Manhattan Island, in New York Harbor, is much the largest part of the Borough of Manhattan, one of the Five Boroughs which form the City of New York. The Borough of Manhattan covers the same territory and the same people as the County of New York, a subdivision of the State of New York in the Northeastern United States. With a 2007 population of 1,620,867US Census Bureau Annual Estimates of the Population for Counties: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2007 living in a land area of 22.96 square miles (59.47  km²), New York County is the most densely populated county in the United States at 70,595 residents per square mile (27,267/km²). It is also one of the wealthiest counties in the United States, with a 2005 personal per capita income above $100,000. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis The borough (and the county) consist of Manhattan Island, Roosevelt Island, Randall's Island, almost one-tenth of Ellis Island,[http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=120ORIG], New Jersey v. New York, 523 U.S. 767 (1998), accessed 2008-01-04. the above-water portion of Liberty Island, several much smaller islands, and a small section on the mainland of New York State adjacent to the Bronx.

Manhattan is a major commercial, financial, and cultural center of the United States and the world.Barry, Dan. " A NATION CHALLENGED: IN NEW YORK; New York Carries On, but Test of Its Grit Has Just Begun", The New York Times, October 11, 2001. Accessed December 22, 2007. "A roaring void has been created in the financial center of the world."Sorrentino, Christopher. "When He Was Seventeen", The New York Times, September 16, 2007. Accessed December 22, 2007. "In 1980 there were still the vestigial remains of the various downtown revolutions that had reinvigorated New York's music and art scenes and kept Manhattan in the position it had occupied since the 1940s as the cultural center of the world."Bumiller, Elisabeth. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CEFDF103CF93BA35753C1A963958260 "THE POPE'S VISIT: THE CARDINAL; As Pope's Important Ally, Cardinal Shines High in Hierarchy"], The New York Times, October 8, 1995. Accessed December 18, 2007. "As the Archbishop of the media and cultural center of the United States, Cardinal O'Connor has extraordinary power among Catholic prelates." Most 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. Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States, is the site of both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ, and is the home to the largest number of corporate headquarters in the nation. It is indisputably the center of New York City and the New York metropolitan region, holding the seat of city government, and the largest fraction of employment, business, and recreational activities.

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).[http://www.newsday.com/community/guide/lihistory/ny-history-hs216a1v,0,919043.story?coll=ny-lihistory-navigation Full Text of Robert Juet's Journal: From the collections of the New York Historical Society, Second Series, 1841 log book], Newsday. Accessed 2007-05-16. A 1610 map depicts the name Manahata 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.Holloway, Marguerite. [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E1D71F3CF935A25756C0A9629C8B63 "URBAN TACTICS; I'll Take Mannahatta"], The New York Times, May 16, 2004, accessed 2007-04-30. "He could envision what Henry Hudson saw in 1609 as he sailed along Mannahatta, which in the Lenape dialect most likely meant island of many hills.' The Encyclopedia of New York City offers other derivations, including from the Munsee dialect of Lenape: manahachtanienk ("place of general inebriation"), manahatouh ("place where timber is procured for bows and arrows"), or menatay ("island")."More on the names behind the roads we ride", The Record (Bergen County), April 21, 2002. Accessed 2007-10-26. "The origin of Manhattan probably is from the language of the Munsee Indians, according to the Encyclopedia of New York City. It could have come from manahachtanienk, meaning place of general inebriation, or manahatouh, meaning place where timber is procured for bows and arrows, or menatay, meaning island."

Brooklyn (named after the Dutch town Breukelen) is one of the five boroughs of New York City. Located on western Long Island and an independent distinct city until its consolidation into New York in 1898, Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2.5 million residents.Kings County, New York, United States Census Bureau, December 30, 2006 If the borough were still an independent city, it would be the fourth-largest city in the United States. Brooklyn is coterminous with Kings County, which is the most populous county in New York State, and the second most densely populated county in the United States (after New York County, which is the borough of Manhattan).US-25S&-_lang=en "Population, Housing Units, Area, and Density: 2000", United States Census Bureau, accessed May 11, 2007.

Though a part of New York City, Brooklyn maintains a distinct culture, independent art scene, and unique architectural heritage. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves where a particular ethnic group and culture predominate.

The Bronx is the northernmost of New York City's five boroughs and the newest of New York State's 62 counties. It is located northeast of Manhattan and south of Westchester County. The Bronx is the only borough situated primarily on the North American mainland (while the other four are on islands). In 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the borough's population on July 1, 2007 was 1,373,659,American Fact Finder (U.S. Census Bureau): Table GCT-T1, 2007 Population Estimates for New York State by County, retrieved on July 2, 2008 ranking 4th of the five boroughs in population, 4th in area, and 3rd in density.In July, 2007, the Bronx also had more people than Maine (which is entitled to two Representatives in Congress) or any of ten other states. See List of U.S. states by population. More people lived on the 42 square miles (109 square km) of the Bronx's land than on the combined land area of Alaska and Wyoming (over 665,000 square miles or 1.7 million km², according to Table 348 of the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2008) Ranked areas of the boroughs from U.S. Census Bureau, County and City Data Book:2007 Table B-1, Area and Population, retrieved on July 12, 2008.U.S. Census Bureau, County and City Data Book:2007 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.

