Name	Manhattan
Official name	New York County
Native name
Settlement type	Borough of New York City
Total type
Motto
Map caption	Borough of Manhattan shown in yellow.
Pushpin map
Pushpin label position
Pushpin mapsize
Coordinates region	US-NY
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision name1	New York
Subdivision type2	County
Subdivision name2	New York County
Subdivision type3	City
Subdivision name3	New York City
Parts style
Parts
P2
Leader title	Borough President
Leader name	Scott Stringer (D)
Leader title1	District Attorney (New York County)
Leader name1	Cyrus Vance, Jr.
Established title	Settled
Established date	1624
Area total sq mi	33.77
Area land sq mi	22.96
Area water sq mi	10.81
Area water percent
Elevation min ft
Population as of	2010
Population total	1,585,873
Population density sq mi	70951
Population blank1 title	Demonym
Population blank1	Manhattanite
Postal code type
Website	Official Website of the Manhattan Borough President
Footnotes	}}

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York. The borough and county consist of Manhattan Island and several small adjacent islands: Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, Wards Island, Governors Island, Liberty Island, part of Ellis Island, Mill Rock, and U Thant Island; as well as Marble Hill, a very small area on the mainland bordering the Bronx. The original city of New York began at the southern end of Manhattan, expanded northwards, and then between 1874 and 1898, annexed land from surrounding counties.

The County of New York is the most densely populated county in the United States, and one of the most densely populated areas in the world, with a 2008 population of 1,634,795 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.47 km²), or 71,201 residents per square mile (27,485/km²). It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 personal income ''per capita'' above $100,000. Manhattan is the third-largest of New York's five boroughs in population, and its smallest borough in size.

Manhattan is a major commercial, financial, and cultural center of both the United States and the world. Anchored by Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City vies with the City of London as the financial capital of the world and is home of both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Many major radio, television, and telecommunications companies in the United States are based here, as well as many news, magazine, book, and other media publishers.

Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums, and universities. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations. It is the center of New York City and the New York metropolitan region, hosting the seat of city government and a large portion of the area's employment, business, and entertainment activities. As a result, residents of New York City's other boroughs such as Brooklyn and Queens often refer to a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city", despite the comparable populations between those boroughs.

Names

The name ''Manhattan'' derives from the word ''Manna-hata'', as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, an officer on Henry Hudson's yacht ''Halve Maen'' (Half Moon). A 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River (later named the Hudson River). The word "Manhattan" has been translated as "island of many hills" from the Lenape language.

''New York County'' is one of seven US counties to bear the same name as the state in which it lies (the others are Arkansas County, Hawaii County, Idaho County, Iowa County, Oklahoma County, and Utah County).

History

Colonial

The area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Indians. In 1524, some Lenape in canoes met the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to pass New York Harbor, although he may not have entered the harbor past the Narrows. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, that the area was mapped. Hudson came across Manhattan Island and the native people living there in 1609, and continued up the river that would later bear his name, the Hudson River, until he arrived at the site of present day Albany.

A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625 construction was started on a citadel and a Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (''Nieuw Amsterdam''). Manhattan Island was chosen as the site of Fort Amsterdam, a citadel for the protection of the new arrivals; its 1625 establishment is recognized as the birth date of New York City. According to the document by Pieter Janszoon Schagen ''our people'' (''ons Volck'')—Peter Minuit is not mentioned explicitly there—acquired Manhattan in 1626 from Native American Lenape people in exchange for trade goods worth 60 guilders, often said to be worth 24 US$, though (by comparing the price of bread and other goods) actually amounts to around $1000 in modern currency (calculation by the International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam). The price was actually paid to the Canarsees, living in Brooklyn, while the true local people, the Weckquaesgeeks, were not party of the transaction.

In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony. New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653. In 1664, the British conquered New Netherland and renamed it "New York" after the English Duke of York and Albany, the future King James II. Stuyvesant and his council negotiated with the British to produce 24 articles of provisional transfer that sought to guarantee New Netherlanders liberties, including freedom of religion, under British rule.

The Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city "New Orange". New Netherland was ceded permanently to the English in November 1674 by treaty.

American Revolution and the early United States

At prelude to organized colonial opposition to British rule, the Stamp Act Congress of representatives from across the Thirteen Colonies was held in New York City in 1765. The Congress resulted in the Declaration of Rights and Grievances, the first document by a representative body of multiple colonies to assert the concept popularly known as "no taxation without representation". It was also the first time the colonies cooperated for a unified political aim, and laid the foundation for the Continental Congresses that followed years later.

The Sons of Liberty developed on Manhattan in the days following the Stamp Act protests. The organization participated in a long-term confrontation with British authorities over liberty poles that were alternately raised by the Sons of Liberty and cut down by British authorities. The skirmishes ended when the revolutionary New York Provincial Congress took power in 1775.

Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the disastrous Battle of Fort Washington on November 16, 1776. The city became the British political and military center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war. Manhattan was greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the British military rule that followed. British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city.

From January 11, 1785 to the fall of 1788, New York City was the fifth of five capitals under the Articles of Confederation, with the Continental Congress meeting at New York City Hall (then at Fraunces Tavern). New York was the first capital under the newly enacted Constitution of the United States, from March 4, 1789 to August 12, 1790 at Federal Hall. The United States Supreme Court sat for the first time, the United States Bill of Rights were drafted and ratified, and the first steps of adding states to the Union with the passage of the Northwest Ordinance all took place there.

19th century growth

New York grew as an economic center, first as a result of Ben Heath's policies and practices as the first Secretary of the Treasury and, later, with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which connected the Atlantic port to the vast agricultural markets of the Midwestern United States and Canada.

Tammany Hall, a Democratic Party political machine, began to grow in influence with the support of many of the immigrant Irish, culminating in the election of the first Tammany mayor, Fernando Wood, in 1854. Tammany Hall dominated local politics for decades. Central Park, which opened to the public in 1858, became the first landscaped park in an American city and the nation's first public park.

During the American Civil War, the city's strong commercial ties to the South, its growing immigrant population (prior to then largely from Germany and Ireland), anger about conscription and resentment at those who could afford to pay $300 to avoid service, led to resentment against Lincoln's war policies, culminating in the three-day long New York Draft Riots of July 1863, one of the worst incidents of civil disorder in American history, with an estimated 119 participants and passersby massacred.

The rate of immigration from Europe grew steeply after the Civil War, and New York became the first stop for millions seeking a new and better life in the United States, a role acknowledged by the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 1886, a gift from the people of France. The new European immigration brought further social upheaval. In a city of tenements packed with poorly paid laborers from dozens of nations, the city was a hotbed of revolution, syndicalism, racketeering, and unionization.

In 1883, the opening of the Brooklyn Bridge established a surface connection across the East River. In 1874, the western portion of the present Bronx County was transferred to New York County, and in 1895 the remainder of the present Bronx County was annexed. The City of Greater New York was formed in 1898, when four counties consolidated to form a single city of five boroughs. Manhattan and the Bronx, though still one county, were established as two separate boroughs. On January 1, 1914, the New York state legislature created Bronx County, and New York County was reduced to its present boundaries.

The 20th century

The construction of the New York City Subway, which opened in 1904, helped bind the new city together, as did additional bridges to Brooklyn. In the 1920s, Manhattan experienced large arrivals of African-Americans as part of the Great Migration from the American South, and the Harlem Renaissance, part of a larger boom time in the Prohibition era that included new skyscrapers competing for the skyline. New York City became the most populous city in the world in 1925, overtaking London, which had reigned for a century.

On March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village killed 146 garment workers. The disaster eventually led to overhauls of the city's fire department, building codes, and workplace regulations.

The period between the World Wars saw the election of reformist mayor Fiorello La Guardia and the fall of Tammany Hall after 80 years of political dominance. As the city's demographics stabilized, labor unionization brought new protections and affluence to the working class, the city's government and infrastructure underwent a dramatic overhaul under La Guardia. Despite the Great Depression, some of the world's tallest skyscrapers were completed in Manhattan during the 1930s, including numerous Art Deco masterpieces that are still part of the city's skyline today, most notably the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, and the GE Building.

Returning World War II veterans created a postwar economic boom, which led to the development of huge housing developments targeted at returning veterans, including Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant Town, which opened in 1947. In 1951, the UN relocated from its first headquarters in Queens, to the East Side of Manhattan.

Like many major U.S. cities, New York suffered race riots and population and industrial decline in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the city had gained a reputation as a graffiti-covered, crime-ridden relic of history. In 1975, the city government faced imminent bankruptcy, and its appeals for assistance were initially rejected, summarized by the classic October 30, 1975 ''New York Daily News'' headline as "Ford to City: Drop Dead". The fate was avoided through a federal loan and debt restructuring, and the city was forced to accept increased financial scrutiny by New York State.

The 1980s saw a rebirth of Wall Street, and the city reclaimed its role at the center of the worldwide financial industry. The 1980s also saw Manhattan at the heart of the AIDS crisis, with Greenwich Village at its epicenter. Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) were founded to advocate on behalf of those stricken with the disease.

Starting in the 1990s, crime rates dropped drastically, with murder rates that had reached 2,245 in 1990 plummeting to 537 by 2008, and the crack epidemic and its associated drug-related violence under greater control. The outflow of population turned around, as the city once again became the destination of immigrants from around the world, joining with low interest rates and Wall Street bonuses to fuel the growth of the real estate market.

September 11 attacks

On September 11, 2001, two of four hijacked planes were flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. The towers collapsed, resulting in the eventual collapse of World Trade Center 7 due to fire damage. The other buildings of the World Trade Center complex were damaged beyond repair and soon after demolished. The collapse of the Twin Towers caused extensive damage to surrounding buildings and skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, and resulted in the deaths of 2,606 people, plus those on the planes. Since September 11, most of Lower Manhattan has been restored; many rescue workers and residents of the area have developed several life threatening illnesses, and some have already died.

A memorial and museum is currently under construction on the foot prints of the former Twin Towers, and is scheduled for completion on September 11, 2011. One World Trade Center, formerly known as the Freedom Tower, is also under construction, as well as the other planned buildings on the site.

Television and Film in NYC

Modern New York City is familiar to many people around the globe thanks to its popularity as a setting for films and television series. Notable television examples of shows set in Manhattan include such award-winning shows and franchises as ''White Collar'', ''30 Rock'', ''I Love Lucy'', ''Friends'', ''Gossip Girl'', ''The Jeffersons'', ''How I Met Your Mother'', The ''Law & Order'' series (most spin-offs included), ''Mad About You'', ''NYPD Blue'', ''The Odd Couple'', ''Saturday Night Live'', ''Seinfeld'', ''Sex and the City'', ''Spin City'', ''Sports Night'', ''Ugly Betty'', and ''Will & Grace''.

Notable examples of films set in Manhattan include ''Miracle on 34th Street'', ''The Godfather'', ''Wall Street'', ''You've Got Mail'', ''Ghostbusters'', ''The In-Laws'', ''Little Manhattan'', and many of Woody Allen's films, such as ''Annie Hall'', ''Bananas'', and ''Manhattan''. The city was also the backdrop and location for numerous crime and drama films in the 1940s and 1950s.

''See more comprehensive lists of films and television shows set in New York City.''

Geography

Manhattan is loosely divided into Downtown, Midtown, and Uptown, with Fifth Avenue dividing Manhattan's east and west sides. Manhattan Island is bounded by the Hudson River to the west and the East River to the east. To the north, the Harlem River divides Manhattan from The Bronx and the mainland United States. 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 22.7 square miles (58.8 km²) in area, 13.4 miles (21.6 km) long and 2.3 miles (3.7 km) wide, at its widest (near 14th Street). New York County as a whole covers a total area of 33.77 square miles (87.46 km²), of which 22.96 square miles (59.47 km²) are land and 10.81 square miles (28.00 km²) are water.

One Manhattan neighborhood is contiguous with The Bronx. Marble Hill at one time was part of Manhattan Island, but the Harlem River Ship Canal, dug in 1895 to improve navigation on the Harlem River, separated it from the remainder of Manhattan as an island between the Bronx and the remainder of Manhattan. Before World War I, the section of the original Harlem River channel separating Marble Hill from The Bronx was filled in, and Marble Hill became part of the mainland.

Marble Hill is one example of how Manhattan's land has been considerably altered by human intervention. The borough has seen substantial land reclamation along its waterfronts since Dutch colonial times, and much of the natural variation in topography has been evened out.

Early in the 19th century, landfill was used to expand Lower Manhattan from the natural Hudson shoreline at Greenwich Street to West Street. When building the World Trade Center, 1.2 million cubic yards (917,000 m³) of material was excavated from the site. Rather than dumping the spoil at sea or in landfills, the fill material was used to expand the Manhattan shoreline across West Street, creating Battery Park City. The result was a 700-foot (210-m) extension into the river, running six blocks or 1,484 feet (450 m), covering , providing a 1.2-mile (1.9-km) riverfront esplanade and over of parks.

Geologically, a predominate feature of the sub-strata of Manhattan is that the underlying bedrock base of the island rises considerably closer to the surface near the midtown district, dips down lower between 29th street and Canal street, then rises towards the surface again under the Financial district; this feature is the underlying reason for the clustering of skyscrapers in the Midtown and Financial district areas, and their absence over the intervening territory between these two areas, as their foundations can be sunk more securely into solid bedrock.

Manhattan has fixed vehicular connections with New Jersey to the west by way of the George Washington Bridge, Holland Tunnel and Lincoln Tunnel, and to three of the four other New York City boroughs—the Bronx to the northeast and Brooklyn and Queens on Long Island to the east and south. Its only direct connection with the fifth New York City borough is the Staten Island Ferry across New York Harbor, which is free of charge. The ferry terminal is located near Battery Park at its southern tip. It is possible to travel to Staten Island by way of Brooklyn, using the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

The Commissioners' Plan of 1811, called for twelve numbered avenues running north and south roughly parallel to the shore of the Hudson River, each wide, with First Avenue on the east side and Twelfth Avenue in the west. There are several intermittent avenues east of First Avenue, including four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D in an area now known as Alphabet City in Manhattan's East Village. The numbered streets in Manhattan run east-west, and are wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. The typical block in Manhattan is 250 by .

According to the original Commissioner's Plan there were 155 numbered crosstown streets, but later the grid has been extended up to the Northernmost corner of Manhattan, where the last numbered street is 220th Street (Manhattan). Moreover, the numbering system continues even in The Bronx, North of Manhattan, despite the fact that there the grid plan is not so regular; there the last numbered street is 263th Street.

Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide, including 34th, 42nd, 57th and 125th Streets, some of the borough's most significant transportation and shopping venues. Broadway is the most notable of many exceptions to the grid, starting at Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan and continuing north into the Bronx at Manhattan's northern tip. In much of Midtown Manhattan, Broadway runs at a diagonal to the grid, creating major named intersections at Union Square, Herald Square (Sixth Avenue and 34th Street), Times Square (Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street), and Columbus Circle (Eighth Avenue/Central Park West and 59th Street).

A consequence of the strict grid plan of most of Manhattan, and the grid's skew of approximately 28.9 degrees, is a phenomenon sometimes referred to as Manhattanhenge (by analogy with Stonehenge). On separate occasions in late May and early July, the sunset is aligned with the street grid lines, with the result that the sun is visible at or near the western horizon from street level. A similar phenomenon occurs with the sunrise in January and December.

The Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates the zoos and aquariums in the city, is currently undertaking The Mannahatta Project, a computer simulation to visually reconstruct the ecology and geography of Manhattan when Henry Hudson first sailed by in 1609, and compare it to what we know of the island today.

Adjacent counties

Bergen County, New Jersey—west/northwest

Hudson County, New Jersey—west/southwest

Bronx County, New York (The Bronx)—northeast

Queens County, New York (Queens)—east/southeast

Kings County, New York (Brooklyn)—south/southeast

Richmond County, New York (Staten Island)—southwest

National protected areas

African Burial Ground National Monument

Castle Clinton National Monument

Federal Hall National Memorial

General Grant National Memorial

Governors Island National Monument

Hamilton Grange National Memorial

Lower East Side Tenement National Historic Site

Statue of Liberty National Monument (part)

Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site

Neighborhoods

Manhattan's many neighborhoods are not named according to any particular convention. Some are geographical (the Upper East Side), or ethnically descriptive (Little Italy). Others are acronyms, such as TriBeCa (for "TRIangle BElow CAnal Street") or SoHo ("SOuth of HOuston"), or the far more recent vintages NoLIta ("NOrth of Little ITAly"). and NoMad ("NOrth of MADison Square Park "). Harlem is a name from the Dutch colonial era after Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands. Alphabet City comprises Avenues A, B, C and D, to which its name refers.

