NYC: Five Boroughs

NYC: Five Boroughs
Originally uploaded by trudeau

New York: the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world, says Wikipedia.

A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment. It is host of the United Nations headquarters.

Located on a large natural harbor on the Atlantic coast of the Northeastern United States, the city consists of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

- Estimated population exceeds 8.3 million people,[2] and with a land area of 305 square miles (790 km2),[3][4] New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States.[5]
- The metropolitan area's population is also the nation's largest, estimated at 18.8 million people over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km2).
- Combined Statistical Area containing the Greater New York City metropolitan area contained 21.962 million people, also the largest in the United States.


* New York was founded as a commercial trading post by the Dutch in 1624. The settlement was called New Amsterdam until 1664 when the colony came under English control.[7]
* New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790.[8] It has been the country's largest city since 1790.[9]

- The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange.
- Empire State Building and the twin towers of the former World Trade Center.

- Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art,
- abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting
- hip hop,[10] punk,[11] salsa, disco and Tin Pan Alley in music
- the home of Broadway theater.

- Use of mass transit, most of which runs 24 hours per day.
- Nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36% of its population was born outside the United States.
- "The City that Never Sleeps"; other nicknames include Gotham[14] and the Big Apple.[15]

Delaware/Algonquin, indigenous peoples.

- European discovery in 1524[16] by Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian explorer in the service of the French crown.
- Dutch fur trading settlement, later called "Nieuw Amsterdam" (New Amsterdam), on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1614.
- Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders - about $1000 in 2006.
- 1664, the English conquered the city and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany.

- Seminal John Peter Zenger trial in 1735, helping to establish the freedom of the press in North America.
- 1754, Columbia University was founded under charter by George II of Great Britain as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[23]
- The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October of 1765 as the Sons of Liberty organized in the city, skirmishing over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.

- Major battles known as the New York Campaign during the American Revolutionary War. After the upper Manhattan Battle of Fort Washington in 1776 the city became the British military and political base of operations in North America, and a haven for Loyalist refugees, until military occupation ended in 1783.
- The assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York City the national capital shortly after the war: the Constitution of the United States was ratified and in 1789 the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the United States Supreme Court each assembled for the first time in 1789, and the United States Bill of Rights drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[24]
- By 1790, New York City had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.