interleague play every regular season that has also come to be called the Subway Series. The Yankees have won a record 27 championships,  while the Mets have won the World Series twice.  The city also was once home to the Brooklyn Dodgers (now the Los Angeles Dodgers), who won the World Series once,  and the New York Giants (now the San Francisco Giants), who won the World Series five times. Both teams moved to California in 1958.  There are also two Minor League Baseball teams in the city, the Brooklyn Cyclones  and Staten Island Yankees. 

The city is represented in the National Football League by the New York Giants and the New York Jets, although both teams play their home games at MetLife Stadium in nearby East Rutherford, New Jersey,  which hosted Super Bowl XLVIII in 2014. 

The New York Islanders  and the New York Rangers  represent the city in the National Hockey League. Also within the metropolitan area are the New Jersey Devils, who play in nearby Newark, New Jersey. 

The city's National Basketball Association teams are the Brooklyn Nets and the New York Knicks, while the New York Liberty is the city's Women's National Basketball Association. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city.  The city is well known for its links to basketball, which is played in nearly every park in the city by local youth, many of whom have gone on to play for major college programs and in the NBA.

In soccer, New York City is represented by New York City FC of Major League Soccer, who play their home games at Yankee Stadium.  The New York Red Bulls play their home games at Red Bull Arena in nearby Harrison, New Jersey.  Historically, the city is known for the New York Cosmos, the highly successful former professional soccer team which was the American home of Pelé, one of the world's most famous soccer players. A new version of the New York Cosmos was formed in 2010, and began play in the second division North American Soccer League in 2013. The Cosmos play their home games at James M. Shuart Stadium on the campus of Hofstra University, just outside the New York City limits in Hempstead, New York.

The annual United States Open Tennis Championships is one of the world's four Grand Slam tennis tournaments and is held at the National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens.  The New York Marathon is one of the world's largest, and the 2004–2006 events hold the top three places in the marathons with the largest number of finishers, including 37,866 finishers in 2006.[http://www.aims-association.org/statistics/World's_Largest_Marathons.html World's Largest Marathons], Association of International Marathons and Road Races (AIMS). Retrieved June 28, 2007. The Millrose Games is an annual track and field meet whose featured event is the Wanamaker Mile. Boxing is also a prominent part of the city's sporting scene, with events like the Amateur Boxing Golden Gloves being held at Madison Square Garden each year.  The city is also considered the host of the Belmont Stakes, the last, longest and oldest of horse racing's Triple Crown races, held just over the city's border at Belmont Park on the first or second Sunday of June. The city also hosted the 1932 U.S. Open golf tournament and the 1930 and 1939 PGA Championships, and has been host city for both events several times, most notably for nearby Winged Foot Golf Club.

Many sports are associated with New York's immigrant communities. Stickball, a street version of baseball, was popularized by youths in the 1930s, and a street in the Bronx was renamed Stickball Boulevard in the late 2000s to memorialize this. 

Transportation

New York City's comprehensive transportation system is both complex and extensive.

Rapid transit

Mass transit in New York City, most of which runs 24 hours a day, accounts for one in every three users of mass transit in the United States, and two-thirds of the nation's rail riders live in the New York City Metropolitan Area.  

Rail

The iconic New York City Subway system is the largest rapid transit system in the world when measured by stations in operation, with , and by length of routes. New York's subway is notable for nearly the entire system remaining open 24 hours a day, in contrast to the overnight shutdown common to systems in most cities, including Hong Kong,   London, Paris, Seoul,   and Tokyo. The New York City Subway is also the busiest metropolitan rail transit system in the Western Hemisphere, with 1.76 billion passenger rides in 2015,  while Grand Central Terminal, also popularly referred to as "Grand Central Station", is the world's largest railway station by number of train platforms.

Public transport is essential in New York City. 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted to work in 2005 using mass transit.  This is in contrast to the rest of the United States, where about 90% of commuters drive automobiles to their workplace. According to the New York City Comptroller, workers in New York City area spend an average of 6 hours and 18 minutes getting to work each week, the longest commute time in the nation among large cities.  New York is the only US city in which a majority (52%) of households do not have a car; only 22% of Manhattanites own a car.  Due to their high usage of mass transit, New Yorkers spend less of their household income on transportation than the national average, saving $19 billion annually on transportation compared to other urban Americans. 

New York City's commuter rail network is the largest in North America. The rail network, connecting New York City to its suburbs, consists of the Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit. The combined systems converge at Grand Central Terminal and Pennsylvania Station and contain more than 250 stations and 20 rail lines. In Queens, the elevated AirTrain people mover system connects JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road; a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.   For intercity rail, New York City is served by Amtrak, whose busiest station by a significant margin is Pennsylvania Station on the West Side of Manhattan, from which Amtrak provides connections to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. along the Northeast Corridor, as well as long-distance train service to other North American cities. 

The Staten Island Railway rapid transit system solely serves Staten Island, operating 24 hours a day. The Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH train) links Midtown and Lower Manhattan to northeastern New Jersey, primarily Hoboken, Jersey City, and Newark. Like the New York City Subway, the PATH operates 24 hours a day; meaning three of the six rapid transit systems in the world which operate on 24-hour schedules are wholly or partly in New York (the others are a portion of the Chicago 'L', the PATCO Speedline serving Philadelphia, and the Copenhagen Metro).

Multibillion US$ heavy-rail transit projects under construction in New York City include the Second Avenue Subway, the East Side Access project, and the 7 Subway Extension. 

Buses

New York City's public bus fleet is the largest in North America,  and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the main intercity bus terminal of the city, serves 7,000 buses and 200,000 commuters daily, making it the busiest bus station in the world.

Aviation

New York's airspace is the busiest in the United States and one of the world's busiest air transportation corridors. The three busiest airports in the New York metropolitan area include John F. Kennedy International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport, and LaGuardia Airport; 109 million travelers used these three airports in 2012, and the city's airspace is the busiest in the nation.  JFK and Newark Liberty were the busiest and fourth busiest U.S. gateways for international air passengers, respectively, in 2012; , JFK was the busiest airport for international passengers in North America.  Plans have advanced to expand passenger volume at a fourth airport, Stewart International Airport near Newburgh, New York, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.  Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities. 

Ferries

The Staten Island Ferry is the world's busiest ferry route, carrying approximately 20 million passengers per year on the  route between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan and running 24 hours a day.  Other ferry systems shuttle commuters between Manhattan and other locales within the city and the metropolitan area.