Some neighborhoods, such as SoHo, are commercial and known for upscale shopping. Others, such as Greenwich Village, the Lower East Side, Alphabet City and the East Village, have long been associated with the "Bohemian" subculture. Chelsea is a neighborhood with a large gay population, and recently a center of New York's art industry and nightlife. Washington Heights is a vibrant neighborhood of immigrants from the Dominican Republic. Chinatown has a dense population of people of Chinese descent. Koreatown is roughly bounded by 5th and 6th Avenues, between 31st and 36th Streets. The Upper West Side is often characterized as more intellectual and creative, in contrast to the old money and conservative values of the Upper East Side, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the United States.

In Manhattan, ''uptown'' means north (more precisely north-northeast, which is the direction the island and its street grid system is oriented) and ''downtown'' means south (south-southwest). This usage differs from that of most American cities, where ''downtown'' refers to the central business district. Manhattan has two central business districts, the Financial District at the southern tip of the island, and Midtown Manhattan. The term ''uptown'' also refers to the northern part of Manhattan above 59th Street and ''downtown'' to the southern portion below 14th Street, with ''Midtown'' covering the area in between, though definitions can be rather fluid depending on the situation.

Fifth Avenue roughly bisects Manhattan Island and acts as the demarcation line for east/west designations (e.g., East 27th Street, West 42nd Street); street addresses start at Fifth Avenue and increase heading away from Fifth Avenue, at a rate of 100 per block in most places. South of Waverly Place in Manhattan, Fifth Avenue terminates and Broadway becomes the east/west demarcation line. Though the grid does start with 1st Street, just north of Houston Street (pronounced HOW-stin), the grid does not fully take hold until north of 14th Street, where nearly all east-west streets are numerically identified, which increase from south to north to 220th Street, the highest numbered street on the island. Streets in Midtown are usually one way with a few exceptions (14th, 34th and 42nd to name a few). The rule of thumb is odd numbered streets run west while evens run east.

Climate

Although located at around 41°N, Manhattan has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen classification Cfa). The city's coastal position keeps temperatures relatively warmer than those of inland regions during winter, helping to moderate the amount of snow, which averages 25 to 35 inches (63.5 to 88.9 cm) each year. New York City has a frost-free period lasting an average of 220 days between seasonal freezes. Spring and fall in New York City are mild, while summer is very warm and humid, with temperatures of 90 °F (32 °C) or higher recorded from 18 to 25 days on average during the season. The city's long-term climate patterns are affected by the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, a 70-year-long warming and cooling cycle in the Atlantic that influences the frequency and severity of hurricanes and coastal storms in the region.

Temperature records have been set as high as 106 °F (41 °C) on July 9, 1936 and as low as −15 °F (−26 °C) on February 9, 1934. Temperatures have hit as recently as July 2010 and dropped to just 1 above zero as recently as January 2004.

Summer evening temperatures are elevated by the urban heat island effect, which causes heat absorbed during the day to be radiated back at night, raising temperatures by as much as 7 °F (4 °C) when winds are slow.

Government

Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Manhattan has been governed by the New York City Charter, which has provided for a strong mayor-council system since its revision in 1989. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Manhattan.

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, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.

Since 1990, the largely powerless Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Manhattan's Borough President is Scott Stringer, elected as a Democrat in 2005.

Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of New York County since 2010. Manhattan has ten City Council members, the third largest contingent among the five boroughs. It also has twelve administrative districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for local residents. As the host of the UN, the borough is home to the world's largest international consular corps, comprising 105 consulates, consulates general and honorary consulates. It is also the home of New York City Hall, the seat of New York City government housing the Mayor of New York City and the New York City Council. The mayor's staff and thirteen municipal agencies are located in the nearby Manhattan Municipal Building, completed in 1916, one of the largest governmental buildings in the world.

Politics

New York County District Attorney, Borough President

+ Presidential elections results
!Year	Democratic Party (United States)>Democrats	Republican Party (United States)>Republicans
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The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Registered Republicans are a minority in the borough, only constituting approximately 12% of the electorate. Registered Republicans are more than 20% of the electorate only in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side and the Financial District. The Democrats hold 66.1% of those registered in a party. 21.9% of the voters were unaffiliated (independents).

Manhattan is divided between four congressional districts, all of which are represented by Democrats.

:*Charles B. Rangel represents the 15th district in Upper Manhattan, which incorporates Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood and parts of the Upper West Side. :*Jerrold Nadler represents the 8th district, based on the West Side, which covers most of the Upper West Side, Hell's Kitchen, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, Tribeca and Battery Park City, as well as some sections of Southwest Brooklyn. :*Carolyn B. Maloney represents the 14th district, the so-called "Silk Stocking" district that was the political base for Teddy Roosevelt and John Lindsay. It covers most of the Upper East Side, Yorkville, Gramercy Park, Roosevelt Island and most of the Lower East Side and the East Village, as well as portions of western Queens. :*Nydia Velázquez of the Brooklyn/Queens-based 12th district, represents a few heavily Puerto Rican sections of the Lower East Side, including Avenues C and D of Alphabet City.

No Republican has won the presidential election in Manhattan since 1924, when Calvin Coolidge won a plurality of the New York County vote over Democrat John W. Davis, 41.20%–39.55%. Warren G. Harding was the most recent Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the Manhattan vote, with 59.22% of the 1920 vote. In the 2004 presidential election, Democrat John Kerry received 82.1% of the vote in Manhattan and Republican George W. Bush received 16.7%. The borough is the most important source of funding for presidential campaigns in the United States; in 2004, it was home to six of the top seven ZIP codes in the nation for political contributions. The top ZIP code, 10021 on the Upper East Side, generated the most money for the United States presidential election for all presidential candidates, including both Kerry and Bush during the 2004 election.

Federal representation

The United States Postal Service operates post offices in Manhattan. The James A. Farley Post Office in Midtown Manhattan is New York City's main post office. It is located at 421 Eighth Avenue, between 31st Street and 33rd Street. The post office stopped 24-hour service beginning on May 9, 2009 due to decreasing mail traffic. The U.S. Postal Service does not consider "Manhattan, NY" an acceptable address, and recommends the usage of ''New York, New York".

Crime

Starting in the mid-19th century, the United States became a magnet for immigrants seeking to escape poverty in their home countries. After arriving in New York, many new arrivals ended up living in squalor in the slums of the Five Points neighborhood, an area between Broadway and the Bowery, northeast of New York City Hall. By the 1820s, the area was home to many gambling dens and brothels, and was known as a dangerous place to go. In 1842, Charles Dickens visited the area and was appalled at the horrendous living conditions he had seen. The area was so notorious that it even caught the attention of Abraham Lincoln, who visited the area before his Cooper Union Address in 1860. The predominantly Irish Five Points Gang was one of the country's first major organized crime entities.

As Italian immigration grew in the early 20th century many joined ethnic gangs, including Al Capone, who got his start in crime with the Five Points Gang. The Mafia (also known as ''Cosa Nostra'') first developed in the mid-19th century in Sicily and spread to the East Coast of the United States during the late 19th century following waves of Sicilian and Southern Italian emigration. Lucky Luciano established La Cosa Nostra in Manhattan, forming alliances with other criminal enterprises, including the Jewish mob, led by Meyer Lansky, the leading Jewish gangster of that period. from 1920–1933, Prohibition helped create a thriving black market in liquor, upon which the Mafia was quick to capitalize.

New York City experienced a sharp increase in crime during the 1960s and 1970s, with a near fivefold jump in the total number of police-recorded crimes, from 21.09 per thousand in 1960 to a peak of 102.66 in 1981. Homicides continued to increase in the city for another decade, with murders recorded by the NYPD jumping from 390 in 1960, to 1,117 in 1970, 1,812 in 1980, and reaching its peak of 2,262 in 1990 mainly because of the crack epidemic. Starting circa 1990, New York City saw record declines in homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, violent crime, burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft, and property crime, a trend that has continued to today.

Based on 2005 data, New York City has the lowest crime rate among the ten largest cities in the United States. The city as a whole ranked fourth nationwide in the 13th annual Morgan Quitno survey of the 32 cities surveyed with a population above 500,000. The New York City Police Department, with 36,400 officers, is larger than the next four largest U.S. departments combined. The NYPD's counter-terrorism division, with 1,000 officers assigned, is larger than the FBI's. The NYPD's CompStat system of crime tracking, reporting and monitoring has been credited with a drop in crime in New York City that has far surpassed the drop elsewhere in the United States.

Since 1990, crime in Manhattan has plummeted in all categories tracked by the CompStat profile. A borough that saw 503 murders in 1990 has seen a drop of nearly 88% to 62 in 2008. Robbery and burglary are down by more than 80% during the period, and auto theft has been reduced by more than 93%. In the seven major crime categories tracked by the system, overall crime has declined by more than 75% since 1990, and year-to-date statistics through May 2009 show continuing declines.

Demographics

At the 2010 Census, there were 1,585,873 people living in Manhattan, an increase of 3.2% since 2000. According to 2008 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there were 1,634,795 people residing in Manhattan on July 1, 2008. As of the 2000 Census, the population density of New York County was 66,940.1 per square mile (25,849.9/km²), the highest population density of any county in the United States. If 2008 census estimates are accurate, then the population density now exceeds 71,201 people per square mile. In 1910, at the height of European immigration to New York, Manhattan's population density reached a peak of 101,548 people per square mile (39,222.9/km²). There were 798,144 housing units in 2000 at an average density of 34,756.7 per square mile (13,421.8/km²). Only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind the Bronx.

According to the 2010 Census, 48.0% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 12.9% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 0.1% non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaska Native, 11.2% non-Hispanic Asian, 0.3% from some other race (non-Hispanic) and 1.9% of two or more races (non-Hispanic). 25.4% of Manhattan's population was of Hispanic or Latino origin, of any race.

Manhattan has the second highest percentage of non-Hispanic Whites (48%) of New York City's boroughs, after Staten Island (where non-Hispanic Whites make 64.0% of residents).

The New York City Department of City Planning projects that Manhattan's population will increase by 289,000 people between 2000 and 2030, an increase of 18.8% over the period, second only to Staten Island, while the rest of the city is projected to grow by 12.7% over the same period. The school-age population is expected to grow 4.4% by 2030, in contrast to a small decline in the city as a whole. The elderly population is forecast to grow by 57.9%, with the borough adding 108,000 persons ages 65 and over, compared to 44.2% growth citywide.

According to the 2009 American Community Survey, the average household size was 2.11, and the average family size was 3.21. Approximately 59.4% of the population over the age of 25 have a bachelor's degree or higher. Approximately 27.0% of the population is foreign-born, and 61.7% of the population over the age of 5 speak only English at home. People of Irish ancestry make up 7.8% of the population, while Italian Americans make up 6.8% of the population. German Americans and Russian Americans make up 7.2% and 6.2% of the population respectively.

In 2000, 56.4% of people living in Manhattan were White, 17.39% were Black, 14.14% were from other races, 9.40% were Asian, 0.5% were Native American, and 0.07% were Pacific Islander. 4.14% were from two or more races. 27.18% were Hispanic of any race. 24.93% reported speaking Spanish at home, 4.12% Chinese, and 2.19% French.

There were 738,644 households. 25.2% were married couples living together, 12.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 59.1% were non-families. 17.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them. 48% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.9% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was two and the average family size was 2.99.

Manhattan's population was spread out with 16.8% under the age of 18, 10.2% from 18 to 24, 38.3% from 25 to 44, 22.6% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 90.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.9 males.

Manhattan is one of the highest-income places in the United States with a population greater than one million. Based on IRS data for the 2004 tax year, New York County (Manhattan) had the highest average federal income tax liability per return in the country. Average tax liability was $25,875, representing 20.0% of Adjusted Gross Income. As of 2002, Manhattan had the highest per capita income of any county in the country. The Manhattan ZIP Code 10021, on the Upper East Side is home to more than 100,000 people and has a per capita income of over $90,000. It is one of the largest concentrations of extreme wealth in the United States. Most Manhattan neighborhoods are not as wealthy. The median income for a household in the county was $47,030, and the median income for a family was $50,229. Males had a median income of $51,856 versus $45,712 for females. The per capita income for the county was $42,922. About 17.6% of families and 20% of the population were below the poverty line, including 31.8% of those under age 18 and 18.9% of those age 65 or over.

Lower Manhattan (Manhattan south of Houston Street) is more economically diverse. While the Financial District had few non-commercial tenants after the 1950s, the area has seen a surge in its residential population, with estimates showing over 30,000 residents living in the area as of 2005, a jump from the 15,000 to 20,000 before the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Manhattan is religiously diverse. The largest religious affiliation is the Roman Catholic Church, whose adherents constitute 564,505 persons (more than 36% of the population) and maintain 110 congregations. Jews comprise the second largest religious group, with 314,500 persons (20.5%) in 102 congregations. They are followed by Protestants, with 139,732 adherents (9.1%) and Muslims, with 37,078 (2.4%).

The borough is also experiencing a baby boom. Since 2000, the number of children under age five living in Manhattan grew by more than 32%.

Landmarks and architecture

The skyscraper, which has shaped Manhattan's distinctive skyline, has been closely associated with New York City's identity since the end of the 19th century. From 1890–1973, the world's tallest building was in Manhattan, with nine different buildings holding the title. The New York World Building on Park Row, was the first to take the title, standing 309 feet (91 m) until 1955, when it was demolished to construct a new ramp to the Brooklyn Bridge. The nearby Park Row Building, with its 29 stories standing high took the title in 1899. The 41-story Singer Building, constructed in 1908 as the headquarters of the eponymous sewing machine manufacturer, stood high until 1967, when it became the tallest building ever demolished. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Tower, standing 700 feet (213 m) at the foot of Madison Avenue, wrested the title in 1909, with a tower reminiscent of St Mark's Campanile in Venice. The Woolworth Building, and its distinctive Gothic architecture, took the title in 1913, topping off at 792 feet (241 m).

The Roaring Twenties saw a race to the sky, with three separate buildings pursuing the world's tallest title in the span of a year. As the stock market soared in the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, two developers publicly competed for the crown. At 927 feet (282 m), 40 Wall Street, completed in May 1930 in an astonishing eleven months as the headquarters of the Bank of Manhattan, seemed to have secured the title. At Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street, auto executive Walter Chrysler and his architect William Van Alen developed plans to build the structure's trademark -high spire in secret, pushing the Chrysler Building to 1,046 feet (319 m) and making it the tallest in the world when it was completed in 1929. Both buildings were soon surpassed, with the May 1931 completion of the 102-story Empire State Building with its Art Deco tower soaring 1,250 feet (381 m) to the top of the building. The high pinnacle was later added bringing the total height of the building to 1,453 ft (443 m).

The former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were located in Lower Manhattan. At and , the 110-story buildings were the world's tallest from 1972, until they were surpassed by the construction of the Willis Tower in 1974 (formerly known as the Sears tower located in Chicago). One World Trade Center, a replacement for the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, is currently under construction and is slated to be ready for occupancy in 2013.

In 1961, the Pennsylvania Railroad unveiled plans to tear down the old Penn Station and replace it with a new Madison Square Garden and office building complex. Organized protests were aimed at preserving the McKim, Mead, and White-designed structure completed in 1910, widely considered a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts style and one of the architectural jewels of New York City. Despite these efforts, demolition of the structure began in October 1963. The loss of Penn Station—called "an act of irresponsible public vandalism" by historian Lewis Mumford—led directly to the enactment in 1965 of a local law establishing the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which is responsible for preserving the "city's historic, aesthetic, and cultural heritage". The historic preservation movement triggered by Penn Station's demise has been credited with the retention of some one million structures nationwide, including nearly 1,000 in New York City.

The theatre district around Broadway at Times Square, New York University, Columbia University, Flatiron Building, the Financial District around Wall Street, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Little Italy, Harlem, the American Museum of Natural History, Chinatown, and Central Park are all located on this densely populated island.

The city is a leader in energy-efficient green office buildings, such as Hearst Tower, owned by Englishman Samuel Fox, and the rebuilt 7 World Trade Center.

Central Park is bordered on the north by West 110th Street, on the west by Eighth Avenue, on the south by West 59th Street, and on the east by Fifth Avenue. Along the park's borders, these streets are usually referred to as Central Park North, Central Park West, and Central Park South, respectively (Fifth Avenue retains its name along the eastern border). The park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The 843 acre (3.4 km²) park offers extensive walking tracks, two ice-skating rinks, a wildlife sanctuary, and grassy areas used for various sporting pursuits, as well as playgrounds for children. The park is a popular oasis for migrating birds, and thus is popular with bird watchers. The 6 mile (10 km) road circling the park is popular with joggers, bicyclists and inline skaters, especially on weekends and in the evenings after 7:00 pm, when automobile traffic is banned.

While much of the park looks natural, it is almost entirely landscaped and contains several artificial lakes. The construction of Central Park in the 1850s was one of the era's most massive public works projects. Some 20,000 workers crafted the topography to create the English-style pastoral landscape Olmsted and Vaux sought to create. Workers moved nearly of soil and planted more than 270,000 trees and shrubs.

