A Guide To The 5 Boroughs Of New York City

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Published on December 12, 2019, 12:01 am
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New York City is made up of five county-level administrative divisions called boroughs: Manhattan, Queens, Bronx, Brooklyn, and Staten Island. If you are a New Yorker, you probably knew this already.

But anyone new to the city, especially someone from abroad, is very likely to get confused between the names of the five boroughs, their counties, and what makes each one unique. Many New Yorkers do not know much about the history and geography of their city either. So here is a quick friendly guide to the 5 boroughs of New York City.

Manhattan

Coextensive with the county of New York, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York, Manhattan is known as “the City”. It is the most densely populated of the five boroughs and serves as the city’s administrative and economic centre, cultural identifier, and historical birthplace.

It is in Manhattan where you will find the most well-known landmarks of New York like Broadway and the Theater District, Central Park, American Museum of Natural History, Empire State Building, Little Italy, Madison Square Garden, Metropolitan Museum, the New York Stock Exchange, Times Square, the Battery, World Trade Center, and Chinatown. Watch theatrical shows, play casino games in Nektan casinos UK, or just blend into the crowd in Times Square; you can do anything you want in Manhattan.

The Manhattan borough consists of Manhattan Island, Marble Hill, Randalls Island, Wards Island, Roosevelt Island, Liberty Island, Governors Island and several other small islands. The Manhattan Island itself is loosely divided into Downtown, Midtown, Uptown, and Fifth Avenue.

Queens

Queens is the largest borough of all the 5 boroughs in terms of size. It is coterminous with Queens County and lies adjacent to the Brooklyn borough at the southwestern end of Long Island. It also shares its water borders with two other boroughs, Manhattan and Bronx.

Most popular landmarks in Queens include Flushing Meadows-Corona Park; the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, the site of the US Open tennis tournament; Aqueduct Racetrack; Kaufman Astoria Studios; and Citi Field, home of the New York Mets baseball team.

Queens is also known for its ethnic diversity. It is the ethnically diverse country in the United States and the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world. With an estimated population of 2.3 million, it is the second-largest borough in terms of population. Approximately 40% of its vast population is foreign-born.

Bronx

Our third borough is Bronx, the third-most densely populated county in the entire United States. It is situated south of Westchester Country, northeast and east of Manhattan, and north of Queens. The borough of Bronx is coterminous with Bronx Country.

The borough borrows its name from Swedish-born Jonas Bronck, who was responsible for establishing the first settlement in the area back in 1639. Over the 19th and 20th centuries, Bronx attracted various migrant groups from European countries, the Caribbean regions, and even the southern U.S. states. This cultural mix has made the borough a wellspring of hip hop, rock, and Latin music.

Bronx is home to the Yankee Stadium, home of the New York Yankees baseball stadium and the Bronx Zoo, which is the world’s largest metropolitan zoo.

Brooklyn

The most populous county in the New York state, and the second-most densely populated county in the U.S., the borough of Brooklyn is coterminous with the Kings County. It shares borders with the Queens borough at the western of the Long Island. It is connected to Manhattan through several bridge and tunnel connections across the East River, and to Staten Island through the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.

The borough of Brooklyn is known for its cultural, ethnic, and social diversity. An independent art scene, distinct neighbourhoods, and a unique architectural heritage also come to one’s mind when thinking of Brooklyn.

Staten Island

Coterminus with the Richmond County, Staten Island is located in the southwest portion of the city. It’s separated from New Jersey by two tidal straits known as Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull. The New York Bay separates it from the rest of New York. It’s the third-largest in land area and the least populated of the five boroughs.

Staten Island is connected to Manhattan by the Staten Island Ferry, a free commuter ferry which is also a popular tourist attraction thanks to its unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. The borough’s biggest highlight is the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is one of the last undisturbed forests in the city with an area of 2,500 acres.

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Jonas Bronck is the pseudonym under which we publish and manage the content and operations of The Bronx Daily.™ | Bronx.com - the largest daily news publication in the borough of "the" Bronx with over 1.5 million annual readers. Publishing under the alias Jonas Bronck is our humble way of paying tribute to the person, whose name lives on in the name of our beloved borough.