Taxis, transport startups, and trams

Other features of the city's transportation infrastructure encompass more than 12,000 yellow taxicabs;  various competing startup transportation network companies; and an aerial tramway that transports commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan Island.

Streets and highways

Despite New York's heavy reliance on its vast public transit system, streets are a defining feature of the city. Manhattan's street grid plan greatly influenced the city's physical development. Several of the city's streets and avenues, like Broadway,  Wall Street,  Madison Avenue,  and Seventh Avenue are also used as metonyms for national industries there: the theater, finance, advertising, and fashion organizations, respectively.

New York City also has an extensive web of expressways and parkways, which link the city's boroughs to each other as well as to northern New Jersey, Westchester County, Long Island, and southwestern Connecticut through various bridges and tunnels. Because these highways serve millions of outer borough and suburban residents who commute into Manhattan, it is quite common for motorists to be stranded for hours in traffic jams that are a daily occurrence, particularly during rush hour. 

River crossings

New York City is located on one of the world's largest natural harbors,  and the boroughs of Manhattan and Staten Island are (primarily) coterminous with islands of the same names, while Queens and Brooklyn are located at the west end of the larger Long Island, and The Bronx is located at the southern tip of New York State's mainland. This situation of boroughs separated by water led to the development of an extensive infrastructure of bridges and tunnels. Nearly all of the city's major bridges and tunnels are notable, and several have broken or set records.

The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge,   connecting Manhattan to Bergen County, New Jersey. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge is the longest suspension bridge in the Americas and one of the world's longest.   The Brooklyn Bridge is an icon of the city itself. The towers of the Brooklyn Bridge are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement, and their architectural style is neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches above the passageways through the stone towers. This bridge was also the longest suspension bridge in the world from its opening until 1903, and is the first steel-wire suspension bridge. The Queensboro Bridge is an important piece of cantilever architecture. The Manhattan Bridge, opened in 1909, is considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges, and its design served as the model for many of the long-span suspension bridges around the world; the Manhattan Bridge, Throgs Neck Bridge, Triborough Bridge, and Verrazano-Narrows Bridge are all examples of Structural Expressionism.  

Manhattan Island is linked to New York City's outer boroughs and New Jersey by several tunnels as well. The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and Midtown Manhattan, is the busiest vehicular tunnel in the world.  The tunnel was built instead of a bridge to allow unfettered passage of large passenger and cargo ships that sailed through New York Harbor and up the Hudson River to Manhattan's piers. The Holland Tunnel, connecting Lower Manhattan to Jersey City, New Jersey, was the world's first mechanically ventilated vehicular tunnel when it opened in 1927.   The Queens-Midtown Tunnel, built to relieve congestion on the bridges connecting Manhattan with Queens and Brooklyn, was the largest non-federal project in its time when it was completed in 1940.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first person to drive through it.  The Hugh L. Carey Tunnel runs underneath Battery Park and connects the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan to Red Hook in Brooklyn.

Environment

Environmental impact reduction

New York City has focused on reducing its environmental impact and carbon footprint. Mass transit use in New York City is the highest in the United States. Also, by 2010, the city had 3,715 hybrid taxis and other clean diesel vehicles, representing around 28% of New York's taxi fleet in service, the most of any city in North America.

New York's high rate of public transit use, over 200,000 daily cyclists ,  and many pedestrian commuters make it the most energy-efficient major city in the United States.  Walk and bicycle modes of travel account for 21% of all modes for trips in the city; nationally the rate for metro regions is about 8%.  In both its 2011 and 2015 rankings, Walk Score named New York City the most walkable large city in the United States.    Citibank sponsored the introduction of 10,000 public bicycles for the city's bike-share project in the summer of 2013.  Research conducted by Quinnipiac University showed that a majority of New Yorkers support the initiative.  New York City's numerical "in-season cycling indicator" of bicycling in the city hit an all-time high in 2013. 

The city government was a petitioner in the landmark Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency Supreme Court case forcing the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. The city is also a leader in the construction of energy-efficient green office buildings, including the Hearst Tower among others.  Mayor Bill de Blasio has committed to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions between 2014 and 2050 to reduce the city's contributions to climate change, beginning with a comprehensive "Green Buildings" plan.

Water purity and availability

New York City is supplied with drinking water by the protected Catskill Mountains watershed.  As a result of the watershed's integrity and undisturbed natural water filtration system, New York is one of only four major cities in the United States the majority of whose drinking water is pure enough not to require purification by water treatment plants.  The Croton Watershed north of the city is undergoing construction of a US$3.2 billion water purification plant to augment New York City's water supply by an estimated 290 million gallons daily, representing a greater than 20% addition to the city's current availability of water.  The ongoing expansion of New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, an integral part of the New York City water supply system, is the largest capital construction project in the city's history,  with segments serving Manhattan and The Bronx completed, and with segments serving Brooklyn and Queens planned for construction in 2020. 

Environmental revitalization

Newtown Creek, a  a long estuary that forms part of the border between the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, has been designated a Superfund site for environmental clean-up and remediation of the waterway's recreational and economic resources for many communities.  One of the most heavily used bodies of water in the Port of New York and New Jersey, it had been one of the most contaminated industrial sites in the country,  containing years of discarded toxins, an estimated 30 e6USgal of spilled oil, including the Greenpoint oil spill, raw sewage from New York City's sewer system, and other accumulation.

Government and politics

Government

New York City has been a metropolitan municipality with a mayor–council form of government  since its consolidation in 1898. The government of New York is more centralized than that of most other U.S. cities. In New York City, the city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.

The Mayor and council members are elected to four-year terms. The City Council is a unicameral body consisting of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries.  Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a three consecutive-term limit,  but can resume after a four-year break. The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and the City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.  

Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are also several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System.

Uniquely among major American cities, New York is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different US district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square near City Hall in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx, and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and US Court of International Trade are also based in New York, also on Foley Square in Manhattan.

Politics

The present mayor is Bill de Blasio, a Democrat  elected in 2013 with over 73% of the vote, who assumed office on January 1, 2014.

The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of April 2016, 69% of registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10% are Republicans.  New York City has not been carried by a Republican in a statewide or presidential election since President Calvin Coolidge won the five boroughs in 1924. In 2012, Democrat Barack Obama became the first presidential candidate of any party to receive more than 80% of the overall vote in New York City, sweeping all five boroughs. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development, and labor politics are of importance in the city.