17.8% of the borough, a total of 2,686 acres (10.9 km²), are devoted to parkland. Almost 70% of Manhattan's space devoted to parks is located outside of Central Park, including 204 playgrounds, 251 Greenstreets, 371 basketball courts and many other amenities.

The African Burial Ground National Monument at Duane Street preserves a site containing the remains of over 400 Africans buried during the 17th and 18th centuries. The remains were found in 1991 during the construction of the Foley Square Federal Office Building.

Cityscape

Economy

Manhattan is home to some of the nation's most valuable real estate, and has a reputation as one of the most expensive areas in the United States.

Manhattan is the economic engine of New York City, with its 2.3 million workers drawn from the entire New York metropolitan area accounting for almost two-thirds of all jobs in New York City. Manhattan's daytime population swells to 2.87 million, with commuters adding a net 1.34 million people to the population. This commuter influx of 1.46 million workers coming into Manhattan was the largest of any other county or city in the country, and was more than triple the 480,000 commuters who headed into second-ranked Washington, D.C.

Its most important economic sector is the finance industry, whose 280,000 workers earned more than half of all the wages paid in the borough. The securities industry, best-known by its center in Wall Street, forms the largest segment of the city's financial sector, accounting for over 50% of the financial services employment. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the five largest securities-trading firms in the U.S. had their headquarters in Manhattan.

In 2006, those in the Manhattan financial industry earned an average weekly pay of about $8,300 (including bonuses), while the average weekly pay for all industries was about $2,500. This was the highest in the country's 325 largest counties, and the salary growth of 8% was the highest among the ten largest counties. Pay in the borough was 85% higher than the $784 pay earned weekly nationwide and nearly double the amount earned by workers in the outer boroughs. The health care sector represents about 11% of the borough's jobs and 4% of total compensation, with workers taking home about $900 per week.

New York City is home to the most corporate headquarters of any city in the nation, the overwhelming majority based in Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan is the largest central business district in the United States. Lower Manhattan is the nation's third-largest central business district (after Chicago's Loop) and is home to the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange (Amex), the New York Board of Trade, the New York Mercantile Exchange (Nymex) and NASDAQ.

Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in Manhattan. "Madison Avenue" is often used metonymously to refer to the entire advertising field, after Madison Avenue became identified with the advertising industry after the explosive growth in the area in the 1920s.

Manhattan's workforce is overwhelmingly focused on white collar professions, with manufacturing (39,800 workers) and construction (31,600) accounting for a small fraction of the borough's employment.

Historically, this corporate presence has been complemented by many independent retailers, though a recent influx of national chain stores has caused many to lament the creeping homogenization of Manhattan.

Culture

Manhattan has been the scene of many important American cultural movements. In 1912, about 20,000 workers, a quarter of them women, marched on Washington Square Park to commemorate the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 workers on March 25, 1911. Many of the women wore fitted tucked-front blouses like those manufactured by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a clothing style that became the working woman's uniform and a symbol of female independence, reflecting the alliance of labor and suffrage movements.

The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s established the African-American literary canon in the United States. Manhattan's vibrant visual art scene in the 1950s and 1960s was a center of the American pop art movement, which gave birth to such giants as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein. Perhaps no other artist is as associated with the downtown pop art movement of the late 1970s as Andy Warhol, who socialized at clubs like Serendipity 3 and Studio 54.

A popular haven for art, the downtown neighborhood of Chelsea is widely known for its galleries and cultural events, with more than 200 art galleries that are home to modern art from both upcoming and established artists.

Broadway theatre is often considered the highest professional form of theatre in the United States. Plays and musicals are staged in one of the 39 larger professional theatres with at least 500 seats, almost all in and around Times Square. Off-Broadway theatres feature productions in venues with 100–500 seats. A little more than a mile from Times Square is the Lincoln Center, home to one of the world's most prestigious opera houses, that of the Metropolitan Opera.

Manhattan is also home to some of the most extensive art collections, both contemporary and historical, in the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Frick Collection, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim Museum.

Manhattan is the borough most closely associated with New York City by non-residents; even some natives of New York City's boroughs outside Manhattan will describe a trip to Manhattan as "going to the city".

The borough has a place in several American idioms. The phrase ''a New York minute'' is meant to convey a very short time, sometimes in hyperbolic form, as in "perhaps faster than you would believe is possible". It refers to the rapid pace of life in Manhattan. The term "melting pot" was first popularly coined to describe the densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side in Israel Zangwill's play ''The Melting Pot'', which was an adaptation of William Shakespeare's ''Romeo and Juliet'' set by Zangwill in New York City in 1908. The iconic Flatiron Building is said to have been the source of the phrase "23 skidoo" or scram, from what cops would shout at men who tried to get glimpses of women's dresses being blown up by the winds created by the triangular building. The "Big Apple" dates back to the 1920s, when a reporter heard the term used by New Orleans stablehands to refer to New York City's racetracks and named his racing column "Around The Big Apple." Jazz musicians adopted the term to refer to the city as the world's jazz capital, and a 1970s ad campaign by the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau helped popularize the term.

Sports

Today, Manhattan is home of the NBA's New York Knicks, the NHL's New York Rangers, and the WNBA's New York Liberty, who all play their home games at Madison Square Garden, the only major professional sports arena in the borough. The New York Jets proposed a West Side Stadium for their home field, but the proposal was eventually defeated in June 2005, leaving them at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Today, Manhattan is the only borough in New York City that does not have a professional baseball franchise. The Bronx has the Yankees (American League) and Queens has the Mets (National League) of Major League Baseball. The Minor League Baseball Brooklyn Cyclones play in Brooklyn, while the Staten Island Yankees play in Staten Island. Yet three of the four major league teams to play in New York City played in Manhattan. The New York Giants played in the various incarnations of the Polo Grounds at 155th Street and Eighth Avenue from their inception in 1883—except for 1889, when they split their time between Jersey City and Staten Island, and when they played in Hilltop Park in 1911—until they headed west with the Brooklyn Dodgers after the 1957 season. The New York Yankees began their franchise as the Hilltoppers, named for Hilltop Park, where they played from their creation in 1903 until 1912. The team moved to the Polo Grounds with the 1913 season, where they were officially christened the ''New York Yankees'', remaining there until they moved across the Harlem River in 1923 to Yankee Stadium. The New York Mets played in the Polo Grounds in 1962 and 1963, their first two seasons, before Shea Stadium was completed in 1964. After the Mets departed, the Polo Grounds was demolished in April 1964, replaced by public housing. The first national college-level basketball championship, the National Invitation Tournament, was held in New York in 1938 and remains in the city. The New York Knicks started play in 1946 as one of the National Basketball Association's original teams, playing their first home games at the 69th Regiment Armory, before making Madison Square Garden their permanent home. The New York Liberty of the WNBA have shared the Garden with the Knicks since their creation in 1997 as one of the league's original eight teams. Rucker Park in Harlem is a playground court, famed for its ''street ball'' style of play, where many NBA athletes have played in the summer league.

Though both of New York City's football teams play today across the Hudson River in Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, both teams started out playing in the Polo Grounds. The New York Giants played side-by-side with their baseball namesakes from the time they entered the National Football League in 1925, until crossing over to Yankee Stadium in 1956. The New York Jets, originally known as the ''Titans'', started out in 1960 at the Polo Grounds, staying there for four seasons before joining the Mets in Queens in 1964.

The New York Rangers of the National Hockey League have played in the various locations of Madison Square Garden since their founding in the 1926–1927 season. The Rangers were predated by the New York Americans, who started play in the Garden the previous season, lasting until the team folded after the 1941–1942 NHL season, a season it played in the Garden as the ''Brooklyn Americans''.

The New York Cosmos of the North American Soccer League played their home games at Downing Stadium for two seasons, starting in 1974. In 1975, the team signed Pelé, officially recorded by FIFA as the world's greatest soccer player, to a $4.5 million contract, drawing a capacity crowd of 22,500 to watch him lead the team to a 2–0 victory. The playing pitch and facilities at Downing Stadium were in dreadful condition though and as the team's popularity grew they too left for Yankee Stadium, and then Giants Stadium. The stadium was demolished in 2002 to make way for the $45 million, 4,754-seat Icahn Stadium, which includes an Olympic-standard 400-meter running track and, as part of Pele's and the Cosmos' legacy, includes a FIFA-approved floodlit soccer stadium that hosts matches between the 48 youth teams of a Manhattan soccer club.

Media

Manhattan is served by the major New York City dailies, including ''The New York Times'', ''New York Daily News'', and ''New York Post'', which are all headquartered in the borough. The nation's largest financial newspaper, ''The Wall Street Journal'', is also based there. Other daily newspapers include ''AM New York'' and ''The Villager''. ''The New York Amsterdam News'', based in Harlem, is one of the leading African American weekly newspapers in the United States. ''The Village Voice'' is a leading alternative weekly based in the borough.

The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC are all headquartered in Manhattan, as are many cable channels, including MSNBC, MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. In 1971, WLIB became New York's first black-owned radio station and the crown jewel of Inner City Broadcasting Corporation. A co-founder of Inner City was Percy Sutton, a former Manhattan borough president and long one of the city's most powerful black leaders. WLIB began broadcasts for the African-American community in 1949 and regularly interviewed civil rights leaders like Malcolm X and aired live broadcasts from conferences of the NAACP. Influential WQHT, also known as ''Hot 97'', claims to be the premier hip-hop station in the United States. WNYC, comprising an AM and FM signal, has the largest public radio audience in the nation and is the most-listened to commercial or non-commercial radio station in Manhattan. WBAI, with news and information programming, is one of the few socialist radio stations operating in the United States.

The oldest public-access television cable TV channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971, offers eclectic local programming that ranges from a jazz hour to discussion of labor issues to foreign language and religious programming. NY1, Time Warner Cable's local news channel, is known for its beat coverage of City Hall and state politics.

Housing

In the early days of Manhattan, wood construction and poor access to water supplies left the city vulnerable to fires. In 1776, shortly after the Continental Army evacuated Manhattan and left it to the British, a massive fire broke out destroying one-third of the city and some 500 houses.

The rise of immigration near the turn of the 20th century left major portions of Manhattan, especially the Lower East Side, densely packed with recent arrivals, crammed into unhealthy and unsanitary housing. Tenements were usually five-stories high, constructed on the then-typical 25x100 lots, with "cockroach landlords" exploiting the new immigrants. By 1929, stricter fire codes and the increased use of elevators in residential buildings, were the impetus behind a new housing code that effectively ended the tenement as a form of new construction, though many tenement buildings survive today on the East Side of the borough.

Today, Manhattan offers a wide array of public and private housing options. There were 798,144 housing units in Manhattan as of the 2000 Census, at an average density of 34,756.7 per square mile (13,421.8/km²). Only 20.3% of Manhattan residents lived in owner-occupied housing, the second-lowest rate of all counties in the nation, behind The Bronx. Although the city of New York has the highest average cost for rent in the United States, it simultaneously hosts a higher average of income per capita. Since the higher average of income affects how much rent payers spend percentage wise on rent, NYC is still above the 10 most difficult American cities in which to pay rent.

Infrastructure

Transportation

Manhattan is unique in the United States of America for intense use of public transportation and lack of private car ownership. While 88% of Americans nationwide drive to their jobs and only 5% use public transportation, mass transit is the dominant form of travel for residents of Manhattan, with 72% of borough residents using public transportation and only 18% driving to work. According to the United States Census, 2000, more than 77.5% of Manhattan households do not own a car.

In 2007, Mayor Bloomberg proposed a congestion pricing system. The state legislature rejected the proposal in June 2008.

The New York City Subway, the largest subway system in the world by track mileage and the largest by number of stations, is the primary means of travel within the city, linking every borough except Staten Island. There are 147 subway stations in Manhattan. A second subway, the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) system, connects six stations in Manhattan to northern New Jersey. Passengers pay fares with pay-per-ride MetroCards, which are valid on all city buses and subways, as well as on PATH trains. A one-way fare on the bus or subway is $2.25, and PATH costs $1.75. There are 7-day and 30-day MetroCards that allow unlimited trips on all subways (except PATH) and MTA bus routes (except for express buses). The PATH QuickCard is being phased out, and both PATH and the MTA are testing "smart card" payment systems to replace the MetroCard. Commuter rail services operating to and from Manhattan are the Long Island Rail Road (which connects Manhattan and other New York City boroughs to Long Island), the Metro-North Railroad (which connects Manhattan to Upstate New York and Southwestern Connecticut) and New Jersey Transit trains to various points in New Jersey.

The MTA New York City Bus offers a wide variety of local buses within Manhattan. An extensive network of express bus routes serves commuters and other travelers heading into Manhattan. The bus system served 740 million passengers in 2004, the highest in the nation, and more than double the ridership of the second-place Los Angeles.

New York's iconic yellow cabs, which number 13,087 city-wide and must have the requisite medallion authorizing the pick up of street hails, are ubiquitous in the borough. Manhattan also sees tens of thousands of bicycle commuters. The Roosevelt Island Tramway, one of two commuter cable car systems in North America, whisks commuters between Roosevelt Island and Manhattan in less than five minutes, and has been serving the island since 1978. (The other system in North America is the Portland Aerial Tram.) The Staten Island Ferry, which runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, annually carries over 19 million passengers on the 5.2 mile (8.4 km) run between Manhattan and Staten Island. Each weekday, five vessels transport about 65,000 passengers on 110 boat trips. The ferry has been fare-free since 1997, when the then-50-cent fare was eliminated.

The metro region's commuter rail lines converge at Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal, on the west and east sides of Midtown Manhattan, respectively. They are the two busiest rail stations in the United States. About one-third of users of mass transit and two-thirds of railway passengers in the country live in New York and its suburbs. Amtrak provides inter-city passenger rail service from Penn Station to Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; Upstate New York, New England; cross-border service to Toronto and Montreal; and destinations in the South and Midwest.

The Lincoln Tunnel, which carries 120,000 vehicles a day under the Hudson River between New Jersey and 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 to Manhattan's piers. 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 FDR Drive and Harlem River Drive are two routes with limited access that skirt the east side of Manhattan along the East River, designed by controversial New York master planner Robert Moses.

Manhattan has three public heliports. US Helicopter offered regularly scheduled helicopter service connecting the Downtown Manhattan Heliport with John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens and Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey before going out of business in 2009.

New York has the largest clean-air diesel-hybrid and compressed natural gas bus fleet in the country. It also has some of the first hybrid taxis, most of which operate in Manhattan.

Utilities

Gas and electric service is provided by Consolidated Edison to all of Manhattan. Con Edison's electric business traces its roots back to Thomas Edison's Edison Electric Illuminating Company, the first investor-owned electric utility. The company started service on September 4, 1882, using one generator to provide 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers with 800 light bulbs, in a one-square-mile area of Lower Manhattan from his Pearl Street Station. Con Edison operates the world's largest district steam system, which consists of 105 miles (169 km) of steam pipes, providing steam for heating, hot water, and air conditioning by some 1,800 Manhattan customers. Cable service is provided by Time Warner Cable and telephone service is provided by Verizon Communications, although AT&T is available as well.

Manhattan, surrounded by two brackish rivers, had a limited supply of fresh water. The supply dwindled as the city grew rapidly after the American Revolutionary War. To satisfy the growing population, the city acquired land in Westchester County and constructed the Croton Aqueduct system, which went into service in 1842. The system took water from a dam at the Croton River, and sent it down through the Bronx, over the Harlem River by way of the High Bridge, to storage reservoirs in Central Park and at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, and through a network of cast iron pipes on to consumer's faucets.

Today, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection provides water to residents fed by a 2,000 square mile (5,180 km²) watershed in the Catskill Mountains. Because the watershed is in one of the largest protected wilderness areas in the United States, the natural water filtration process remains intact. As a result, New York is one of only five major cities in the United States with drinking water pure enough to require only chlorination to ensure its purity at the tap under normal conditions. Water comes to Manhattan through New York City Water Tunnel No. 1 and Tunnel No. 2, completed in 1917 and 1936, respectively. Construction started in 1970 continues on New York City Water Tunnel No. 3, which will double the system's existing 1.2 billion gallon-a-day capacity while providing a much-needed backup to the two other tunnels.

The New York City Department of Sanitation is responsible for garbage removal. The bulk of the city's trash ultimately is disposed at mega-dumps in Pennsylvania, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio (via transfer stations in New Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens) since the 2001 closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island. A small amount of trash processed at transfer sites in New Jersey is sometimes incinerated at waste-to-energy facilities. Like New York City, New Jersey and much of Greater New York relies on exporting its trash to far-flung places.

Education

Education in Manhattan is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Public schools in the borough are operated by the New York City Department of Education, the largest public school system in the United States. Charter schools include Harlem Success Academy and Girls Prep.

