New York—often called New York City or the City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part—is themost populous city in the United States[1] and the center of the New York metropolitan area, the premier gateway for legal immigration to the United States[9][10][11] and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world.[12][13] A global power city,[14] New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment, its fast pace[15] defining the term New York minute.[16] Home to theheadquarters of the United Nations,[17] New York is an important center for international diplomacy[18] and has been described as the cultural and financial capital of the world.[19][20][21][22][23][24]

Situated on one of the world's largest natural harbors,[25][26] New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which is a separate county of New York State.[27] The five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898.[28] With a census-estimated 2014 population of 8,491,079[1][29]distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km2),[30] New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States.[31]As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York,[32][33][34] making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world.[33][35][36] By 2014 census estimates, the New York City metropolitan region remains by a significant margin the most populous in the United States, as defined by both the Metropolitan Statistical Area (20.1 million residents)[5] and the Combined Statistical Area (23.6 million residents).[6] In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product (GMP) of nearly US$1.39 trillion,[37] while in 2012, the CSA[38] generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion, both ranking first nationally by a wide margin and behind the GDP of only twelve and eleven countries, respectively.[39]

New York City traces its roots to its 1624 founding as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626.[40] The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664.[40][41][42] New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790.[43] It has been the country's largest city since 1790.[44]The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries[45] and is a globally recognized symbol of the United States and its democracy.[46]

Many districts and landmarks in New York City have become well known, and the city received a record 56 million tourists in 2014,[47]hosting three of the world's ten most visited tourist attractions in 2013.[48] Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world.[49][50][51] Times Square, iconic as the world's "heart"[52] and its "Crossroads",[53] is the brightly illuminated hub of the Broadway Theater District,[54] one of the world's busiest pedestrian intersections,[55][56] and a major center of the world's entertainment industry.[57] The names of many of the city's bridges,skyscrapers,[58] and parks are known around the world. Anchored byWall Street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan, New York City has been called both the most economically powerful city and the leading financial center of the world,[23][59][60][61][62][63] and the city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by total market capitalization, the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.[64][65]Manhattan's real estate market is among the most expensive in the world.[66][67] Manhattan's Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere,[68][69] with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city.[70][71]Providing continuous 24/7 service,[72] the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 469 stations in operation.[73][74][75][76] New York City's higher education networkcomprises over 120 colleges and universities, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, which have been ranked among the top 35 in the world.

• HISTORY

During the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the geologic foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, the ice sheet would help split apart what are now Long Island and Staten Island.[79]

In the precolonial era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by various bands of Algonquian tribes of Native Americans, including the Lenape, whose homeland, known as Lenapehoking, included Staten Island; the western portion of Long Island, including the area that would become Brooklyn and Queens; Manhattan; the Bronx; and the Lower Hudson Valley.[80]

The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown, who sailed his ship La Dauphine into New York Harbor. He claimed the area for France and named it "Nouvelle Angoulême" (New Angoulême).[81]

 
Peter Minuit is credited with the purchase of the island of Manhattan in 1626.
A Spanish expedition led by captain Estêvão Gomes, a Portuguese sailing forEmperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 aboard the purpose-built caravel "La Anunciada" and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Rio de San Antonio. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August. The first scientific map to show the North American East coast continuously, the 1527 world map known as the Padrón Real, was informed by Gomes' expedition, and labeled the Northeast as Tierra de Esteban Gómez in his honor.[82]

In 1609, English explorer Henry Hudson re-discovered the region when he sailed his ship the Halve Maen ("Half Moon" in Dutch) into New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for his employer, the Dutch East India Company. He proceeded to sail up what he named the North River, also called the Mauritis River, and now known as the Hudson River, to the site of the present-day New York State capital of Albany in the belief that it might represent an oceanic tributary. When the river narrowed and was no longer saline, he realized it was not a maritime passage and sailed back downriver. He made a ten-day exploration of the area and claimed the region for his employer. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay would be claimed by the Netherlands and called Nieuw-Nederland (New Netherland).

