Which is the largest borough in New York City?
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Borough (New York City) New York City Brooklyn
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. 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 Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with a Census-estimated 2,636,735 residents in 2015. It is geographically adjacent to the borough of Queens at the southwestern end of Long Island. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, the most populous county in the U.S. state of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after the county of New York (which is coextensive with the borough of Manhattan). 

With a land area of 71 sqmi and water area of 26 sqmi, Kings County is New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area, though it is the second-largest among the city's five boroughs.  Today, if each of the five boroughs was a separate city, Brooklyn would rank as the third most populous city in the U.S., behind Los Angeles and Chicago.

Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city (and previously an authorized village and town within the provisions of the New York State Constitution), until January 1, 1898, when, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York," Brooklyn was consolidated with the other cities, boroughs, and counties to form the modern "City of New York" surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs. The borough continues, however, to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the Borough seal and flag, is , which translates from early modern Dutch to "Unity makes strength".

In the first decades of the 21st century, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as an avant garde destination for hipsters,  with concomitant gentrification, dramatic house price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability.  Since 2010, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,  and of postmodern art and design.

History

The history of European settlement in Brooklyn spans more than 350 years. The settlement began in the 17th century as the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, grew to be a sizable city in the 19th century, and was consolidated in 1898 with New York City (then confined to Manhattan and part of the Bronx), the remaining rural areas of Kings County, and the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island, to form the modern City of New York.

Colonial era

Six Dutch towns

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle the area on the western edge of Long Island, which was then largely inhabited by the Lenape, a Native American people who are often referred to in contemporary colonial documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". The "Breuckelen" settlement, named after Breukelen in the Netherlands, was part of New Netherland, and the Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes (listed here first by their later, more common English names): 

* Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of the Anabaptist, Lady Deborah Moody, possibly after Gravesend, England, or 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands
* Brooklyn Heights: as "Breuckelen" in 1646, after the town now spelled "Breukelen", Netherlands
* Flatlands: as "New Amersfoort" in 1647
* Flatbush: as "Midwout" in 1652
* New Utrecht: in 1657, after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands
* Bushwick: as "Boswijck" in 1661

The capital of the colony, New Amsterdam across the East River, obtained its charter later than the village of Brooklyn did, in 1653. The neighborhood of Marine Park was home to the first tidal mill in North America. This mill was built by the Dutch, and the foundation can be seen today. However, the area was not formally settled as a town. Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's early (1824) compilation. 

Six townships in an English province

What is today Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the final English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, in a prelude to the Second Anglo–Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the conquerors renamed their prize in honor of the overall English naval commander, James, Duke of York, brother of the Monarch, King Charles II of England and future king himself as King James II of England and James VII of Scotland; Brooklyn became a part of the new English and later British colony, the Province of New York.

The English reorganized the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island as Kings County on November 1, 1683,  one of the "original twelve counties" then established in New York Province. This tract of land was recognized as a political entity for the first time, and the municipal groundwork was laid for a later expansive idea of Brooklyn identity.

Lacking the patroon and tenant farmer system established along the Hudson River Valley, this agricultural county unusually came to have one of the highest percentages of slavery among the population in the "Original Thirteen Colonies" along the Atlantic Ocean eastern coast of North America.

Revolutionary War

On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn) was the first major engagement fought in the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared, and the largest of the entire conflict. British troops forced Continental Army troops under George Washington off the heights near the modern sites of Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Grand Army Plaza. 

Washington, viewing particularly fierce fighting at the Gowanus Creek from his vantage point atop a hill near the west end of present-day Atlantic Avenue, was famously reported to have emotionally exclaimed: "What brave men I must this day lose!". 

The fortified American positions at Brooklyn Heights consequently became untenable and were evacuated a few days later, leaving the British in control of New York Harbor. While Washington's defeat on the battlefield cast early doubts on his ability as the commander, the subsequent tactical withdrawal of all his troops and supplies across the East River in a single night is seen by historians as one of his most brilliant triumphs.

The surrounding region was controlled by the British for the duration of the war, as New York City was soon occupied and became their military and political base of operations in North America for the remainder of the conflict. The British generally enjoyed a dominant Loyalist sentiment from the remaining residents in Kings County who did not evacuate, though the region was also the center of the fledgling—and largely successful—American intelligence network, headed by Washington himself.

The British set up a system of notorious prison ships off the coast of Brooklyn in Wallabout Bay, where more American patriots died of intentional neglect than died in combat on all the battlefields of the American Revolutionary War, combined. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 resulted, in part, in the evacuation of the British from New York City, celebrated by residents into the 20th century.

Post-colonial era

Urbanization

The first half of the 19th century saw the beginning of the development of urban areas on the economically strategic East River shore of Kings County, facing the adolescent City of New York confined to Manhattan Island. The New York Navy Yard operated in Wallabout Bay (border between Brooklyn and Williamsburgh) for the entire 19th century and two thirds of the 20th century.

The first center of urbanization sprang up in the Town of Brooklyn, directly across from Lower Manhattan, which saw the incorporation of the Village of Brooklyn in 1816. Reliable steam ferry service across the East River to Fulton Landing converted Brooklyn Heights into a commuter town for Wall Street. Ferry Road to Jamaica Pass became Fulton Street to East New York. Town and Village were combined to form the first, kernel incarnation of the City of Brooklyn in 1834.

