A RARE 1939 DOCUMENT RELATED TO QUEENS NEW YORK SIGNED BY MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY FIORELLO H. LaGuardia APPROVING THE GRADING OF THE FAMOUS NEW 'BELT PARKWAY'.   CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL OF CONTRACT PLANS  AND SPECIFICATIONS FOR IMPROVEMENTS CIRCUMFERENTIAL (BELT)
 PARKWAY  BY GRADING THE AREA BOUNDED BY NORTH CONDUIT AVENUE, 150TH STREET, ROCKAWAY BOULEVARD, AND BAISLEY BOULEVARD, BOROUGH OF QUEENS


THIS HISTORIC DOCUMENT IS ALSO CO-SIGNED BY NYC CHIEF ENGINEER JOHN C. RIEDEL.























Fiorello LaGuardia chose not to wear his Jewish heritage on his sleeve. In fact, he allowed the public to identify him as Italian, not Jewish, even under the most tempting of political circumstances. When issues of Jewish interest came up in New York or national politics, however, the "Little Flower" was an ardent advocate for Jewish rights. As mayor of New York, he was one of Hitler’s most outspoken opponents.

LaGuardia was born in Greenwich Village in 1882 to Achille Luigi Carlo LaGuardia, a Catholic, and Irene Luzzato Coen, who had been raised in an observant Jewish home in Trieste. In 1880, the couple emigrated to the United States. After their third child was born, Achille joined the U.S. Army. The family was sent to remote outposts in South Dakota and Arizona. In 1898, Achille became gravely ill from eating "embalmed" rations supplied to the Army and died four years later. When Fiorello LaGuardia was elected to Congress in 1922, the first bill he introduced called for the death penalty for "scavengers" who supplied tainted food to the military. The bill did not pass, but LaGuardia never lost his Progressive disgust for government corruption or the ability of "the interests" to escape justice.

A superb linguist, in 1900 the 18-year-old Fiorello took his first government post in the American consular corps in Budapest. Advised that his Jewish roots and lack of a Harvard degree would stunt his prospects in the diplomatic service, which was very "white shoe," LaGuardia resigned and returned to New York in 1906 to work for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty for Children and as a translator for the U.S. Immigration Service while attending New York University Law School. On graduation, he opened a practice that specialized in protecting immigrant workers in the garment industry. Although he never earned much, LaGuardia won numerous friends and a great reputation among the immigrant Jewish garment workers and peddlers of the Lower East Side by representing them in court, free of charge.

In 1916, running as a Republican, LaGuardia challenged the incumbent Congressman from the Lower East Side, a Tammany-backed saloonkeeper named Farley. Speaking to crowds in Yiddish, Italian and Serbo-Croatian, LaGuardia defeated Farley by a narrow margin, becoming the first Italian-American elected to Congress. In 1922, Tammany ran a Jewish candidate against LaGuardia and circulated a flyer calling LaGuardia "a pronounced anti-Semite and Jew-hater." Advised that he should publicly proclaim that his mother was Jewish, LaGuardia rejected the tactic as "self-serving." Instead, he challenged his opponent to debate him in Yiddish – an offer his opponent could not accept. LaGuardia won re-election.

Defeated for re-election in the Roosevelt landslide of 1932, LaGuardia successfully ran for mayor of the City of New York in 1933. Once in office, he became an implacable foe of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Before taking office, LaGuardia called Hitler a "perverted maniac." In a public address in 1934, LaGuardia warned, "Part of [Hitler’s] program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany." In 1937, speaking before the Women’s Division of the American Jewish Congress, LaGuardia called for the creation of a special pavilion at the upcoming New York World’s Fair: "a chamber of horrors" for "that brown-shirted fanatic."

In response, the government-controlled press in Germany called LaGuardia a "Dirty Talmud Jew," a "shameless Jew lout" and "a whoremonger." When the German ambassador protested LaGuardia’s remarks to Cordell Hull, the U.S. Secretary of State, Hull explained to the ambassador that, personally, he "very earnestly deprecate[d] the utterances which have thus given offense to the German government." Hull had to explain, however, that in America the mayor of New York was free to speak his mind. Hull complained privately to President Roosevelt that LaGuardia was poisoning German-American relations, but Roosevelt asked Hull, "What would you say if I should say that I agreed completely with LaGuardia?" Several months later, LaGuardia visited Roosevelt and recorded the following scene:

The president smiled as I entered his office. Then he extended his right arm and said, "Heil, Fiorello!" I snapped to attention, extended my right arm and replied, "Heil, Franklin!" And that’s all that was ever said about it.

In May of 1937, news broke of a scandal in six Brooklyn public high schools in which bootleg contraceptives were being sold to students. The German press immediately blamed "the Jew LaGuardia" for this episode of "hair-raising immorality." LaGuardia fired back he had no response to the charge: the only city official competent to deal with the German press allegations was the deputy sanitation commissioner in charge of sewage disposal!

In 1938, after the division of Czechoslovakia and Kristallnacht, LaGuardia stepped up his attacks on the Hitler regime. At a rally of 20,000 anti-Fascists in Madison Square Garden, LaGuardia proclaimed himself unable "adequately to describe the brutality of [Hitler] and his government" and called the Nazi regime a great threat to world peace. Historians David and Jackie Esposito have written, "In the face of large scale indifference to human rights violations abroad and growing isolationism at home . . . LaGuardia reasserted a Progressive’s faith in the rule of reason and the power of enlightened public opinion to face up to the Nazis and confront Hitler." When the U.S. entered the war in 1941, LaGuardia’s principled position was vindicated.

After the war, LaGuardia became the director general of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) from March 29, 1946 to January 1, 1947, where he joined in the efforts to feed the millions of displaced persons in the aftermath of World War II. In his role as director general, LaGuardia visited several DP camps in Europe.

It was recently discovered that among the millions of Jews who were detained at concentration camps during WWII, it is little known that Gemma LaGuardia Gluck, the sister of New York's illustrious Mayor Fiorello LaGaurdia, was among them.





Fiorello Henry La Guardia (/fiəˈrɛloʊ ləˈɡwɑːrdiə/; born Fiorello Enrico La Guardia, Italian pronunciation: [fjoˈrɛllo enˈriːko la ˈɡwardja])[2] (December 11, 1882 – September 20, 1947) was an American politician. He is best known for being the 99th Mayor of New York City for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a Republican. Previously he had been elected to Congress in 1916 and 1918, and again from 1922 through 1930. Irascible, energetic, and charismatic, he craved publicity and is acclaimed as one of the greatest mayors in American history.[3] Only five feet, two inches (1.57 m) tall, he was called "the Little Flower" (Fiorello is Italian for "little flower").

La Guardia, a Republican who appealed across party lines, was very popular in New York during the 1930s. As a New Dealer, he supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, and in turn Roosevelt heavily funded the city and cut off patronage for La Guardia's enemies. La Guardia revitalized New York City and restored public faith in City Hall. He unified the transit system, directed the building of low-cost public housing, public playgrounds, and parks, constructed airports, reorganized the police force, defeated the powerful Tammany Hall political machine, and reestablished employment on merit in place of patronage jobs.[4]

La Guardia was seen as a domineering leader who verged on authoritarian but whose reform politics were carefully tailored to address the sentiments of his diverse constituency. He won elections against the historically corrupt Tammany Hall political system, presided during the Great Depression and World War II, implemented New Deal welfare and public works programs in the city, and gave political support to immigrants and ethnic minorities. He was also supported by President Roosevelt. La Guardia was known as a reform mayor who helped clean out corruption, brought in experts, and made the city responsible for its own citizens. His administration engaged new groups that had been kept out of the political system, gave New York its modern infrastructure, and raised expectations of new levels of urban possibility.

Contents 
1 Early life and career
1.1 Marriages and family
2 Early political career
2.1 Elected to Congress
2.2 President of the Board of Aldermen
2.2.1 Immigration
2.3 Return to Congress
2.3.1 Foreign policy
2.3.2 Champion of the progressive movement
2.3.3 Prohibition
2.3.4 Defeats in 1929 and 1932
3 Mayor of New York
3.1 1933 election
3.2 Agenda
3.3 Ethnic politics
3.4 Crime
3.5 Public works
3.6 1939
3.7 Reform
3.8 Germany
3.8.1 Gemma La Guardia Gluck
4 World War II
5 Later life and death
5.1 Legacy
6 Memorials
7 See also
8 Footnotes
9 Further reading
10 External links
Early life and career
La Guardia was born in Greenwich Village in New York City. His father, Achille La Guardia, was a lapsed Catholic from Cerignola, Italy, and his mother, Irene Coen, was a Jewish woman from Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; his maternal grandmother Fiorina Luzzatto Coen was a Luzzatto, a member of the prestigious Italian-Jewish family of scholars, kabbalists, and poets and had among her ancestors the famous rabbi Samuel David Luzzatto. It was in Trieste that Achille La Guardia met and married Irene.[5] Fiorello La Guardia was raised an Episcopalian and practiced that religion all his life. His middle name "Enrico" was anglicized to "Henry" when he was a child.

He moved to Arizona with his family, where his father had a bandmaster position at Fort Whipple in the U.S. Army. La Guardia attended public schools and high school in Prescott, Arizona.[6] After his father was discharged from his bandmaster position in 1898, Fiorello lived in Trieste.[7] He graduated from the Dwight School, a private school on the Upper West Side of New York City.

La Guardia joined the State Department and served in U.S. consulates in Budapest, Trieste (Austria-Hungary, now Italy), and Fiume (Austria-Hungary, now Rijeka, Croatia), (1901–1906). He returned to the United States to continue his education at New York University. From 1907 to 1910, he worked as an interpreter for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration at the Ellis Island immigration station.