New York is the most important source of political fundraising in the United States, as four of the top five ZIP codes in the nation for political contributions are in Manhattan. The top ZIP code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the 2004 presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John Kerry.  The city has a strong imbalance of payments with the national and state governments. It receives 83 cents in services for every $1 it sends to the federal government in taxes (or annually sends $11.4 billion more than it receives back). City residents and businesses also spent an additional $4.1 billion in the 2009-2010 fiscal year to the state of New York than the city received in return. 

Notable people

Global outreach

In 2006, the Sister City Program of the City of New York, Inc. was restructured and renamed New York City Global Partners. New York City has expanded its international outreach via this program to a network of cities worldwide, promoting the exchange of ideas and innovation between their citizenry and policymakers, according to the city's website. New York's historic sister cities are denoted below by the year they joined New York City's partnership network. 

Notes New York City, in the U.S. state of New York, is composed of five boroughs. They are Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. Each borough also has coextensive boundaries as a county of New York State. The county governments were dissolved when New York City consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county. 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; these same boroughs are coextensive with the four most densely populated counties in the United States (New York [Manhattan], Kings [Brooklyn], Bronx, and Queens).

The term borough was adopted to describe a unique form of governmental administration for each of the five fundamental constituent parts of the newly consolidated city in 1898. Under New York State Law, a "borough" is a municipal corporation that is created when a county is merged with populated areas within it. This differs significantly from typical borough forms of government used in Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, other states, Greater London, and elsewhere.

Background

New York City is often referred to collectively as the five boroughs; the term is used to refer to New York City as a whole unambiguously, avoiding confusion with any particular borough or with the Greater New York metropolitan area. The term is also used by politicians to counter a frequent focus on Manhattan and, thereby, to place all five boroughs on equal footing. In the same vein, the term outer boroughs refers to all of the boroughs excluding Manhattan, even though the geographic center of the city is along the Brooklyn–Queens border.

All of the boroughs were created in 1898 during consolidation, when the city's current boundaries were established. The Bronx originally included parts of New York County outside of Manhattan that had previously been ceded by neighboring Westchester County in two stages, in 1874 and then following a referendum in 1894. The separate present-day Bronx County was not created until 1914, and is the last created county in the State of New York.

The borough of Queens consists of what formerly was only the western part of a then-larger Queens County. In 1899, the three eastern towns of Queens that had not joined the city the year before formally seceded from Queens County to form the new Nassau County. The borough of Staten Island was officially the borough of Richmond until the name was changed in 1975 to reflect its common appellation.

Description of the boroughs

There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs of New York City, many with a definable history and character to call their own.
* Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough and is home to Central Park and most of the city's skyscrapers. Manhattan's (New York County's) population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km²) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and 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 United Nations Headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. 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. Several small islands are also 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 Lower, Midtown, and 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. The borough also includes a small neighborhood on the United States mainland, called Marble Hill.  Marble Hill was originally part of Manhattan Island, but is now contiguous with the Bronx after having been severed from the U.S. mainland by the construction of the Harlem River Ship Canal north of the neighborhood, and having been connected to the mainland by the subsequent filling in of the Harlem River's original path to the neighborhood's south. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the outer boroughs.

* Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the only central core neighborhood in the outer boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.  Marine Park and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn.

* Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,  as well as the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Queens is the site of Citi Field, the baseball stadium of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are located in Queens. (The third is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey.)

* Staten Island (Richmond County) is the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan by way of the Staten Island Ferry, a free commuter ferry and popular tourist attraction which provides unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2500 acres, including 28 mi of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.  Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.

* The Bronx (Bronx County) is New York City's northernmost borough and the only New York City borough that is not considered an island or part of one. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball stadium of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.  It is also home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo, which covers 265 acre and houses over 6,000 animals.  The Bronx is also the birthplace of rap and hip hop culture (needs more citation).  Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at .

Governance

Since 1914, each of New York City's five boroughs has been coextensive with a county of New York State – unlike most U.S. cities, which lie within a single county or extend partially into another county, constitute a county in themselves, or are completely separate and independent of any county.

Each borough is represented by a borough president. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island each have a Borough Hall. The the Manhattan Borough President's office is situated in the Manhattan Municipal Building. The Bronx Borough President's office used to be in its own Bronx Borough Hall, but has been in the Bronx County Courthouse for decades. Since the abolition of the Board of Estimate in 1990 (due to a 1989 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court ), the borough presidents have minimal executive powers, and there is no legislative function within a borough. Executive functions in New York City are the responsibility of the Mayor of New York City, while legislative functions reside with the New York City Council. The borough presidents primarily act as spokesmen, advocates, and ceremonial leaders for their boroughs, have budgets from which they can allocate relatively modest sums of money to community organizations and projects, and appoint the members of the 59 largely advisory community boards in the city's various neighborhoods. The Brooklyn and Queens borough presidents also appoint trustees to the local public library systems in those boroughs.

Because they are counties, each borough also elects a district attorney, as does every other county of the state. While the district attorneys of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island are popularly referred to as such by the media (e.g., "Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance, Jr.", or "Brooklyn D.A. Kenneth P. Thompson"), they are technically and legally the district attorneys of New York County, Kings County and Richmond County, respectively. There is no such distinction made for the district attorneys of the other two counties, Queens and the Bronx, since the borough shares the county's name. Because the five district attorneys are, technically speaking, state officials (since the counties are considered to be arms of the state government), rather than officials of the city government, they are not subject to the term limitations that govern other New York City officials such as the mayor, the New York City Public Advocate, members of the city council or the borough presidents.

Some civil court judges also are elected on a borough-wide basis, although they generally are eligible to serve throughout the city.

Sixth borough

The term sixth borough is used to describe any of a number of places that have been called or likened to a part of New York City because of their geographic location, demographics, special affiliation, or cosmopolitan character. They have included adjacent cities and counties in the New York metropolitan area as well as in other states, U.S. territories, and foreign countries.    In 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to the city's waterfront and waterways as a composite sixth borough during presentations of planned rehabilitation projects along the city's shoreline,       including Governor's Island in the Upper New York Bay. Hell's Kitchen, also known as Clinton and Midtown West, is a neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. It is traditionally considered to be bordered by 34th Street in the south, 59th Street in the north, Eighth Avenue in the east, and the Hudson River to the west. The area provides transport, medical, and warehouse infrastructure support to Manhattan's Midtown business district.