In parallel development, the Town of Bushwick, a little farther up the river, saw the incorporation of the Village of Williamsburgh in 1827, which separated as the Town of Williamsburgh in 1840, only to form the short-lived City of Williamsburgh in 1851. Industrial deconcentration in mid-century was bringing shipbuilding and other manufacturing to the northern part of the county. Each of the two cities and six towns in Kings County remained independent municipalities, and purposely created non-aligning street grids with different naming systems.

But the East River shore was growing too fast for the three-year-old infant City of Williamsburgh, which, along with its Town of Bushwick hinterland, was subsumed within a greater City of Brooklyn in 1854.

By 1841, the growing city across the East River from Manhattan produced its own prominent newspaper with the appearance of the The Brooklyn Eagle, and Kings County Democrat published by Alfred G. Stevens.  It later became the most popular and highest circulation afternoon paper in America. The publisher changed to L. Van Anden on April 19, 1842,  and the paper was renamed The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Kings County Democrat on June 1, 1846.  On May 14, 1849, the name was shortened to The Brooklyn Daily Eagle.  On September 5, 1938, the name was further shortened, to Brooklyn Eagle.  The establishment of the paper in the 1800s set a tone for the developing separate identity for Brooklynites in the next century along with its famous National League baseball team, the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both major institutions were lost in the 1950s, when the paper closed in 1955 after unsuccessful attempts at a sale following a reporters' strike and the baseball team decamped for Los Angeles in a realignment of major league baseball in 1957.

Agitation against Southern slavery was stronger in Brooklyn than in New York, and under Republican leadership the city was fervent in the Union cause in the Civil War. After the war the Henry Ward Beecher Monument was built downtown to honor a famous local abolitionist. A great victory arch at what was then the south end of town celebrated the armed forces, the place now being called Grand Army Plaza.

The city had a population of 25,000 in 1834, but the police department only comprised 12 men on the day shift and another 12 at night. Every time a rash of burglaries broke out, officials blamed burglars coming in from New York City. Finally in 1855, a modern police force was created, employing 150 men. Voters complained of inadequate protection and excessive costs. In 1857 the state legislature merged the Brooklyn force with that of New York City. 

Civil War

Fervent in the Union cause, the city of Brooklyn played a major role in supplying troops and materiel for the American Civil War. The most well known regiment to be sent off to war from the city was the 14th Brooklyn "Red Legged Devils". They fought from 1861 to 1864, wore red the entire war, and were the only regiment named after a city, and President Lincoln called them into service personally, making them part of a handful of 3 year enlisted soldiers in April 1861. Unlike other regiments during the American Civil War, the 14th wore a uniform inspired by that of the French Chasseurs, a light infantry used for quick assaults on the enemy.

As both a seaport and a manufacturing center, Brooklyn was well prepared to play to the Union's strengths in shipping and manufacturing. The two combined in shipbuilding; the ironclad Monitor was built in Brooklyn.

Twin city

Taking a thirty-year break from municipal expansionism, this well-situated coastal city established itself as the third-most-populous American city for much of the 19th century. Brooklyn is referred to as a twin city of New York in the 1883 poem, "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which appears on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. The poem calls New York Harbor "the air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame". As a twin city to New York, it played a role in national affairs that was later overshadowed by its century-old submergence into its old partner and rival.

Economic growth continued, propelled by immigration and industrialization. The waterfront from Gowanus Bay to Greenpoint was developed with piers and factories. Industrial access to the waterfront was improved by the Gowanus Canal and the canalized Newtown Creek. The USS Monitor was only the most famous product of the large and growing shipbuilding industry of Williamsburg. After the Civil War, trolley lines and other transport brought urban sprawl beyond Prospect Park and into the center of the county.

The rapidly growing population needed more water, so the City built centralized waterworks including the Ridgewood Reservoir. The municipal Police Department, however, was abolished in 1854 in favor of a Metropolitan force covering also New York and Westchester Counties. In 1865 the Brooklyn Fire Department (BFD) also gave way to the new Metropolitan Fire District.

Throughout this period the peripheral towns of Kings County, far from Manhattan and even from urban Brooklyn, maintained their rustic independence. The only municipal change seen was the secession of the eastern section of the Town of Flatbush as the Town of New Lots in 1852. The building of rail links such as the Brighton Beach Line in 1878 heralded the end of this isolation.

Sports became big business, and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms played professional baseball at Washington Park in the convenient suburb of Park Slope and elsewhere. Early in the next century, they brought their new name of Brooklyn Dodgers to Ebbets Field, beyond Prospect Park. Racetracks, amusement parks, and beach resorts opened in Brighton Beach, Coney Island, and elsewhere in the southern part of the county.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the City of Brooklyn experienced its final, explosive growth spurt. Railroads and industrialization spread to Bay Ridge and Sunset Park. In the space of a decade, the city annexed the Town of New Lots in 1886, the Town of Flatbush, the Town of Gravesend, the Town of New Utrecht in 1894, and the Town of Flatlands in 1896. Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the ends of Kings County.

Mayors of the City of Brooklyn

Brooklyn elected a mayor from 1834 until consolidation in 1898 into the City of Greater New York, whose own second mayor (1902–1903), Seth Low, had been Mayor of Brooklyn from 1882 to 1885. Since 1898, Brooklyn has, in place of a separate mayor, elected a Borough President.