He graduated from New York University School of Law in 1910, was admitted to the bar the same year, and began a law practice in New York City.[6]

Marriages and family
La Guardia married twice. His first wife was Thea Almerigotti, an Istrian immigrant, whom he married on March 8, 1919. In June 1920 they had a daughter, Fioretta Thea, who died May 9, 1921, of spinal meningitis. His first wife died of tuberculosis on November 29, 1921, at the age of 26.[8] In 1929 he married Marie Fisher (1895–1984) who had been his secretary while in Congress; they adopted two children, Eric Henry (born 1930) and Jean Marie (1928–62), the biological daughter of Thea's sister.[9][10]


La Guardia between two Italian officers in front of a Ca.44, c. 1918
Early political career
Elected to Congress
La Guardia became Deputy Attorney General of New York in January 1915.[11] In 1916, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he had a reputation as a fiery and devoted reformer.[12] As a Representative, La Guardia represented an ethnically diverse slum district in East Harlem and, although barred from important committee posts because of his political independence, he was a tireless and vocal champion of progressive causes.[13] La Guardia took office on March 4, 1917, but soon was commissioned into the United States Army Air Service; he rose to the rank of major in command of a unit of Ca.44 bombers on the Italian-Austrian front in World War I. He resigned his seat in Congress on December 31, 1919.

President of the Board of Aldermen

New York Times front page November 5, 1919

La Guardia during his time in Congress, c. 1929.
In 1919, La Guardia was chosen to run as the Republican candidate for the office of President of the New York City Board of Aldermen. His Democratic opponent was Robert L. Moran, an alderman from the Bronx who had succeeded to the Board presidency in 1918 when Alfred E. Smith, who had been elected board president in 1917, became governor.[14] Michael "Dynamite Mike" Kelly, commander of New York's Third "Shamrock" Battalion, also joined the race. Tammany Hall looked with alarm upon Kelly's entrance into the campaign and tried to persuade him to withdraw his candidacy and throw his support behind Moran. When he refused, Tammany went to the New York Supreme Court and successfully sued to keep Kelly's name off the ballot.[15] When Election Day arrived, over 3,500 of Kelly's supporters wrote Kelly's name on the ballot.[15] This number was sufficient to defeat Moran, who lost to La Guardia by 1,363 votes.[16]

Immigration
As the son of Italian immigrants and an interpreter on Ellis Island between 1907 and 1910, La Guardia had experienced how immigration policies affected the families that came to the United States. He wanted a change for the immigrants, especially with the immigrant medical examinations that took place on Ellis Island. His passion for justice among immigrants, and his ability to speak Italian, Yiddish, and Croatian helped him in his endeavor for justice amongst immigrant factory workers and set him on his path in public service.[17]

Return to Congress
La Guardia, running as a Republican, won a seat in Congress from the Italian stronghold of East Harlem in 1922 and served in the House until March 3, 1933.[13] A leading liberal reformer, La Guardia sponsored labor legislation and railed against immigration quotas. His major legislation was the Norris–La Guardia Act, cosponsored with Nebraska senator George Norris in 1932. It circumvented Supreme Court limitations on the activities of labor unions, especially as those limitations were imposed between the enactment of the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914 and the end of the 1920s. Based on the theory that the lower courts are creations not of the Constitution but of Congress, and that Congress therefore has wide power in defining and restricting their jurisdiction, the act forbids issuance of injunctions to sustain anti-union contracts of employment, to prevent ceasing or refusing to perform any work or remain in any relation of employment, or to restrain acts generally constituting component parts of strikes, boycotts, and picketing. It also said courts could no longer enforce yellow-dog contracts, which are labor contracts prohibiting a worker from joining a union.[18][19]

Foreign policy
Never an isolationist, he supported using American influence abroad on behalf of democracy or for national independence or against autocracy. Thus he supported the Irish independence movement and the anti-czarist Russian Revolution of 1917, but did not approve of Vladimir Lenin. Unlike most progressive colleagues, such as Norris, La Guardia consistently backed internationalism, speaking in favor of the League of Nations and the Inter-Parliamentary Union as well as peace and disarmament conferences. In domestic policies he tended toward socialism and wanted to nationalize and regulate; however he was never close to the Socialist Party and never bothered to read Karl Marx.[20]

Champion of the progressive movement
As a congressman, La Guardia was a tireless and vocal champion of progressive causes, from allowing more immigration and removing U.S. troops from Nicaragua to speaking up for the rights and livelihoods of striking miners, impoverished farmers, oppressed minorities, and struggling families. A thorn in the side of the era's plutocrats and their enablers in government, he fought for progressive income taxes, greater government oversight of Wall Street, and national employment insurance for workers idled by the Great Depression.[13]

Prohibition
La Guardia was one of the first Republicans to voice his opinion about prohibition, urging that the Dry cause "would prove disastrous in the long run". This was breaking a taboo, given the fact that both parties "avoided taking a stand on prohibition issues" at the time.[21][22]

Defeats in 1929 and 1932
As a Republican, La Guardia had to support Harding in 1920; he had to be silent in the 1928 campaign although he favored Al Smith, a Democrat. In 1929, he lost the election for mayor to incumbent Democrat Jimmy Walker by a landslide.[23] In 1932 he was defeated for re-election to the House by James J. Lanzetta, the Democratic candidate; 1932 was not a good year for Republican candidates like La Guardia, and the 20th Congressional district was shifting from a Jewish and Italian-American population to a Puerto Rican population. However, it has also been argued that powerful Tammany Hall boss Jimmy Hines was able to successfully get enough votes forged to get La Guardia unseated in this election as well.[24]

Mayor of New York
1933 election
Walker and his Irish-run Tammany Hall were forced out of office by scandal and La Guardia was determined to replace him. First he had to win the nomination of both the Republican party and also the "Fusion" group of independents. He was not the first choice of either, for they distrusted Italians. On the other hand, La Guardia had enormous determination, high visibility, the support of reformer Samuel Seabury and the ability to ruin the prospects of any rival by a divisive primary contest. He secured the nominations and expected an easy win against hapless incumbent Mayor John P. O'Brien. However, at the last minute Joseph V. McKee entered the race as the nominee of the new "Recovery party". McKee was a formidable opponent because he was sponsored by Bronx Democratic boss Edward J. Flynn and apparently was favored by President Franklin Roosevelt. La Guardia made corruption his main issue. The campaign saw mud slung three ways, with La Guardia denounced as a far-left "Red", O'Brien as a pawn of the bosses, and McKee as an anti-Semite. La Guardia's win was based on a complex coalition of regular Republicans (mostly middle class German Americans in the boroughs outside Manhattan), a minority of reform-minded Democrats, some Socialists, a large proportion of middle-class Jews, and the great majority of Italians. The Italians had been loyal to Tammany; their switch proved decisive.[25]

Agenda

La Guardia and Franklin D. Roosevelt
La Guardia came to office in January 1934 with five main goals:[26]

Restore the financial health and break free from the bankers' control
Expand the federally funded work-relief program for the unemployed
End corruption in government and racketeering in key sectors of the economy
Replace patronage with a merit-based civil service, with high prestige
Modernize the infrastructure, especially transportation and parks
He achieved most of the first four goals in his first hundred days, as FDR gave him 20% of the entire national CWA budget for work relief. La Guardia then collaborated closely with Robert Moses, with support from the governor, Democrat Herbert Lehman, to upgrade the decaying infrastructure. The city was favored by the New Deal in terms of funding for public works projects.

Ethnic politics
La Guardia governed in an uneasy alliance with New York's Jews and liberal WASPs, together with ethnic Italians and Germans.[27]

La Guardia was not an orthodox Republican. He also ran as the nominee of the American Labor Party, a union-dominated anti-Tammany left wing group that supported Franklin D. Roosevelt for president beginning in 1936. La Guardia supported Roosevelt, chairing the Committee of Independent Voters for Roosevelt and Wallace with Senator George Norris during the 1940 presidential election.

La Guardia was the city's first Italian-American mayor, but was not a typical Italian New Yorker. He was a Republican Episcopalian who had grown up in Arizona and had a Triestine Jewish mother[5] and a lapsed Catholic father. He spoke several languages, reportedly including Hebrew, Croatian, German, Italian, and Yiddish.[citation needed] It served him well during a contentious congressional campaign in 1922. When Henry Frank, a Jewish opponent, accused him of anti-Semitism, La Guardia rejected the suggestion that he publicly disclose that his mother was Jewish as "self-serving". Instead, La Guardia dictated an open letter in Yiddish that was also printed in Yiddish. In it, he challenged Frank to publicly and openly debate the issues of the campaign "ENTIRELY IN THE YIDDISH LANGUAGE.” Frank, although he was Jewish, could not speak the language and was forced to decline—and lost the election.[citation needed]

Crime
La Guardia loathed the gangsters who brought a negative stereotype and shame to the Italian community.[28] His first action as mayor was to order the chief of police to arrest mob boss Lucky Luciano on whatever charges could be found. La Guardia then went after the gangsters with a vengeance, stating in a radio address to the people of New York in his high-pitched, squeaky voice, "Let's drive the bums out of town". In 1934 he went on a search-and-destroy mission looking for mob boss Frank Costello's slot machines, which La Guardia executed with gusto, rounding up thousands of the "one armed bandits", swinging a sledgehammer and dumping them off a barge into the water for the newspapers and media. In 1935 La Guardia appeared at The Bronx Terminal Market to institute a citywide ban on the sale, display, and possession of artichokes, whose prices were inflated by mobs. When prices went down, the ban was lifted.[29] In 1936, La Guardia had special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, a future Republican presidential candidate, single out Lucky Luciano for prosecution. Dewey led a successful investigation into Luciano's lucrative prostitution operation, eventually sending Luciano to jail with a 30–50 year sentence. The case was made into the 1937 movie Marked Woman, starring Bette Davis.

La Guardia proved successful in shutting down the burlesque theaters, whose shows offended his puritanical sensibilities.[30]

Public works
La Guardia's admirers credit him with, among other things, restoring the economic lifeblood of New York City during and after the Great Depression. He is given credit for many massive public works programs administered by his powerful Parks Commissioner Robert Moses and employed thousands of voters. The mayor's relentless lobbying for federal funds allowed New York to develop its economic infrastructure.[31]

To obtain large-scale federal money the mayor became a close partner of Roosevelt and New Deal agencies such as CWA, PWA and WPA, which poured $1.1 billion into the city from 1934–39. In turn he gave FDR a showcase for New Deal achievement, helped defeat FDR's political enemies in Tammany Hall (the Democratic party machine in Manhattan). He and Moses built highways, bridges and tunnels, transforming the physical landscape of New York City. The West Side Highway, East River Drive, Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, Triborough Bridge, and two airports (LaGuardia Airport, and, later, Idlewild, now JFK Airport) were built during his mayoralty.[32]

1939
1939 was a busy year, as he opened the 1939 New York World's Fair at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, opened New York Municipal Airport No. 2 in Queens (later renamed Fiorello H. LaGuardia Field), and had the city buy out the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and Brooklyn–Manhattan Transit Corporation, thus completing the public takeover of the subway system. When the city's newspapers were closed by a strike he famously read the comics on the radio.[33]

Reform
Responding to popular disdain for the sometimes corrupt City Council, La Guardia successfully proposed a reformed 1938 City Charter that created a powerful new New York City Board of Estimate, similar to a corporate board of directors.