The first non-Native American inhabitant of what would eventually become New York City was Dominican trader Juan Rodriguez (transliterated to Dutch as Jan Rodrigues). Born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, he arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–1614, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch. Broadway, from 159th Street to 218th Street, is named Juan Rodriguez Way in his honor.[83][84]

 
New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it "New York".
A permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 – making New York the 12th oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in thecontinental United States [85] – with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement onGovernors Island. In 1625, construction was started on a citadel and a Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam).[86][87] The colony of New Amsterdam was centered at the site which would eventually become Lower Manhattan. The Dutch colonial Director-GeneralPeter Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small band of the Lenape,[88] in 1626 for a value of 60 guilders[89] (about $1000 in 2006);[90] a disproved legend says that Manhattan was purchased for $24 worth of glass beads.[91][92]

In 1664, Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of the colony of New Netherland, surrendered New Amsterdam to the English without bloodshed. The English promptly renamed the fledgling city "New York" after the Duke of York (later King James II).[93]

On August 24, 1673, Dutch captain Anthonio Colve took over the colony of New York from England and rechristened it "New Orange" to honor the Prince of Orange, King William III. However, facing defeat from the British and French, who had teamed up to destroy Dutch trading routes, the Dutch returned the island to England in 1674.[94]

At the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the English gained New Amsterdam (New York) in North America in exchange for Dutch control of Run, an Indonesian island. Several intertribal wars among the Native Americans and some epidemicsbrought on by contact with the Europeans caused sizable population losses for the Lenape between the years 1660 and 1670.[95] By 1700, the Lenape population had diminished to 200.[96]

New York experienced several yellow fever epidemics in the 18th century, losing ten percent of its population to the disease in 1702.[97][98]

New York grew in importance as a trading port while under British rule in the early 1700s. It also became a center ofslavery, with 42% of households holding slaves by 1730, more than any other city other than Charleston, South Carolina.[99]Most slaveholders held a few or several domestic slaves, but others hired them out to work at labor. Slavery became integrally tied to New York's economy through the labor of slaves throughout the port, and the banks and shipping tied to the South. Discovery of the African Burying Ground in the 1990s, during construction of a new federal courthouse nearFoley Square, revealed that tens of thousands of Africans had been buried in the area in the colonial years.

The trial in Manhattan of John Peter Zenger in 1735 helped to establish the freedom of the press in North America. In 1754,Columbia University was founded under charter by King George II as King's College in Lower Manhattan.[100] The Stamp Act Congress met in New York in October 1765 as the Sons of Liberty organized in the city, skirmishing over the next ten years with British troops stationed there.

 
The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, took place in Brooklyn in 1776.
The Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolutionary War, was fought in August 1776 entirely within the modern-day borough of Brooklyn. After the battle, in which the Americans were defeated, leaving subsequent smaller armed engagements following in its wake, the city became the British military and political base of operations in North America. The city was a haven for Loyalist refugees, as well as escaped slaves who joined the British lines for freedom newly promised by the Crown for all fighters. As many as 10,000 escaped slaves crowded into the city during the British occupation. When the British forces evacuated at the close of the war in 1783, they transported 3,000 freedmen for resettlement in Nova Scotia. They resettled other freedmen in England and the Caribbean.

The only attempt at a peaceful solution to the war took place at the Conference House on Staten Island between American delegates, including Benjamin Franklin, and British general Lord Howe on September 11, 1776. Shortly after the British occupation began, the Great Fire of New York occurred, a large conflagration on the West Side of Lower Manhattan, which destroyed about a quarter of the buildings in the city, including Trinity Church.[101]

In 1785, the assembly of the Congress of the Confederation made New York the national capital shortly after the war. New York was the last capital of the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation and the first capital under the Constitution of the United States. In 1789, the first President of the United States, George Washington, was inaugurated; the first United States Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States each assembled for the first time, and the United States Bill of Rightswas drafted, all at Federal Hall on Wall Street.[102] By 1790, New York had surpassed Philadelphia as the largest city in the United States.

 
Broadway follows the Native American Wickquasgeck Trail through Manhattan.[103]
Under New York State's gradual abolition act of 1799, children of slave mothers were born to be eventually liberated but were held in indentured servitude until their mid-to-late twenties.[104][105] Together with slaves freed by their masters after the Revolutionary War and escaped slaves, a significant free-black population gradually developed in Manhattan. Under such influential United States founders asAlexander Hamilton and John Jay, the New York Manumission Society worked for abolition and established the African Free School to educate black children.[106] It was not until 1827 that slavery was completely abolished in the state, and free blacks struggled afterward with discrimination. New York interracial abolitionist activism continued; among its leaders were graduates of the African Free School. The city's black population reached more than 16,000 in 1840.[107]

In the 19th century, the city was transformed by development relating to its status as a trading center, as well as by European immigration.[108] The city adopted the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which expanded the city street grid to encompass all of Manhattan. The 1825 completion of the Erie Canal through central New York connected the Atlantic port to the agricultural markets and commodities of the North American interior via the Hudson River and the Great Lakes.[109]Local politics became dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants.[110]

Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant,Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city.