New York City borough

In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, transportation to Manhattan was no longer by water only, and the City of Brooklyn's ties to the City of New York were strengthened.

The question became whether Brooklyn was prepared to engage in the still-grander process of consolidation then developing throughout the region, whether to join with the county of New York, the county of Richmond and the western portion of Queens County to form the five boroughs of a united City of New York. Andrew Haskell Green and other progressives said Yes, and eventually they prevailed against the Daily Eagle and other conservative forces. In 1894, residents of Brooklyn and the other counties voted by a slight majority to merge, effective in 1898. 

Kings County retained its status as one of New York State's counties, but the loss of Brooklyn's separate identity as a city was met with consternation by some residents at the time. The merger was called the "Great Mistake of 1898" by many newspapers of the day, and the phrase still denotes Brooklyn pride among old-time Brooklynites.

Geography

Brooklyn totals 97 sqmi in area, of which 71 mi2 is land (73%), and 26 mi2 is water (27%); the borough is the second-largest in land area among the boroughs of New York City. However, Kings County, coterminous with Brooklyn, is New York State's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area. Brooklyn lies at the southwestern end of Long Island, and the borough's western border constitutes the island's western tip. Brooklyn's water borders are extensive and varied, including Jamaica Bay; the Atlantic Ocean; The Narrows, separating Brooklyn from the borough of Staten Island in New York City and crossed by the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge; Upper New York Bay, separating Brooklyn from Jersey City and Bayonne in the U.S. state of New Jersey; and the East River, separating Brooklyn from the borough of Manhattan in New York City and traversed by the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, and numerous routes of the New York City Subway. To the east of Brooklyn lies the borough of Queens, which contains John F. Kennedy International Airport in that borough's Howard Beach neighborhood, approximately two miles from the border of the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Boroughscape

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, using the 32 °F coldest month (January) isotherm, Brooklyn experiences a humid subtropical climate (Cfa),  with partial shielding from the Appalachian Mountains and moderating influences from the Atlantic Ocean. Brooklyn receives plentiful precipitation all year round, with nearly 50 inches yearly. The area averages 234 days with at least some sunshine annually, and averages 57% of possible sunshine annually, accumulating 2,535 hours of sunshine per annum.  Brooklyn lies in the USDA 7b plant hardiness zone. 

Demographics

Since 2010, the population of Brooklyn was estimated by the United States Census Bureau to have increased 5.3% to 2,636,735, as of 2015 – Brooklyn's estimated population represented 30.8% of New York City's estimated population of 8,550,405; 33.6% of Long Island's population of 7,838,722; and 13.3% of New York State's population of 19,795,791.   

2010 Census

According to the 2010 United States Census, Brooklyn's population was 42.8% White, including 35.7% non-Hispanic White; 34.3% Black, including 31.9% non-Hispanic black; 10.5% Asian; 0.5% Native American; 0.0% (rounded) Pacific Islander; 3.0% Multiracial American; and 8.8% from Other races. Hispanics and Latinos made up 19.8% of Brooklyn's population. 

2012 estimates

According to the 2012 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there are 2,565,635 people (up from 2.3 million in 1990), 880,727 households, and 583,922 families living in Brooklyn.   The population density was 34,920/square mile (13,480/km²). There were 930,866 housing units at an average density of 13,180/square mile (5,090/km²).

Of the 880,727 households in Brooklyn, 38.6% were married couples living together, 22.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 33.7% were non-families. 33.3% had children under the age of 18 living in them. Of all households 27.8% are made up of individuals and 9.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.75 and the average family size was 3.41.

In Brooklyn the population was spread out with 26.9% under the age of 18, 10.3% from 18 to 24, 30.8% from 25 to 44, 20.6% from 45 to 64, and 11.5% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age was 33 years. Brooklyn has more women and girls, with 88.4 males for every 100 females. Brooklyn's lesbian community is the largest out of all of the New York City boroughs. 

The median income for households in Brooklyn was $32,135, and the median income for a family was $36,188. Males had a median income of $34,317, which was higher than females, whose median income was $30,516. The per capita income was $16,775. About 22% of families and 25.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 34% of those under age 18 and 21.5% of those age 65 or over.

Languages

Brooklyn has a high degree of linguistic diversity. As of 2010, 54.12% (1,240,416) of Brooklyn residents ages 5 and older spoke English at home as a primary language, while 17.16% (393,340) spoke Spanish, 6.46% (148,012) Chinese, 5.31% (121,607) Russian, 3.47% (79,469) Yiddish, 2.75% (63,019) French Creole, 1.35% (31,004) Italian, 1.20% (27,440) Hebrew, 1.01% (23,207) Polish, 0.99% (22,763) French, 0.95% (21,773) Arabic, 0.85% (19,388) various Indic languages, 0.70% (15,936) Urdu, and African languages were spoken as a main language by 0.54% (12,305) of the population over the age of five. In total, 45.88% (1,051,456) of Brooklyn's population ages 5 and older spoke a mother language other than English. 
Neighborhoods

Brooklyn's neighborhoods are dynamic in ethnic composition. For example, during the early to mid-20th century, Brownsville had a majority of Jewish residents; since the 1970s it has been majority African American. Midwood during the early 20th century was filled with ethnic Irish, then filled with Jewish residents for nearly 50 years, and is slowly becoming a Pakistani enclave. Brooklyn's most populous racial group, white, declined from 97.2% in 1930 to 46.9% by 1990. 

