New York City
,
city
and port located at the mouth of the
Hudson River
, southeastern
New York
state, northeastern U.S. It is the largest and most influential American metropolis,
encompassing
Manhattan
and Staten islands, the western sections of
Long Island
, and a small portion of the
New York state
mainland to the north of Manhattan. New York City is in reality a collection of many neighbourhoods scattered among the city’s five boroughs?
Manhattan
,
Brooklyn
, the
Bronx
,
Queens
, and
Staten Island
?each exhibiting its own lifestyle. Moving from one city neighbourhood to the next may be like passing from one country to another. New York is the most populous and the most international city in the country. Its urban area extends into adjoining parts of New York,
New Jersey
, and
Connecticut
. Located where the
Hudson
and
East
rivers empty into one of the world’s premier harbours, New York is both the gateway to the North American continent and its preferred exit to the oceans of the globe. Area 305 square miles (790 square km). Pop. (2010) 8,175,133; New York?White Plains?Wayne Metro Division, 11,576,251; New York?Northern New Jersey?Long Island Metro Area, 18,897,109; (2020) 8,804,190; New York?Jersey City?White Plains Metro Division, 12,449,348; New York?Newark?Jersey City Metro Area, 20,140,470.
Did You Know?
Since the first U.S. census was held in 1790, New York has been the largest city in the
United States
. How do other cities rank?
Find out in our list of the 25 largest U.S. cities.
Character of the city
New York is the most ethnically
diverse
, religiously varied, commercially driven, famously congested, and, in the eyes of many, the most attractive urban centre in the country. No other city has contributed more images to the
collective
consciousness
of Americans:
Wall Street
means finance,
Broadway
is synonymous with theatre, Fifth Avenue is automatically paired with shopping, Madison Avenue means the
advertising
industry,
Greenwich Village
connotes bohemian lifestyles, Seventh Avenue signifies fashion,
Tammany Hall
defines machine politics, and
Harlem
evokes images of the
Jazz Age
, African American
aspirations
, and slums. The word
tenement
brings to mind both the miseries of urban life and the upward mobility of striving immigrant masses. New York has more Jews than
Tel Aviv
, more Irish than
Dublin
, more Italians than
Naples
, and more
Puerto Ricans
than
San Juan
. Its symbol is the
Statue of Liberty
, but the metropolis is itself an icon, the arena in which
Emma Lazarus
’s “tempest-tost” people of every nation are transformed into Americans?and if they remain in the city, they become New Yorkers.
Britannica Quiz
United States of America Quiz
For the past two centuries, New York has been the largest and wealthiest American city. More than half the people and goods that ever entered the United States came through its port, and that stream of commerce has made change a constant presence in city life. New York always meant possibility, for it was an urban centre on its way to something better, a metropolis too busy to be
solicitous
of those who stood in the way of progress. New York?while the most American of all the country’s cities?thus also achieved a reputation as both foreign and fearsome, a place where turmoil,
arrogance
, incivility, and cruelty tested the stamina of everyone who entered it. The city was inhabited by strangers, but they were, as
James Fenimore Cooper
explained, “essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state but to the United States.” Once the capital of both its state and the country, New York surpassed such status to become a world city in both commerce and outlook, with the most famous skyline on earth. It also became a target for international terrorism?most notably the
destruction in 2001
of the
World Trade Center
, which for three decades had been the most prominent symbol of the city’s global prowess. However, New York remains for its residents a conglomeration of local neighbourhoods that provide them with familiar cuisines, languages, and experiences. A city of stark contrasts and deep contradictions, New York is perhaps the most fitting representative of a diverse and powerful nation.
The landscape
The city site
Sections of the
granite
bedrock of New York date to about 100 million years ago, but the
topography
of the present city is largely the product of the glacial recession that marked the end of the
Wisconsin Glacial Stage
about 10,000 years ago. Great erratic boulders in Manhattan’s
Central Park
, deep kettle depressions in Brooklyn and Queens, and the glacial moraine that remains in parts of the
metropolitan area
provide silent testimony to the enormous power of the ice. Glacial retreat also carved out the waterways around the city. The
Hudson
and
East
rivers, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and Arthur Kill are, in reality, estuaries of the
Atlantic Ocean
, and the Hudson is tidal as far north as
Troy
. The approximately 600 miles (1,000 km) of New York shoreline are locked in constant combat with the ocean, as it erodes the land and adds new sediments elsewhere. Although the harbour is constantly dredged, ship channels are continually filled with river silt and are too shallow for more modern deep-sea vessels.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Subscribe Now
South of the rockbound terrain of Manhattan stretches a sheltered deepwater anchorage offering easy access to the Atlantic Ocean. In 1524 the Italian navigator
Giovanni da Verrazzano
was the first European to enter the harbour, which he named Santa Margarita, and he reported that the hills surrounding the vast expanse of New York Bay appeared to be rich in minerals; more than 90 species of
precious
stone and 170 of the world’s minerals have actually been found in New York. Verrazzano’s daring expedition was
commemorated
in 1964, when what was then the world’s longest suspension
bridge
was dedicated to span the Narrows at the entrance to Upper New York Bay.
Only the third largest American port at the time of the
American Revolution
, New York gradually achieved trade domination and by the mid-1800s handled more than half of the country’s oceangoing travelers and commercial trade. After 1900 New York was the world’s busiest port, a distinction it held until the 1950s. Cargo containerization, the
obsolescence
of its waterfront piers, and soaring labour costs shifted business to the New Jersey side of the river after the 1960s, but at the beginning of the 21st century the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
still dominated the water trade of the northeastern United States.