Borough (New York City)

"Five Boroughs" redirects here. For the Mercian area of this name during the tenth and eleventh centuries, see Five Boroughs of the Danelaw.
The Five Boroughs of New York City: 1: Manhattan, 2: Brooklyn, 3: Queens, 4: The Bronx, and 5: Staten Island

New York City, in the U.S. state of New York, is composed of five boroughs. They are Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island. Each borough has the same boundaries as a county of the state. The county governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county.

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

Background

New York City's five boroughs overview
Jurisdiction Population Land area
BoroughCounty1 July 2013
Estimates		square
miles		square
km
ManhattanNew York1,626,1592359
The BronxBronx1,418,73342109
BrooklynKings2,592,14971183
Queens Queens2,296,175109283
Staten Island Richmond472,62158151
8,405,837303786
19,651,12747,214122,284
Source: United States Census Bureau[1][2][3]
The percentage of New York City population residing in each borough (from bottom to top): 1. Manhattan, 2. Brooklyn, 3. Queens, 4. The Bronx, and 5. Staten Island. (Populations before 1898 are for the areas now enclosed in the present boroughs).

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

Unlike most U.S. cities, which lie within a single county, extend partially into another county, constitute a county in themselves, or are completely separate and independent of any county, since 1914 each of New York City's five boroughs is coextensive with a county of New York state.

All of the boroughs were created in 1898 during consolidation, when the city's current boundaries were established. The borough of the Bronx was originally the parts of New York County that had previously been ceded by Westchester County, until Bronx County was created in 1914.

The borough of Queens originally consisted of only the western part of a larger Queens County, until Nassau County was created by the secession from Queens County of the three eastern towns in 1899. The borough of Staten Island was officially the borough of Richmond until the name was changed in 1975 to reflect its common appellation.

Each borough is represented by a borough president. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island each have a Borough Hall, while the Manhattan Borough President's office is contained in the Manhattan Municipal Building, and the Bronx Borough President's office is in the Bronx County Courthouse. Since the abolition of the board of estimate in 1990 (due to a 1989 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court[4]), the borough president now has minimal executive powers, and there is no legislative function within a borough. Executive functions in New York City are the responsibility of the Mayor of New York City, while legislative functions reside with the New York City Council.

Because they are counties, each borough also elects a district attorney, as does every other county of the state. Some civil court judges also are elected on a borough-wide basis, although they generally are eligible to serve throughout the city.

Sixth borough

The downtowns of Brooklyn, left and bottom; Manhattan, right and center, and Jersey City, top

The term sixth borough is used to describe any of a number of places that have been referred to as a part of New York City because of its geographic location, population, demographics, special affiliation, or cosmopolitan character. They have included adjacent cities and counties in the New York Metropolitan Area as well as in other states, U.S. territories, and foreign countries.[5][6][7] In 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to the city's waterfront and waterways as a sixth borough during presentations of a planned rehabilitation projects along the city's shoreline,[8][9][10][11][12][13] including Governor's Island in the Upper New York Bay.[14]

New Jersey's Hudson Waterfront lies opposite Manhattan on the Hudson River, and during the Dutch colonial era, was under the jurisdiction of New Amsterdam and known as Bergen, Jersey City and Hoboken in Hudson County are sometimes referred to as the sixth borough, given their proximity and connections by rapid transit PATH trains[15][16][17][18] Fort Lee, in Bergen County, opposite Upper Manhattan and connected by the George Washington Bridge has also been called the sixth borough.[19][20][21] In the 1920s, soon after the creation of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey there were calls to integrate the rail and subway system in New York and Northern New Jersey.[22][23] After Mayor Bloomberg called for the 7 Subway Extension to continue to Secaucus Junction, a feasibility study was conducted and released in April 2013.[24][25][26]

The cities of Yonkers and Mount Vernon, New York, directly border the northern Bronx and share much of that borough's heavily urbanized character. In 1894, the voters of Yonkers and Mount Vernon were able to take part, along with the voters of Kings, Queens and Richmond Counties (today's Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island respectively), in a referendum to determine if they wanted to become part of New York City, which at that time consisted only of Manhattan and a portion of the Bronx. While the results were positive elsewhere, the returns were so negative in Yonkers and Mount Vernon that those two areas were not included in the consolidated city and remained independent municipalities.[27] A subway connection was planned between Getty Square in Yonkers' city center and the New York City Subway, but the project was abandoned after the failed merger vote. Local residents frequently refer to the area as "the sixth borough," referring to the two cities' location bordering the Bronx, the high number of local residents employed in Manhattan, and the area's similarly urban character.[28] In 1934 a bill was submitted by a New York City alderman that again proposed merging Yonkers into New York City as a sixth borough.[29]

Places outside of the New York metropolitan area that are home to large populations of former residents of New York have also been referred to as a sixth borough, including Philadelphia[30][31] and Miami.