Along with gentrification, many of Brooklyn's neighborhoods are also becoming increasingly diverse, with an influx of immigrants integrating its neighborhoods. The borough also attracts people previously living in other cities in the United States. Of these, most come from Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Cincinnati, and Seattle.       

Brooklyn contains dozens of distinct neighborhoods, representing many of the major ethnic groups found within the New York City area. The borough is home to a large African American community. Bedford-Stuyvesant is home to one of the most famous African American communities in the city, along with Brownsville, East New York, and Coney Island. Brooklyn's African American and Caribbean communities are spread throughout much of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn is also home to many Russians and Ukrainians, who are mainly concentrated in the areas of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. Brighton Beach features many Russian and Ukrainian businesses and has been nicknamed Litte Russia and Little Odessa, respectively. Originally these communities were mostly Jewish; however, the non-Jewish Russian and Ukrainian communities of Brighton Beach now also represent various aspects of Russian and Ukrainian culture.

Bushwick is the largest hub of Brooklyn's Hispanic American community. Like other Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City, Bushwick has an established Puerto Rican presence, along with an influx of many Dominicans, South Americans, Central Americans, Mexicans, as well as a more recent influx of Puerto Ricans. As nearly 80% of Bushwick's population is Hispanic, its residents having created many businesses to support their various national and distinct traditions in food and other items. Sunset Park's population is 42% Hispanic, made up of these various ethnic groups. Brooklyn's main Hispanic groups are Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Dominicans, and Panamanians; they are spread out throughout the borough. Puerto Ricans and Dominicans are predominant in Bushwick, Williamsburg, and East New York, while Mexicans are predominant in Sunset Park and Panamanians in Crown Heights.

Italian Americans are mainly concentrated in the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, Bay Ridge, Bath Beach, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens where there are many Italian restaurants, bakeries, delicatessens,  pizzerias, cafes, and social clubs.

Orthodox Jews and Hasidic Jews have become concentrated in Borough Park, Williamsburg, and Flatbush, where there are many yeshivas, synagogues, and kosher delicatessens, as well as many other Jewish businesses. Other notable religious Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish neighborhoods are Kensington, Midwood,  Canarsie, Sea Gate, and Crown Heights. Many hospitals in Brooklyn were started by Jewish charities, including Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park and Brookdale Hospital in Brownsville.   Many non-religious Jews are concentrated in Ditmas Park, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope.
Brooklyn's Polish are largely concentrated in Greenpoint, which is home to Little Poland. They are also scattered throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn.

Brooklyn's West Indian community is concentrated in the Crown Heights, Flatbush, East Flatbush, Kensington, and Canarsie neighborhoods in central Brooklyn. Brooklyn is home to one of the largest communities of West Indians outside of the Caribbean, being rivaled only by Toronto, Miami, Montreal,and London. Although the largest West Indian groups in Brooklyn are mostly Jamaicans, Guyanese and Haitians, there are West Indian immigrants from nearly every part of the Caribbean. Crown Heights and Flatbush are home to many of Brooklyn's West Indian restaurants and bakeries. Brooklyn has an annual, celebrated Carnival in the tradition of pre-Lenten celebrations in the islands. Started by natives of Trinidad and Tobago, the West Indian Labor Day Parade takes place every Labor Day on Eastern Parkway.

Brooklyn's Greek Americans live throughout the borough, but their businesses today are concentrated in Downtown Brooklyn near Atlantic Avenue. Greek-owned diners are also found throughout the borough, but many Greeks have re-located off of Atlantic Avenue due to demographic shift.

Chinese Americans live throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn, in Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, and Homecrest. The largest concentration is in Sunset Park along 8th Avenue, which is known for Chinese culture. It is called "Brooklyn's Chinatown". Many Chinese restaurants can be found throughout Sunset Park, and the area hosts a popular Chinese New Year celebration.

Irish Americans can be found throughout Brooklyn, in low to moderate concentrations in the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Marine Park, Gerritsen Beach, and Vinegar Hill. Many moved east on Long Island in the mid-twentieth century.

Today, Arab Americans and Pakistanis along with other Muslim communities have moved into the southwest portion of Brooklyn, particularly to Bay Ridge, where there are many Middle Eastern restaurants, hookah lounges, halal shops, Islamic shops and mosques. Coney Island Avenue is home to Little Pakistan as Church Avenue is to Bangladeshis. Jay Street Borough Hall (Downtown Brooklyn) is little Arabia. Pakistani Independence Day is celebrated every year with parades and parties on Coney Island Avenue. Earlier, the area was known predominately for its Irish, Norwegian, and Scottish populations. There are also many Middle Eastern, particularly Yemeni, businesses, mosques, and restaurants on Atlantic Avenue west of Flatbush Avenue, near Brooklyn Heights.