Germany
He was an outspoken and early critic of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. In a public address in 1934, La Guardia warned that "part of Hitler's program is the complete annihilation of the Jews in Germany". In 1937, speaking before the Women's Division of the American Jewish Congress, he called for the creation of a special pavilion at the upcoming New York World's Fair, "a chamber of horrors" for "that brown-shirted fanatic".[34] He also encouraged the boycotting of German goods, led anti-Nazi rallies, and promoted legislation to facilitate the U.S. rescue of the Jewish refugees.[35]

Gemma La Guardia Gluck
La Guardia's sister, Gemma La Guardia Gluck (1881–1962),[36] and brother-in-law, Herman Gluck (a Hungarian Jew whom she met while teaching English in Europe), were living in Hungary and were arrested by the Gestapo on June 7, 1944,[37] when the Nazis took control of Budapest. Adolf Eichmann and Heinrich Himmler knew that Gemma was La Guardia's sister and ordered her to be held as a political prisoner. She and Herman Gluck were deported to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, where he died, as Gemma learned from reading a newspaper account a year after her own release.[38][39] She was transferred from Mauthausen to the notorious women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück, located some fifty miles from Berlin, where unbeknownst to Gemma at the time, her daughter Yolanda[36] (whose husband also died in the camps[40]) and baby grandson were also held for a year in a separate barracks.[41] Gemma Gluck, who was held in Block II of the camp and assigned prisoner #44139,[37] was one of the few survivors of this camp[42] and wrote about her time at Ravensbrück. [43][44] She also wrote that the Soviets were "violating girls and women of all ages", and about her, her daughter's and grandson's suffering as displaced persons in postwar Berlin, where the Germans abandoned them for a possible hostage exchange in April 1945, as the Russians were advancing. Gemma and her family did not speak German, and had no identity papers, money, or means of documenting where they had been. Gemma finally managed to get word to the Americans who contacted La Guardia, who had no idea where they were. He worked to get them on the immigration lists, but asserted in a letter, included in the appendix of Gemma's memoir, that her "case was the same as that of hundreds of thousands of displaced people" and "no exceptions can be made". Thus, despite Gemma's intimate connection with a powerful American politician, who was then director of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), it took two years for her to be cleared and sent to the United States. She returned to New York in May 1947, where she was reunited with her brother only four months before he died. As he had made no provision for her, she lived in very reduced circumstances, in a public housing project in Queens, New York, until her death in 1962.[36][45] Gluck is one of the few American-born women interned by the Nazis. (Another was Virginia d'Albert-Lake.)

World War II
In 1941 during the run-up to American involvement in World War II, President Roosevelt appointed La Guardia first director of the new Office of Civilian Defense (OCD). Roosevelt was an admirer of La Guardia; after meeting Winston Churchill for the first time he described him as "an English Mayor La Guardia".[46] The OCD was the national agency responsible for preparing for blackouts, air raid wardens, sirens, and shelters in case of German air raids. The government knew that such air raids were impossible but the goal was to psychologically mobilize many thousands of middle class volunteers to make them feel part of the war effort. La Guardia remained Mayor of New York, shuttling back and forth with three days in Washington and four in the city in an effort to do justice to two herculean jobs. On top of this, he still performed other gestures, such as arranging police protection with his personal assurances for local artists Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, when they were threatened by Nazi supporters for their new patriotic comic book superhero, Captain America.[47] After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, his role was turned over to full-time director of OCD, James M. Landis. La Guardia's popularity slipped away and he ran so poorly in straw polls in 1945 that he did not run for a fourth term.[48]

Unemployment ended, and the city was a gateway for military supplies and soldiers sent to Europe, with the Brooklyn Navy Yard providing many of the warships and the garment trade providing uniforms. The city's great financiers, however, were less important in decision making than the policy makers in Washington, and very high wartime taxes were not offset by heavy war spending. New York was not a center of heavy industry and did not see a wartime boom, as defense plants were built elsewhere.[49] FDR refused to make La Guardia a general and was unable to provide fresh money for the city. By 1944 the city was short of funds to pay for La Guardia's new programs.[50]

Later life and death

The grave of Fiorello La Guardia
La Guardia was the director general for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1946.

A man of short stature, La Guardia's height is sometimes given as 5 feet 0 inches (1.52 m). According to an article in The New York Times, however, his actual height was 5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m).[51]

La Guardia was a Freemason and was a member of Garibaldi Lodge #542, in New York City.[52]

He died of pancreatic cancer in his home at 5020 Goodridge Avenue, in the Riverdale section of The Bronx on September 20, 1947, aged 64[53] and is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.[54]

Legacy
La Guardia was ranked first among the nation's mayors in a 1993 poll of historians and social scientists.[4][55] According to biographer Mason B. Williams, his close collaboration with Roosevelt's New Deal proved a striking success in linking national money and local needs.[56] La Guardia enabled the political recognition new groups that had been largely excluded from the political system, such as Jews and Italians.[57] His administration (in cooperation with Robert Moses) gave New York its modern infrastructure.[31] His far-sighted goals raised ambitions for new levels of urban possibility. According to Thomas Kessner, trends since his tenure mean that "people would be afraid of allowing anybody to take that kind of power".[4]

Memorials

14¢ Fiorello LaGuardia U.S. postage stamp issued April 24, 1972.

The footstone of Fiorello La Guardia
In 1972 the United States Postal Service honored La Guardia with a 14-cent postage stamp.

New York's LaGuardia Airport, LaGuardia Community College, and other parks and buildings around New York City are named for him.

A strong supporter of Zionism, LaGuardia Street and LaGuardia interchange both in Tel Aviv, Israel, were named in his honor.

Known for his love of music, La Guardia was noted for spontaneously conducting professional and student orchestras and was instrumental in the creation of the High School of Music & Art in 1936, now renamed the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts.[58]

La Guardia was a fictionalized character in many films – in Ghostbusters II La Guardia's ghost talks to New York Mayor Lenny (played by David Margulies). He was also the subject of the hit Broadway musical Fiorello!, portrayed by actor Tom Bosley and in The Little Flower, portrayed by Tony Lo Bianco. Fiorello! won a Pulitzer Prize, and ran for two years (1959–1961).


Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest borough of New York City in area. It is bordered by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long Island to its west,[4] and Nassau County to its east. Queens also shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island (via the Rockaways).

With a population of 2,405,464 as of the 2020 census,[2] Queens is the second most populous county in the State of New York, second to Kings County (Brooklyn), and is therefore also the second most populous of the five New York City boroughs. Were it a city, Queens would rank as the fourth most-populous in the U.S. Approximately 47 percent of the residents of Queens are foreign-born.[5] Queens is the most linguistically diverse place on Earth and is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States.[6][7][8]

Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of the Province of New York. The settlement was presumably named for the English Queen Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705).[9][10] From 1683 to 1899, the County of Queens included what is now Nassau County. Queens became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, combining the separate towns of Long Island City, Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica, and western Hempstead.[11] With the exception of Hempstead, all are today considered neighborhoods of Queens.

Queens has the most diversified economy of the five boroughs of New York City.[12] It is home to two of New York City's airports: John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia. Landmarks in Queens which support its economy include Flushing Meadows–Corona Park; Citi Field, home to the New York Mets baseball team; the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, site of the U.S. Open tennis tournament; Kaufman Astoria Studios; Silvercup Studios; and the Aqueduct Racetrack. Flushing is undergoing rapid gentrification with investment by Chinese transnational entities,[13] while Long Island City is undergoing gentrification secondary to its proximity across the East River from Manhattan.

The borough has diverse housing, ranging from high-rise apartment buildings in some areas of western and central Queens, such as Ozone Park, Jackson Heights, Flushing, Astoria, and Long Island City, to neighborhoods with many low-rise structures in the eastern part of the borough.[14][15]


Contents
1 History
1.1 Colonial and post-colonial history
1.2 Incorporation as borough
2 Geography
2.1 Climate
3 Neighborhoods
4 Demographics
4.1 Ethnic groups
4.2 Languages
4.3 Religion
5 Culture
5.1 Food
6 Economy
7 Sports
8 Government
8.1 Representatives in Congress
9 Education
9.1 Elementary and secondary education
9.2 Postsecondary institutions
9.3 Queens Public Library
10 Transportation
10.1 Vehicles for hire
10.2 Roundtrip car sharing
10.3 Micromobility
10.4 Airports
10.5 Public transportation
10.6 Roads
11 Notable people
12 In popular culture
13 The Cemetery Belt
14 See also
15 Notes
16 References
17 Further reading
18 External links
History
For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Queens.
Colonial and post-colonial history

Catherine of Braganza, Queen of England
The first European settlement in the region were the Dutch, who established the colony of New Netherland. The first settlements were established in 1635 followed by further settlement at Maspeth in 1642 (ultimately unsuccessful),[16] and Vlissingen (now Flushing) in 1645.[17] Other early settlements included Newtown (now Elmhurst) in 1652 and Jamaica in 1655. However, these towns were mostly inhabited by English settlers from New England via eastern Long Island (Suffolk County) who were subject to Dutch law.[18] After the capture of the colony by the English and its subsequent renaming as New York in 1664, the area (and all of Long Island) became known as Yorkshire.[19]: xi–xii 

The Flushing Remonstrance signed by colonists in 1657 is considered a precursor to the United States Constitution's provision on freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights. The signers protested the Dutch colonial authorities' persecution of Quakers in what is today the borough of Queens.