Once a bastion of poor and working-class Irish Americans, Hell's Kitchen's proximity to Midtown has changed its personality since the 1970s. The 1969 City Planning Commission's Plan for New York City reported that development pressures related to its Midtown location were driving people of modest means from the area, and the gritty reputation that Hell's Kitchen developed afterward kept real estate prices below those of most other areas of Manhattan. Since the early 1990s, the area has been gentrifying, and rents have risen rapidly. Located close to both Broadway theatres and the Actors Studio training school, Hell's Kitchen has long been a home to learning and practicing actors.

Boundaries

The name "Hell's Kitchen" generally refers to the area from 34th to 59th Streets. Starting west of Eighth Avenue, city zoning regulations generally limit buildings to six stories. As a result, most of the buildings are older, and are often walk-up apartments. For the most part, the neighborhood encompasses the ZIP codes 10019 and 10036. The post office for 10019 is called Radio City Station, the original name for Rockefeller Center on Sixth Avenue.Benson, Michael R. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res
9407E2DF123BF931A15751C1A963948260&scp2&sq
%22Hell%27s+Kitchen%22+%2234th+street%27+%2257th+street%22&st=nyt "Clinton frets over that gleam in developers' eyes"], The New York Times, December 22, 1985. Accessed February 17, 2008. "Hell's Kitchen, which stretched from 40th to 59th Streets and from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson, is now called Clinton. The modern district reaches south to 34th Street."
* East: To the east, the neighborhood overlaps the Times Square Theater District to the east at Eighth Avenue. On its southeast border, it overlaps the Garment District also on Eighth Avenue. Here, two landmarks reside – the New Yorker Hotel and the dynamic Manhattan Center building (at the northwest corner of 34th Street and Eighth Avenue). Included in the transition area on Eighth Avenue are the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42nd Street, the Pride of Manhattan Fire Station (from which 15 firefighters died at the World Trade Center), several theatres including Studio 54, the original soup stand of Seinfelds "The Soup Nazi"' and the Hearst Tower.
* North: The northern edge of Hell's Kitchen borders the southern edge of the Upper West Side. 57th Street is the traditional boundary between the two neighborhoods. However, Hell's Kitchen is often considered to extend further north to 59th Street, the southern edge of Central Park starting at Eighth Avenue, where the avenue names change; this neighborhood overlaps with the Upper West Side if this is considered to be Hell's Kitchen's northern boundary. Included in the 57th to 59th Street transition area are the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Hudson Hotel, Mount Sinai West, where John Lennon died in 1980 after being shot, and John Jay College.
* South: The southern boundary is at Chelsea, but the two neighborhoods overlap and are often lumped together as the "West Side" since they support the Midtown Manhattan business district. The traditional dividing line is 34th Street. The transition area just north of Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station includes the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.
* West: The western border of the neighborhood is the Hudson River at the Hudson River Park and West Side Highway.

Name

Several explanations exist for the original name. An early use of the phrase appears in a comment Davy Crockett made about another notorious Irish slum in Manhattan, Five Points. According to the Irish Cultural Society of the Garden City Area:

According to an article by Kirkley Greenwell, published online by the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Association:

Local historian Mary Clark explained the name thus:

Hell's Kitchen has stuck as the most-used name of the neighborhood, even though real estate developers have offered alternatives of "Clinton" and "Midtown West", or even "the Mid-West". The Clinton name, used by the municipality of New York City, originated in 1959 in an attempt to link the area to DeWitt Clinton Park at 52nd and Eleventh Avenue, named after the 19th century New York governor.

History

Early history and development

On the island of Manhattan as it was when Europeans first saw it, the Great Kill formed from three small streams that united near present-day Tenth Avenue and 40th Street, then wound through the low-lying Reed Valley, renowned for fish and waterfowl,  to empty into the Hudson River at a deep bay on the river at the present 42nd Street.  The name was retained in a tiny hamlet, Great Kill, that became a center for carriage-making, while the upland to the south and east became known as Longacre, the predecessor of Longacre Square (now Times Square). 

One of the large farms of the colonial era in this neighborhood was that of Andreas Hopper and his descendants, extending from today's 48th Street nearly to 59th Street and from the river east to what is now Sixth Avenue. One of the Hopper farmhouses, built in 1752 for John Hopper the younger, stood near 53rd Street and Eleventh Avenue; christened "Rosevale" for its extensive gardens, it was the home of the War of 1812 veteran, Gen. Garrit Hopper Striker, and lasted until 1896, when it was demolished. The site was purchased for the city and naturalistically landscaped by Samuel Parsons Jr. as DeWitt Clinton Park. In 1911 New York Hospital bought a full city block largely of the Hopper property, between 54th and 55th Streets, Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues.  Beyond the railroad track, projecting into the river at 54th Street, was Mott's Point, with an 18th-century Mott family house surrounded by gardens that was inhabited by members of the family until 1884 and survived until 1895.

A lone surviving structure that dates from the time this area was open farmland and suburban villas is a pre-1800s carriage house that once belonged to a villa owned by former Vice President and New York State governor George Clinton, now in a narrow court behind 422 West 46th Street.  From 1811 until it was officially de-mapped in 1857, the diminutive Bloomingdale Square was part of the city's intended future; it extended from 53rd to 57th Streets between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. It was eliminated after the establishment of Central Park,  and the name shifted to the junction of Broadway, West End Avenue, and 106th Street, now Straus Park. In 1825, the City purchased for $10 clear title to a right-of-way through John Leake Norton's farm, "The Hermitage", to lay out 42nd Street clear to the river. Before long, cattle ferried from Weehawken were being driven along the unpaved route to slaughterhouses on the East Side.  Seventy acres of the Leakes; (later the Nortons') property, extending north from 42nd to 46th Street and from Broadway to the river, had been purchased before 1807 by John Jacob Astor and William Cutting, who held it before dividing it into building lots as the district became more suburban.

Unity with the city and deterioration

There were multiple changes that helped Hell's Kitchen integrate with New York City proper. The first was construction of the Hudson River Railroad, whose initial leg – the 40 mi to Peekskill – was completed on September 29, 1849, By the end of 1849, it stretched to Poughkeepsie and in 1851 it extended to Albany. The track ran at a steep grade up Eleventh Avenue, as far as 60th Street.
 

