New York City is located on the Eastern Atlantic coast of the United States, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The city center resides at the exact location of 40 degrees, 42 minutes, 51 seconds N latitude, and 74 degrees, 0 minutes 23 seconds W longitude.
New York City is made of five boroughs separated by various waterways. Brooklyn and Queens occupy the western portion of Long Island, while Staten Island and Manhattan are compeletely on their own land mass. Bronx, to the north, remains attached to the New York State mainland.
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The island of Manhattan is largely a protrusion of granite, rising a few hundred feet from sea-level. The southern tip and center of the island are virtually solid granite, while areas in Greenwich Village and Chelsea are composed of softer soil. As a result of this geologic arrangement, Manhattan's tallest buildings are located in these two large "rocky" areas. Manhattan is flanked on its west side by the Hudson River, and on the east side by the Harlem River (on the north) and the East River (on the south). Manhattan's street layout consists primarily of avenues and streets. The space between avenues is typically much larger than the space between streets (roughly 3x). Brooklyn was largely a marshland before it was settled in the late 1600s. The Dutch were the first settlers from the old world to colonize this borough in the 17th century. Although they shared the land with British settlers, the Dutch culture was the dominant one well into the 19th century. When first asked to join New York city as a borough in 1833, Brooklyn refused. Brooklyn, in a close vote, did not decide to become a part of New York City until 1898. Today, Brooklyn is a borough of many neighborhoods, each with its own strong ethnic flavor. It's very rare to find a New Yorker whose family has been living in America for more than one generation who didn't have an ancestor that lived in Brooklyn at some point in their life. The borough of Queens was named after the wife of Charles II of England, Queen Catherine of Braganza in 1683. The area became a borough of New York City in 1898 and rapid economic and physical growth followed the merger. At the beginning of the 17th century, Queens was populated largely by small farms and was predominantly rural. During the 18th century, the area started to experience growth in the area of manufacturing along the shores of the East river. After the merger with New York City the growth that had already begun increased at an ever-increasing rate. The area has been very popular for new immigrants in the past half of this century and is largely split up into different ethnic neighborhoods that feel very much like the home countries of the people that live there. There are very few inter-racial neighborhoods in Queens and the new immigrants that come to live here tend to congregate in their own areas. New York's two major airports are located in queens along with a lot of the industry in New York City. Queens is connected physically to Long Island.Manhattan
General areas in Manhattan
Brooklyn
General areas in Brooklyn
Queens
General areas in Queens