Part of a series on
Long Island
Long Island—Title.svg
Topics
GeographyHistoryEconomyEducationTransportationPoliticsPeopleTallest buildingsRecreationLaw enforcementViticulture
Regions
BrooklynQueens
Nassau CountySuffolk County
Municipalities
North ShoreSouth Shore
North ForkSouth Fork
Long Island SoundBarrier islands
vte
Originally, Queens County included the adjacent area now comprising Nassau County. It was an original county of New York State, one of twelve created on November 1, 1683.[19]: 121–122  The county is assumed to have been named after Catherine of Braganza, since she was queen of England at the time (she was Portugal's royal princess Catarina, daughter of King John IV of Portugal).[10][9] The county was founded alongside Kings County (Brooklyn, which was named after her husband, King Charles II), and Richmond County (Staten Island, named after his illegitimate son, the 1st Duke of Richmond).[20][21][22] However, the namesake is disputed. While Catherine's title seems the most likely namesake, no historical evidence of official declaration has been found.[23] On October 7, 1691, all counties in the Colony of New York were redefined. Queens gained North and South Brother Islands as well as Huletts Island (today known as Rikers Island).[19]: 268  On December 3, 1768, Queens gained other islands in Long Island Sound that were not already assigned to a county but that did not abut on Westchester County (today's Bronx County).[19]: 1062–1063 

Queens played a minor role in the American Revolution, as compared to Brooklyn, where the Battle of Long Island was largely fought. Queens, like the rest of what became New York City and Long Island, remained under British occupation after the Battle of Long Island in 1776 and was occupied throughout most of the rest of the Revolutionary War. Under the Quartering Act, British soldiers used, as barracks, the public inns and uninhabited buildings belonging to Queens residents. Even though many residents opposed unannounced quartering, they supported the British crown. The quartering of soldiers in private homes, except in times of war, was banned by the Third Amendment to the United States Constitution. Nathan Hale was captured by the British on the shore of Flushing Bay and hanged in Manhattan.

From 1683 until 1784, Queens County consisted of five towns: Flushing, Hempstead, Jamaica, Newtown, and Oyster Bay. On April 6, 1784, a sixth town, the Town of North Hempstead, was formed through secession by the northern portions of the Town of Hempstead.[24][25] The seat of the county government was located first in Jamaica,[26] but the courthouse was torn down by the British during the American Revolution to use the materials to build barracks.[27] After the war, various buildings in Jamaica temporarily served as courthouse and jail until a new building was erected about 1787 (and later completed) in an area near Mineola (now in Nassau County) known then as Clowesville.[28][29][30][31]

The 1850 United States census was the first in which the population of the three western towns exceeded that of the three eastern towns that are now part of Nassau County. Concerns were raised about the condition and distance of the old courthouse, and several sites were in contention for the construction of a new one.[32]

In 1870, Long Island City split from the Town of Newtown, incorporating itself as a city, consisting of what had been the village of Astoria and some unincorporated areas within the town of Newtown. Around 1874, the seat of county government was moved to Long Island City from Mineola.[33][34][35][36]

On March 1, 1860, the eastern border between Queens County (later Nassau County) and Suffolk County was redefined with no discernible change.[37] On June 8, 1881, North Brother Island was transferred to New York County.[38] On May 8, 1884, Rikers Island was transferred to New York County.[39]


Queens Boulevard, looking east from Van Dam Street, in 1920. The newly built IRT Flushing Line is in the boulevard's median.
In 1886, Lloyd's Neck, which was then part of the town of Oyster Bay and had earlier been known as Queens Village, was set off and separated from Queens County and annexed to the town of Huntington in Suffolk County.[40][41][42] On April 16, 1964, South Brother Island was transferred to Bronx County.[43]

Incorporation as borough
See also: History of New York City, List of former municipalities in New York City, and List of streetcar lines in Queens
The New York City borough of Queens was authorized on May 4, 1897, by a vote of the New York State Legislature after an 1894 referendum on consolidation.[44] The eastern 280 square miles (730 km2) of Queens that became Nassau County was partitioned on January 1, 1899.[45] Queens Borough was established on January 1, 1898.[46][47][30]

"The city of Long Island City, the towns of Newtown, Flushing and Jamaica, and that part of the town of Hempstead, in the county of Queens, which is westerly of a straight line drawn through the middle of the channel between Rockaway Beach and Shelter Island, in the county of Queens, to the Atlantic Ocean" was annexed to New York City,[11] dissolving all former municipal governments (Long Island City, the county government, all towns, and all villages) within the new borough.[48] The areas of Queens County that were not part of the consolidation plan,[35][49][50][51][52][53][54] consisting of the towns of North Hempstead and Oyster Bay, and the major remaining portion of the Town of Hempstead, remained part of Queens County until they seceded to form the new Nassau County on January 1, 1899. At this point, the boundaries of Queens County and the Borough of Queens became coterminous. With consolidation, Jamaica once again became the county seat, though county offices now extend to nearby Kew Gardens also.[55]

In 1899, New York City conducted a land survey to determine the exact border of Queens between the Rockaways and Lawrence. This proved difficult because the border was defined as "middle of the channel between Rockaway Beach and Shelter Island" (now called Long Beach Island), and that particular channel had closed up by 1899. The surveyors had to determine where the channel had been when the consolidation law was written in 1894. The surveyors did so in part by speaking with local fishermen and oystermen who knew the area well.[54]

From 1905 to 1908 the Long Island Rail Road in Queens became electrified. Transportation to and from Manhattan, previously by ferry or via bridges in Brooklyn, opened up with the Queensboro Bridge finished in 1909, and with railway tunnels under the East River in 1910. From 1915 onward, much of Queens was connected to the New York City Subway system.[28][56] With the 1915 construction of the Steinway Tunnel carrying the IRT Flushing Line between Queens and Manhattan, and the robust expansion of the use of the automobile, the population of Queens more than doubled in the 1920s, from 469,042 in 1920 to 1,079,129 in 1930.[57]

In later years, Queens was the site of the 1939 New York World's Fair and the 1964 New York World's Fair. LaGuardia Airport, in northern Queens, opened in 1939. Idlewild Airport, in southern Queens and now called JFK Airport, opened in 1948. In one of several notable incidents, TWA Flight 800 took off from the airport on July 17, 1996. In another, American Airlines Flight 587 took off from the latter airport on November 12, 2001, but ended up crashing in Queens' Belle Harbor area, killing 265 people. In late October 2012, much of Queens' Breezy Point area was destroyed by a massive six-alarm fire caused by Hurricane Sandy.


Looking south from the Queensboro Bridge in Long Island City, this photo was published in 1920 by the Queens Chamber of Commerce to illustrate the borough's "numerous attractive industrial plants."[58]
Geography

Location of Queens (red) within New York City (remainder white)

Aerial view of Queens looking north from the vicinity of John F. Kennedy International Airport, showing development patterns typical of the borough
Queens is located on the far western portion of geographic Long Island and includes a few smaller islands, most of which are in Jamaica Bay, forming part of the Gateway National Recreation Area, which in turn is one of the National Parks of New York Harbor.[59] According to the United States Census Bureau, Queens County has a total area of 178 square miles (460 km2), of which 109 square miles (280 km2) is land and 70 square miles (180 km2) (39%) is water.[60]

Brooklyn, the only other New York City borough on geographic Long Island, lies just south and west of Queens, with Newtown Creek, an estuary that flows into the East River, forming part of the border. To the west and north is the East River, across which is Manhattan to the west and The Bronx to the north. Nassau County is east of Queens on Long Island. Staten Island is southwest of Brooklyn, and shares only a three-mile-long water border (in the Outer Bay) with Queens. North of Queens are Flushing Bay and the Flushing River, connecting to the East River. The East River opens into Long Island Sound. The midsection of Queens is crossed by the Long Island straddling terminal moraine created by the Wisconsin Glacier. The Rockaway Peninsula, the southernmost part of all of Queens, sits between Jamaica Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, featuring 7 miles (11 km) of beaches.[61][62][63]

Climate
Under the Köppen climate classification, using the 32 °F (0 °C) coldest month (January) isotherm, Queens and the rest of New York City have a humid continental climate (Dfa) bordeing humid subtropical climate (Cfa) with partial shielding from the Appalachian Mountains and moderating influences from the Atlantic Ocean. Queens receives precipitation throughout the year, with an average of 44.8 inches (114 cm) per year. In an average year, there will be 44 days with either moderate or heavy rain.[64]

An average winter will have 22 days with some snowfall, of which nine days have at least 1 inch (2.5 cm) of snowfall.[64] Summer is typically hot, humid, and wet. An average year will have 17 days with a high temperature of 90 °F (32 °C) or warmer.[64] In an average year, there are 14 days on which the temperature does not go above 32 °F (0 °C) all day.[64] Spring and autumn can vary from chilly to very warm.

The highest temperature ever recorded at LaGuardia Airport was 107 °F (42 °C) on July 3, 1966.[65][64] The highest temperature ever recorded at John F. Kennedy International Airport was 104 °F (40 °C), also on July 3, 1966.[65][66] LaGuardia Airport's record-low temperature was −7 °F (−22 °C) on February 15, 1943, the effect of which was exacerbated by a shortage of heating oil and coal.[64][67] John F. Kennedy International Airport's record-low temperature was −2 °F (−19 °C), on February 8, 1963, and January 21, 1985.[66][68][69] On January 24, 2016, 30.5 inches (77 cm) of snow fell, which is the record in Queens.[70]

Tornadoes are generally rare; the most recent tornado, an EF0, touched down in College Point on August 3, 2018, causing minor damage.[71] Before that, there was a tornado in Breezy Point on September 8, 2012, which damaged the roofs of some homes,<[72] and an EF1 tornado in Flushing on September 26, 2010.[73]

Climate data for JFK Airport, New York (1991–2020 normals,[a] extremes 1948–present)

Neighborhoods
Main article: Neighborhoods of New York City
See also: List of Queens neighborhoods

A typical residential street in Jackson Heights

Long Island City, a neighborhood in western Queens

Forest Hills Gardens
Four United States Postal Service postal zones serve Queens, based roughly on those serving the towns in existence at the consolidation of the five boroughs into New York City: Long Island City (ZIP codes starting with 111), Jamaica (114), Flushing (113), and Far Rockaway (116). Also, the Floral Park post office (110), based in Nassau County, serves a small part of northeastern Queens. Each of these main post offices has neighborhood stations with individual ZIP codes, and unlike the other boroughs, these station names are often used in addressing letters. These ZIP codes do not always reflect traditional neighborhood names and boundaries; "East Elmhurst", for example, was largely coined by the USPS and is not an official community. Most neighborhoods have no solid boundaries. The Forest Hills and Rego Park neighborhoods, for instance, overlap.

