New York City

In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians, including Munsee-speaking Lenape. The homeland of the Lenape, known as Lenapehoking, included the present-day areas of Staten Island, Manhattan, the Bronx, the western portion of Long Island (including Brooklyn and Queens), and the Lower Hudson Valley.

The first documented visit to New York Harbor by a European was in 1524, by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. He claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angoulême). A Spanish expedition, led by the Portuguese captain Estêvão Gomes sailing for Emperor Charles V, arrived in New York Harbor in January 1525 and charted the mouth of the Hudson River, which he named Río de San Antonio ('Saint Anthony's River').

In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company. He sailed up what the Dutch called North River (now the Hudson River), named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange.

Hudson claimed the region for the Dutch East India Company. In 1614, the area between Cape Cod and Delaware Bay was claimed by the Netherlands and named Nieuw-Nederland ("New Netherland"). The first non–Native American inhabitant of what became New York City was Juan Rodriguez, a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a representative of the Dutch.

A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, making New York the 12th-oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the continental United States, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction began on a citadel and Fort Amsterdam, later called Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam), on present-day Manhattan Island.

The colony of New Amsterdam extended from the southern tip of Manhattan to modern-day Wall Street, where a 12-foot (3.7 m) wooden stockade was built in 1653 to protect against Native American and English raids. In 1626 Peter Minuit, the director of New Netherland, as charged by the Dutch West India Company, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band, for "the value of 60 guilders" (about $900 in 2018). …

New York City lies in the northeastern United States, in southeastern New York State, approximately halfway between Washington, D.C. and Boston. Its location at the mouth of the Hudson River, which feeds into a naturally sheltered harbor and then into the Atlantic Ocean, has helped the city become a significant trading port. Most of the city is built on the three islands of Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

During the Wisconsin glaciation, 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, the New York City area was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet. The erosive forward movement of the ice (and its subsequent retreat) contributed to the separation of what is now Long Island and Staten Island. That action left bedrock at a relatively shallow depth, providing a solid foundation for most of Manhattan's skyscrapers.

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. The Hudson River separates the city from 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 freshwater river in the city.

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. Some of the natural relief in topography has been evened out, especially in Manhattan.

The city's total area is 468.484 square miles (1,213.37 km). 302.643 sq mi (783.84 km) of the city is land and 165.841 sq mi (429.53 km) of it is water. 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. The summit of the ridge is mostly covered in woodlands as part of the Staten Island Greenbelt.

New York City is sometimes referred to collectively as the Five Boroughs. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. …

New York City is the most populous city in the United States, with 8,804,190 residents as of the 2020 census, its highest decennial count ever, incorporating more immigration into the city than outmigration since the 2010 census. More than twice as many people live in New York City as in Los Angeles, the second largest American city. The city's population in 2020 was 35.9% White, 22.7% Black, 14.6% Asian, 10.5% Mixed, 0.7% Native American and 0.1% Pacific Islander; 28.4% identified themselves as Hispanic or Latino.

Between 2010 and 2020, New York City's population grew by 629,000 residents, more than the total growth of the next four largest American cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Phoenix) combined. The city's population density of 27,744.1 inhabitants per square mile (10,712.1/km) makes it the densest of any American municipality with a population above 100,000. Manhattan's population density is 70,450.8 inhabitants per square mile (27,201.2/km), the highest of any county in the United States.

Based on data from the 2020 census, New York City comprised about 43.6% of the state's population of 20,202,320, and about 39% of the population of the New York metropolitan area. The majority of New York City residents in 2020 (5,141,539 or 58.4%) were living in Brooklyn or Queens, the two boroughs on Long Island. An estimated 800 languages are spoken in New York, and the New York City metropolitan statistical area has the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world. The New York region continues to be by far the leading metropolitan gateway for legal immigrants admitted into the United States, substantially exceeding the combined totals of Los Angeles and Miami. Nearly seven times as many young professionals applied for jobs in New York City in 2023 as compared to 2019, making New York the most popular destination for recent college graduates.

The New York metropolitan area became the world's largest urban area in 1925, surpassing London. The metropolitan area surpassed 10 million in the early 1930s, becoming the first megacity. …

New York City is a global hub of business and commerce, sometimes called the "Capital of the World". Greater New York is the world's largest metropolitan economy, with a gross metropolitan product estimated at US$2.16 trillion in 2022. New York is a center for worldwide banking and finance, health care, and life sciences, medical technology and research, retailing, world trade, transportation, tourism, real estate, new media, traditional media, advertising, legal services, accountancy, insurance, and the arts in the United States; while Silicon Alley, metonymous for New York's high technology sphere, continues to expand. The Port of New York and New Jersey is a major economic engine, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal.

Many Fortune 500 corporations are headquartered in New York City, as are a large number of multinational corporations. New York City has been ranked first among cities across the globe in attracting capital, business, and tourists. New York City's role as the top global center for the advertising industry is metonymously reflected as Madison Avenue. The city's fashion industry provides approximately 180,000 employees with $11 billion in annual wages.

Significant other economic sectors include universities and non-profit institutions. Manufacturing declined over the 20th century but still accounts for significant employment. The city's apparel and garment industry, historically centered on the Garment District in Manhattan, peaked in 1950, when more than 323,000 workers were employed in the industry in New York. In 2015, fewer than 23,000 New York City residents were employed in the industry, although revival efforts were underway, and the American fashion industry continues to be metonymized as Seventh Avenue.

In 2024, the gross domestic product of New York City exceeded US$1.3 trillion, of which over $1 trillion (77%) was produced by Manhattan alone. Like other large cities, New York City has a degree of income disparity, as indicated by its Gini coefficient of 0.55 as of 2022. In November 2023, the city had total employment of over 4.75 million of which more than a quarter were in education and health services. Manhattan, which accounted for more than half of the city's jobs, had an average weekly wage of $2,590 in the second quarter of 2023, ranking fourth-highest among the nation's 360 largest counties. …

New York City is a metropolitan municipality with a strong mayor–council form of government. The city government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services.

The City Council is a unicameral body of 51 council members whose districts are defined by geographic population boundaries. Each term for the mayor and council members lasts four years and has a two consecutive-term limit, (reset after a four-year break). The New York City Administrative Code, the New York City Rules, and The City Record are the code of local laws, compilation of regulations, and official journal, respectively.

Each borough is coextensive with a judicial district of the state Unified Court System, of which the Criminal Court and the Civil Court are the local courts, while the New York Supreme Court conducts major trials and appeals. Manhattan hosts the First Department of the Supreme Court, Appellate Division, while Brooklyn hosts the Second Department. There are several extrajudicial administrative courts, which are executive agencies and not part of the state Unified Court System.

New York City is divided between, and is host to the main branches of, two different U.S. district courts: the District Court for the Southern District of New York, whose main courthouse is on Foley Square in Manhattan and whose jurisdiction includes Manhattan and the Bronx; and the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, whose main courthouse is in Brooklyn and whose jurisdiction includes Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and U.S. Court of International Trade are also based on Foley Square.

The city's current and 112th mayor is Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat and Democratic Socialist who was elected in November 2025. Mamdani took office shortly after midnight in a private ceremony on January 1, 2026. The Democratic Party holds the majority of public offices. As of November 2023, 67% of active registered voters in the city are Democrats and 10.2% are Republicans. New York City has not been carried by a Republican presidential candidate since 1924, and no Republican candidate for statewide office has won all five boroughs since the city was incorporated in 1898. …