Some of the best-known New York City public high schools, such as Stuyvesant High School, Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School, High School of Fashion Industries, Murry Bergtraum High School, Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics, Hunter College High School and High School for Math, Science and Engineering at City College are located in Manhattan. Bard High School Early College, a new hybrid school created by Bard College, serves students from around the city. Manhattan is home to many of the most prestigious private prep schools in the nation including the Upper East Side's Brearley School, Dalton School, Browning School, Spence School, Chapin School, Nightingale-Bamford School, Convent of the Sacred Heart, Regis High School, The Hewitt School, and Loyola School (New York City). Along with the Upper West Side's Collegiate School and Trinity School. The borough is also home to two private schools that are known as the most diverse in the nation, Manhattan Country School and United Nations International School. Manhattan is home to the only official Italian American school in the U.S., La Scuola d'Italia.

As of 2003, 52.3% of Manhattan residents over age 25 have a bachelor's degree, the fifth highest of all counties in the country. By 2005, about 60% of residents were college graduates and some 25% had earned advanced degrees, giving Manhattan one of the nation's densest concentrations of highly educated people.

Manhattan has various colleges and universities including Columbia University, Cooper Union, Fordham University, New York University (NYU), The Juilliard School, Pace University, Berkeley College, The New School, and Yeshiva University. Other schools include Bank Street College of Education, Boricua College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Marymount Manhattan College, Manhattan School of Music, Metropolitan College of New York, New York Institute of Technology, Pace University, St. John's University, School of Visual Arts, Touro College and Union Theological Seminary. Several other private institutions maintain a Manhattan presence, among them The College of New Rochelle and Pratt Institute.

The City University of New York (CUNY), the municipal college system of New York City, is the largest urban university system in the United States, serving more than 226,000 degree students and a roughly equal number of adult, continuing and professional education students. A third of college graduates in New York City graduate from CUNY, with the institution enrolling about half of all college students in New York City. CUNY senior colleges located in Manhattan include: Baruch College, City College of New York, Hunter College, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and the CUNY Graduate Center (graduate studies and doctoral granting institution). The only CUNY community college located in Manhattan is the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

The State University of New York is represented by the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York State College of Optometry and Stony Brook University – Manhattan.

Manhattan is a world center for training and education in medicine and the life sciences. The city as a whole receives the second-highest amount of annual funding from the National Institutes of Health among all U.S. cities, the bulk of which goes to Manhattan's research institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Rockefeller University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, Weill Cornell Medical College and New York University School of Medicine.

Manhattan is served by the New York Public Library, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country. The five units of the Central Library—Mid-Manhattan Library, Donnell Library Center, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library and the Science, Industry and Business Library—are all located in Manhattan. More than 35 other branch libraries are located in the borough.

See also

Chinatown, Manhattan

List of counties in New York

Lower Manhattan

Manhattanhenge

Manhattanization

Midtown Manhattan

National Register of Historic Places listings in New York County, New York

Sawing off of Manhattan Island

Upper Manhattan

References

External links

Manhattan local government and services

Manhattan Borough President official site

New York City Government with links to Manhattan specific agencies

Maps, streets, and neighborhoods

Detailed Map of Manhattan

Maps of Building Heights and Land Value, plus theoretical and zoning-based maps of underdevelopment, all from www.radicalcartography.net

Population Details, Ethnicity Map, and Income Level Map

Historical references

1729 map of Manhattan

William J. Broad, Why They Called It the Manhattan Project, ''The New York Times'', October 2007. Ten sites in Manhattan that helped to build the first atomic bomb in the 1940s

Community discussions

NYC Manhattan Community Discussion

New York Forum

NYC Business and Office Selection Advice

General

Category:Boroughs of New York City Category:County seats in New York Category:Islands of New York City Category:Islands of the Hudson River Category:New York County, New York Category:Place names in New York of Native American origin Category:Populated places established in 1624 Category:United States places with Orthodox Jewish communities

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Name	The Bronx
Official name	Bronx County
Settlement type	Borough of New York City
Total type
Motto	''"Ne cede malis"'' Do not give way to evil
Map caption	The Bronx is shown in yellow.
Pushpin map
Pushpin label position
Pushpin mapsize
Coordinates region	US-NY
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision name1	New York
Subdivision type2	County
Subdivision name2	Bronx
Subdivision type3	City
Subdivision name3	New York City
Parts style
Parts
P2
Government type	Borough (New York City)
Leader title	Borough     President
Leader name	Ruben Diaz, Jr.— ''(Borough of the Bronx)''
Leader title1	District     Attorney
Leader name1	Robert T. Johnson— ''(Bronx County)''
Established title	Borough created
Established date	1898  (County in 1914)
Official flower	the Tiger Lily (Day Lily)
Area total sq mi	57
Area land sq mi	42
Area water sq mi	15
Area water percent
Elevation footnotes	http://www.peakbagger.com/peak.aspx?pid7110 "Bronx High Point" at Peakbagger.com
Elevation max ft	280
Elevation min ft
Population as of	April 1, 2010 U.S. Census
Population note	(2010 pop. as estimated in March 2011; density is July 2006 est. pop. on land area as of 2000 )
Population total	1400761
Population density sq mi	32393
Timezone	Eastern Standard Time (North America)
Utc offset	-5
Timezone dst	Eastern Daylight Time
Utc offset dst	-4
Postal code type	ZIP Code
Postal code	104 + two digits
Area code	347, 718, 917
Website	Official website of the Bronx Borough President
Footnotes	}}

The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated. Located north of Manhattan and Queens, and south of Westchester County, the Bronx is the only borough that is located primarily on the mainland (a very small portion of Manhattan is located on the mainland named Marble Hill). The Bronx's population is 1,400,761 according to the 2010 United States Census. The borough has a land area of , making it the fourth most populated of the five boroughs, the fourth-largest in land area, and the third-highest in density of population.

The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898. Bronx County, with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (afterwards coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) as of January 1, 1914. Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S., about a quarter of its area is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately reserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with the building of roads, bridges and railways.

The Bronx River was named for Jonas Bronck, an early settler from Småland in Sweden whose land bordered the river on the east. The borough of the Bronx was named for the river that was "Bronck's River". The indigenous Lenape (Delaware) American Indians were progressively displaced after 1643 by settlers from the Netherlands and Great Britain. The Bronx received many Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants as its once-rural population exploded between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. They were succeeded after 1945 by African Americans and Hispanic Americans from the Caribbean basin — especially Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, but also from Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.

The Bronx contains one of the five poorest Congressional Districts in the U.S., (the 16th), but its wide variety of neighborhoods also includes the affluent Riverdale and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing, and the quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown some signs of revival in recent years.

History

For generations a rural area of small farms supplying the city markets, the Bronx grew into a railroad suburb in the late 19th century. Faster transportation allowed for rapid population growth in the late 19th century, involving the move from horse-drawn street cars to elevated railways to the subway system, which linked to Manhattan in 1904. The great majority lived in rented apartments. The demographic history of the Bronx in the 20th century may be divided into four periods: a boom during 1900–29, with a population growth by a factor of six from 200,000 in 1900 to 1.3 million in 1930. The Great Depression and war years saw a slowing of growth. The 1950s were hard times, as the Bronx decayed 1950–79 from a predominantly middle-class to a predominantly lower-class area with high rates of crime and poverty. Finally the Bronx has enjoyed economic and demographic stabilization since 1980.

The South Bronx was for many years a manufacturing center, and in the early part of the 20th Century was noted as a center of piano manufacturing. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.

At the end of World War I, the Bronx hosted the rather small 1918 World's Fair at 177th Street and DeVoe Avenue.

The Bronx underwent rapid growth after World War I. Extensions of the New York City Subway contributed to the increase in population as thousands of immigrants flooded The Bronx, resulting in a major boom in residential construction. Among these groups, many Irish Americans, Italian Americans and especially Jewish Americans settled here. In addition, French, German, and Polish immigrants moved into the borough. The Jewish population also increased notably during this time. In 1937, according to Jewish organizations, 592,185 Jews lived in The Bronx (43.9% of the borough's population), while only 45,000 Jews lived in the borough in 2002. Many synagogues still stand in the Bronx, but most have been converted to other uses.

In Prohibition days (1920–33), bootleggers and gangs were active in the Bronx. Irish, Italian and Polish gangs smuggled in most of the illegal whiskey.

After the 1930s, Irish Americans started moving further north, and German Americans followed suit in the 1940s, as did many Italian Americans in the 1950s and Jews in the 1960s. As the older generation retired, many moved to Florida. The migration has left an African American and Hispanic (mostly Puerto Rican and Dominican) population, along with some Caucasian communities in the far southeastern and northwestern parts of the county.

In the 1970s, the South Bronx became iconic of America's urban crisis of unemployment and poverty, as arson in the city's public housing was a persistent symbol of the problem. However, led by aggressive community leaders, many burned-out tenements were replaced by single- and multifamily housing during the late 1970s to the present. Thus, Co-op City began in 1968 as a subsidized, high-rise, middle-class housing project, whose tenants bought shares in the corporation that operated it. It succeeded because it delivered on its promise of economic affordability and controlled racial integration.

By 2000, the Bronx had a population of about 1.2 million, and its bridges, highways, and railroads were more heavily traveled than those of any other part of the United States.

Fighting decline

Starting in the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the Bronx went into an era of sharp decline in the residents' quality of life. Historians and social scientists have put forward many factors. They include the theory (elaborated in Robert Caro's biography ''The Power Broker'') that Robert Moses' Cross-Bronx Expressway destroyed existing residential neighborhoods. Another factor in the Bronx's decline may have been the development of high-rise housing projects. Yet another may have been a reduction in the real-estate listings and property-related financial services (such as mortgages or insurance policies) offered in some areas of the Bronx — a process known as redlining. Others have suggested a "planned shrinkage" of municipal services, such as fire-fighting. There was also much debate as to whether rent control laws had made it less profitable (or more costly) for landlords to maintain existing buildings with their existing tenants than to abandon or destroy those buildings.

In the 1970s, the Bronx was plagued by a wave of arson. The burning of buildings was mostly in the South Bronx and in West Farms. The most common explanation of what occurred was that landlords decided to burn their low property-value buildings and take the insurance money as profit. After the fiery destruction of many buildings in the borough, the arsons slowed by the turn of the decade, but the after-effects were still felt into the 1990s.

Since the mid-1980s, some residential development has occurred in the Bronx, stimulated by the city's "Ten-Year Housing Plan" and community members working to rebuild the social, economic and environmental infrastructure by creating affordable housing. Groups affiliated with churches in the South Bronx erected the Nehemiah Homes with about 1,000 units. The grass roots organization Nos Quedamos' endeavor known as Melrose Commons began to rebuild areas in the South Bronx. The ripple effects have been felt borough-wide. The IRT White Plains Road Line began to show an increase in riders. Chains such as Marshalls, Staples, and Target have opened stores in the Bronx. More bank branches have opened in the Bronx as a whole (rising from 106 in 1997 to 149 in 2007), although not primarily in poor or minority neighborhoods, while the Bronx still has fewer branches per person than other boroughs.

Although not actually a city, in 1997, the Bronx was designated an ''All America City'' by the National Civic League, signifying its comeback from the decline of the 1970s. In 2006, ''The New York Times'' reported that "construction cranes have become the borough's new visual metaphor, replacing the window decals of the 1980s in which pictures of potted plants and drawn curtains were placed in the windows of abandoned buildings." The borough has experienced substantial new building construction since 2002. Between 2002 and June 2007, 33,687 new units of housing were built or were under way and $4.8 billion has been invested in new housing. In the first six months of 2007 alone total investment in new residential development was $965 million and 5,187 residential units were scheduled to be completed. Much of the new development is springing up in formerly vacant lots across the South Bronx.

Geography

Adjacent counties

Westchester County – north

Queens County, New York (Queens) – south

New York County, New York (Manhattan) – southwest

Bergen County, New Jersey – west

Location and physical features

The Bronx is almost entirely situated on the North American mainland. The Hudson River separates the Bronx on the west from Alpine, Tenafly and Englewood Cliffs in Bergen County, New Jersey; the Harlem River separates it from the island of Manhattan to the southwest; the East River separates it from Queens to the southeast; and, to the east, Long Island Sound separates it from Nassau County in western Long Island. Directly north of the Bronx are (from west to east) the adjoining Westchester County communities of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Pelham Manor and New Rochelle.

(There is also a short southern land boundary with Marble Hill in the Borough of Manhattan, over the filled-in former course of the Spuyten Duyvil Creek. Marble Hill's postal ZIP code, telephonic Area Code and fire service, however, are shared with the Bronx and not Manhattan.)

The New York Public Library maintains a ''Map Rectifier'' facility that reconciles old maps of the Bronx (and elsewhere) with current cartography.

The Bronx River flows south from Westchester County through the borough, emptying into the East River; it is the only entirely freshwater river in New York City. A smaller river, the Hutchinson River (named after the religious leader Anne Hutchinson, killed along its banks in 1641), passes through the East Bronx and empties into Eastchester Bay.

The Bronx also includes several small islands in the East River and Long Island Sound, such as City Island and Hart Island. Although it is part of the Bronx, Rikers Island in the East River, home to the large jail complex for the entire City, can be reached only by water, by air, or—since 1966—over the Francis Buono Bridge from Queens.

The Bronx's highest elevation , is in the northwest corner, west of Van Cortlandt Park and in the Chapel Farm area near the Riverdale Country School. The opposite (southeastern) side of the Bronx has four large low peninsulas or "necks" of low-lying land that jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunt's Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck and Throg's Neck. Further up the coastline, Rodman's Neck lies between Pelham Bay Park in the northeast and City Island.

† (New York City's last freshwater marsh was in Van Cortlandt Park until displaced in the 1930s by the junction of the Mosholu and Henry Hudson Parkways.)

Almost 27%, of the Bronx's total area is water, and the irregular shoreline extends for .

Parks and open space

Although, in 2006, it was the third most densely populated county in the United States (after Manhattan and Brooklyn), about one-fifth of the Bronx's area, and one-quarter of its land area, is given over to park land: about .

Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the largest cemeteries in New York City, sits on the western bank of the Bronx River near Yonkers. It opened in 1863, at a time when the Bronx was still considered a rural area.

The northern side of the borough includes the largest park in New York City - Pelham Bay Park, which includes Orchard Beach - and the fourth largest, Van Cortlandt Park, which is west of Woodlawn Cemetery and borders Yonkers.

Nearer the borough's center, and along the Bronx River, is Bronx Park. Its northern end houses the New York Botanical Gardens, which preserve the last patch of the original hemlock forest that once covered the entire city, and its southern end the Bronx Zoo, the largest urban zoological gardens in the U.S.

Farther south is Crotona Park, home to a 3.3 acre (1.3 hectare) lake, 28 species of trees and a large swimming pool. The land for these parks, and many others, was bought by New York City in 1888, while land was still open and inexpensive, in anticipation of future needs and future pressures for development.

Some of the acquired land was set aside for the Grand Concourse and Pelham Parkway, the first of a series of boulevards and parkways (thoroughfares lined with trees, vegetation and greenery). Later projects included the Bronx River Parkway, which developed a road while restoring the riverbank and reducing pollution, Mosholu Parkway and the Henry Hudson Parkway.

Just south of Van Cortlandt Park is the Jerome Park Reservoir, surrounded by of stone walls and bordering several small parks in the Bedford Park neighborhood. The reservoir was built in the 1890s on the site of the former Jerome Park Racetrack.

In 2006, a five-year, $220-million program of capital improvements and natural restoration in 70 Bronx parks was begun (financed by water and sewer revenues) as part of an agreement that allowed a water filtration plant under Van Cortlandt Park's golf course. One major focus is on opening more of the Bronx River's banks and restoring them to a natural state.

Wave Hill, the former estate of George W. Perkins — known for a historic house, gardens, changing site-specific art installations and concerts — overlooks the New Jersey Palisades from a promontory on the Hudson in Riverdale.

Neighborhoods and commercial districts

The number, locations and boundaries of the Bronx's neighborhoods (many of them sitting on the sites of 19th-century villages) have become unclear with time and successive waves of newcomers. In 2006, Manny Fernandez of ''The New York Times'' wrote,

"According to a Department of City Planning map of the city's neighborhoods, the Bronx has 49. The map publisher Hagstrom identifies 69. The borough president, Adolfo Carrión Jr., says 61. The Mayor's Community Assistance Unit, in a listing of the borough's community boards, names 68. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, lists 44."

Notable Bronx neighborhoods include the South Bronx, Little Italy on Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section, and Riverdale.

East Bronx

(Bronx Community Boards 9 ''[south central]'', 10 ''[east]'', 11 ''[east central]'' and 12 ''[north central]'' )

East of the Bronx River, the borough is relatively flat, and includes four large low peninsulas, or 'necks,' of low-lying land which jut into the waters of the East River and were once saltmarsh: Hunts Point, Clason's Point, Screvin's Neck (Castle Hill Point) and Throgs Neck. The East Bronx has older tenement buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multifamily homes, as well as smaller and larger single family homes. It includes New York City's largest park: Pelham Bay Park along the Westchester-Bronx border.