Government and politics

Since consolidation with New York City in 1898, Brooklyn has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" mayor-council system. The centralized government of New York City is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services. On the other hand, the Brooklyn Public Library is an independent nonprofit organization partially funded by the government of New York City, but also by the government of New York State, the U.S. federal government, and private donors.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 to balance centralization with local authority. Each borough president had a powerful administrative role derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate, which was responsible for creating and approving the city's budget and proposals for land use. In 1989, the Supreme Court of the United States declared the Board of Estimate unconstitutional because Brooklyn, the most populous borough, had no greater effective representation on the Board than Staten Island, the least populous borough; it was a violation of the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" reading of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Brooklyn's current Borough President is Eric Adams, elected as a Democrat in November 2013 with 90.8% of the vote. Adams replaced popular Borough President Marty Markowitz, also a Democrat, who partially used his office to promote tourism and new development for Brooklyn.

The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of 2005, 69.7% of registered voters in Brooklyn were Democrats. Party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. The most controversial political issue is the proposed Atlantic Yards, a large housing and sports arena project. Pockets of majority Republican influence exist in Gravesend, Bensonhurst, Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights and Midwood by U.S. Representative Dan Donovan and New York State Senator Marty Golden.

Each of the city's five counties (coterminous with each borough) has its own criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. The current District Attorney of Kings County is Kenneth P. Thompson, a Democrat elected in 2013. Brooklyn has 16 City Council members, the largest number of any of the five boroughs. Brooklyn has 18 of the city's 59 community districts, each served by an unpaid Community Board with advisory powers under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Each board has a paid district manager who acts as an interlocutor with city agencies.

Economy

Brooklyn's job market is driven by three main factors: the performance of the national and city economy, population flows and the borough's position as a convenient back office for New York's businesses. 

Forty-four percent of Brooklyn's employed population, or 410,000 people, work in the borough; more than half of the borough's residents work outside its boundaries. As a result, economic conditions in Manhattan are important to the borough's jobseekers. Strong international immigration to Brooklyn generates jobs in services, retailing and construction.

Since the late 20th century, Brooklyn has benefited from a steady influx of financial back office operations from Manhattan, the rapid growth of a high-tech and entertainment economy in DUMBO, and strong growth in support services such as accounting, personal supply agencies, and computer services firms.

Jobs in the borough have traditionally been concentrated in manufacturing, but since 1975, Brooklyn has shifted from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy. In 2004, 215,000 Brooklyn residents worked in the services sector, while 27,500 worked in manufacturing. Although manufacturing has declined, a substantial base has remained in apparel and niche manufacturing concerns such as furniture, fabricated metals, and food products.  The pharmaceutical company Pfizer was founded in Brooklyn in 1869 and had a manufacturing plant in the borough for many years that once employed thousands of workers, but the plant shut down in 2008. However, new light-manufacturing concerns packaging organic and high-end food have sprung up in the old plant. 

First established as a shipbuilding facility in 1801, the Brooklyn Navy Yard employed 70,000 people at its peak during World War II and was then the largest employer in the borough. The Missouri, the ship on which the Japanese formally surrendered, was built there, as was the Maine, whose sinking off Havana led to the start of the Spanish–American War. The iron-sided Civil War vessel the Monitor was built in Greenpoint. From 1968–1979 Seatrain Shipbuilding was the major employer.  Later tenants include industrial design firms, food processing businesses, artisans, and the film and television production industry. About 230 private-sector firms providing 4,000 jobs are at the Yard.

Construction and services are the fastest growing sectors.  Most employers in Brooklyn are small businesses. In 2000, 91% of the approximately 38,704 business establishments in Brooklyn had fewer than 20 employees.  , the borough's unemployment rate was 5.9%. 

Brooklyn is also home to many banks and credit unions. According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, there were 37 banks and 26 credit unions operating in the borough in 2010.  

The rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn has generated over US$10 billion of private investment and $300 million in public improvements since 2004. Brooklyn is also attracting numerous high technology start-up companies, as Silicon Alley, the metonym for New York City's entrepreneurship ecosystem, has expanded from Lower Manhattan into Brooklyn. 

Culture

Brooklyn has played a major role in various aspects of American culture including literature, cinema, and theater. The Brooklyn accent has often been portrayed as the "typical New York accent" in American media, although this accent and stereotype are supposedly fading out.  Brooklyn's official colors are blue and gold. 

Cultural venues

Brooklyn hosts the world-renowned Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, and the second largest public art collection in the United States, housed in the Brooklyn Museum.

The Brooklyn Museum, opened in 1897, is New York City's second-largest public art museum. It has in its permanent collection more than 1.5 million objects, from ancient Egyptian masterpieces to contemporary art. The Brooklyn Children's Museum, the world's first museum dedicated to children, opened in December 1899. The only such New York State institution accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, it is one of the few globally to have a permanent collectionover 30,000 cultural objects and natural history specimens.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) includes a 2,109-seat opera house, an 874-seat theater, and the art house BAM Rose Cinemas. Bargemusic and St. Ann's Warehouse are located on the other side of Downtown Brooklyn in the DUMBO arts district. Brooklyn Technical High School has the second-largest auditorium in New York City (after Radio City Music Hall), with a seating capacity of over 3,000. 

Media

Local periodicals

Brooklyn has several local newspapers: The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Bay Currents (Oceanfront Brooklyn), Brooklyn View, The Brooklyn Paper, and Courier-Life Publications. Courier-Life Publications, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, is Brooklyn's largest chain of newspapers. Brooklyn is also served by the major New York dailies, including The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post.

The borough is home to the bi-weekly cultural guide The L Magazine and the arts and politics monthly Brooklyn Rail, as well as the arts and cultural quarterly Cabinet.