Residents of Queens often closely identify with their neighborhood rather than with the borough or city. The borough is a patchwork of dozens of unique neighborhoods, each with its own distinct identity:

Flushing, one of the largest neighborhoods in Queens, has a large and growing Asian community. The community consists of Chinese, Koreans, and South Asians. Asians have now expanded eastward along the Northern Boulevard axis through Murray Hill, Whitestone, Bayside, Douglaston–Little Neck, and eventually into adjacent Nassau County.[77][78] These neighborhoods historically contained Italian Americans and Greeks, as well as Latino Americans. The busy intersection of Main Street, Kissena Boulevard, and 41st Avenue defines the center of Downtown Flushing and the Flushing Chinatown (法拉盛華埠), known as the "Chinese Times Square" or the "Chinese Manhattan".[79][80] The segment of Main Street between Kissena Boulevard and Roosevelt Avenue, punctuated by the Long Island Rail Road trestle overpass, represents the cultural heart of the Flushing Chinatown. Housing over 25,000 individuals born in China alone, Flushing has become home to one of the largest Chinatowns, representing the largest Chinese population of any U.S. municipality other than New York City in total.[81]
Howard Beach, Whitestone, and Middle Village are home to large Italian American populations.
Ozone Park and South Ozone Park have large Italian, Hispanic, and Guyanese populations.
Rockaway Beach has a large Irish American population.
Astoria, in the northwest, is traditionally home to one of the largest Greek populations outside Greece. It also has large Spanish American and Italian American communities, and is home to a growing population of immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia, the Balkans as well as young professionals from Manhattan. Nearby Long Island City is a major commercial center and the home to Queensbridge, the largest housing project in North America.
Maspeth and Ridgewood are home to many Eastern European immigrants such as Romanian, Polish, Serbian, Albanian, and other Slavic populations. Ridgewood also has a large Hispanic population.
Jackson Heights and Elmhurst make up a conglomeration of Hispanic, Asian, Tibetan, and South Asian communities. Jackson Heights is also known as "Little Colombia" thanks to the gastronomical and demographic impact of Colombian people.[82]
Woodside is home to a large Filipino American community and has a "Little Manila" as well a large Irish American population. Many Filipino Americans live in Hollis and Queens Village.
Richmond Hill, in the south, is often thought of as "Little Guyana" for its large Guyanese community,[83] as well as Punjab Avenue (ਪੰਜਾਬ ਐਵੇਨਿਊ), or Little Punjab, for its high concentration of Punjabi people.
Rego Park, Forest Hills, Kew Gardens, and Kew Gardens Hills have traditionally large Jewish populations (historically from Germany and Eastern Europe; though more recent immigrants are from Israel, Iran, and the former Soviet Union). These neighborhoods are also known for large and growing Asian communities, mainly immigrants from China.
Jamaica Estates, Jamaica Hills, Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, and Hollis Hills are also populated with many people of Jewish background. Many Asian families reside in parts of Fresh Meadows as well.
Jamaica is home to large African American, Caribbean, and Central American populations. There are also middle-class African American and Caribbean neighborhoods such as Saint Albans, Queens Village, Cambria Heights, Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, Laurelton, and Briarwood along east and southeast Queens.
Bellerose and Floral Park, originally home to many Irish Americans, is home to a growing South Asian population, predominantly Indian Americans.
Corona and Corona Heights, once considered the "Little Italy" of Queens, was a predominantly Italian community with a strong African American community in the northern portion of Corona and adjacent East Elmhurst. From the 1920s through the 1960s, Corona remained a close-knit neighborhood. Corona today has the highest concentration of Latinos of any Queens neighborhood, with an increasing Chinese American population, located between Elmhurst and Flushing.[84]
Demographics
Main article: Demographics of Queens
Historical population
Census Pop. %±
1790 16,014 —
1800 16,916 5.6%
1810 19,336 14.3%
1820 21,519 11.3%
1830 22,460 4.4%
1840 30,324 35.0%
1850 36,833 21.5%
1860 57,391 55.8%
1870 73,803 28.6%
1880 90,574 22.7%
1890 128,059 41.4%
1900 152,999 19.5%
1910 284,041 85.6%
1920 469,042 65.1%
1930 1,079,129 130.1%
1940 1,297,634 20.2%
1950 1,550,849 19.5%
1960 1,809,578 16.7%
1970 1,986,473 9.8%
1980 1,891,325 −4.8%
1990 1,951,598 3.2%
2000 2,229,379 14.2%
2010 2,230,722 0.1%
2020 2,405,464 7.8%
U.S. Decennial Census[85]
1790-1960[86] 1900-1990[86] 1990-2000[87] 2010-2018[5] 2020[2]
New York City's five boroughsvte
Jurisdiction Population GDP † Land area Density of population
Borough County Census
(2020) billions
(2012 US$) square
miles square
km persons/
mi2 persons/
km2
The Bronx
Bronx
1,472,654 $ 36.938 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482
Brooklyn
Kings
2,736,074 $ 86.151 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227
Manhattan
New York
1,694,263 $ 610.386 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872
Queens
Queens
2,405,464 '$' 82.328 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542
Staten Island
Richmond
495,747 $ 14.270 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327
City of New York
8,804,190 $  830.072 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234
State of New York
20,215,751 $ 1,724.759 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166
† GDP = Gross Domestic Product    Sources:[88][89][90][91] and see individual borough articles.
Racial composition 2020[92] 2018[93][5] 2010[94] 1990[95] 1970[95] 1950[95]
White 25.8% 27.9% 39.7% 57.9% 85.3% 96.5%
—Non-Hispanic 22.8% 25.0% 27.6% 48.0% n/a n/a
Black or African American 16.8% 20.7% 19.1% 21.7% 13.0% 3.3%
Hispanic or Latino (of any race) 27.8% 28.1% 27.5% 19.5% 7.7%[96] n/a
Asian 27.5% 26.8% 22.9% 12.2% 1.1% 0.1%

The Elmhurst Chinatown (艾姆赫斯特 唐人街) at the corner of Broadway and Dongan Avenue

Street scene in Astoria, a largely Greek-American neighborhood
At the 2020 census, 2,405,464 people lived in Queens. In 2018's American Community Survey, the population of Queens was estimated by the United States Census Bureau to have increased to 2,278,906, a rise of 2.2%. Queens' estimated population represented 27.1% of New York City's population of 8,398,748; 29.6% of Long Island's population of 7,701,172; and 11.7% of New York State's population of 19,542,209. The 2019 estimates reported a decline to 2,253,858.[93] In 2018, there were 865,878 housing units, and 777,904 households, 2.97 persons per household, and a median value of $481,300. There was an owner-occupancy rate of 44.5.[93] In the 2010 United States census, Queens recorded a population of 2,230,722. There were 780,117 households enumerated, with an average of 2.82 persons per household. The population density was 20,465.3 inhabitants per square mile (7,966.9/km2). There were 835,127 housing units at an average density of 7,661.7 per square mile (2,982.6/km2).

The racial makeup of the county in 2010 was 39.7% White, 19.1% Black or African American, 0.7% Native American, 22.9% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12.9% from other races, and 4.5% from two or more races. A total of 27.5% of the population were Hispanic or Latin American of any race. The non-Hispanic white population was 27.6%.[94] In 2019, non-Hispanic whites made up an estimated 24.4% of the population, and Blacks or African Americans were 17.3%.[93] The largest minority groups for the borough were Hispanic and Latin Americans (28.2%), and Asians (26.0%).

In Queens, residents consisted of 6.2% under 5, 13.9% 6–18, 64.2% 19–64, and 15.7% over 65. Females made up 51.5% of the population. An estimated 47.5% of residents are foreign-born in 2018. The per capita income was $28,814, and the median household income was $62,008. In 2018, 12.2% of residents lived below the poverty line.

The New York City Department of City Planning was alarmed by the negligible reported increase in population between 2000 and 2010. Areas with high proportions of immigrants and undocumented aliens are traditionally undercounted for a variety of reasons, often based on a mistrust of government officials or an unwillingness to be identified. In many cases, counts of vacant apartment units did not match data from local surveys and reports from property owners.[97]

Ethnic groups
According to a 2001 Claritas study, Queens was the most diverse county in the United States among counties of 100,000+ population.[98] A 2014 analysis by The Atlantic found Queens County to be the third most racially diverse county-equivalent in the United States—behind Aleutians West Census Area and Aleutians East Borough in Alaska—as well as the most diverse county in New York.[7] Meanwhile, a 2017 study by Axios found that, although numerous smaller counties in the United States had higher rates of diversity, Queens was the United States' most diverse populous county.[8]

In Queens, approximately 48.5% of the population was foreign born as of 2010. Within the foreign born population, 49.5% were born in Latin America, 33.5% in Asia, 14.8% in Europe, 1.8% in Africa, and 0.4% in North America. Roughly 2.1% of the population was born in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, or abroad to American parents. In addition, 51.2% of the population was born in the United States. Approximately 44.2% of the population over 5 years of age speak English at home; 23.8% speak Spanish at home. Also, 16.8% of the populace speak other Indo-European languages at home. Another 13.5% speak a non-Indo-European Asian language or language of the Pacific Islands at home.[99]


Little India in Jackson Heights
Among the Asian population in 2010, people of Chinese ethnicity made up the largest ethnic group at 10.2% of Queens' population, with about 237,484 people; the other East and Southeast Asian groups are: Koreans (2.9%), Filipinos (1.7%), Japanese (0.3%), Thais (0.2%), Vietnamese (0.2%), and Indonesians and Burmese both make up 0.1% of the population.[100] People of South Asian descent made up 7.8% of Queens' population: Indians (5.3%), Bangladeshi (1.5%), Pakistanis (0.7%), and Nepali (0.2%).[100] In 2019, Chinese Americans remained the largest Asian ethnicity (10.9%) followed by Asian Indians (5.7%).[93] Asian Indians had estimated population of 144,896 in 2014 (6.24% of the 2014 borough population),[101] as well as Pakistani Americans, who numbered at 15,604.[102] Queens has the second largest Sikh population in the nation after California.[103]


Ridgewood is home to a large Puerto Rican community
Among the Hispanic or Latin American population, Puerto Ricans made up the largest ethnic group at 4.6%, next to Mexicans, who made up 4.2% of the population, and Dominicans at 3.9%. Central Americans made up 2.4% and are mostly Salvadorans. South Americans constitute 9.6% of Queens's population, mainly of Ecuadorian (4.4%) and Colombian descent (4.2%).[100] The 2019 American Community Survey estimated Mexicans and Puerto Ricans were equally the largest groups (4.5% each) in Queens, and Cuban Americans were the third largest single group. Other Hispanic and Latinos collectively made up 18.9% of the population.[93] The Hispanic or Latino population increased by 61% to 597,773 between 1990 and 2006 and now accounts for over 26.5% of the borough's population.