The formerly rural riverfront was industrialized by businesses, such as tanneries, that used the river for shipping products and dumping waste.
The neighborhood that would later be known as Hell's Kitchen, started forming in the southern part of the 22nd Ward in the mid-19th century. Irish immigrants – mostly refugees from the Great Famine – found work on the docks and railroad along the Hudson River and established shantytowns there.

After the American Civil War, there was an influx of people who moved to New York city. The tenements that were built became overcrowded quickly. Many who lived in this congested, poverty-stricken area turned to gang life. Following Prohibition, implemented in 1919, the district's many warehouses were ideal locations for bootleg distilleries for the rumrunners who controlled illicit liquor. At the start of the 20th century, the neighborhood was controlled by gangs, including the violent Gopher Gang led by One Lung Curran and later by Owney Madden. 
Early gangs, like the Hell's Kitchen Gang, transformed into organized crime entities, around the same time that Owney Madden became one of the most powerful mobsters in New York. It became known as the "most dangerous area on the American Continent".

After the repeal of Prohibition, many of the organized crime elements moved into other rackets, such as illegal gambling and union shakedowns. The postwar era was characterized by a flourishing waterfront, and longshoreman work was plentiful. By the end of the 1950s, however, the implementation of containerized shipping led to the decline of the West Side piers and many longshoremen found themselves out of work. In addition, the construction of the Lincoln Tunnel had split Hell's Kitchen in the Lincoln Tunnel ramp area at 39th Street, and anything southwest of 39th Street and Tenth Avenue was virtually condemned. -

In 1959, an aborted rumble between rival Irish and Puerto Rican gangs led to the notorious "Capeman" murders in which two innocent teenagers were killed. By 1965, Hell's Kitchen was the home base of the Westies, an Irish mob aligned with the Gambino crime family. It was not until the early 1980s that widespread gentrification began to alter the demographics of the longtime working-class Irish American neighborhood. The 1980s also saw an end to the Westies' reign of terror, when the gang lost all of its power after the RICO convictions of most of its principals in 1986.

First wave of gentrification

Special Clinton zoning district

Although the neighborhood is immediately west of New York's main business district, large-scale redevelopment has been kept in check for more than 30 years by strict zoning rules in a Special Clinton District designed to protect the neighborhood's residents and its low-rise character.

In part to qualify for federal aid, New York developed a comprehensive Plan for New York City in 1969–70.  For Hell's Kitchen, the master plan called for two to three thousand hotel rooms, 25,000 apartments, 25000000 sqft of office space, a new super liner terminal, a subway along 48th Street, and a convention center to replace what the plan described as "blocks of antiquated and deteriorating structures of every sort."   However, outrage at the massive residential displacement that this development project would have caused,  and the failure of the City to complete any replacement housing, led to opposition to the first project – a new convention center to replace the New York Coliseum. 

To forestall the negative impacts of the master plan, the Clinton Planning Council and Daniel Gutman, their environmental planner, proposed that the convention center and all major development be located south of 42nd Street. 

Nevertheless, in 1973 the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center was approved for a 44th Street site that would replace piers 84 and 86. In exchange the City first abandoned the 1969–70 master plan  and then gave the neighborhood a special zoning district to restrict further redevelopment.  Since then, new development has filled in the many empty lots and rejuvenated existing buildings. However, in 1978, when the city could not afford to construct the 44th Street convention center, the Mayor and Governor chose the rail yard site originally proposed by the local community.  Major office and residential development south of 42nd Street indeed followed, albeit  much later, when the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project started construction.

The SCD was originally split into four areas:
* Preservation Area: 43rd to 56th Streets between Eighth and Tenth Avenues. R-7 density, 6-story height limit on new buildings, suggested average apartment size of two bedrooms (this was a response to the fact that between 1960 and 1970 developers had torn down 2,300 family-sized units and replaced them with 1,500 smaller units).
* Perimeter Area: Eighth Avenue, 42nd and 57th Streets. Bulkier development permitted to counterbalance the downzoning in the preservation area.
* Mixed Use Area: Tenth and Eleventh Avenues between 43rd and 50th Streets. Mixed residential and manufacturing. New residential development only permitted in conjunction with manufacturing areas. Later combined into "Other Areas".
* Other Areas: West of Eleventh Avenue. Industrial and waterfront uses. Later combined with "Mixed Use Area"

Special permits are required for all demolition and construction in the SCD, including demolition of "any sound housing in the District" and any rehabilitation that increases the number of dwellings in a structure. In the original provisions. no building could be demolished unless it was unsound. New developments, conversions, or alterations that create new units or zero bedroom units must contain at least 20% two bedroom apartments with a minimum room size of 168 sqft. Alterations that reduce the percentage of two-bedroom units are not permitted unless the resulting building meets the 20% two-bedroom requirement. Finally, building height in the Preservation Area cannot exceed 66 ft or seven stories, whichever is less.

Windermere

As the gentrification pace increased, there were numerous reports of problems between landlords and tenants. The most extreme example was the eight-story Windermere complex at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 57th Street. Built in 1881, it is the second-oldest large apartment house in Manhattan.  

In 1980, the then-owner, Alan B. Weissman, tried to empty the building of its tenants. According to former tenants and court papers, rooms were ransacked, doors were ripped out, prostitutes were moved in, and tenants received death threats in the campaign to empty the building. All the major New York newspapers covered the trials that sent the Windermere's managers to jail. Although the building's landlord, Alan B. Weissman, was never linked to the harassment, he and his wife made top billing in the 1985 edition of The Village Voice annual list, "The Dirty Dozen: New York's Worst Landlords."  Most of the tenants eventually settled and moved out of the building. As of May 2006, seven tenants remained  and court orders protecting the tenants and the building allowed it to remain in derelict condition even as the surrounding neighborhood was experiencing a dramatic burst of demolition and redevelopment. Finally, in September 2007, the fire department evacuated those remaining seven residents from the building, citing dangerous conditions, and padlocked the front door.  In 2008 the New York Supreme Court ruled that the owners of the building, who include the TOA Construction Corporation of Japan, must repair it. 