Brooklyn Magazine is one of the few glossy magazines about Brooklyn. Several others, that are now defunct, include: BKLYN Magazine (a bimonthly lifestyle book owned by Joseph McCarthy, that saw itself as a vehicle for high-end advertisers in Manhattan and was mailed to 80,000 high-income households), Brooklyn Bridge Magazine, The Brooklynite (a free, glossy quarterly edited by Daniel Treiman), and NRG (edited by Gail Johnson and originally marketed as a local periodical for Clinton Hill and Fort Greene, but expanded in scope to become the self-proclaimed "Pulse of Brooklyn" and then the "Pulse of New York"). 

Ethnic press

Brooklyn has a thriving ethnic press. El Diario La Prensa, the largest and oldest Spanish-language daily newspaper in the United States, maintains its corporate headquarters at 1 MetroTech Center in downtown Brooklyn.  Major ethnic publications include the Brooklyn-Queens Catholic paper The Tablet, Hamodia, an Orthodox Jewish daily and The Jewish Press, an Orthodox Jewish weekly. Many nationally distributed ethnic newspapers are based in Brooklyn. Over 60 ethnic groups, writing in 42 languages, publish some 300 non-English language magazines and newspapers in New York City. Among them the quarterly "L'Idea", a bilingual magazine printed in Italian and English since 1974. In addition, many newspapers published abroad, such as The Daily Gleaner and The Star of Jamaica, are available in Brooklyn.
Our Time Press published weekly by DBG Media covers the Village of Brooklyn with a motto of "The Local paper with the Global View".

Television

The City of New York has an official television station, run by the NYC Media Group, which features programming based in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Community Access Television is the borough's public access channel.

Events

* The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade (mid-to-late June) is a costume-and-float parade. 
* Coney Island also hosts the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (July 4).
* The annual Labor Day Carnival (also known as the Labor Day Parade or West Indian Day Parade) takes place along Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.

Parks and other attractions

* Brooklyn Botanic Garden: located adjacent to Prospect Park is the 52 acre botanical garden, which includes a cherry tree esplanade, a one-acre (0.4 ha) rose garden, a Japanese hill and pond garden, a fragrance garden, a water lily pond esplanade, several conservatories, a rock garden, a native flora garden, a bonsai tree collection, and children's gardens and discovery exhibits.
* Coney Island developed as a playground for the rich in the early 1900s, but it grew as one of America's first amusement grounds and attracted crowds from all over New York. The Cyclone rollercoaster, built in 1927, is on the National Register of Historic Places. The 1920 Wonder Wheel and other rides are still operational. Coney Island went into decline in the 1970s, but has undergone a renaissance. 
* Floyd Bennett Field: the first municipal airport in New York City and long closed for operations, is now part of the National Park System. Many of the historic hangars and runways are still extant.  Nature trails and diverse habitats are found within the park, including salt marsh and a restored area of shortgrass prairie that was once widespread on the Hempstead Plains.
* Green-Wood Cemetery, founded by the social reformer Henry Evelyn Pierrepont  in 1838, is an early Rural cemetery.  It is the burial ground of many notable New Yorkers.
* Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge: a unique Federal wildlife refuge straddling the Brooklyn-Queens border, part of Gateway National Recreation Area
* New York Transit Museum displays historical artifacts of Greater New York's subway, commuter rail, and bus systems; it is located at Court Street, a former Independent Subway System station in Brooklyn Heights on the  Fulton Street Line.
* Prospect Park is a public park in central Brooklyn encompassing 585 acre.  The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, who created Manhattan's Central Park. Attractions include the Long Meadow, a 90 acre meadow, the Picnic House, which houses offices and a hall that can accommodate parties with up to 175 guests; Litchfield Villa, Prospect Park Zoo, the Boathouse, housing a visitors center and the first urban Audubon Center;  Brooklyn's only lake, covering 60 acre; the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts free outdoor concerts in the summertime; and various sports and fitness activities including seven baseball fields. Prospect Park hosts a popular annual Halloween Parade.

Sports

Brooklyn's major professional sports teams are the NBA's Brooklyn Nets and the NHL's New York Islanders. The Nets and Islanders moved into the borough in 2012 and 2015, respectively, and both play their home games at Barclays Center in Prospect Heights. Previously, the Nets had played in Uniondale, New York and in New Jersey, while the Islanders had played in Uniondale since their inception.

Brooklyn also has a storied sports history. It has been home to many famous sports figures such as Joe Paterno, Vince Lombardi, Mike Tyson, Joe Torre, and Vitas Gerulaitis. Basketball legend Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn though he grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina.

In the earliest days of organized baseball, Brooklyn teams dominated the new game. The second recorded game of baseball was played near what is today Fort Greene Park on October 24, 1845. Brooklyn’s Excelsiors, Atlantics and Eckfords were the leading teams from the mid-1850s through the Civil War, and there were dozens of local teams with neighborhood league play, such as at Mapleton Oval. During this "Brooklyn era", baseball evolved into the modern game: the first fastball, first changeup, first batting average, first triple play, first pro baseball player, first enclosed ballpark, first scorecard, first known African-American team, first black championship game, first road trip, first gambling scandal, and first eight pennant winners were all in or from Brooklyn. 