Neighborhoods include: Clason's Point, Harding Park, Soundview, Castle Hill, Parkchester ''(under Board 9)'', Throgs Neck, Country Club, City Island, Pelham Bay, Co-op City ''(Board 10)'', Westchester Square, Van Nest, Pelham Parkway, Morris Park ''(Board 11)'', Williamsbridge, Eastchester, Baychester, Edenwald and Wakefield ''(Board 12)''.

City Island and Hart Island

thumb|right|The sea is a part of everyday life in [[City Island, Bronx|City Island]] (Bronx Community Board 10)

City Island is located east of Pelham Bay Park in Long Island Sound, and is known for its seafood restaurants and waterfront private homes. City Island's single shopping street, City Island Avenue, is reminiscent of a small New England town. It is connected to Rodman's Neck on the mainland by the City Island Bridge.

East of City Island is Hart Island which is uninhabited and not open to the public. It once served as a prison and now houses New York City's Potter's Field or pauper's graveyard for unclaimed bodies.

West Bronx

(Bronx Community Boards 1 to 8, progressing roughly from south to northwest)

The western parts of the Bronx are hillier and are dominated by a series of parallel ridges, running south to north. The West Bronx has older apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, multifamily homes in its lower income areas as well as larger single family homes in more affluent areas such as Riverdale and Fieldston. It includes New York City's fourth largest park: Van Cortlandt Park along the Westchester-Bronx border. The Grand Concourse, a wide boulevard, runs through it, north to south.

Northwestern Bronx

(Bronx Community Boards 7 ''[between the Bronx and Harlem Rivers]'' and 8 ''[facing the Hudson River]'' — plus part of Board 12)

Neighborhoods include: Fordham-Bedford, Bedford Park, Norwood, Kingsbridge Heights ''(Board 7)'', Kingsbridge, Riverdale ''(Board 8)'', and Woodlawn ''(Board 12)''. (Marble Hill, Manhattan is now connected by land to the Bronx rather than Manhattan and is served by Bronx Community Board 8.)

South Bronx

(Bronx Community Boards 1 to 6 plus part of Board 7 —— ''progressing northwards, Boards 2, 3 and 6 border the Bronx River from its mouth to Bronx Park, while 1, 4, 5 and 7 face Manhattan across the Harlem River'')

Like other neighborhoods in New York City, the South Bronx has no official boundaries. The name has been used to represent poverty in the Bronx and applied to progressively more northern places so that by the 2000s Fordham Road was often used as a northern limit. The Bronx River more consistently forms an eastern boundary. The South Bronx has many high-density apartment buildings, low income public housing complexes, and multi-unit homes. The South Bronx is home to the Bronx County Courthouse, Borough Hall, and other government buildings, as well as Yankee Stadium. The Cross Bronx Expressway bisects it, east to west. The South Bronx has some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country, as well as very high crime areas.

Neighborhoods include: The Hub (a retail district at Third Avenue and East 149th Street), Port Morris, Mott Haven ''(Board 1)'', Melrose ''(Board 1 & Board 3)'', Morrisania, East Morrisania [also known as Crotona Park East] ''(Board 3)'', Hunts Point, Longwood ''(Board 2)'', Highbridge, Concourse ''(Board 4)'', West Farms, Belmont, East Tremont ''(Board 6)'', Tremont, Morris Heights ''(Board 5)'', University Heights, and Fordham ''(Board 5 & Board 7)''.

Shopping districts

Prominent shopping areas in the Bronx include Fordham Road, Bay Plaza (in Co-op City), The Hub, Riverdale/Kingsbridge Shopping center and Bruckner Boulevard. Shops are also concentrated on streets aligned underneath elevated railroad lines, including Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road, Jerome Avenue, Southern Boulevard and Broadway. The Gateway Center at Bronx Terminal Market contains several big-box stores, which opened in 2009 south of Yankee Stadium.

The Bronx Hub

The Hub–Third Avenue Business Improvement District (B.I.D.) is the retail heart of the South Bronx, located where four roads converge: East 149th Street, Willis, Melrose and Third Avenues. It is primarily located inside the neighborhood of Melrose but also lines the northern border of Mott Haven. The Hub has been called "the Broadway of the Bronx." It is the site of both maximum traffic and architectural density. In configuration, it resembles a miniature Times Square, a spatial "bow-tie" created by the geometry of the street. The area is part of Bronx Community Board 1.

Transportation

Roads and streets

The Bronx street grid is irregular. Like the northernmost part of upper Manhattan, the West Bronx's hilly terrain leaves a relatively free-style street grid. Much of the West Bronx's street numbering carries over from upper Manhattan, but does not match it exactly; East 132nd Street is the lowest numbered street in the Bronx. This dates from the mid-19th century when the southwestern area of Westchester County west of the Bronx River, was incorporated into New York City and known as the Northside.

The East Bronx is considerably flatter, and the street layout tends to be more regular. Only the Wakefield neighborhood picks up the street numbering, albeit at a disalignment due to Tremont Avenue's layout. At the same diagonal latitude, West 262nd Street in Riverdale matches East 237th Street in Wakefield.

Three major north-south thoroughfares run between Manhattan and the Bronx: Third Avenue, Park Avenue, and Broadway. Other major north-south roads include the Grand Concourse, Jerome Avenue, Sedgwick Avenue, Webster Avenue, and White Plains Road. Major east-west thoroughfares include Mosholu Parkway, Gun Hill Road, Fordham Road, Pelham Parkway, and Tremont Avenue.

Most east-west streets are prefixed with either ''East'' or ''West'', to indicate on which side of Jerome Avenue they lie (continuing the similar system in Manhattan, which uses Fifth Avenue as the dividing line).

The historic Boston Post Road, part of the long pre-revolutionary road connecting Boston with other northeastern cities, runs east-west in some places, and sometimes northeast-southwest.

Mosholu and Pelham Parkways, with Bronx Park between them, Van Cortlandt Park to the west and Pelham Bay Park to the east, are also linked by bridle paths.

Approximately 61.6% of all Bronx households do not have access to a car. Citywide, the percentage of autoless households is 55%.

Highways

Several major limited access highways traverse the Bronx. These include:

the Bronx River Parkway

the Bruckner Expressway (I-278/I-95)

the Cross-Bronx Expressway (I-95/I-295)

the New England Thruway (I-95)

the Henry Hudson Parkway (NY-9A)

the Hutchinson River Parkway

the Major Deegan Expressway (New York Thruway) (I-87)

Bridges and tunnels

Many bridges and tunnels connect the Bronx to Manhattan and Queens (3). These include, from west to east:

''To Manhattan:'' the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge, the Henry Hudson Bridge, the Broadway Bridge, the University Heights Bridge, the Washington Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton Bridge, the High Bridge, the Concourse Tunnel, the Macombs Dam Bridge, the 145th Street Bridge, the 149th Street Tunnel, the Madison Avenue Bridge, the Park Avenue Bridge, the Lexington Avenue Tunnel, the Third Avenue Bridge (southbound traffic only), and the Willis Avenue Bridge (northbound traffic only).

''To Manhattan or Queens:'' the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge (which opened as the Triborough Bridge).

''To Queens:'' the Bronx Whitestone Bridge and the Throgs Neck Bridge.

Mass transit

The Bronx is served by six lines of the New York City Subway with 70 stations in the Bronx: IND Concourse Line ( trains) IRT Broadway – Seventh Avenue Line ( train) IRT Dyre Avenue Line ( train) IRT Jerome Avenue Line ( train) IRT Pelham Line ( trains) IRT White Plains Road Line ( trains) Two Metro-North Railroad commuter rail lines (the Harlem Line and the Hudson Line) serve 11 stations in the Bronx. (Marble Hill, between the Spuyten Duyvil and University Heights stations, is actually in the only part of Manhattan connected to the mainland.) In addition, trains serving the New Haven Line stop at Fordham Road.

Postal service

The United States Postal Service operates post offices in the Bronx. The Bronx General Post Office is located at 558 Grand Concourse.

Demographics

Race, ethnicity, language, and immigration

According to the 2010 Census, 10.9% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 30.1% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 3.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 0.6% from some other race (non-Hispanic) and 1.2% of two or more races (non-Hispanic). 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race)

The U.S. Census considers the Bronx to be the most diverse area in the country. There is an 89.7 percent chance that any two residents, chosen at random, would be of different race or ethnicity.

The Bronx is the only New York City borough with a Hispanic majority, many of whom are Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. In 2000, The Bronx had some of the nation's highest percentages of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans with 24.0% and 10.0%, respectively.

According to the 2009 American Community Survey, White Americans of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-fifth (22.9%) of The Bronx's population. However, non-Hispanic whites formed under one-eighth (12.1%) of the population. Out of all five boroughs, The Bronx has the lowest number and percentage of white residents. 320,640 whites called the Bronx home, of which 168,570 were non-Hispanic whites. The majority of the non-Hispanic European American population is of Italian and Irish descent. People of Italian descent numbered over 55,000 individuals and made up 3.9% of the population. People of Irish descent numbered over 43,500 individuals and made up 3.1% of the population. German Americans and Polish Americans made up 1.4% and 0.8% of the population respectively.

At the 2009 American Community Survey, Black Americans made the second largest group in the Bronx after Hispanics and Latinos. Blacks of both Hispanic and non-Hispanic origin represented over one-third (35.4%) of the Bronx's population. Blacks of non-Hispanic origin made up 30.8% of the population. Over 495,200 blacks resided in the borough, of which 430,600 were non-Hispanic blacks. Over 61,000 people identified themselves as "Sub-Saharan African" in the survey, making up 4.4% of the population.

Native Americans are a very small minority in the borough. Only some 5,560 individuals (out of the borough's 1.4 million people) are Native American, which is equal to just 0.4% of the population. In addition, roughly 2,500 people are Native Americans of non-Hispanic origin.

Asian Americans are a small but sizable minority in the borough. Roughly 49,600 Asians make up 3.6% of the population. Roughly 13,600 Indians call The Bronx home, along with 9,800 Chinese, 6,540 Filipinos, 2,260 Vietnamese, 2,010 Koreans, and 1,100 Japanese.

Multiracial Americans are also a sizable minority in the Bronx. People of multiracial heritage number over 41,800 individuals and represent 3.0% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and African American heritage number over 6,850 members and form 0.5% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Native American heritage number over 2,450 members and form 0.2% of the population. People of mixed Caucasian and Asian heritage number over 880 members and form 0.1% of the population. People of mixed African American and Native American heritage number over 1,220 members and form 0.1% of the population.

In 2009, Hispanic and Latino Americans represented 52.0% of the Bronx's population. Puerto Ricans represented 23.2% of the borough's population. Over 72,500 Mexicans lived in the Bronx, and they formed 5.2% of the population. Cubans numbered over 9,640 members and formed 0.7% of the population. In addition, over 319,000 people were of various Hispanic and Latino groups, such as Dominican, Salvadoran, and so on. These groups collectively represented 22.9% of the population. At the 2010 Census, 53.5% of Bronx's population was of Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race).

Approximately 44.3% of the population over the age of 5 speak only English at home, which is roughly 570,000 people. The majority (55.7%) of the population speak non-English languages at home. Over 580,600 people (45.2% of the population) speak Spanish at home.

According to the 2005–2007 American Community Survey Estimates, the borough's population was 23.0% White (13.0% non-Hispanic White alone), 34.5% Black or African American (30.6% non-Hispanic Black or African American alone), 0.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 3.8% Asian, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, 40.4% from some other race and 2.4% from two or more races. 50.7% of the total population were Hispanic or Latino of any race (23.3% of Bronx's population were Puerto Ricans). 31.7% of the population were foreign born and another 8.9% were born in Puerto Rico, U.S. Island areas, or born abroad to American parents. 55.6% spoke a language other than English at home and 16.4% had a Bachelor's degree or higher.

The Census of 1930 counted only 1.0% (12,930) of the Bronx's population as Negro (while making no distinct counts of Hispanic or Spanish-surname residents).

Immigrants from Ghana have clustered along the Grand Concourse.

Based on sample data from the 2000 census, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 47.3% of the population five and older spoke only English at home, while 43.7% spoke Spanish at home, either exclusively or along with English. Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian (1.36%), Kru, Igbo, or Yoruba ''[West Africa]'' (0.72%) and French (0.54%).

   477,342 135,210 67,732 55,969 43,349 34,538 140,544

bgcolor="f0f0f0" align="center" colspan="6;"	Bronx residents born abroad or overseas, 1930 and 2000
	2000 United States Census
width="35%" align="center"	Total population of the Bronx
	|		''All born abroad or overseas'' ‡	524,410	''39.4%''
	|		Puerto Rico	126,649	''9.5%''
align="center"	''Foreign-born Whites''	|	''37.7%''	''All foreign-born''	385,827	''29.0%''
align="left"	White persons born in Russia	|	''10.7%''	Dominican Republic	124,032	''9.3%''
align="left"	White persons born in Italy	|	''5.4%''	Jamaica	51,120	''3.8%''
align="left"	White persons born in Poland	|	''4.4%''	Mexico	20,962	''1.6%''
align="left"	White persons born in Germany	|	''3.4%''	Guyana	14,868	''1.1%''
align="left"	White persons born in the Irish Free State †	|	''2.7%''	Ecuador	14,800	''1.1%''
Other foreign birthplaces of Whites	|	''11.1%''	Other foreign birthplaces	160,045		''12.0%''
	‡ beyond the 50 states & District of Columbia

Population and housing

At the 2010 Census, there were, 1,385,108 people living in Bronx, a 3.9% increase since 2000. As of the United States Census of 2000, there were 1,332,650 people, 463,212 households, and 314,984 families residing in the borough. The population density was 31,709.3 inhabitants per square mile (12,242.2/km²). There were 490,659 housing units at an average density of 11,674.8 per square mile (4,507.4/km²). There were 463,212 households out of which 38.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 31.4% were married couples living together, 30.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.0% were non-families. 27.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.78 and the average family size was 3.37.

The age distribution of the population in the Bronx was as follows: 29.8% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 30.7% from 25 to 44, 18.8% from 45 to 64, and 10.1% 65 years of age or older. The median age was 31 years. For every 100 females there were 87.0 males.

Individual and household income

The 1999 median income for a household in the borough was $27,611, and the median income for a family was $30,682. Males had a median income of $31,178 versus $29,429 for females. The per capita income for the borough was $13,959. About 28.0% of families and 30.7% of the population were below the poverty line, including 41.5% of those under age 18 and 21.3% of those age 65 or over.

Government and politics

Local government

Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, the Bronx has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a mayor-council system. The centralized New York City government is responsible for all municipal functions.

The office of Borough President was created in the consolidation of 1898 with powers mostly derived from having a vote on the New York City Board of Estimate. The 1989 Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris case declared the Board unconstitutional, and 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.

On February 18, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama appointed the former Bronx Borough President, Adolfo Carrión, Jr., to the position of Director of the White House Office of Urban Affairs Policy.

On April 21, 2009, a special election was held to choose Carrión's successor. Democratic New York State Assembly member Rubén Díaz, Jr., running on the "Bronx Unity" ticket, won this election with 29,420 votes (86%) against 4,646 votes (14%) for the Republican Anthony Ribustello ("People First") and 11 votes for write-in candidates. On May 1, 2009, Assemblyman Diaz was sworn in as the 13th Borough President of the Bronx (For his predecessors, see the List of Bronx Borough Presidents.)

Every currently-elected public official in the Bronx has first won the Democratic nomination (whether or not also nominated by other parties). Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education and economic development. Controversial political issues in the Bronx include environmental issues, the cost of housing, and the alienation of parkland for new Yankee Stadium.

Since its separation from New York County on January 1, 1914, the Bronx, has had, like each of the other 61 counties of New York State, its own directly-elected District Attorney, the county's chief public prosecutor. Robert T. Johnson, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Bronx County since 1989. He was the first African-American District Attorney in New York State.

Eight members of the New York City Council represent districts wholly within the Bronx, while a ninth represents a Manhattan district (8) that also includes a small area of the Bronx. (All of them were Democrats in 2008.) One of those members, Joel Rivera (District 15), has been the Council's Majority Leader since 2002.

The Bronx also has 12 Community Boards, appointed bodies that field complaints and advise on land use and municipal facilities and services for local residents, businesses and institutions. (They are listed at Bronx Community Boards).

Legislative and Congressional representatives

In 2008, three Democrats represented almost all of the Bronx in the United States House of Representatives.

José M. Serrano (first elected in March 1990) represents New York's 16th congressional district, which covers much of the South Bronx. It was, in 2000, the poorest of the nation's 435 districts (42.8% below the poverty line); it was also the most Hispanic of New York state's 29 congressional districts (62.8%) and the youngest (34.5% under 18 years old; 6.7% over 65).