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 Queens and 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.

Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S., about a quarter of its land is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately preserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with roads, bridges and railroads.

The indigenous Lenape (Delaware) American Indians were slowly 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, together with immigrants from the Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and Hip hop (rap music).

While the Bronx contains the nation's poorest Congressional District (the 16th), it has a wide variety of neighborhoods, including the affluent Riverdale and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing and quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown significant signs of revival in recent years.See the "Historical Populations" table in History above and its sources.

Staten Island () is a borough of New York City situated primarily on the island of the same name. It is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull, and from the rest of New York by New York Bay. With a population of about 477,377, Staten Island is the least populated of the five boroughs but is the third largest in area at .

The Borough of Staten Island is Category: Wiktionary - :coterminous|coterminous with Richmond County, the southernmost county in the state of New York. Until 1975, the borough was officially named the Borough of Richmond.New York Public Library Staten Island Timeline, accessed January 16, 2006 Staten Island has been sometimes called "the forgotten borough" by inhabitants who feel neglected by the city government.Brown, Chip. "Escape From New York", The New York Times, January 30, 1994. Accessed January 14, 2008. "Given their status as residents of "the forgotten borough" - the sorry Cinderella sister in New York's dysfunctional family - maybe the giddiest aspect of all was the attention." See also Buckley, Cara. "Bohemia by the Bay", The New York Times, October 7, 2007. Accessed January 14, 2008. "Even as New York's hip young things invade and colonize neighborhoods near, far and out of state, Staten Island has stayed stubbornly uncool. It remains the forgotten borough."

Staten Island is overall the most suburban of the five boroughs of New York City. The North Shore, especially the neighborhoods of St. George, Tompkinsville, Park Hill, and Stapleton, is the most urban part of the island; it contains the officially designated St. George Historic District and The St. Paul's Avenue-Stapleton Heights Historic District, which feature large Victorian homes. The South Shore has more suburban-style residential neighborhoods and is home to the two and one-half mile long F.D.R. Boardwalk, the fourth longest in the world. Historically, the central and southern sections of the island were once dominated by dairy and poultry farms, almost all of which disappeared in the 20th century.

The borough is accessible to Brooklyn via the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and to New Jersey via the Goethals Bridge, Outerbridge Crossing, and Bayonne Bridge. Staten Island has Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) bus service and an MTA rapid transit line, the Staten Island Railway, which runs from the ferry terminal at St. George to Tottenville. The free Staten Island Ferry connects the borough to Manhattan and is a popular tourist attraction, providing views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and lower Manhattan.

Queens is the largest in area and the second most populous of the five boroughs of New York City, New York, USA. The borough is coterminous with Queens County, a county of New York State.

Located on the western portion of Long Island, Queens is home to two of the three major New York City area airports (John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia), the New York Mets baseball team, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (home of the annual U.S. Open), Kaufman Astoria Studios, Silvercup Studios, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and Queens Center (the most profitable per-square-foot mall in America).

As of the 2005 American Community Survey, immigrants comprise 47.6% of Queens residents making Queens the city's most diverse borough.2005 American Community Survey Fact Sheet for Queens County, New York, United States Census Bureau, accessed February 24, 2007. With a population of 2.2 million it is the second most populous borough in New York City (behind Brooklyn) and the tenth most populous county in the United States. The 2.2 million figure is the highest historical population for the borough. [http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027.html] Were each borough an independent city, Queens would be the fifth largest city in the United States (and Brooklyn would be fourth).

Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of New York and was supposedly named for the then-queen consort, Catherine of Braganza, the Catholic wife of Charles II[http://queens.about.com/od/queensalmanac/f/queens_name.htm] [http://www.ny.com/histfacts/geography.html#queens] (this is not supported by contemporary documents).

The borough is often considered one of the more suburban boroughs of New York City. Neighborhoods in central (except those situated along Queens Boulevard and the neighborhoods of Flushing and Jamaica), southern, and eastern Queens have a look and feel similar to the bordering suburbs of western Nassau County. In its northwestern section, however, Queens is home to many urban neighborhoods and several central business districts. Long Island City, on the Queens' waterfront across from Manhattan, is the site of the Citicorp Building, the tallest skyscraper in New York City outside of Manhattan.