Brooklyn's most famous historical team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, named for "trolley dodgers" played at Ebbets Field.  In 1947 Jackie Robinson was hired by the Dodgers as the first African-American player in Major League Baseball in the modern era. In 1955, the Dodgers, perennial National League pennant winners, won the only World Series for Brooklyn against their rival New York Yankees. The event was marked by mass euphoria and celebrations. Just two years later, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. Walter O'Malley, the team's owner at the time, is still vilified, even by Brooklynites too young to remember the Dodgers as Brooklyn's ball club.

After a 43-year hiatus, professional baseball returned to the borough in 2001 with the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league team that plays in MCU Park in Coney Island. They are an affiliate of the New York Mets.

Transportation

Public transport

About 57 percent of all households in Brooklyn were households without automobiles. The citywide rate is 55 percent in New York City. 

Brooklyn features extensive public transit. Eighteen New York City Subway services, including the Franklin Avenue Shuttle, traverse the borough. Approximately 92.8% of Brooklyn residents traveling to Manhattan use the subway, despite the fact that some neighborhoods like Flatlands and Marine Park are poorly served by subway service. Major stations, out of the 170 currently in Brooklyn, include:
* Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center
* Broadway Junction
* DeKalb Avenue
* Jay Street – MetroTech
* Coney Island – Stillwell Avenue 
Proposed New York City Subway lines never built include a line along Nostrand or Utica Avenues to Marine Park,  as well as a subway line to Spring Creek.  

Brooklyn was once served by an extensive network of streetcars, many of which were replaced by the public bus network that covers the entire borough. There is also daily express bus service into Manhattan. New York's famous yellow cabs also provide transportation in Brooklyn, although they are less numerous in the borough. There are three commuter rail stations in Brooklyn: East New York, Nostrand Avenue, and Atlantic Terminal, the terminus of the Atlantic Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. The terminal is located near the Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center subway station, with ten connecting subway services.

A streetcar line connecting Brooklyn with Queens was proposed by the city in February 2016, with the planned timeline calling for service to begin around 2024.

Roadways

The great majority of limited-access expressways and parkways are located in the western and southern sections of Brooklyn. These include the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the Gowanus Expressway (which is part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), the Prospect Expressway (New York State Route 27), the Belt Parkway, and the Jackie Robinson Parkway (formerly the Interborough Parkway). Planned expressways that were never built include the Bushwick Expressway, an extension of I-78  and the Cross-Brooklyn Expressway, I-878.  Major thoroughfares include Atlantic Avenue, Fourth Avenue, 86th Street, Kings Highway, Bay Parkway, Ocean Parkway, Eastern Parkway, Linden Boulevard, McGuinness Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Nostrand Avenue.

Much of Brooklyn has only named streets, but Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Borough Park and the other western sections have numbered streets running approximately northwest to southeast, and numbered avenues going approximately northeast to southwest. East of Dahill Road, lettered avenues (like Avenue M) run east and west, and numbered streets have the prefix "East". South of Avenue O, related numbered streets west of Dahill Road use the "West" designation. This set of numbered streets ranges from West 37th Street to East 108 Street, and the avenues range from A-Z with names substituted for some of them in some neighborhoods (notably Albemarle, Beverley, Cortelyou, Dorchester, Ditmas, Foster, Farragut, Glenwood, Quentin). Numbered streets prefixed by "North" and "South" in Williamsburg, and "Bay", "Beach", "Brighton", "Plumb", "Paerdegat" or "Flatlands" along the southern and southwestern waterfront are loosely based on the old grids of the original towns of Kings County that eventually consolidated to form Brooklyn. These names often reflect the bodies of water or beaches around them, such as Plumb Beach or Paerdegat Basin.

Brooklyn is connected to Manhattan by three bridges, the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges; a vehicular tunnel, the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel (formerly the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel); and several subway tunnels. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge links Brooklyn with the more suburban borough of Staten Island. Though much of its border is on land, Brooklyn shares several water crossings with Queens, including the Kosciuszko Bridge (part of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway), the Pulaski Bridge, and the JJ Byrne Memorial Bridge, all of which carry traffic over Newtown Creek, and the Marine Parkway Bridge connecting Brooklyn to the Rockaway Peninsula.

Waterways

Brooklyn was long a major shipping port, especially at the Brooklyn Army Terminal in Sunset Park. Most container ship cargo operations have shifted to the New Jersey side of New York Harbor, while the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook is a focal point for New York's growing cruise industry. The Queen Mary 2, one of the world's largest ocean liners, was designed specifically to fit under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the United States. She makes regular ports of call at the Red Hook terminal on her transatlantic crossings from Southampton, England.

NY Waterway offers commuter services from the western shore of Brooklyn to points in Lower Manhattan, Midtown, and Long Island City, as well as tours and charters. SeaStreak also offers weekday ferry service between the Brooklyn Army Terminal and the Manhattan ferry slips at Pier 11 downtown and East 34th Street in midtown. A Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel, originally proposed in the 1920s as a core project for the then new Port Authority of New York is again being studied and discussed as a way to ease freight movements across a large swath of the metropolitan area.

Education

Education in Brooklyn is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system.

Brooklyn Technical High School (commonly called Brooklyn Tech), a New York City public high school, is the largest specialized high school for science, mathematics, and technology in the United States.  Brooklyn Tech opened in 1922. Brooklyn Tech is located across the street from Fort Greene Park. This high school was built from 1930 to 1933 at a cost of about $6,000,000 and is 12 stories high. It covers about half of a city block.  Brooklyn Tech is noted for its famous alumni  (including two Nobel Laureates), its academics, and the large number of graduates attending prestigious universities.