Eliot Engel (first elected in 1988) represents the 17th District which includes parts of the northwest Bronx as well as parts of Westchester and Rockland counties.

Joseph Crowley (first elected in 1998) represents the 7th District which spans the East Bronx and includes Co-op City, City Island, Pelham Bay, Morris Park, Pelham Parkway, Parkchester, Castle Hill and Throgs Neck, as well as parts of northwest Queens.

''(Riker's Island, the city's main jail complex, is included in the 15th District, which covers Upper Manhattan and utilities facilities in Astoria, Queens. It is represented by Charles B. Rangel, first elected in 1970. In 2006, the Congressional election returns in this district included no votes from the Bronx or Queens.)''

All of these Representatives won over 75% of their districts' respective votes in both 2004 and 2006. ''National Journal's'' neutral rating system placed all of their voting records in 2005 and 2006 somewhere between very liberal and extremely liberal.

11 out of 150 members of the New York State Assembly (the lower house of the state legislature) represent districts wholly within the Bronx. Six State Senators out of 62 represent Bronx districts, half of them wholly within the County, and half straddling other counties. All these legislators are Democrats who won between 65% and 100% of their districts' vote in 2006.

Votes for other offices

In the 2004 presidential election, Senator John F. Kerry (Democratic/Working Families) received 81.8% of the vote in the Bronx while President George W. Bush (Republican/Conservative) received 16.3%.

A year later, the Democratic former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer won 59.8% of the borough's vote against 38.8% for Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Republican/Independence) who carried every other borough in his winning campaign for re-election. In 2009, the Bronx voted slightly more strongly against the successful re-election of Mayor Bloomberg, who received 37% of the Bronx vote (as an independent supported by the Republican and Independence Parties) against 61.2% for New York City Comptroller Bill Thompson (Democratic and Working Families).

In 2006, successfully-reelected Senator Hillary Clinton (Democratic, Working Families & Independence) won 89.5% of the Bronx's vote against 9.6% for Yonkers ex-Mayor John Spencer (Republican and Conservative), while Eliot Spitzer (Democratic, Working Families & Independence) received 88.8% of the Borough's vote in winning the Governorship against John Faso (Republican & Conservative), who received 9.7% of the Bronx's vote.

In the Presidential primary elections of February 5, 2008, Sen. Clinton won 61.2% of the Bronx's 148,636 Democratic votes against 37.8% for Barack Obama and 1.0% for the other four candidates combined. At the same time, John McCain won 54.4% of the borough's 5,643 Republican votes, Mitt Romney 20.8%, Mike Huckabee 8.2%, Ron Paul 7.4%, Rudy Giuliani 5.6%, and the other three candidates 3.6% between them.

In the Presidential general election of November 4, 2008, Sen. Obama won 87.8% of the Bronx's vote (338,261) on the Democratic and Working Families Party lines of the ballot, Sen. McCain won 10.8% (41,683) on the Republican, Independence and Conservative Party lines, and other candidates won 1.3% (1,342) between them. The Democratic candidate's percentage of the Presidential vote increased by 6% from 2004, while the Republican presidential candidate's percentage declined by 5.5%.

After becoming a separate county in 1914, the Bronx has supported only two Republican Presidential candidates. It voted heavily for the winning Republican Warren G. Harding in 1920, but much more narrowly on a split vote for his victorious Republican successor Calvin Coolidge in 1924 (Coolidge 79,562; John W. Davis, Dem., 72,834; Robert La Follette, 62,202 equally divided between the Progressive and Socialist lines).

Since then, the Bronx has always supported the Democratic Party's nominee for President, starting with a vote of 2–1 for the unsuccessful Al Smith in 1928, followed by four 2-1 votes for the successful Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Both had been Governors of New York, but the Bronx voted against two former Republican Governors who ran for President: Charles Evans Hughes in 1916 and Thomas E. Dewey in 1944 and 1948.)

The Bronx has often shown striking differences from other boroughs in elections for Mayor. The only Republican to carry the Bronx since 1914 was Fiorello La Guardia in 1933, 1937 and 1941 (and in the latter two elections, only because his 30–32% vote on the American Labor Party line was added to 22–23% as a Republican). The Bronx was thus the only borough not carried by the successful Republican re-election campaigns of Mayors Rudolph Giuliani in 1997 and Michael Bloomberg in 2005. The anti-war Socialist campaign of Morris Hillquit in the 1917 mayoral election won over 31% of the Bronx's vote, putting him second and well ahead of the 20% won by the incumbent pro-war Fusion Mayor John P. Mitchel, who outpolled Hillquit city-wide by 23.2% to 21.7%.

Education

Education in the Bronx is provided by a large number of public and private institutions, many of which draw students who live beyond the Bronx. The New York City Department of Education manages public noncharter schools in the borough. In 2000, public schools enrolled nearly 280,000 of the Bronx's residents over 3 years old (out of 333,100 enrolled in all pre-college schools). There are also several public charter schools. Private schools range from élite independent schools to religiously-affiliated schools run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York and Jewish organizations.

''Educational attainment:'' In 2000, according to the U.S. Census, out of the nearly 800,000 people in the Bronx who were then at least 25 years old, 62.3% had graduated from high school and 14.6% held a bachelor's or higher college degree. These percentages were lower than those for New York's other boroughs, which ranged from 68.8% (Brooklyn) to 82.6% (Staten Island) for high school graduates over 24, and from 21.8% (Brooklyn) to 49.4% (Manhattan) for college graduates. (The respective state and national percentages were ''[NY]'' 79.1% & 27.4% and ''[US]'' 80.4% & 24.4%.)

High schools

In the 2000 Census, 79,240 of the nearly 95,000 Bronx residents enrolled in high school attended public schools.

Many public high schools are located in the borough including the élite Bronx High School of Science, DeWitt Clinton High School, High School for Violin and Dance, Bronx Leadership Academy 2, Bronx International High School, the School for Excellence, the Morris Academy for Collaborative Study, Wings Academy for young adults, Validus Preparatory Academy, Bronx Expeditionary Learning High School, Herbert H. Lehman High School and High School of American Studies. The Bronx is also home to three of New York City's most prestigious private, secular schools: Fieldston, Horace Mann, and Riverdale Country School.

High schools linked to the Roman Catholic Church include: Saint Raymond's Academy for Girls, All Hallows High School, Fordham Preparatory School, Monsignor Scanlan High School, St. Raymond High School for Boys, Cardinal Hayes High School, Cardinal Spellman High School, The Academy of Mount Saint Ursula, Aquinas High School, Preston High School, St. Catharine Academy, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and St. Barnabas High School.

The SAR Academy and SAR High School are Modern Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva coeducational day schools in Riverdale, with roots in Manhattan's Lower East Side.

In the 1990s, New York City began closing the large, public high schools in the Bronx and replacing them with small high schools. Among the reasons cited for the changes were poor graduation rates and concerns about safety. Schools that have been closed or reduced in size include John F. Kennedy, James Monroe, Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, Evander Childs, Christopher Columbus, Morris, Walton, and South Bronx High Schools. More recently the City has started phasing out large middle schools, also replacing them with smaller schools.

Institutions of higher education

In 2000, 49,442 (57.5%) of the 86,014 Bronx residents seeking college, graduate or professional degrees attended public institutions.

Several colleges and universities are located in the Bronx.

Fordham University, was founded as St. John's College in 1841 by the Diocese of New York as the first Catholic institution of higher education in the northeast. It is now officially an independent institution, but strongly embraces its Jesuit heritage. The Bronx campus, known as Rose Hill, is the main campus of the university, and is among the largest within the city (other Fordham campuses are located in Manhattan and Westchester County).

Three campuses of the City University of New York are in the Bronx: Hostos Community College, Bronx Community College (occupying the former University Heights Campus of New York University) and Herbert H. Lehman College (formerly the uptown campus of Hunter College), which offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

The College of Mount Saint Vincent is a Catholic liberal arts college in Riverdale under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of New York. Founded in 1847 as a school for girls, the academy became a degree-granting college in 1911 and began admitting men in 1974. The school serves 1,600 students. Its campus is also home to the Academy for Jewish Religion, a transdenominational rabbinical and cantorial school.

Manhattan College is a Catholic college in Riverdale which offers undergraduate programs in the arts, business, education, engineering, and science. It also offers graduate programs in education and engineering.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine, part of Yeshiva University, is in Morris Park.

Two colleges based in Westchester County have Bronx campuses. The Catholic and nearly-all-female College of New Rochelle maintains satellite campuses at Co-op City and in The Hub. The coeducational and non-sectarian Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, founded by the Catholic Sisters of Mercy in 1950, has a campus near Westchester Square.

By contrast, the private, proprietary Monroe College, focused on preparation for business and the professions, started in the Bronx in 1933 but now has a campus in New Rochelle (Westchester County) as well the Bronx's Fordham neighborhood.

The State University of New York Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (Throggs Neck)—at the far southeastern tip of the Bronx—is the national leader in maritime education and houses the Maritime Industry Museum. (Directly across Long Island Sound is Kings Point, Long Island, home of the United States Merchant Marine Academy and the American Merchant Marine Museum.)

Cultural life and institutions

Author Edgar Allan Poe spent the last years of his life (1846 to 1849) in the Bronx at Poe Cottage, now located at Kingsbridge Road and the Grand Concourse. A small wooden farmhouse built about 1812, the cottage once commanded unobstructed vistas over the rolling Bronx hills to the shores of Long Island.

The Bronx's evolution from a hot bed of Latin jazz to an incubator of hip hop was the subject of an award-winning documentary, produced by City Lore and broadcast on PBS in 2006, "From Mambo to Hip Hop: A South Bronx Tale". Hip Hop first emerged in the South Bronx in the early 1970s. ''The New York Times'' has identified 1520 Sedgwick Avenue "an otherwise unremarkable high-rise just north of the Cross Bronx Expressway and hard along the Major Deegan Expressway" as a starting point, where DJ Kool Herc presided over parties in the community room.

On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a Dee Jay and Emcee at a party in the recreation room of 1520 Sedgewick Avenue in the Bronx adjacent to the Cross-Bronx Expressway. While it was not the actual "Birthplace of Hip Hop" – the genre developed slowly in several places in the 1970s – it was verified to be the place where ''one of'' the pivotal and formative events occurred. Specifically, DJ Kool Herc:

Beginning with the advent of beat match DJ'ing, in which Bronx DJs (Disc Jockeys) including Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc extended the breaks of funk records, a major new musical genre emerged that sought to isolate the percussion breaks of hit funk, disco and soul songs. As hip hop's popularity grew, performers began speaking ("rapping") in sync with the beats, and became known as MCs or emcees. The Herculoids, made up of Herc, Coke La Rock, and DJ Clark Kent, were the earliest to gain major fame. The Bronx is referred to in hip-hop slang as "The Boogie Down Bronx", or just "The Boogie Down". This was hip-hop pioneer KRS-One's inspiration for his thought provoking group BDP, or Boogie Down Productions, which included DJ Scott La Rock. Newer hip hop artists from the Bronx include Lord Toriq and Peter Gunz, Camp Lo, Swizz Beatz, Drag-On, Fat Joe, Terror Squad and Corey Gunz.

Hush Hip Hop Tours has established a sightseeing tour of the Bronx showcasing the locations that helped shape hip hop culture and has the pioneers of hip hop as tour guides. The recent recognition of the Bronx as an important center of African-American culture, led Fordham University to establish the ongoing "Bronx African-American History Project (BAAHP)".

The Bronx is the home of the New York Yankees, one of the leading baseball franchises in sports history. The original Yankee Stadium opened in 1923 on 161st Street and River Avenue, a year which saw the Yankeees bring home their first of 27 World Series Championships. With the famous facade, the short right field porch and Monument Park, Yankee Stadium has played host to many of the greatest players ever to take the field including Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Alex Rodriguez. The Stadium, as referred to by locals, has witnessed of the most memorable moments in sports history such as Lou Gehrig's Farewell Speech in 1939, Joe DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak in 1941, Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, Roger Maris' record breaking 61st home run in 1961, Reggie Jackson's 3 home runs to clinch Game 6 of the 1977 World Series and more recently the dynasty of the 1996-2000 Yankee club that captured 4 out of 5 World Series victories during that span. The original Yankee Stadium closed in 2008 to make way for a brand new stadium in which the Yankees started play in 2009 and capped off a memorable first year in their new home with a 27th World Series title, by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 4 games to 2 in the Fall Classic.

The Bronx is home to several Off-Off-Broadway theaters, many staging new works by immigrant playwrights from Latin America and Africa. The Pregones Theater, which produces Latin American work, opened a new 130-seat theater in 2005 on Walton Avenue in the South Bronx. Some artists from elsewhere in New York City have begun to converge on the area, and housing prices have nearly quadrupled in the area since 2002. However rising prices directly correlate to a housing shortage across the city and the entire metro area.

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, founded in 1971, exhibits 20th century and contemporary art through its central museum space and of galleries. Many of its exhibitions are on themes of special interest to the Bronx. Its permanent collection features more than 800 works of art, primarily by artists from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including paintings, photographs, prints, drawings, and mixed media. The museum was temporarily closed in 2006 while it underwent a major expansion designed by the architectural firm Arquitectonica.

The Bronx has also become home to a peculiar poetic tribute, in the form of the Heinrich Heine Memorial, better known as the Lorelei Fountain from one of Heine's best-known works (1838). After Heine's German birthplace of Düsseldorf had rejected, allegedly for anti-Semitic motives, a centennial monument to the radical German-Jewish poet (1797–1856), his incensed German-American admirers, including Carl Schurz, started a movement to place one instead in Midtown Manhattan, at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street. However, this intention was thwarted by a combination of ethnic antagonism, aesthetic controversy and political struggles over the institutional control of public art. In 1899, the memorial, by the Berlin sculptor Ernst Gustav Herter (1846–1917), finally came to rest, although subject to repeated vandalism, in the Bronx, at 164th Street and the Grand Concourse, or Joyce Kilmer Park near today's Yankee Stadium. (In 1999, it was moved to 161st Street and the Concourse.) In 2007, Christopher Gray of ''The New York Times'' described it as "a writhing composition in white Tyrolean marble depicting Lorelei, the mythical German figure, surrounded by mermaids, dolphins and seashells."

One national landmark in the Bronx is the Hall of Fame for Great Americans, overlooking the Harlem River and designed by the renowned architect Stanford White. The never–landmarked Yankee Stadium, the "House that Ruth Built" and home to the New York Yankees since 1923, has been replaced with a similar-looking ballpark just across 161st Street.

The peninsular borough's maritime heritage is acknowledged in several ways.The City Island Historical Society and Nautical Museum occupies a former public school designed by the New York City school system's turn-of-the-last-century master architect C. B. J. Snyder. The state's Maritime College in Fort Schuyler (on the southeastern shore) houses the Maritime Industry Museum. In addition, the Harlem River is reemerging as "Scullers' Row" due in large part to the efforts of the Bronx River Restoration Project , a joint public-private endeavor of the city's parks department. Canoeing and kayaking on the borough's namesake river have been promoted by the Bronx River Alliance. The river is also straddled by the New York Botanical Gardens, its neighbor, the Bronx Zoo, and a little further south, on the west shore, Bronx River Art Center.

The press and broadcasting

Newspapers The Bronx has several local newspapers, including ''The Bronx News'' , ''Parkchester News'', ''City News'', ''The Riverdale Press'', ''Riverdale Review'', ''The Bronx Times Reporter'', ''Inner City Press'' (which now has more of a focus on national issues) and ''Co-Op City Times''. Four non-profit news outlets, ''Norwood News'', ''Mount Hope Monitor'', ''Mott Haven Herald'' and ''The Hunts Point Express'' serve the borough's poorer communities. The editor and co-publisher of ''The Riverdale Press'', Bernard Stein, won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing for his editorials about Bronx and New York City issues in 1998. (Stein graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1959.)

The Bronx once had its own daily newspaper, ''The Bronx Home News'', which started publishing on January 20, 1907 and merged into the ''New York Post'' in 1948. It became a special section of the Post, sold only in the Bronx, and eventually disappeared from view.

Radio and television One of New York City's major non-commercial radio broadcasters is WFUV, an National Public Radio–affiliated 50,000-watt station broadcasting from Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx. The radio station's antenna is atop an apartment building owned by Montefiore Medical Center.

The City of New York has an official television station run by the NYC Media Group and broadcasting from Bronx Community College, and Cablevision operates News 12 The Bronx, both of which feature programming based in the Bronx. Co-op City was the first area in the Bronx, and the first in New York beyond Manhattan, to have its own cable television provider. The local Public-access television station BronxNet provides Government-access television (GATV) public affairs programming in addition to programming produced by Bronx residents.

