Borough (New York City)

The five boroughs of New York City: 1: Manhattan, 2: Brooklyn, 3: Queens, 4: The Bronx, 5: Staten Island

New York City, in the state of New York, in the United States, is composed of five boroughs. They are Manhattan, The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, 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, other states, Greater London, and elsewhere.

Background

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 can be 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.

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 those parts of New York County outside of Manhattan that had previously been ceded by neighboring Westchester County in two stages, in 1874 and then following a referendum in 1894. The separate present-day Bronx County was not created until 1914.

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

Governance

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

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^[1]), 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. The borough presidents primarily act as spokesmen, advocates and cheerleaders for their boroughs, have budgets from which they can allocate relatively modest sums of money to community organizations and projects, and appoint the members of the 59 largely advisory community boards in the city's various neighborhoods. The Brooklyn and Queens borough presidents also appoint trustees to the local public library systems in those boroughs.

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

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

Sixth borough

The term sixth borough is used to describe any of a number of places that have been 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.^[2][3][4] 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,^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]} including Governor's Island in the Upper New York Bay.^[11]

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.^{[12][13][14][15]} Fort Lee, in Bergen County, opposite Upper Manhattan and connected by the George Washington Bridge has also been called the sixth borough.^[16][17][18] 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.^[19][20] After Mayor Bloomberg called for the 7 Subway Extension to continue to Secaucus Junction, a feasibility study was conducted and released in April 2013.^[21][22][23]

The Westchester County cities of Yonkers and Mount Vernon directly border the northern Bronx and share much of that borough's heavily urbanized character. In 1894, the voters of Yonkers and Mount Vernon, along with voters in other parts of southern Westchester, took part in a referendum to determine if they wanted to become part of New York City, along with the voters in Kings, Queens and Richmond Counties (today's Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, respectively). At that time, the city consisted only of Manhattan and a portion of the present-day Bronx, which had been part of Westchester until it became part of New York City in 1874. While the results of the 1894 vote were positive elsewhere, including in several other adjacent sections of Westchester, which were then annexed to the city and which thus became part of the new borough of The Bronx, 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.^[24] 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.^[25] 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.^[26]

Places outside of the New York metropolitan area that are home to large populations of former New Yorkers have also been referred to as the "sixth borough," including Philadelphia,^[27][28] Miami and South Florida,^[29] Los Angeles^[30] and, outside the continental U.S., Puerto Rico and Israel.^[31]

The term also applies to entities as well. For instance, Manhattan College, located in Riverdale, Bronx, refers to its Jaspers student cheering section as "The 6th Borough" at home basketball games played in Draddy Gymnasium.^[32] In addition, the University of Connecticut Huskies is often referred to as the Sixth Borough, given its dominance in games played at Madison Square Garden;^[33] the school sells a T-shirt making this claim as well.^[34]

See also

• Flags of New York City
• List of counties in New York

References

New York City The Five Boroughs The Bronx (Bronx County) Brooklyn (Kings County): Manhattan (New York County) Queens (Queens County) Staten Island (Richmond County) History Timeline Neighborhoods Ethnic enclaves Architecture Monuments Skyscrapers Culture Arts Books Cuisine Dialect Museums Music Nicknames Sports Tourism Gardens Landmarks Parks People Media Economy Companies Education Dept. of Education Elementary schools High schools Colleges Government Mayor Elections Council Politics Hospitals Fire Police Crime Law enforcement Geography Flags Environment Demographics History Transportation History Bridges and tunnels Streets Other lists Images Portal New York metropolitan area State of New York United States