Queens has the largest Colombian population in the city, accounting for over 35.6% of the city's total Colombian population, for a total of 145,956 in 2019;[82] it also has the largest Ecuadorian population in the city, accounting for 62.2% of the city's total Ecuadorian population, for a total of 101,339. Queens has the largest Peruvian population in the city, accounting for 69.9% of the city's total Peruvian population, for a total of 30,825. Queens has the largest Salvadoran population in the city, accounting for 50.7% of the city for a total population of 25,235. The Mexican population in Queens has increased 45.7% since 2011 to 71,283, the second-highest in the city, after Brooklyn.[104]

Queens is also home to 49.6% of the city's Asian population. Among the five boroughs, Queens has the largest population of Chinese, Indian, Korean, Filipino, Bangladeshi and Pakistani Americans. Queens has the largest Asian American population by county outside the Western United States; according to the 2006 American Community Survey, Queens ranks fifth among US counties with 477,772 (21.18%) Asian Americans, behind Los Angeles County, California, Honolulu County, Hawaii, Santa Clara County, California, and Orange County, California.

Some main European ancestries in Queens as of 2000 include: Italian (8.4%), Irish (5.5%), German (3.5%), Polish (2.7%), Russian (2.3%), and Greek (2.0%). Of the European American population, Queens has the third largest Bosnian population in the United States behind only St. Louis and Chicago, numbering more than 15,000.[105] Queens is home to some 50,000 Armenian Americans.[106]

The Jewish Community Study of New York 2011, sponsored by the UJA-Federation of New York, found that about 9% of Queens residents were Jews.[107] In 2011, there were about 198,000 Jews in Queens, making it home to about 13% of all people in Jewish households in the eight-county area consisting of the Five Boroughs and Westchester, Nassau, and Suffolk counties.[107] Russian-speaking Jews make up 28% of the Jewish population in Queens, the largest in any of the eight counties.[108]

In Queens, the Black and African American population earns more than non-Hispanic whites on average.[109] Many of these Blacks and African Americans live in quiet, middle-class suburban neighborhoods near the Nassau County border, such as Laurelton and Cambria Heights which have large black populations whose family income is higher than average. The migration of European Americans from parts of Queens has been long ongoing with departures from Ozone Park, Woodhaven, Bellerose, Floral Park, and Flushing (most of the outgoing population has been replaced with Asian Americans). Neighborhoods such as Whitestone, College Point, North Flushing, Auburndale, Bayside, Middle Village, and Douglaston–Little Neck have not had a substantial exodus of white residents, but have seen an increase of Asian population, mostly Chinese and Korean. Queens has experienced a real estate boom making most of its neighborhoods desirable for people who want to reside near Manhattan but in a less urban setting.

Languages
According to the office of the New York State Comptroller in 2000, 138 languages are spoken in the borough.[110] Another survey, in 2010, by the Modern Language Association, found that – of those over the age of five residing in Queens – 56.16% spoke a language other than English in the home.

    



Language​
Ages 5+​
%​
Source →
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
English Spanish Chinese Various
Indic
Korean Russian Italian Tagalog Greek French|Creole Polish Hindi Urdu Other
Asian
Other
Indo-|European
French Arabic Serbo-|Croatian Hebrew Various
African
Portu-|guese Per­sian Gu­ja­ra­ti Ger­man Japanese Other
Slav­ic
Other
Pacific|Island
Hun­gar-|i­an Thai Viet-|namese All
non-
English
905,890 493,462 166,570 71,054 56,701 34,596 32,268 31,922 31,651 27,345 24,118 19,868 19,262 18,931 16,435 14,685 12,505 10,008 9,410 8,787 7,364 7,308 6,942 6,927 6,723 4,884 4,667 3,053 2,830 2,636 1,160,483
43.84 23.88 8.06 3.44 2.74 1.67 1.56 1.54 1.53 1.32 1.17 0.96 0.93 0.92 0.80 0.71 0.61 0.48 0.46 0.43 0.36 0.35 0.34 0.34 0.33 0.24 0.23 0.15 0.14 0.13 56.16
MLA Language Map Data Center → "Queens". Modern Language Association. 2010. Retrieved August 10, 2013.
Religion
In 2010 statistics, the largest religious group in Queens was the Diocese of Brooklyn, with 677,520 Roman Catholics worshiping at 100 parishes, followed by an estimated 81,456 Muslims with 57 congregations, 80,000 Orthodox Jews with 110 congregations, 33,325 non-denominational Christian adherents with 129 congregations, 28,085 AME Methodists with 14 congregations, 24,250 Greek Orthodox with 6 congregations, 16,775 Hindus with 18 congregations, 13,989 AoG Pentecostals with 64 congregations, 13,507 Seventh-day Adventists with 45 congregations, and 12,957 Mahayana Buddhists with 26 congregations. Altogether, 49.4% of the population was claimed as members by religious congregations, although members of historically African American denominations were underrepresented due to incomplete information.[111] In 2014, Queens had 738 religious organizations, the thirteenth most out of all U.S. counties.[112]

Culture
See also: Culture of New York City, LGBT culture in New York City § Queens, Music of New York City, and List of people from Queens


2018 Queens Pride Parade: Caribbean Equality Project at top, and the ensuing Multicultural Festival below

Rocket Thrower (1963) at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park
Queens has been the center of the punk rock movement, particularly in New York; Ramones originated out of Forest Hills,[113] it has also been the home of such notable artists as Tony Bennett, Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Simon, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Queens Poet Laureates (generally, 3-year appointments):

1997–2001: Stephen Stepanchev (inaugural Poet Laureate)
2001–2004: Hal Sirowitz (born 1949)
2004–2007: Ishle Yi Park
2007–2010: Julio Marzan
2010–2014: Paolo Javier
2015–2019: Maria Lisella[114]
Queens has notably fostered African American culture, with establishments such as The Afrikan Poetry Theatre and the Black Spectrum Theater Company catering specifically to African Americans in Queens.[115][116] In the 1940s, Queens was an important center of jazz; such jazz luminaries as Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald took up residence in Queens, seeking refuge from the segregation they found elsewhere in New York.[117] Additionally, many notable hip-hop acts hail from Queens, including Nas, Run-D.M.C., Kool G Rap, A Tribe Called Quest, LL Cool J, MC Shan, Mobb Deep, 50 Cent, Nicki Minaj, Tony Yayo, Tragedy Khadafi, N.O.R.E., Capone (rapper), Ja Rule, Heems of Das Racist and Action Bronson.

Queens hosts various museums and cultural institutions that serve its diverse communities. They range from the historical (such as the John Bowne House) to the scientific (such as the New York Hall of Science), from conventional art galleries (such as the Noguchi Museum) to unique graffiti exhibits (such as 5 Pointz). Queens's cultural institutions include, but are not limited to:

5 Pointz
Afrikan Poetry Theatre
Bowne House
Flushing Town Hall
King Manor
MoMA PS1
Museum of the Moving Image
Noguchi Museum
New York Hall of Science
Queens Botanical Garden
Queens Museum of Art
SculptureCenter
Hindu Temple Society of North America
Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning
The travel magazine Lonely Planet also named Queens the top destination in the country for 2015 for its cultural and culinary diversity.[118] Stating that Queens is "quickly becoming its hippest" but that "most travelers haven't clued in... yet,"[119] the Lonely Planet stated that "nowhere is the image of New York as the global melting pot truer than Queens."[120]

Food
The cuisine available in Queens reflects its vast cultural diversity.[121] The cuisine of a particular neighborhood often represents its demographics; for example, Astoria hosts many Greek restaurants, in keeping with its traditionally Greek population.[122] Jackson Heights is known for its prominent Indian cuisine and also many Latin American eateries.[123]

The Queens Night Market in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, operating on Sundays from April to October starting in 2015, contains samples of food from dozens of countries.[124]

Economy
See also: Economy of New York City

JetBlue headquarters in Queens
Queens has the second-largest economy of New York City's five boroughs, following Manhattan. In 2004, Queens had 15.2% (440,310) of all private-sector jobs in New York City and 8.8% of private-sector wages. In 2012, private-sector employment increased to 486,160.[125] Queens has the most diversified economy of the five boroughs, with occupations spread relatively evenly across the health care, retail trade, manufacturing, construction, transportation, and film and television production sectors, such that no single sector is overwhelmingly dominant.[12]

The diversification in Queens' economy is reflected in a large amount of employment in the export-oriented portions of its economy—such as transportation, manufacturing, and business services—that serve customers outside the region. This accounts for more than 27% of all Queens jobs and offers an average salary of $43,727, 14% greater than that of jobs in the locally oriented sector.


Long Island City is one of New York City's fastest-growing neighborhoods.[126]
The borough's largest employment sector—trade, transportation, and utilities—accounted for nearly 30% of all jobs in 2004; in 2012, its largest employment sector became health care and social services.[125] Queens is home to two of the three major New York City area airports, JFK International Airport and LaGuardia Airport. These airports are among the busiest in the world, leading the airspace above Queens to be the most congested in the country. This airline industry is particularly important to the economy of Queens, providing almost one-quarter of the sector's employment and more than 30% of the sector's wages.

Education and health services were the next largest sector in Queens and comprised almost 24% of the borough's jobs in 2004; in 2012, transportation and warehousing, and retail were the second largest at 12% each.[125] The manufacturing and construction industries in Queens are among the largest of the city and accounted for nearly 17% of the borough's private sector jobs in 2004. Comprising almost 17% of the jobs in Queens is the information, financial activities, and business and professional services sectors in 2004.

As of 2003, Queens had almost 40,000 business establishments. Small businesses act as an important part of the borough's economic vitality with two-thirds of all businesses employing between one and four people.

Several large companies have their headquarters in Queens, including watchmaker Bulova, based in East Elmhurst; internationally renowned piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons in Astoria; Glacéau, the makers of Vitamin Water, headquartered in Whitestone; and JetBlue Airways, an airline based in Long Island City.