Failed rezoning attempts

By the 1980s the area south of 42nd Street was in decline. Both the state and the city hoped that the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center would renew the area. Hotels, restaurants, apartment buildings, and television studios were proposed.Lyons, Richard. [http://www.nytimes.com/1986/04/06/realestate/glittering-javits-center-kindles-dreams-for-west-side.html "Glittering Javits Center Kindles Dreams For West Side."] The New York Times. New York. April 6, 1986. Section B, page 7, column 1. One proposal included apartments and hotels on a 30 acre pier jutting out onto Hudson River, which also included a marina, ferry slip, stores, restaurants, and a performing arts center.  At Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street, a 32-story office tower would be built.  Hotels, apartment buildings, and a Madison Square Garden would be built over the tracks west of Pennsylvania Station.   North of the Javits Center, a "Television City" would be developed by Larry Silverstein in conjunction with NBC.

One impediment to development was that there was very little public transit in the area, which is far from Penn Station, and none of the proposals for a quick link to Penn Station were viable.  No changes to the zoning policy happened until 1990, when the city rezoned a small segment of 11th Avenue near the Javits Center.   In 1993, part of 9th Avenue between 35th and 41st Streets was also rezoned.   However, neither of these rezonings was particularly significant, as most of the area was still zoned as a manufacturing district with low-rise apartment buildings. 

By the early 1990s, there was a recession, which scuttled plans for rezoning and severely reduced the amount of development in the area.  After the recession was over, developers invested in areas like Times Square, eastern Hell's Kitchen, and Chelsea, but mostly skipped the Far West Side. 

September 11, 2001

While almost all fire stations in Manhattan lost firefighters in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the station with the greatest loss of firefighters was Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9 at 48th Street and Eighth Avenue, which lost 15 firefighters.  Given its proximity to Midtown, the station had specialized in skyscraper fires and rescues and, in 2007, was the second busiest firehouse in New York City, with 9,685 runs between the two companies.  Its patch reads "Pride of Midtown" and "Never Missed a Performance". Memorials dot the station's exterior walls and a granite memorial is in a park to its north. Ladder 21, the "Pride of Hell's Kitchen", located on 38th Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues, and stationed with Engine 34, lost seven firefighters on September 11.  In addition, on September 11, Engine 26 was temporarily stationed with Engine 34/Ladder 21 and lost many firefighters themselves.

Larry Silverstein made part of his fortune that eventually earned him the lease for the World Trade Center by building and managing buildings in the neighborhood.

Redevelopment and second wave of gentrification

Hell's Kitchen has become an increasingly upscale neighborhood of affluent young professionals as well as residents from the "old days",    with rents in the neighborhood having increased dramatically above the average in Manhattan.  It has also acquired a large and diverse community as residents have moved north from Chelsea. Zoning has long restricted the extension of Midtown Manhattan's skyscraper development into Hell's Kitchen, at least north of 42nd Street.  The David Childs and Frank Williams designed Worldwide Plaza established a beachhead when it was built in 1989 at the former Madison Square Garden site, a full city block between 49th and 50th Streets and between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. This project led a real-estate building boom on Eighth Avenue, including the Hearst Tower at 56th Street and Eighth Avenue. An indication of how fast real estate prices rose in the neighborhood was a 2004 transaction involving the Howard Johnson's Motel at 52nd and Eighth Avenue. In June, Vikram Chatwal's Hampshire Hotel Group bought the motel and adjoining SIR (Studio Instrument Rental) building for $9 million. In August, they sold the property to Elad Properties for about $43 million. Elad, which formerly owned the Plaza Hotel, is in the process of building The Link, a luxury 44-story building.

The most prominent real estate project in the area, the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project, including a mixed-use real estate development by Related Companies and Oxford Properties over the MTA's West Side Yard which is expected to consist of 16 skyscrapers containing more than 12700000 sqft of new office, residential, and retail space. Among the components of the Hudson Yards will be an extension of the IRT Flushing Line, serving the , to the 34th Street – Hudson Yards station. This new station opened on September 13, 2015, at 34th Street and 11th Avenue, and will serve a renovation of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, 6000000 sqft of commercial office space, a 750000 sqft retail center with two levels of restaurants, cafes, markets and bars, a hotel, a cultural space, about 5,000 residences, a 750-seat school, and 14 acres of public open space.  Development on the rail yard site officially broke ground on December 4, 2012, with the first tower, an 895 ft office building in the southeast corner of the site, expected to be complete in 2016. 

Demographics

Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Clinton (Hell's Kitchen) was 45,884, an increase of 5,289 (13.0%) from the 40,595 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .[http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/census2010/t_pl_p5_nta.pdf Table PL-P5 NTA: Total Population and Persons Per Acre - New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010], Population Division - New York City Department of City Planning, February 2012. Accessed June 16, 2016.

The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 56.4% (25,891) White, 6.3% (2,869) African American, 0.2% (70) Native American, 15.0% (6,886) Asian, 0.1% (31) Pacific Islander, 0.4% (181) from other races, and 2.4% (1,079) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 19.3% (8,877) of the population.[http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/data-maps/nyc-population/census2010/t_pl_p3a_nta.pdf Table PL-P3A NTA: Total Population by Mutually Exclusive Race and Hispanic Origin - New York City Neighborhood Tabulation Areas*, 2010], Population Division - New York City Department of City Planning, March 29, 2011. Accessed June 14, 2016.

Parks and recreation

Hell's Kitchen's side streets are mostly lined with trees. The neighborhood does not have many parks or recreational areas, though smaller plots have been converted into green spaces.

One such park is De Witt Clinton Park on Eleventh Avenue between 52nd and 54th streets,  across the West Side Highway from Clinton Cove Park. Another is Hell's Kitchen Park, built in the 1970s on a former parking lot on 10th Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets. 

A newer park in Hell's Kitchen is the Hudson Park and Boulevard, which is part of the Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project. 

The Clinton Community Garden, a neighborhood garden, is a result of the actors living in the area. Since they mostly work at night in the local theatres, they took time to create a garden in what was then a rubble-strewn lot on West 48th Street between Ninth and Tenth avenues  Eventually it contributed to the area's gentrification.

Culture

Entertainment industry 

Hell's Kitchen's gritty reputation had made its housing prices lower than elsewhere in Manhattan. Given the lower costs in the past and its proximity to Broadway theatres, the neighborhood is a haven for aspiring actors.  Many famous actors and entertainers have resided there, including Burt Reynolds, Rip Torn, Bob Hope, Charlton Heston, James Dean, Madonna, Jerry Seinfeld, Larry David, Alicia Keys, John Michael Bolger, and Sylvester Stallone. This is due in large part to the Actors Studio on West 44th at which Lee Strasberg taught and developed method acting.