• MODERN HISTORY

The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants. Over 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, upwards of a quarter of the city's population.[111]There was also extensive immigration from the German provinces, where revolutions had disrupted societies, and Germans comprised another 25% of New York's population by 1860.[112]

Democratic Party candidates were consistently elected to local office, increasing the city's ties to the South and its dominant party. In 1861, Mayor Fernando Woodcalled on the aldermen to declare independence from Albany and the United States after the South seceded, but his proposal was not acted on.[106] Anger at newmilitary conscription laws during the American Civil War (1861–1865), which spared wealthier men who could afford to pay a $300 (equivalent to $5,766 in 2016) commutation fee to hire a substitute,[113][114] led to the Draft Riots of 1863, whose most visible participants were ethnic Irish working class.[106] The situation deteriorated into attacks on New York's elite, followed by attacks on black New Yorkers and their property after fierce competition for a decade between Irish immigrants and blacks for work. Rioters burned the Colored Orphan Asylum to the ground, but more than 200 children escaped harm due to efforts of the New York City Police Department, which was mainly made up of Irish immigrants.[112] According to historian James M. McPherson (2001), at least 120 people were killed. In all, eleven black men were lynched over five days, and the riots forced hundreds of blacks to flee the city for Williamsburg, Brooklyn, as well as New Jersey; the black population in Manhattan fell below 10,000 by 1865, which it had last been in 1820. The white working class had established dominance.[112][115] Violence by longshoremen against black men was especially fierce in the docks area.[112] It was one of the worst incidents of civil unrest in American history.[116]

 
A construction worker on top of theEmpire State Building as it was being built in 1930. The Chrysler Building is below and behind him.
In 1898, the modern City of New York was formed with the consolidation of Brooklyn (until then a separate city), the County of New York (which then included parts of the Bronx), the County of Richmond, and the western portion of the County of Queens.[117] The opening of the subway in 1904, first built as separate private systems, helped bind the new city together. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, the city became a world center for industry, commerce, and communication.

In 1904, the steamship General Slocum caught fire in the East River, killing 1,021 people on board. In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the city's worst industrial disaster, took the lives of 146 garment workers and spurred the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and major improvements in factory safety standards.[118]

 
UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld in front of theUnited Nations Headquartersbuilding, completed in 1952.
New York's non-white population was 36,620 in 1890.[119] New York City was a prime destination in the early twentieth century for African Americans during the Great Migration from the American South, and by 1916, New York City was home to the largest urban African diaspora in North America. The Harlem Renaissance of literary and cultural life flourished during the era of Prohibition. The larger economic boom generated construction of skyscrapers competing in height and creating an identifiable skyline.

New York became the most populous urbanized area in the world in the early 1920s, overtaking London. The metropolitan area surpassed the 10 million mark in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity in human history.[120] The difficult years of the Great Depression saw the election of reformer Fiorello La Guardia as mayor and the fall ofTammany Hall after eighty years of political dominance.[121]

Returning World War II veterans created a post-war economic boom and the development of large housing tracts in eastern Queens. New York emerged from the war unscathed as the leading city of the world, with Wall Street leading America's place as the world's dominant economic power. The United Nations Headquarters was completed in 1952, solidifying New York's global geopolitical influence, and the rise of abstract expressionism in the city precipitated New York's displacement of Paris as the center of the art world.[122]

 
The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, a designated National Historic Landmark as the site of the 1969Stonewall Riots.[123]
The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations by members of the gay community against a police raid that took place in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Villageneighborhood of Lower Manhattan. They are widely considered to constitute the single most important event leading to the gay liberation movement and the modern fight for LGBT rights in the United States.[124][125]

 
United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the original World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.
In the 1970s, job losses due to industrial restructuring caused New York City to suffer from economic problems and rising crime rates.[126] While a resurgence in the financial industry greatly improved the city's economic health in the 1980s, New York's crime rate continued to increase through that decade and into the beginning of the 1990s.[127] By the mid 1990s, crime rates started to drop dramatically due to revised police strategies, improving economic opportunities, gentrification, and new residents, both American transplants and new immigrants from Asia and Latin America. Important new sectors, such as Silicon Alley, emerged in the city's economy. New York's population reached all-time highs in the 2000 Census and then again in the 2010 Census.