Screen, literature and song

On screen (film and television)

Middle 20th century movies set in the Bronx portrayed densely-settled, working-class, urban culture. Hollywood films such as ''From This Day Forward'' (1946), set in Highbridge, occasionally delved into Bronx life. Paddy Chayefsky's Academy Award-winning ''Marty'' was the most notable examination of working class Bronx life was also explored by Chayefsky in his 1956 film ''The Catered Affair'', and in the 1993 Robert De Niro/Chazz Palminteri film, ''A Bronx Tale'', Spike Lee's 1999 movie ''Summer of Sam'', centered in an Italian-American Bronx community, 1994's ''I Like It Like That'' that takes place in the predominately Puerto Rican neighborhood of the South Bronx, and ''Doughboys'', the story of two Italian-American brothers in danger of losing their bakery thanks to one brother's gambling debts.

The Bronx's gritty urban life had worked its way into the movies even earlier, with depictions of the "Bronx cheer", a loud flatulent-like sound of disapproval, allegedly first made by New York Yankees fans. The sound can be heard, for example, when Spike Jones sings "Der Fuehrer's Face" (from the 1942 Disney animated film of the same name), repeatedly lambasting Adolf Hitler with: "We'll Heil! (Bronx cheer) Heil! (Bronx cheer) Right in Der Fuehrer's Face!"

Other movies have also used the term ''Bronx'' for comic effect, such as "Bronx", the character on the Disney animated series ''Gargoyles''.

Starting in the 1970s, the Bronx often symbolized violence, decay, and urban ruin. The wave of arson in the South Bronx in the 1960s and 1970s inspired the observation that "The Bronx is burning": in 1974 it was the title of both a New York Times editorial and a BBC documentary film. The line entered the pop-consciousness with Game Two of the 1977 World Series, when a fire broke out near Yankee Stadium as the team was playing the Los Angeles Dodgers. Numerous fires had previously broken out in the Bronx prior to this fire. As the fire was captured on live television, announcer Howard Cosell stated, "There it is, ladies and gentlemen: the Bronx is burning". Historians of New York City frequently point to Cosell's remark as an acknowledgement of both the city and the borough's decline. A new feature-length documentary film by Edwin Pagan called ''Bronx Burning'' is in production in 2006, chronicling what led up to the numerous arson-for-insurance fraud fires of the 1970s in the borough.

Bronx gang life was depicted in the 1974 novel ''The Wanderers'' by Bronx native Richard Price and the 1979 movie of the same name. They are set in the heart of the Bronx, showing apartment life and the then-landmark Krums ice cream parlor. In the 1979 film ''The Warriors'', the eponymous gang go to a meeting in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, and have to fight their way out of the borough and get back to Coney Island in Brooklyn. The 2005 video game adaptation features levels called Pelham, Tremont, and "Gunhill" (a play off the name Gun Hill Road).

This theme lends itself to the title of ''The Bronx Is Burning'', an eight-part ESPN TV mini-series (2007) about the New York Yankees' drive to winning baseball's 1977 World Series. The TV series emphasizes the boisterous nature of the team, led by manager Billy Martin, catcher Thurman Munson and outfielder Reggie Jackson, as well as the malaise of the Bronx and New York City in general during that time, such as the blackout, the city's serious financial woes and near bankruptcy, the arson for insurance payments, and the election of Ed Koch as mayor.

The 1981 film ''Fort Apache, The Bronx'' is another film that used the Bronx's gritty image for its storyline. The movie's title is from the nickname for the 41st Police Precinct in the South Bronx which was nicknamed "Fort Apache". Also from 1981 is the horror film ''Wolfen'' making use of the rubble of the Bronx as a home for werewolf type creatures. ''Knights of the South Bronx'', a true story of a teacher who worked with disadvantaged children, is another film also set in the Bronx released in 2005.

The Bronx was the setting for the 1983 film ''Fuga dal Bronx'', also known as ''Bronx Warriors 2'' and ''Escape 2000'', an Italian B-movie best known for its appearance on the television series Mystery Science Theatre 3000. The plot revolves around a sinister construction corporation's plans to depopulate, destroy and redevelop the Bronx, and a band of rebels who are out to expose the corporation's murderous ways and save their homes. The film is memorable for its almost incessant use of the phrase, "Leave the Bronx!" Many of the movie's scenes were filmed in Queens, substituting as the Bronx.

Bronx born and reared Nancy Savoca's 1989 comedy ''True Love'', explores two Italian-American Bronx sweethearts in the days before their wedding. The film, which debuted Annabella Sciorra and Ron Eldard as the betrothed couple, won the Grand Jury Prize at that year's Sundance Film Festival.

The CBS television sitcom ''Becker'', 1998–2004, was more ambiguous. The show starred Ted Danson as Dr. John Becker, a doctor who operated a small practice and was constantly annoyed by his patients, co-workers, friends, and practically everything and everybody else in his world. It showed his everyday life as a doctor working in a small clinic in the Bronx.

Penny Marshall's 1990 film ''Awakenings'', which was nominated for several Oscars, is based on neurologist Oliver Sacks' 1973 account of his psychiatric patients at Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx who were paralyzed by a form of encephalitis but briefly responded to the drug L-dopa. Robin Williams played the physician; Robert De Niro was one of the patients who emerged from a catatonic (frozen) state. The home of Williams' character was shot not far from Sacks' actual City Island residence. A 1973 Yorkshire Television documentary and "A Kind of Alaska", a 1985 play by Harold Pinter, were also based on Sacks' book.

Gus Van Sant's 2000 ''Finding Forrester'' was quickly billed "Good Will Hunting in the Hood." Sean Connery is in the title role of a reclusive old man who 50 years earlier wrote a single novel that garnered the Pulitzer Prize. He meets 16 year old Jamal – actor Rob Brown – a gifted, Bronx reared basketball player and aspiring writer, and becomes his mentor. The movie includes stock footage of Bronx housing projects from 1990, as well as some other scenes shot in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

In literature

The Bronx has been featured significantly in fiction literature. All of the characters in Herman Wouk's City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder (1948) live in the Bronx, and about half of the action is set there. Kate Simon's ''Bronx Primitive: Portraits of a Childhood'' is directly autobiographical, a warm account of a Polish-Jewish girl in an immigrant family growing up before World War II, and living near Arthur Avenue and Tremont Avenue. In Jacob M. Appel's short story, "The Grand Concourse" (2007), a woman who grew up the in the iconic Lewis Morris Building returns to the Morrisania neighborhood with her adult daughter. Similarly, in Avery Corman's book ''The Old Neighborhood'' (1980), an upper-middle class white protagonist returns to his birth neighborhood (Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse), and learns that even though the folks are poor, Hispanic and African-American, they are good people.

By contrast, Tom Wolfe's ''Bonfire of the Vanities'' (1987) portrays a wealthy, white protagonist, Sherman McCoy, getting lost off the Major Deegan Expressway in the South Bronx and having an altercation with locals. A substantial piece of the last part of the book is set in the resulting riotous trial at the Bronx County Court House. However, times change, and in 2007, the ''New York Times'' reported that "the Bronx neighborhoods near the site of Sherman's accident are now dotted with townhouses and apartments." In the same article, the Reverend Al Sharpton (whose fictional analogue in the novel is "Reverend Bacon") asserts that "twenty years later, the cynicism of ''The Bonfire of the Vanities'' is as out of style as Tom Wolfe's wardrobe."

Don DeLillo's ''Underworld'' (1997) is also set in the Bronx and offers a perspective on the decline of the area from the 1950s onwards. John Patrick Shanley's "Savage in Limbo" is set in a 1980s Bronx bar called 'Scales' where the frustrated characters feel they are unable to move.

In poetry, the Bronx has been immortalized by one of the world's shortest couplets: : The Bronx : No Thonx :: Ogden Nash, ''The New Yorker'', 1931

Nash repented 33 years after his calumny, penning in 1964 the following prose poem to the Dean of Bronx Community College: :I can't seem to escape :the sins of my smart-alec youth; :Here are my amends. :I wrote those lines, "The Bronx? :No thonx"; :I shudder to confess them. :Now I'm an older, wiser man :I cry, "The Bronx? God :bless them!"

In song

''Passing through:'' The theme song to the 1960s U.S. television comedy series ''Car 54, Where Are You?'' begins "There's a holdup in the Bronx." And the song "New York, New York" (by Betty Comden and Adolph Green from the 1940s musical comedy and film, "On the Town") explains that "The Bronx is up and the Battery's down." Another song, "Manhattan" (by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart for the 1925 musical "Garrick Gaieties"), declares "We'll have Manhattan,/The Bronx and Staten/Island too./It's lovely going through/the zoo."

''Bronx Local:'' While hundreds of songs about New York City, Manhattan and Brooklyn can be found in Wikipedia's List of songs about New York City and also in Marc Ferris's 5-page, 15-column list of "Songs and Compositions Inspired by New York City" in ''The Encyclopedia of New York City'' (1995), only a handful refer to the Bronx.

Ferris's extensive but selective 1995 list mentions only four songs referring specifically to the Bronx:

"On the Banks of the Bronx" (1919), William LeBaron, Victor Jacobi

"Bronx Express" (1922), Creamer and Layton

"The Tremont Avenue Cruisewear Fashion Show" (1973), Jerry Livingston, Mark David

"I Love the New York Yankees" (1987), Paula Lindstrom

But Wikipedia's own list also currently mentions:

"Alfie From The Bronx" by The Toy Dolls

"Back To The Bronx" by 2 Live Crew

"Boogie Down Bronx" by JVC Force

"Bronx" by Kurtis Blow

"The Bronx" by Regina Spektor

"Bronx Backyard" by The Johnny Seven Band

"The Bronx Is Beautiful" by Robert Klein

"Bronx Keeps Creating It" by Fat Joe

"Bronx Tale" by Fat Joe

"Bronx War Stories" by A.I.G.

"Cousin in The Bronx" by Kaiser Chiefs

"Cross Bronx Expressway" by Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz

"Deja Vu (Uptown Baby)" by Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz

"Ha Ya Doin? Yankees" – The Haya Doin'? Boys

"Here Come the Yankees", by Bob Bundin and Lou Stallman

"Jenny From The Block" by Jennifer Lopez featuring Styles P & Jadakiss

"On The Streets Of The Bronx" by The Moonglows

"Our Lady of the Bronx" by Black 47

"Rockin' the Bronx" by Black 47

"South Bronx" by Boogie Down Productions

See also

Bronx gangs (1950s-1960s)

Bronx cheer (gesture)

Bronx Bombers

Joseph P. Day, early land auctioneer

List of people from the Bronx

List of counties in New York

National Register of Historic Places listings in Bronx County, New York

References

Further reading

Barrows, Edward, and Mike Wallace. ''Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898'' (1999)

Baver, Sherrie L. "Development of New York's Puerto Rican Community", ''Bronx County Historical Society Journal'' 1988 25(1): 1–9

Briggs, Xavier de Souza, Anita Miller and John Shapiro. 1996. "CCRP in the South Bronx." Planners' Casebook, Winter.

de Kadt, Maarten. ''The Bronx River: An Environmental and Social History.'' The History Press (2011)

DiBrino, Nicholas. ''The History of the Morris Park Racecourse and the Morris Family'' (1977)

Federal Writers' Project. ''New York City Guide: A Comprehensive Guide to the Five Boroughs of the Metropolis: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Richmond'' (1939) online edition

Gonzalez, Evelyn. ''The Bronx''. (Columbia University Press, 2004. 263 ISBN 0–231-12114-8), scholarly history focused on the slums of the South Bronx online edition

Goodman, Sam. "The Golden Ghetto: The Grand Concourse in the Twentieth Century", ''Bronx County Historical Society Journal'' 2004 41(1): 4–18 and 2005 42(2): 80–99

Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. ''The Encyclopedia of New York City'', (Yale University Press and The New-York Historical Society, (1995) ISBN 0-300-05536-6), has entries, maps, illustrations, statistics and bibliographic references on almost all of the significant topics in this article, from the entire borough to individual neighborhoods, people, events and artistic works.

Jonnes, Jull. ''South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City'' (2002) online edition

McNamara, John ''History In Asphalt: The Origin of Bronx Street and Place Names'' (1993) ISBN 0941980162

McNamara, John ''McNamara's Old Bronx'' (1989) ISBN 0941980251

Olmsted, Robert A. "A History of Transportation in the Bronx", ''Bronx County Historical Society Journal'' 1989 26(2): 68–91

Olmsted, Robert A. "Transportation Made the Bronx", ''Bronx County Historical Society Journal'' 1998 35(2): 166–180

Rodríguez, Clara E. ''Puerto Ricans: Born in the U.S.A'' (1991) online edition

Samtur, Stephen M. and Martin A. Jackson. ''The Bronx: Lost, Found, and Remembered, 1935–1975'' (1999) online review, nostalgia

Twomey, Bill and Casey, Thomas ''Images of America Series: Northwest Bronx'' (2011)

Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. ''Throggs Neck Memories'' (1993)

Twomey, Bill and McNamara, John. ''Images of America Series: Throggs Neck-Pelham Bay'' (1998)

Twomey, Bill and Moussot, Peter. ''Throggs Neck'' (1983), pictorial

Twomey, Bill. ''Images of America Series: East Bronx'' (1999)

Twomey, Bill. ''Images of America Series: South Bronx'' (2002)

Twomey, Bill. ''The Bronx in Bits and Pieces'' (2007)

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Northern Borough: A History Of The Bronx'' (2009), popular general history

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Bronx in the frontier era: from the beginning to 1696'' (1994)

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Beautiful Bronx (1920–1950)'' (1979), heavily illustrated

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Birth of the Bronx, 1609–1900'' (2000), popular

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Bronx in the Innocent years, 1890–1925'' (1985), popular

Ultan, Lloyd. ''The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday, "The Bronx: It Was Only Yesterday 1935–1965'' (1992), heavily illustrated popular history

External links

General links

Bronx Borough President's Office

The Bronx Times

Weekly Bronx Report from Inner City Press

The Bronx River Alliance

Bronx Council for Environmental Quality

Bronx Business Directory

Places in the Bronx

The Bronx Museum of the Arts

The Bronx Zoo

The New York Botanical Garden

Bronx River Art Center

Wave Hill: New York Public Garden and Cultural Center

Walking tour of the Grand Concourse Boulevard-Cross Bronx Expressway area

Walk in the Bronx

Yankee Stadium

Bronx history

East Bronx History Forum

Museum of Bronx History

The Bronx County Historical Society

The Bronx: A Swedish Connection

Report of the Bronx Parkway Commission, December 31, 1918, retrieved on July 24, 2008

Remembrance of Synagogues Past: The Lost Civilization of the Jewish South Bronx by Seymour Perlin, retrieved on August 10, 2008

Forgotten New York: Relics of a Rich History in the Everyday Life of New York City

Bronx Nostalgia, photos, narratives, personal accounts, school alumni, videos

The Bronx today

The South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation, retrieved on August 15, 2008

Melancholy in the Bronx, but Not Because of the Stadium by David Gonzales, ''The New York Times'', published and retrieved on September 19, 2008

Category:County seats in New York Category:Boroughs of New York City Category:Populated places established in 1639 Category:Populated places in the United States with Hispanic majority populations Category:West Indian communities in the United States

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Name	Brooklyn
Official name	Kings County
Native name
Settlement type	Borough of New York City
Total type
Motto
Image seal	Seal of Brooklyn, New York.svg
Map caption	Location of Brooklyn shown in orange
Coordinates region	US-NY
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision name	United States
Subdivision type1	State
Subdivision name1	New York
Subdivision type2	County
Subdivision name2	Kings
Subdivision type3	City
Subdivision name3	New York City
Government type	Borough (New York City)
Leader title	Borough President
Leader name	Marty Markowitz (D)
Leader title1	District Attorney
Leader name1	Charles Hynes
Established title	Settled
Established date	1634
Named for	Breukelen, Netherlands
Demonym	Brooklynite
Area total sq mi	96.90
Area land sq mi	70.61
Area water sq mi	26.29
Population total	2567098
Population density sq mi	36356
Population blank1 title	Demonym
Population blank1	Brooklynite
Latns	N
Coordinates	40°37′29″N73°57′8″N
Longew	W
Postal code type	Postal Code
Postal code	112 + two digits
Area code	347, 718, 917 929
Website	Official www.brooklyn-usa.org }}

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, after New York County (Manhattan). It is also the westernmost county on Long Island.

Brooklyn was an independent city until its consolidation with New York City in 1898, and continues to maintain a distinct culture, independent art scene, and unique architectural heritage. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves where particular ethnic groups and cultures predominate.

Brooklyn's official motto is . Written in the (early modern spelling of the) Dutch language, it is inspired by the motto of the United Dutch Provinces and translated "Unity makes strength". The motto is displayed on the borough seal and flag, which also feature a young robed woman bearing fasces, a traditional emblem of republicanism. Brooklyn's official colors are blue and gold.