With the opening of the original Improv by Budd Friedman in 1963, the club became a hangout for singers to perform but quickly attracted comedians, as well, turning it into the reigning comedy club of its time. Once located near West 44th Street and Ninth Avenue, it has since shuttered, replaced by a restaurant.

Manhattan Plaza at 43rd Street between Ninth and Tenth Avenues was built in the 1970s to house artists. It consists of two 46-story towers with 70% of the apartments set aside  for rent discounts for those who work in the arts.  The Actors' Temple and Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church with its Actors' Chapel also testify to the long-time presence of show business people.

The neighborhood is also home to a number of broadcast and music-recording studios, including the CBS Broadcast Center at 524 West 57th Street, also the home of Black Entertainment Television's 106 & Park show; the former Sony Music Studios at 460 West 54th Street, which closed in 2007; Manhattan Center Studios at 311 West 34th Street; and Right Track Recording's Studio A509 orchestral recording facility at West 38th Street and Tenth Avenue. The syndicated Montel Williams Show is also taped at the Unitel Studios, 433 West 53rd Street, between Ninth and Tenth Avenues.

The Comedy Central satirical news program The Daily Show has been taped in Hell's Kitchen since its debut. In 2005, it moved from its quarters at 54th Street and Tenth Avenue to a new studio in the neighborhood, at 733 Eleventh Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets. The 54th and 10th location was used for The Colbert Report throughout its entire run from 2005 until 2014. As of 2015 the studio is used for The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, following Stephen Colbert's departure from Comedy Central. Next door at 511 W. 54th St. is Ars Nova theater, home to emerging artists Joe Iconis and breakout star Jesse Eisenberg, among others.

The headquarters of Troma studios was located in Hell's Kitchen before their move to Long Island City in Queens. The Baryshnikov Arts Center opened at 37 Arts on 37th Street in 2005, the Orchestra of St. Luke's opened the DiMenna Center for Classical Music in the same building in 2011. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater opened at 55th Street and Ninth Avenue in 2006.

Food

Ninth Avenue is noted for its many ethnic restaurants. The Ninth Avenue Association's International Food Festival, stretches through the Kitchen from 37th to 57th Streets every May, usually on the third weekend of the month. It has been going on since 1974 and is one of the oldest street fairs in the city. There are Caribbean, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Irish, Mexican, and Thai restaurants as well as multiple Afghan, Argentine, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Turkish, Indian, Pakistani, and Vietnamese restaurants. Due to the abundance of restaurants, Restaurant Row is located on West 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues.

Transportation

The Lincoln Tunnel connects New York City to New Jersey. Parking lots dot the neighborhood, but are dwindling in quantity as developments are being built. Eleventh Avenue is lined with car dealerships, many of which claim to have the highest volume among all dealerships for their brands in the country.

The massive Port Authority Bus Terminal is between 40th and 42nd Streets and Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Several New York City Bus routes (such as the ) also service the area.

Many of the horse-drawn carriages from Central Park stay in stables just off the West Side Highway. It is not uncommon to hear the sound of horses in the neighborhood. There have been calls for banning horse-drawn carriages, especially from Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio following a handful of collisions between cars and carriages.    The carriage horses live in historic stables originally built in the 19th century, but today boast the latest in barn design, such as fans, misting systems, box stalls, and state-of-the-art sprinkler systems. As horses always have in densely populated urban areas, the carriage horses live upstairs in their stables while the carriages are parked below on the ground floor.  

Cruise ships frequently dock at the New York Passenger Ship Terminal in the 48th to 52nd piers called Piers 88, 90, 92. Cruise ship horns are a common sound in the neighborhood. Several French restaurants opened on West 51st Street to accommodate traffic from the French Line. The piers originally built in 1930 are now considered small, and some cruise traffic uses other locations. Other ship operations in the neighborhood include Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises at West 42nd and the NY Waterway ferry service.

Hell's Kitchen begins northwest of Penn Station. Amtrak trains going into the station run along a sunken corridor west of Tenth Avenue, which feeds into the Freedom Tunnel; it is used by approximately thirty trains daily. During the post-9/11 building boom, apartment houses have been built over sections of the train tracks.

Hell's Kitchen is bounded on the east by the New York City Subway's IND Eighth Avenue Line (). The MTA built the 7 Subway Extension () for the aforementioned Hudson Yards development. The extension to 34th Street – Hudson Yards opened on September 13, 2015, making the IRT Flushing Line the westernmost New York City Subway line within Midtown. 

Education

The Success Academy Charter Schools group opened an elementary school,  Success Academy Hell's Kitchen,  in the High School of Graphic Communication Arts building in 2013.

In popular culture 

* The Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil (Matt Murdock), born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, resides in, and intermittently operates his law office out of, the neighborhood.
* Jessica Jones, another Marvel superhero, also hails from Hell's Kitchen.
* Within the southern opening of the Freedom Tunnel, the former "shantytowns" constructed by homeless people, now cleared, gave rise to the urban legend of "mole people", as seen in the documentary Dark Days and in Jennifer Toth's book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York.
* Nero Wolfe (1934), series of novels and short stories
* The Fountainhead (1943), novel by Ayn Rand – the character Gail Wynand grows up in Hell's Kitchen, which features as the symbolic site of a building he orders to be made.
* Route 66 (1960–63), TV show – Buz Murdock, one of the lead characters, grew up in Hell's Kitchen. 
* The Fortunate Pilgrim (1964), novel by Mario Puzo
* "New York City" (1989), song by The Cult
* State of Grace (1990), film by Phil Joanou
* American Psycho (1991), novel by Bret Easton Ellis
* Alone in the Dark 2 (1993), by Infogrames
* Devil's Heaven (1995), novel by Thomas Adcock
* Sleepers (1995), novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra, and Sleepers, 1996 film
* "Hell's Kitchen" (1997), song by Dream Theater
* Everybody Dies (1998), novel by Lawrence Block
* Bringing Out the Dead (1999), film by Martin Scorsese
* Deus Ex (2000), video game by Ion Storm
* Cosmopolis (2003), novel by Don DeLillo
* In America (2003) by Jim Sheridan
* Mafia Summer  (2005), novel by E. Duke Vincent
* The Power of the Dog (2005), crime/thriller novel by Don Winslow
* Jackson Steeg series novels (2006–9) by Ira Berkowitz
* Shamrock Alley (2009), novel by Ronald Malfi
* Run for Your Life (2009), novel by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
* The Spy (2010), novel by Clive Cussler
* Hell On Wheels (2011–6), the character of Thomas C. Durant claims to have grown up in Hell's Kitchen as a boy, which led to his ferocious need for power.
* Public Morals (2015), TV show
* Tom Clancy's The Division (2016), video game by Ubisoft Massive