Higher education

Public colleges

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, and was the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City. The College ranked in the top 10 nationally for the second consecutive year in Princeton Review’s 2006 guidebook, America’s Best Value Colleges. Many of its students are first and second generation Americans.

Founded in 1970, Medgar Evers College is a senior college of the City University of New York, with a mission to develop and maintain high quality, professional, career-oriented undergraduate degree programs in the context of a liberal arts education. The College offers programs both at the baccalaureate and associate degree levels, as well as Adult and Continuing Education classes for Central Brooklyn residents, corporations, government agencies, and community organizations. Medgar Evers College is a few blocks east of Prospect Park in Crown Heights.

CUNY's New York City College of Technology (City Tech) of The City University of New York (CUNY) (Downtown Brooklyn/Brooklyn Heights) is the largest public college of technology in New York State and a national model for technological education. Established in 1946, City Tech can trace its roots to 1881 when the Technical Schools of the Metropolitan Museum of Art were renamed the New York Trade School. That institution—which became the Voorhees Technical Institute many decades later—was soon a model for the development of technical and vocational schools worldwide. In 1971, Voorhees was incorporated into City Tech.

SUNY Downstate College of Medicine, originally founded as the Long Island College Hospital in 1860, is the oldest hospital-based medical school in the United States. The Medical Center comprises the College of Medicine, College of Health Related Professions, College of Nursing, School of Public Health, School of Graduate Studies, and University Hospital of Brooklyn. The Nobel Prize winner Robert F. Furchgott was a member of its faculty. Half of the Medical Center's students are minorities or immigrants. The College of Medicine has the highest percentage of minority students of any medical school in New York State.

Private colleges

Brooklyn Law School was founded in 1901 and is notable for its diverse student body. Women and African Americans were enrolled in 1909. According to the Leiter Report, a compendium of law school rankings published by Brian Leiter, Brooklyn Law School places 31st nationally for quality of students. 

Long Island University is a private university headquartered in Brookville on Long Island, with a campus in Downtown Brooklyn with 6,417 undergraduate students. The Brooklyn campus has strong science and medical technology programs, at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, is a private college founded in 1887 with programs in engineering, architecture, and the arts.  Some buildings in the school's Brooklyn campus are official landmarks.  Pratt has over 4700 students, with most at its Brooklyn campus. Graduate programs include library and information science, architecture, and urban planning. Undergraduate programs include architecture, construction management, writing, critical and visual studies, industrial design and fine arts, totaling over 25 programs in all.

The New York University Tandon School of Engineering, the United States' second oldest private institute of technology, founded in 1854, has its main campus in Downtown's MetroTech Center, a commercial, civic and educational redevelopment project of which it was a key sponsor. NYU-Tandon is one of the 18 schools and colleges that comprise New York University (NYU).  [http://xfinity.comcast.net/slideshow/finance-collegeshighestsalaries/polytechnic-institute-of-new-york-university-nyu-poly%20/ 8. Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) | 24/7 Wall St.: Colleges That Guarantee the Highest Salaries | Comcast.net] 

St. Francis College is a Catholic college located in Brooklyn Heights and was founded in 1859 by Franciscan friars. Today, there are over 2,400 students attending the small liberal arts college. St. Francis is considered by the New York Times as one of the more diverse colleges, and was ranked one of the best baccalaureate colleges by both Forbes magazine and U.S. News & World Report.   

Brooklyn also has smaller liberal arts institutions, such as Saint Joseph's College in Clinton Hill and Boricua College in Williamsburg.

Community colleges

Kingsborough Community College is a junior college in the City University of New York system, located in Manhattan Beach.

Brooklyn Public Library

As an independent system, separate from the New York and Queens public library systems, the Brooklyn Public Library  offers thousands of public programs, millions of books, and use of more than 850 free Internet-accessible computers. It also has books and periodicals in all the major languages spoken in Brooklyn, including English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, Hebrew, and Haitian Kreyòl, as well as French, Yiddish, Hindi, Bengali, Polish, Italian, and Arabic. The Central Library is a landmarked building facing Grand Army Plaza.

There are 58 library branches, placing one within a half mile of each Brooklyn resident. In addition to its specialized Business Library in Brooklyn Heights, the Library is preparing to construct its new Visual & Performing Arts Library (VPA) in the BAM Cultural District, which will focus on the link between new and emerging arts and technology and house traditional and digital collections. It will provide access and training to arts applications and technologies not widely available to the public. The collections will include the subjects of art, theater, dance, music, film, photography and architecture. A special archive will house the records and history of Brooklyn's arts communities.

Partnerships with districts of foreign cities

* Anzio, Lazio, Italy (since 1990)
* Gdynia, Poland (since 1991) 
* Beşiktaş, Istanbul Province, Turkey (since 2005) 
* Leopoldstadt, Vienna, Austria (since 2007)   
* London Borough of Lambeth, United Kingdom
* Bnei Brak, Israel

Hospitals and healthcare

* Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center  
* The Medical Society of the County of Kings, Inc. (founded 1822): its mission is "to foster progress in the science and art of medicine and to promote, preserve and enforce the highest of standards of ethical and proficient medical care".
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