The city and surrounding area suffered the bulk of the economic damage and largest loss of human life in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks when 10 of the 19 terrorists associated with Al-Qaeda piloted American Airlines Flight 11into the North Tower of the World Trade Center and United Airlines Flight 175 into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and later destroyed them, killing 2,192 civilians, 343 firefighters, and 71 law enforcement officers who were in the towers and in the surrounding area.[128] The rebuilding of the area, has created a new One World Trade Center, and a 9/11 memorial and museum along with other new buildings and infrastructure. The World Trade Center PATH station, which opened on July 19, 1909 as the Hudson Terminal, was also destroyed in the attack. A temporary station was built and opened on November 23, 2003. A permanent station, the World Trade Center Transportation Hub, is currently under construction.[129] The new One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere[130] and the fourth-tallest building in the world by pinnacle height, with its spire reaching a symbolic 1,776 feet (541.3 m) in reference to the year of American independence.[131][132][133][134]

The Occupy Wall Street protests in Zuccotti Park in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan began on September 17, 2011, receiving global attention and spawning the Occupy movement against social and economic inequality worldwide.[135]

When one Republican presidential candidate for the 2016 election ridiculed the liberalism of "New York values" in January 2016, Donald Trump, leading in the polls, vigorously defended his city. The National Review, a conservative magazine published in the city since its founding by William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955, commented, "By hearkening back to New York's heart after 9/11, for a moment Trump transcended politics. How easily we forget, but for weeks after the terror attacks, New York was America.

 

• GEOGRAPHY

New York City is situated in the Northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston.[138] The location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into theAtlantic Ocean, has helped the city grow in significance as a trading port. Most of New York City is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

The Hudson River flows through the Hudson Valley into New York Bay. Between New York City and Troy, New York, the river is an estuary.[139] The Hudson River separates the city from the U.S. state of New Jersey. The East River—a tidal strait—flows from Long Island Sound and separates the Bronx and Manhattan from Long Island. The Harlem River, another tidal strait between the East and Hudson Rivers, separates most of Manhattan from the Bronx. The Bronx River, which flows through the Bronx and Westchester County, is the only entirely fresh water river in the city.[140]

The city's land has been altered substantially by human intervention, with considerable land reclamation along the waterfronts since Dutch colonial times; reclamation is most prominent in Lower Manhattan, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.[141] Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.[142]

The city's total area is 468.9 square miles (1,214 km2). 164.1 sq mi (425 km2) of this is water and 304.8 sq mi (789 km2) is land.[143][144] The highest point in the city is Todt Hill on Staten Island, which, at 409.8 feet (124.9 m) above sea level, is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard south of Maine.[145] The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.[146]

 
Cityscape

 
View of Midtown Manhattan at night, from across the Hudson River in Weehawken, New Jersey.

 
View of Lower Manhattan at sunset, from Jersey City, New Jersey. One World Trade Center is the tallest skyscraper in the Western Hemisphere.

 
The skyscrapers of New York City are almost all situated in Manhattan, seen here in this panorama viewed from Weehawken, New Jersey, in January 2015. Prominent tall buildings include One57 and 432 Park Avenue, left of center; the Empire State Building, right of center; and on the far right of the picture, One World Trade Center. Near the last mentioned, Four World Trade Center, 70 Pine Street, theWoolworth Building, and 40 Wall Street can be seen. At the center of the skyline picture, the Chrysler Building, The New York Times Building, and the Conde Nast Building can be picked out of the crowd by their spires.

 

INCOME

 

New York City has a high degree of income disparity as indicated by its Gini Coefficient of 0.5 for the city overall and 0.6 for Manhattan.[264] The disparity is driven by wage growth in high-income brackets, while wages have stagnated for middle and lower-income brackets. In the first quarter of 2014, the average weekly wage in New York County (Manhattan) was $2,749, representing the highest total among large counties in the United States.[265] In 2013, New York City had the highest number of billionaires of any city in the world, higher than the next five U.S. cities combined,[266][267][268] including former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.[269] New York also had the highest density of millionaires per capita among major U.S. cities in 2014, at 4.6% of residents.[270] Lower Manhattan has been experiencing a baby boom, with the area south of Canal Street witnessing 1,086 births in 2010, 12% greater than 2009 and over twice the number born in 2001.