Notable residents

Notable current and former residents of Hell's Kitchen include:

* Carmelo Anthony (born 1984), basketball player 
* Benjamin Appel (1907–1977), crime novelist 
* Jake T. Austin (born 1994), actor
* Lewis Black, comic 
* Stephen Blackehart (born 1967), actor
* David Blaine (born 1973), illusionist and endurance artist
* Anthony Bourdain, chef and author 
* James J. Braddock ("Cinderella Man"), boxer, lived on West 48th Street 
* James Cagney, actor 
* George Cain (1943–2010), author of Blueschild Baby. 
* Lorenzo Carcaterra, author, was born and raised in Hell's Kitchen, which is featured in his autobiographical story "A Safe Place" as well as the novel and later film Sleepers. 
* Vanessa Carlton (born 1980), singer-songwriter 
* Paul Cavonis (born 1937), actor
* Chevy Chase (born 1943), actor and comedian
* Richard Christy (born 1974), comedian, radio personality, and musician 
* Vincent "Mad Dog" Coll (1908-1932), mobster
* Hugh E. Conway, economist
* James Coonan (born 1946), mobster 
* Celia Cruz (1925-2003), singer, lived on West 55th Street
* Edward Cummiskey (d. 1976), mobster
* Robert Davi (born 1953), actor
* Larry David (born 1947), actor, producer of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm.McShane, Larry. [http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/people/149555,CST-NWS-kramer26.article "The real Kramer says actor no racist: But Richards is 'paranoid,' 'very wound-up'"], Chicago Sun-Times, November 26, 2006. Accessed August 11, 2009. "The real Kramer lived for 10 years in a Hell's Kitchen apartment across the hall from Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, and his life became the framework for Richards' quirky, bumbling Seinfeld sidekick."
* Robert De Niro, actor
* Tom Devaney, mobster
* Bill Dwyer, mobster
* Donald Faison, actor
* Alice Faye, actress
* Mickey Featherstone, mobster
* Sutton Foster, stage actor
* Robert Fripp, musician
* Zach Galligan, actor
* Peter H. Gilmore (born 1958), High Priest of the Church of Satan
* Marcelo Gomes (born 1979), Brazilian ballet dancer who has performed with the American Ballet Theatre. 
* John Goodman, actor, lived on Ninth Avenue
* Tom Gorman (1919-1986), Major League Baseball umpire. 
* James Gunn, author and filmmaker
* Tom Hanks, actor, had an apartment in Hell's Kitchen in the late 1970s/early '80s.
* Charlton Heston, actor, worked as a model in Hell's Kitchen from 1944 to 1947.
* Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind, musician
* Alicia Keys (born 1981), singer and pianist 
* Kenny Kramer (born 1943), comedian, lived in a Hell's Kitchen apartment across the hall from Larry David and became the inspiration for the Cosmo Kramer character on Seinfeld.
* Stanley Kramer (1913-2001), film director and producer 
* Reichen Lehmkuhl (born 1973), winner of The Amazing Race and star of The A-List: New York
* Mark LoMonaco, professional wrestler, known as Bubba Ray Dudley
* Henrik Lundqvist, hockey player and New York Rangers goaltender, played in the NHL
* Owney Madden, mobster
* George Maharis, actor, lived on West 49th
* Mary "Typhoid Mary" Mallon shared an apartment in Hell's Kitchen with her boyfriend between jobs as a cook during the 1900s
* Eddie McGrath, mobster
* Frank Miller, writer and comic book artist
* Brian Mullen (born 1962), hockey player, played in the NHL for the Winnipeg Jets, New York Rangers, San Jose Sharks and New York Islanders.Allen, Kevin. [http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/USAToday/access/55900749.html?dids
55900749:55900749&FMTABS&FMTS
ABS:FT&typecurrent&date
Feb+07%2C+1989&authorKevin+Allen&pub
USA+TODAY+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&descMullen+brothers+come+long+way+from+Hell's+Kitchen&pqatl
google "Mullen brothers come long way from Hell's Kitchen"], USA Today, February 7, 1989. Accessed August 11, 2009.
* Joe Mullen (born 1957), hockey player, played in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames, Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins from 1980–1997, winning three Stanley Cups.
* Joakim Noah, basketball player
* Graham Norton, comedian, owns property on Tenth Avenue
* Paul O'Neill (born 1956), producer and founder of Trans-Siberian Orchestra
* Jerry Orbach (1935–2004), actor. Kept an apartment on Eighth Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets. 
* Tony Orlando, singer
* Ilka Tanya Payán (1943–1996), actress and AIDS activist
* Josh Peck, actor, was born and raised in Hell's Kitchen.
* Mario Puzo (1920–1999), author of The Godfather  
* George Raft (1901–1980), actor 
* Andrew Rannells, actor
* John Reed, author
* Tim Rose, musician, lived on West 46th Street, Restaurant Row, in Hell's Kitchen for a decade or more in the 1980s and 90s, and later referred to it as "skid row" in a song called "Because You're Rich."
* Mickey Rourke (born 1953), actor 
* Stephen Schwartz, composer
* Kevin Spacey, actor 
* Mickey Spillane, mobster
* Sylvester Stallone, actor born and raised in area.
* Linards Tauns, Latvian modernist poet and spiritual leader of Hell's Kitchen group of immigrant Latvian poets.
* William M. "Boss" Tweed, political figure, lived at West 51st Street.
* Lisa Velez of Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, singer
* Thomas Wagner a.k.a. "The Cadillac Man" (born 1949), author
* Matt Wiese, professional wrestler, known as Horshu or Luther Reigns
* Bruce Willis, actor, lived in the West 40s between Ninth and Tenth Avenues

Notes
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manhattan
WikipediaEntity
Manhattan
 in which New York borough which you find household? 

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