Long Island City is a major manufacturing and back-office center. Flushing is a major commercial hub for Chinese American and Korean American businesses, while Jamaica is the major civic and transportation hub for the borough.

Sports
See also: Sports in New York City

Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets

Arthur Ashe Stadium interior, US Open 2014
Queens is home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball.[127] Founded in 1962 as an expansion team, the Mets has won 2 World Series championships and 5 National League pennants. Citi Field is a 41,922-seat stadium opened in April 2009 in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park that is the home ballpark of the Mets.[128] Shea Stadium, the former home of the Mets and the New York Jets of the National Football League, as well as the temporary home of the New York Yankees and the New York Giants Football Team stood where Citi Field's parking lot is now located, operating from 1964 to 2008.[129]

The U.S. Open tennis tournament has been played since 1978 at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, located just south of Citi Field.[130] With a capacity of 23,771, Arthur Ashe Stadium is the biggest tennis stadium in the world.[131] The U.S. .Open was formerly played at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills.[132] South Ozone Park is the home of Aqueduct Racetrack, operated by the New York Racing Association and offers Thoroughbred horse-racing from late October/early November through April.[133] Belmont Park Racetrack is mostly in Nassau County; however, a section of the property, including the Belmont Park station on the Long Island Rail Road, is in Queens.

Government
Main article: Government of New York City
United States presidential election results for
Queens[134][135][136] 

Party affiliation of Queens registered voters
Party 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996
Democratic 62.94% 62.52 62.85 62.79 62.99 62.52 62.30 62.27 62.28 62.33
Republican 14.60% 14.66 14.97 15.04 15.28 15.69 16.47 16.74 16.93 17.20
Other 3.88% 3.93 3.94 3.86 3.37 3.30 3.10 3.20 3.02 2.78
No affiliation 18.58% 18.89 18.24 18.31 18.36 18.49 18.13 17.79 17.77 17.69
Since New York City's consolidation in 1898, Queens has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a strong mayor–council system. The centralized New York City government is responsible for public education, correctional institutions, public safety, recreational facilities, sanitation, water supply, and welfare services in Queens. The Queens Library is governed by a 19-member Board of Trustees, appointed by the Mayor of New York City and the Borough President of Queens.

Since 1990 the Borough President has acted as an advocate for the borough at the mayoral agencies, the City Council, the New York state government, and corporations. Queens' Borough President is Donovan Richards, elected in November 2020 as a Democrat. Queens Borough Hall is the seat of government and is located in Kew Gardens.

The Democratic Party holds most public offices. Sixty-three percent of registered Queens voters are Democrats. Local party platforms center on affordable housing, education, and economic development. Controversial political issues in Queens include development, noise, and the cost of housing.


The Queens County Courthouse was built in 1938 and houses the borough's Supreme Court, Surrogate Court and County Clerk.[137]
Each of the city's five counties has its criminal court system and District Attorney, the chief public prosecutor who is directly elected by popular vote. Richard A. Brown, who ran on both the Republican and Democratic Party tickets, was the District Attorney of Queens County from 1991 to 2018. The new DA as of January 2020 is Melinda Katz.[138] Queens has 12 seats on the New York City Council, the second-largest number among the five boroughs. It is divided into 14 community districts, each served by a local Community Board. Community Boards are representative bodies that field complaints and serve as advocates for residents.

Although Queens is heavily Democratic, it is considered a swing county in New York politics. Republican political candidates who do well in Queens usually win citywide or statewide elections. Republicans such as former Mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg won majorities in Queens. Republican State Senator Serphin Maltese represented a district in central and southern Queens for twenty years until his defeat in 2008 by Democratic City Councilman Joseph Addabbo, Jr. In 2002, Queens voted against incumbent Republican Governor of New York George Pataki in favor of his Democratic opponent, Carl McCall by a slim margin.[139]

On the national level, Queens has not voted for a Republican candidate in a presidential election since 1972, when Queens voters chose Richard Nixon over George McGovern. Since the 1996 presidential election, Democratic presidential candidates have received over 70% of the popular vote in Queens.[140] Since the election of Donald Trump, Queens has become known in the United States for its surge in progressive politics and grassroots campaigning.[141]

Representatives in Congress
In 2018, seven Democrats represented Queens in the United States House of Representatives.[142]

Thomas Suozzi (first elected in 2016) represents New York's 3rd congressional district, which covers the northeast Queens neighborhoods of Little Neck, Whitestone, Glen Oaks, and Floral Park. The district also covers the North Shore of Nassau County.[142]
Gregory Meeks (first elected in 1998) represents New York's 5th congressional district, which covers the entire Rockaway Peninsula as well as the southeast Queens neighborhoods of Broad Channel, Cambria Heights, Hollis, Jamaica, Laurelton, Queens Village, Rosedale, Saint Albans, Springfield Gardens, and South Ozone Park. The district also includes John F. Kennedy International Airport.[142]
Grace Meng (first elected in 2012) represents New York's 6th congressional district, which includes the central and eastern Queens neighborhoods of Auburndale, Bayside, Elmhurst, Flushing, Forest Hills, Glendale, Kew Gardens, Maspeth, Middle Village, Murray Hill, and Rego Park.[142]
Nydia Velázquez (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 7th congressional district, which includes the southwest Queens neighborhoods of Maspeth, Ridgewood, and Woodhaven. The district also covers central and western Brooklyn and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.[142]
Hakeem Jeffries (first elected in 2012) represents New York's 8th congressional district, which includes the southwest Queens neighborhoods of Ozone Park and Howard Beach. The district also covers central and southern Brooklyn.[142]
Carolyn Maloney (first elected in 1992) represents New York's 12th congressional district, which includes the western Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, and Maspeth. The district also covers the East Side of Manhattan.[142]
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (first elected in 2018) represents New York's 14th congressional district, which includes the northwest Queens neighborhoods of Astoria, College Point, Corona, East Elmhurst, Jackson Heights, Woodside, and Elmhurst. The district also covers the East Bronx.[142]
Education
See also: Education in New York City and List of high schools in New York City § Queens
Elementary and secondary education
Elementary and secondary school education in Queens is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions. Non-charter public schools in the borough are managed by the New York City Department of Education,[143] the largest public school system in the United States. Most private schools are affiliated with or identify themselves with the Roman Catholic or Jewish religious communities. Townsend Harris High School is a Queens public magnet high school for the humanities consistently ranked as among the top 100 high schools in the United States. One of the nine Specialized High Schools in New York City is located in Queens. Located in the York College, City University of New York Campus in Jamaica, the Queens High School for the Sciences at York College, which emphasizes both science and mathematics, ranks as one of the best high schools in both the state and the country. It is one of the smallest Specialized High Schools that requires an entrance exam, the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test. The school has a student body of around 400 students.

Postsecondary institutions

LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City, Queens

Queens College is part of the City University of New York.
LaGuardia Community College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), is known as "The World's Community College" for its diverse international student body representing more than 150 countries and speaking over 100 languages. The college has been named a National Institution of Excellence by the Policy Center on the First Year of College. In a 2003 benchmark survey, in the Large Community College category (8,000–14,999 students), LaGuardia was one of three community colleges ranked number one, nationally.[144] The college hosts the LaGuardia and Wagner Archives.
Queens College is one of the elite colleges in the CUNY system. Established in 1937 to offer a strong liberal arts education to the residents of the borough, Queens College has over 16,000 students including more than 12,000 undergraduates and over 4,000 graduate students. Students from 120 countries speaking 66 different languages are enrolled at the school, which is located in Flushing. Queens College is also the host of CUNY's law school. The Queens College Campus is also the home of Townsend Harris High School and the Queens College School for Math, Science, and Technology (PS/IS 499).
Queensborough Community College, originally part of the State University of New York, is in Bayside and is now part of CUNY. It prepares students to attend senior colleges mainly in the CUNY system.
St. John's University is a private, coeducational Roman Catholic university founded in 1870 by the Vincentian Fathers. With over 19,000 students, St. John's is known for its pharmacy, business and law programs as well as its men's basketball and soccer teams.
Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology is a private, cutting edge, degree-granting institution located across the Grand Central Parkway from LaGuardia Airport. Its presence underscores the importance of aviation to the Queens economy.
York College is one of CUNY's leading general-purpose liberal arts colleges, granting bachelor's degrees in more than 40 fields, as well as a combined BS/MS degree in Occupational Therapy. Noted for its Health Sciences Programs York College is also home to the Northeast Regional Office of the Food and Drug Administration.
Queens Public Library

A branch of the Queens Public Library in Flushing
The Queens Public Library is the public library system for the borough and one of three library systems serving New York City. Dating back to the foundation of the first Queens library in Flushing in 1858, the Queens Public Library is one of the largest public library systems in the United States. Separate from the New York Public Library, it is composed of 63 branches throughout the borough. In the fiscal year 2001, the Library achieved a circulation of 16.8 million. The Library has maintained the highest circulation of any city library in the country since 1985 and the highest circulation of any library in the nation since 1987. The Library maintains collections in many languages, including Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Haitian Creole, Polish, and six Indic languages, as well as smaller collections in 19 other languages.

Transportation
See also: Transportation in New York City
According to 2011–2015 ACS Microdata, 38% of Queens households did not own a car; the citywide rate is 55%.[145]

Vehicles for hire
As of 2019, the city had about 80,000 for-hire vehicles, of which, two-thirds were ride-hail – Uber, Lyft, Via, and Juno.[146] Until the -19 pandemic, the ride-hail car offered a ride-share option. There are about 13,500 traditional taxis (yellow cabs with medallions) in the city, 7,676 boro taxis, 38,791 black cars, 21,932 livery cars, 288 commuter vans, and 2,206 paratransit vehicles.

Roundtrip car sharing
Zipcar, and others, entered New York City market in 2002 offering roundtrip car sharing from private locations, mostly from parking garages. In 2018, the city partnered with the roundtrip car share companies, led by Zipcar, to launch the nation's larges on-street car-sharing program with the greatest take-up in The Bronx and in Queens – Jackson Heights, Jamaica, and Far Rockaway.[147][148][149][150][151] In 2020, during beginning throes of the -19 pandemic, Enterprise CarShare suspended service in New York City. Among the traditional car rental locations in Queens, both international airports harbor larger fleets, conveniently close to Queens residents.