See also

References

  1. ↑ 2013 borough population estimates are taken from the annual database of county population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, retrieved on May 13, 2014.
  2. ↑ Per the County and City Data Book:2007 (U.S. Census Bureau), Table B-1, Area and Population, retrieved on July 12, 2008, New York County (Manhattan) was the nation's densest-populated county, followed by Kings County (Brooklyn), Bronx County, Queens County and San Francisco, California.
  3. ↑ American Fact Finder (U.S. Census Bureau): New York by County - Table GCT-PH1. Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2000 Data Set: Census 2000 Summary File 1 (SF 1) 100-Percent Data, retrieved on February 6, 2009
  4. ↑ Cornell Law School Supreme Court Collection: Board of Estimate of City of New York v. Morris, Cornell Law School. Retrieved September 11, 2008.
  5. ↑ Popik, Barry (January 24, 2006). "Sixth Borough Yonkers, Scarsdale, Fort Lee, Jersey City, Hoboken, Nassau County, Rockland County, S". Big Apple. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  6. ↑ Walker, Ken (May 10, 2007). "That Mythical Sixth Borough". Daily Newarker. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  7. ↑ Carlsen, Jen (December 10, 2010). "Poll: Where is New York's 6th Borough?". Gothamist. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  8. ↑ "Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn Unveil Comprehensive Plan for New York city's Waterfront and Waterways" (Press release). NYCEDC. March 14, 2011. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  9. ↑ Rovzar, Chris. "Mayor Bloomberg Attempts to Rebrand the 'Sixth Borough'". New York Magazine. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  10. ↑ Mainland, Alex (February 18, 2011). "A Blog for the ‘Sixth Borough’". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  11. ↑ Yeh, Richard (March 14, 2011). "City Reclaims Waterfront as 'Sixth Borough'". WNYC. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  12. ↑ "Sixth Borough Stories from New York's Waterfront". Columbia School of Journalism. 2011. Retrieved 2013-05-01. The sixth borough. That's what Mayor Bloomberg calls the 578 miles of shore land that encircle the five boroughs of New York City.
  13. ↑ Cunningham, Ryan A. (January 22, 2012). "Will NYC have a 6th Borough?". Metropolis Magazine. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  14. ↑ "Studio Report The Speculation Studio: Governors Island, The Sixth Borough?". Urban Omnibus. January 11, 2012. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  15. ↑ Strunsky, Steve (December 9, 2001). "CITIES; Bright Lights, Big Retail". The New York Times.
  16. ↑ Holusha, John. "Commercial Property / The Jersey Riverfront; On the Hudson's West Bank, Optimistic Developers", The New York Times, October 11, 1998. Accessed May 25, 2007. "'That simply is out of the question in midtown,' he said, adding that some formerly fringe areas in Midtown South that had previously been available were filled up as well. Given that the buildings on the New Jersey waterfront are new and equipped with the latest technology and just a few stops on the PATH trains from Manhattan, they become an attractive alternative. 'It's the sixth borough', he said."
  17. ↑ Belson, Ken (May 21, 2007). "In Stamford, a Plan to Rebuild an Area and Build an Advantage". The New York Times.
  18. ↑ Olear, Greg (December 2002). "The Sixth Borough A good look at Hoboken". The Copperator. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  19. ↑ Lefkowitz, Melanie. "Bergen County's Fort Lee: Town With a View". The Wall Street Journal - Copyright ©2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. April 30, 2011. Accessed September 16, 2012.
  20. ↑ Linh Tat (2012-06-12). "Fort Lee grapples with questions on future development". © 2012 North Jersey Media Group Inc. All rights reserved. Retrieved 2012-09-16.
  21. ↑ Vera Haller (2012-09-07). "Living In Fort Lee, N.J. Close to the City, but With a Life of Its Own". © 2012 The New York Times Company. Retrieved 2012-09-16.
  22. ↑ "Transportation for Greater New York (1920)". Electric Railway Journal · Vol. 56, No. 22. November 27, 1920. pp. 1095–1106. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
  23. ↑ "The New Jersey Commuter in New York Subway". Vol. 58, No. 27. December 31, 1921. pp. 1151–1152. Retrieved 2013-05-21.
  24. ↑ Parsons Brinkerhoff (April 2013). No 7 Secaucus Extension Feasibility Analysis Final Report (PDF) (Report). NYCEDC. Retrieved 2013-04-10.
  25. ↑ Frasinelli, Mike (April 10, 2013). "Plan to extend No. 7 subway from NYC to New Jersey could be back on track". The Star-Ledger. Retrieved 2013-04-10.
  26. ↑ Rouse, Karen (April 10, 2013). "Report: Extending NY No. 7 subway line to Secaucus would accommodate commuter demand". The Record. Retrieved 2013-04-10.
  27. ↑ Nevius, Michelle and Nevius, James. Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City. New York: Free Press, 2009. ISBN 141658997X, p.177-78
  28. ↑ travelfrosch. "The Sixth Borough". The Virtual Tourist. Retrieved 2013-05-01.
  29. ↑ "ADDING OF YONKERS TO CITY IS SOUGHT; Alderman Jacobs Says He Will Present Bill Seeking Merger as a Sixth Borough.", The New York Times, November 3, 1934. Retrieved August 26, 2007. "Merging the city of Yonkers with New York City as a sixth borough was proposed last night by Alderman Elias H. Jacobs, Washington Heights Democrat, who said he would introduce a local bill in the Board of Aldermen branch of the Municipal Assembly at its next meeting on Nov. 13."
  30. ↑ Carlson, Jen. "Sixth Borough Stealing NYC Residents". Gothamist. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  31. ↑ Pressler, Jessica (August 14, 2005). "Philadelphia Story: The Next Borough". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-05-01.