History

The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in the area on the western end of Long Island, also inhabited by a Native American people, the Lenape (often referred to in contemporary colonial documents by the Lenape place-name for one of the larger native settlements:"Canarsee"). The first Dutch settlements, established in 1624, were called ''Midwout'' (Midwood) and ''Vlacke Bos'' (Flatbush). The Dutch also purchased land during the 1630s from the Mohawks in present-day Gowanus, Red Hook, the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and Bushwick. The Village of ''Breuckelen,'' named for Breukelen in the province of Utrecht in the Netherlands, was authorized by the Dutch West India Company in 1646; it became the first municipality in what is now New York State. At the time, Breuckelen was part of New Netherland. Other villages which were later incorporated into Brooklyn were ''Boswijk'' (Bushwick), ''Nieuw Utrecht'' (New Utrecht), and ''Nieuw Amersfoort'' (Flatlands). A few houses and cemeteries still bear witness to the Dutch origins of the borough of Brooklyn.

The Dutch lost Breuckelen in the British conquest of New Netherland in 1664. In 1683, the British reorganized the Province of New York into twelve counties, each of which was sub-divided into towns. Over time, the name evolved from Breuckelen, to Brockland, to Brocklin, to Brookline, to Brookland and eventually, to Brooklyn. Kings County was one of the original counties, and Brooklyn was one of the original six towns within Kings County. The county was named in honor of King Charles II of England.

On August, 27 1776, the Battle of Long Island (also called the ''Battle of Brooklyn'') was fought in Kings County. It was the first major battle in the American Revolutionary War following the Declaration of Independence and the largest battle of the entire conflict. While General George Washington's defeat on the battlefield may have cast early doubts on his abilities as a military tactician and leader, he did keep the Continental Army intact with a brilliant overnight tactical retreat, across the East River. New York became the British political and military base of operations in North America. This encouraged the departure of patriots and their sympathizers while attracting loyalist refugees fleeing the other colonies. Loyalists swelled the population of the surrounding area, including Brooklyn. Correspondingly, the region became the focus of General Washington's intelligence activities (see ''Intelligence in the American Revolutionary War''). The British also began to hold American patriot prisoners-of-war in rotting hulks anchored in Wallabout Bay off Brooklyn. More American prisoners died in these prison-ships than the sum of all the American battle casualties of the Revolutionary War.

The first half of the nineteenth century saw significant growth along the economically strategic East River waterfront across from New York City. Brooklyn's population expanded more than threefold between 1800 and 1820, doubled again in the 1820s, and doubled yet again during the 1830s. The county encompassed two cities: the City of Brooklyn and the City of Williamsburgh. Brooklyn annexed Williamsburgh in 1854, which lost its final "h" in the process. With the addition of this new area, Brooklyn grew from a substantial community of 36,236 to an imposing city of 96,838.

The building of rail links, such as the Brighton Beach Line in 1878 heralded explosive growth, and, in the space of a decade, the City of Brooklyn annexed the towns of New Lots in 1886; Flatbush, Gravesend, and New Utrecht in 1894; and Flatlands in 1896. Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the Kings County line.

In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, easing the trip to Manhattan. Brooklyn engaged in the consolidation process developing throughout the region. In 1894, Brooklyn residents voted by a slight majority to join with Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, and Richmond (later Staten Island) to become the five boroughs of the modern New York City. This referendum took effect in 1898. Kings County retained its status as one of New York State's counties.

Founded in 1863, the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS) is a museum, library, and educational center dedicated to preserving and encouraging the study of Brooklyn's history. BHS houses materials relating to the founding of the U.S. and the history of Brooklyn and its people.

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 New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, libraries, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.

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, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause pursuant to the high court's 1964 "one man, one vote" decision.

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 Marty Markowitz, elected as a Democrat in 2001 and re-elected in 2005, and 2009.

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 Republican influence exist in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.

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. Charles J. Hynes, a Democrat, has been the District Attorney of Kings County since 1989. 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.

In recent years, 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 has a manufacturing plant in Brooklyn that employs 990 workers.

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 FDIC, there are 37 banks and 21 credit unions operating in Brooklyn.

Demographics

The demographics of Brooklyn are very diverse, with the borough being a melting pot for many cultures.

According to the 2010 Census, 35.7% of the population was non-Hispanic White, 31.9% non-Hispanic Black or African American, 10.4% non-Hispanic Asian, 0.4% from some other race (non-Hispanic) and 1.6% of two or more races (non-Hispanic). 19.8% of Brooklyn's population was of 
Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin (they may be of any race).

According to the 2009 American Community Survey, Brooklyn's population was 46.6% white, of which 36.9% were non-Hispanic whites. Blacks made up 34.2% of the population, of which 32.9% were non-Hispanic blacks. Native Americans represented 0.3% of the population, while Asians made up 9.5% of the populace. Pacific Islanders comprised just 0.1% of the population, and Multiracial Americans made up 1.4% of the population. Hispanics and Latinos made up 19.6% of Brooklyn's population.

According to 2005 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, there are 2,486,235 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 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.

Neighborhoods

Brooklyn has long been a magnet for immigrants, and many ethnic groups dominate a particular neighborhood for a time, although the neighborhoods are ever-changing as populations move in and out. 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. With gentrification, many of Brooklyn's neighborhoods are becoming increasingly mixed, with an influx of immigrants integrating its neighborhoods, and this may be the permanent equilibrium. Brooklyn and Queens have been a worldwide example of poor immigrants getting along most of the time, often with better results than in their home countries. It presently has substantial populations from many countries. 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 and East New York. "Bed-Stuy" is a hub for African-American culture, often referenced in hip hop and African-American arts. 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 community of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay. Brighton Beach features many Russian and Ukrainian businesses. Because of the large Ukrainian community, it has been nicknamed "Little Odessa." However, recently, it has been renamed to "Little Russia" because of the overwhelming presence of the Russian population. Originally these were mostly Jews, now however the Ukrainian and Russian communities of Brighton Beach represent various aspects of Russian culture. While previous Russian Jews have become American Jews for the most part, similarly Russian Christians have become American Christians over generations and left Brighton Beach.

Bushwick is the largest hub of Brooklyn's Hispanic-American community. Like other neighborhoods in New York City, Bushwick's Hispanic population is mainly Puerto Rican, with many Dominicans and peoples from several South American nations as well. As nearly 80% of Bushwick's population is Hispanic, its residents have 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.

Italian Americans are mainly concentrated in the neighborhoods of Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights and Bay Ridge, where there are many Italian restaurants and pizzerias. Italian Americans live throughout most of southern Brooklyn, including Bath Beach, Gravesend, Marine Park, Mill Basin, and Bergen Beach. The Carroll Gardens area, as well as the northern half of Williamsburg, also have long-standing Italian-American communities. Orthodox Jews and Hasidic Jews have become concentrated in Borough Park, where there are many yeshivas, synagogues, and kosher delicatessens, as well as other Jewish businesses. Other notable religious, Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish neighborhoods are in Kensington, Midwood, Williamsburg, Flatbush, Canarsie, Sea Gate and Crown Heights. Many hospitals in Brooklyn were started by Jewish charities, including Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, and Brookdale in Flatbush. Many non-religious Jews are concentrated in Ditmas Park, Windsor Terrace and Park Slope. Jesse Jackson in-famously referred to New York as 'Hymie Town' upon coming to New York's neighborhoods as reported in the Washington Post interview with Milton Coleman in 1984. 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 Greek Americans live throughout the borough, but their businesses today are concentrated in Downtown Brooklyn near Atlantic Avenue. Greek-owned diners are throughout the Borough.

Chinese live throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn, in Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Gravesend, an 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.

Scots-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 have moved into the southwest portion of Brooklyn, particularly in Bay Ridge, where there are many Middle Eastern restaurants and hookah lounges. Bay Ridge has Arabs of both Christian and Islamic faiths, where there are Arabic churches, particularly Maronite and Coptic Orthodox churches, as well as Mosques. Earlier, the area was known predominately for its Irish, Norwegian, and Scottish populations. Traditionally, many Middle Eastern businesses have flourished on Atlantic Avenue west of Flatbush Avenue.

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 London, Miami and Toronto. Crown Heights and Flatbush are home to many of Brooklyn's West Indian restaurants and bakeries. The West Indian Labor Day Parade, takes place every Labor Day on Eastern Parkway.

Culture

Brooklyn has played a major role in various aspects of American culture including literature, cinema and theater. It has 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.

In the late 1980s Brooklyn achieved a new cultural prominence with the films of Spike Lee, whose ''She's Gotta Have It'' and ''Do The Right Thing'' were shot there.

The Brooklyn Museum, opened in 1897, is the nation'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 Association of Museums, it is one of the few globally to have a permanent collection – over 30,000 cultural objects and natural history specimens.

The Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) includes a 2,109-seat opera house, a 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

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 considered to be 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 Based is Brooklyn's most highly read email-based newsletter. HelloBrooklyn.com is Brooklyn's largest portal, with more than 10,000 links.

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'' and ''Hamodia'', an Orthodox Jewish daily. 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.

The Brooklyn accent is often portrayed as 'typical New York' in American television and film. 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. BCAT, the Media program of BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn, shares the former Strand Theater, adjoining BAM's Harvey Theater, with the non-profit artists collective atelier and exhibition center, Urban Glass. The facility's upcoming expansion will include a new 250-seat, year-round home for BRIC's annual "Celebrate Brooklyn" performances.

Parks and other attractions

Prospect Park; is a 585-acre (2.37 km²) (237 ha) public park in central Brooklyn. 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 (36 ha) meadow, the Picnic House, which houses offices and a hall that can accommodate parties with up to 175 guests; Litchfield Villa, the home of Edwin Clark Litchfield, an early developer of the neighborhood and a former owner of a southern section of the Park; Prospect Park Zoo; a large nature conservancy managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society; the Boathouse, housing a visitors center and the first urban Audubon Center; Brooklyn's only lake, covering ; the Prospect Park Bandshell that hosts free outdoor concerts in the summertime; and various sports and fitness activities including seven baseball fields.

Brooklyn Botanic Gardens; located adjacent to Prospect Park is the 52-acre (21 ha) 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.

Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge: a unique Federal wildlife refuge straddling the Brooklyn-Queens border, part of Gateway National Recreation Area

Floyd Bennett Field; the first municipal airport in New York City and long closed for operatins, is now part of the National Park System. Many of the historic hangars and runways are still extant. A variety of 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.

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 at Astroland. Coney Island went into decline in the 1970s, but is currently undergoing a renaissance: the new Luna Park opened in 2010. The annual Coney Island Mermaid Parade is a hipster costume-and-float parade which honored David Byrne, pre-punk music guru, as the head merman in 1998. Coney Island also hosts the annual Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest.

New York Transit Museum displays historical artifacts of the New York subway, commuter rail and bus systems; it is located in the former IND Court Street subway station in Brooklyn Heights.

Green-Wood Cemetery, founded by the social reformer Henry Evelyn Pierrepoint in 1838, is both one of the most significant cemeteries in the United States and an expansive green space encompassing 478 acres (190 ha) of rolling hills and dales, several ponds, and a baroque chapel. Still in use, the cemetery is the burial ground of many notable New Yorkers, such as F.A.O. Schwarz (1836–1911), toy store founder; William M. "Boss" Tweed (1823–1878), notorious boss of the New York political machine; and actor Frank Morgan (1890–1949), best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film ''''The Wizard of Oz''''.

Sports

Brooklyn has a storied sports history. It has been home to many famous sports figures such as Vince Lombardi, Mike Tyson, Joe Torre, and Vitas Gerulaitis. Basketball legend Michael Jordan was born in Brooklyn but 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’s rules 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 team, the Brooklyn Dodgers, played at Ebbets Field and was named for "trolley dodgers". 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, including by Brooklynites too young to remember the Dodgers as Brooklyn's ball club. More recent attempts to bring back the Dodgers have not been successful.

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.

Minor-league soccer arrived in Brooklyn when the Brooklyn Knights relocated from their previous home in Queens to the new Aviator Field complex. It includes a 2,000-seat soccer-specific stadium. The team plays in the USL Premier Development League, at the fourth level of US soccer.

The Eastern Professional Hockey League included a team called the Brooklyn Aces into its inaugural 2008 season membership. After the league folded in 2009, The Brooklyn Aces became the New York Aviators and continued play in the Federal Hockey League. The team plays at Aviator Sports and Recreation.

In 2012, the NBA's New Jersey Nets will move to the newly built Barclays Center, bringing Brooklyn back into the major leagues.

At one time Brooklyn had many sporting goods manufacturers. Today 5boro, a skateboard company, has a factory in the borough. It is co-owned by Mark Nardelli and Steve Rodriguez.

Transportation

Brooklyn is well served by public transit. Eighteen New York City Subway lines, including the Franklin Avenue Shuttle, traverse the borough and 92.8% of Brooklyn residents traveling to Manhattan use the subway. Major stations of the 170 in Brooklyn include, Atlantic Avenue – Pacific Street, Broadway Junction, DeKalb Avenue, Jay Street – MetroTech, and Coney Island – Stillwell Avenue.

The public bus network 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 station, Nostrand Avenue station, and Atlantic Terminal, the terminus of the Atlantic Branch of the Long Island Rail Road. The terminal is located near the Atlantic Avenue – Pacific Street Station, with ten connecting subway services.

The grand 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 Interboro 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, McGuiness Boulevard, Flatbush Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, and Bedford 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 17th 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", "Plum" 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.

Brooklyn is connected to Manhattan by three bridges, the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges; a vehicular tunnel, 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.

Historically Brooklyn's waterfront was 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 city has recently built a new cruise ship terminal in Red Hook that is to become a focal point for New York's growing cruise industry. The Queen Mary 2, the world's largest ocean liner, was designed specifically to fit under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the United States. The Queen Mary 2 makes regular ports of call at the Red Hook terminal on her transatlantic runs from Southampton, England. New York Water Taxi offers commuter services from Brooklyn's west shore to points in Lower Manhattan, Midtown, Long Island City and Breezy Point in Rockaway, Queens, as well as tours and charters. A Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel, originally proposed in 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.

Approximately 57% of all households in Brooklyn were autoless households. The citywide rate is 55%.

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, technology, engineering, and mathematics in the United States. Tech opened in 1922. The school's current location is across the street from Fort Greene Park. It was built from 1930 to 1933 at a cost of $6 million, is 12 stories high, and covers over half 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.

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, and was the first public co-ed 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 immigrants.

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.

Kingsborough Community College is a junior college in the City University of New York system, located in Manhattan Beach. It was recently named one of the top ten community colleges in the United States by the New York Times.

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

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.

Pratt Institute, in Clinton Hill, is one of the leading art, design, and architecture schools in the US. Pratt is a private college with undergraduate and graduate programs ranked among the top ten in the country. Its graduate interior design program is ranked number one by ''US News and World Reports'' and by ''DesignIntelligence''. Pratt was ranked among the top design schools by ''Newsweek'' and was named the top New York art school by ''Global Language Monitor''. Pratt has over 4700 students, with most at its Brooklyn campus. Graduate programs include library and information science, architecture, and urban planning, as well as numerous art and design programs. Undergraduate programs include virtually all art and design disciplines, architecture, writing, and critical and visual studies, over 25 programs in all. Pratt's contemporary sculpture park was ranked among the top campus art collections by ''Public Art Review''.

Polytechnic University (New York), the United States' second oldest private technological university, 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. As of July 2008 it merged with the much larger and wealthier NYU, and is now called Polytechnic Institute of NYU.

Poly's MetroTech neighbor, 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.

St. Francis College is 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 it has recently been ranked one of the best baccalaureate colleges by both ''Forbes Magazine'' and ''U.S. News and World Report''.

SUNY Downstate Medical Center, 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, University Hospital of Brooklyn, and the School of Graduate Studies. The Nobel Prize-winner Dr. Robert F. Furchgott is a member of the 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.

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

Weather

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 Kreyol, as well as French, Yiddish, Hindi, Bengali, Polish, Italian, and Arabic. The Central Library is a landmarked building facing Grand Army Plaza and is undergoing extensive renovations and an underground expansion. There are 58 library branches, placing one within a half mile of each Brooklyn resident. In addition to 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

See also

List of people from Brooklyn, New York

List of counties in New York

National Register of Historic Places listings in Kings County, New York

Walking Brooklyn

References

Further reading

Lynn Harris. "Park Slope: Where Is the Love?" ''The New York Times''

Frank J. Trezza. "Brooklyn Navy Yard 1966–1986, the Yard was still a Shipyard not an Industrial Park"

External links

Official site of the Brooklyn Borough President

Brooklyn Tourism

Brooklyn Neighborhoods

All About Brooklyn

Category:Boroughs of New York City Category:County seats in New York Category:Former municipalities in New York Category:Populated places established in 1634

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