Micromobility
Citi Bike – a docked-bike and e-bike sharing company had, as of July 2019, 169,000 annual subscribers. In 2021, the Department of Transportation and Citi Bike announced that, as part of its Phase 3 expansion, it was doubling its service area to 70 square miles and tripling the number of bikes to 40,000. The expansion includes 52 new docking stations in Astoria, as well as new stations in Sunnyside and Woodside.[152]

Non-docked e-moped service was launched in the city by Revel in 2019. Companies such as Bird, Lime, VeoRide introduced non-docked e-scooter-sharing in 2021.[153]

Airports
Five jumbo airplanes wait in a line on a runway next to a small body of water. Behind them in the distance is the airport and control tower.
John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens, the busiest international air passenger gateway to the United States
Airline Revenue Passengers
at Queens Airports
2019 → pre--19 pandemic

Domestic
International
Rank*
Total
  JFK    28,233,791    34,317,281 ❶    62,551,072
  LGA
28,875,041
2,209,853
31,084,894
    Total
57,108,832 36,527,134 93,635,966
2020 → mid--19 pandemic
  JFK    8,267,666    8,362,976 ❶    16,630,642
  LGA
7,853,368
391,824
8,245,192
    Total
16,121,034 8,754,800 24,875,834
    *National rank for international passengers
     (enplanements + deplanements)[154][155][156]
Queens has crucial importance in international and interstate air traffic, with two of the New York metropolitan area's three major airports located there. John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), in 2019, before the -19 pandemic, served 62.6 million passengers (enplanements + deplanements) – 34.3 million of which were international, ranking it the busiest airport in the United States by international passenger traffic. In response to the -19 pandemic, the United States imposed travel restrictions, first, in January 2020, on travelers from China and, in the following months, on travelers from other countries. 2020 annual passenger traffic at JFK dropped to 16.6 million (-73.4%) – 8.4 million (-73.4%) of which were international, still ranking it the busiest airport in the United States by international passenger traffic.[154][155][156]

JFK is owned by the City of New York and managed, since 1947, by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The airport's runways and six terminals cover an area of 4,930 acres (2,000 ha) on Jamaica Bay in southeastern Queens.[157] The airport's original official name was New York International Airport, although it was commonly known as Idlewild, with the name changed to Kennedy in December 1963 to honor the assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963.[158]


A multibillion-dollar reconstruction of LaGuardia Airport was announced in July 2015.[159]
LaGuardia Airport is located in East Elmhurst, in northern Queens, on Flushing Bay. Originally opened in 1939, the airport's two runways and four terminals cover 680 acres (280 ha), serving 28.4 million passengers in 2015.[160] In 2014, citing outdated conditions in the airport's terminals, Vice President Joe Biden compared LaGuardia Airport to a "third world country".[161] In 2015, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey began a $4 billion project to renovate LaGuardia Airport's terminals and entryways. The project is expected to be complete by 2021.[159]

Public transportation
See also: Public transportation in New York City
Main article: List of New York City Subway stations in Queens
Main article: List of bus routes in Queens
Main article: New York City Subway
Main article: MTA Regional Bus Operations
Main article: Long Island Rail Road
Main article: Brooklyn–Queens Connector

46th Street – Bliss Street subway station

Flushing – Main Street LIRR station
Subways
The MTA, New York City's 24-hour subway system, has 472 stations, more than any other metro system in the world – 81 of those stations on seven main lines are in Queens. The subway system has almost twice as many miles of track as any other North American system – (i) 665 mi (1,070 km) revenue length (the opposite of "revenue" track would be non-revenue track or dead mileage), (ii) 850 mi (1,368 km) total length, and (iii) 248 mi (399 km) route length. Queens has 42 mi (68 km) miles of route length – 15 mi (24 km) underground, 20 mi (32 km) elevated, 7 mi (11 km) other.[162] The A train – from 207th Street in Manhattan to Far Rockaway in Queens – is the longest line, more than 31 miles.[162] The subway system transports triple the number of people than the next five largest American systems – Chicago, Washington, Boston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia combined.

The A, G, J/Z, and M routes connect Queens to Brooklyn without going through Manhattan first. The F, M, N, and R trains connect Queens and Brooklyn via Manhattan, while the E, W, and 7/<7> trains connect Queens to Manhattan only. Trains on the M service go through Queens twice in the same trip; both of its full-length terminals, in Middle Village and Forest Hills, are in Queens.[163]

Long Island Rail Road
The LIRR, also part of the MTA, operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including holidays – carrying an average of 301,000 customers a day (80 million a year, adjusting downward for weekends) on about 735 scheduled trains.[164] It is the busiest commuter rail hub in the United States. Most of its branches originate or terminate at Penn Station. All but one of its branches (the Port Washington Branch) pass through Jamaica. The New York City area served by the LIRR is called the City Terminal Zone. Within that zone, Queens has stations in Long Island City, Hunterspoint Avenue (in Long Island City), Bayside, Forest Hills, Flushing, Woodside, and Kew Gardens – 22 Queens stations, in all. There are also several stations where LIRR passengers can transfer to the subway.

Sunnyside Yard is used to store Amtrak intercity and NJ Transit commuter trains from Penn Station in Manhattan. The US$11.1 billion East Side Access project, which will bring LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2022; this project will create a new train tunnel beneath the East River, connecting Long Island City in Queens with the East Side of Manhattan.[165][166]

JFK AirTrain
The elevated AirTrain people mover system connects JFK International Airport to the New York City Subway and the Long Island Rail Road along the Van Wyck Expressway;[167] a separate AirTrain system is planned alongside the Grand Central Parkway to connect LaGuardia Airport to these transit systems.[168][169] Plans were announced in July 2015 to entirely rebuild LaGuardia Airport itself in a multibillion-dollar project to replace its aging facilities, and this project would accommodate the new AirTrain connection.[159]

MTA buses
2019 bus ridership, citywide, on the MTA system, was 2.2 million per average weekday – about 678 million for the year. In Queens, the Q58 and Q44 Select Bus Service were the seventh and tenth, respectively, citywide, busiest local lines in 2019.[170] In addition to regular bus lines serving LaGuardia Airport, the MTA offers two Select Bus Services, regular fare, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The M60 – terminals A, B, C, D – to and from Manhattan via Grand Central Parkway and the Triborough Bridge – in Harlem, along 125th Street (with a stop at the 125th Street Metro-North station), ending in Morningside Heights on the Upper West Side, a few blocks south of Columbia University. The Q70 – terminals B, C, D – through Queens, ending in Woodside at 61st Street and Roosevelt Avenue. Overall, about 100 local bus routes operate within Queens, and another 20 express routes shuttle commuters between Queens and Manhattan, under the MTA New York City Bus and MTA Bus brands.[171]

Proposed streetcar
A streetcar line connecting Queens with Brooklyn was proposed by the city in February 2016.[172][173] The planned timeline calls for service to begin around 2024.[174]

Water transit
Main article: East 34th Street Ferry Landing

Newtown Creek with the Midtown Manhattan skyline in the background.
New York Water Taxi operates service across the East River from Hunters Point in Long Island City to Manhattan at 34th Street and south to Pier 11 at Wall Street. In 2007, limited weekday service was begun between Breezy Point, the westernmost point in the Rockaways, to Pier 11 via the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Summertime weekend service provides service from Lower Manhattan and southwest Brooklyn to the peninsula's Gateway beaches.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012, ferry operator SeaStreak began running a city-subsidized ferry service between a makeshift ferry slip at Beach 108th Street and Beach Channel Drive in Rockaway Park and piers in Manhattan and Brooklyn.[175] The service was extended multiple times.[176] finally ending on October 31, 2014.[177]

In February 2015, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city government would begin a citywide ferry service called NYC Ferry to extend ferry transportation to communities in the city that have been traditionally underserved by public transit.[178][179] The ferry opened in May 2017,[180][181] with the Queens neighborhoods of Rockaway and Astoria served by their eponymous routes. A third route, the East River Ferry, serves Hunter's Point South.[182]

Roads
Highways

Air Train JFK path above the Van Wyck Expressway
Queens is traversed by three trunk east–west highways. The Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495) runs from the Queens Midtown Tunnel on the west through the borough to Nassau County on the east. The Grand Central Parkway, whose western terminus is the Triborough Bridge, extends east to the Queens/Nassau border, where the roadway continues as the Northern State Parkway. The Belt Parkway begins at the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, and extends east into Queens, past Aqueduct Racetrack and JFK Airport. On its eastern end at the Queens/Nassau border, it splits into the Southern State Parkway which continues east, and the Cross Island Parkway which turns north.[183]

There are also several major north–south highways in Queens, including the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (Interstate 278), the Van Wyck Expressway (Interstate 678), the Clearview Expressway (Interstate 295), and the Cross Island Parkway.[183]

Queens has six state highways that run west–east largely on surface roads. From north to south, they are New York State Route 25A (Northern Boulevard), New York State Route 25B (Hillside Avenue), New York State Route 25 (Queens Boulevard, Hillside Avenue, and Braddock Avenue), New York State Route 24 (Hempstead Avenue), and New York State Route 27 (Conduit Avenue). The only state highway that primarily uses an expressway is New York State Route 878, which uses the Nassau Expressway in southern Queens.[183]

Streets

Standard cross-street signs for a single-named Boulevard and a co-named Avenue, in Queens
The streets of Queens are laid out in a semi-grid system, with a numerical system of street names (similar to Manhattan and the Bronx). Nearly all roadways oriented north–south are "Streets", while east–west roadways are "Avenues", beginning with the number 1 in the west for Streets and the north for Avenues. In some parts of the borough, several consecutive streets may share numbers (for instance, 72nd Street followed by 72nd Place and 72nd Lane, or 52nd Avenue followed by 52nd Road, 52nd Drive, and 52nd Court), often confusing non-residents.[184] Also, incongruous alignments of street grids, unusual street paths due to geography, or other circumstances often lead to the skipping of numbers (for instance, on Ditmars Boulevard, 70th Street is followed by Hazen Street which is followed by 49th Street). Numbered roads tend to be residential, although numbered commercial streets are not rare. A fair number of streets that were country roads in the 18th and 19th centuries (especially major thoroughfares such as Northern Boulevard, Queens Boulevard, Hillside Avenue, and Jamaica Avenue) carry names rather than numbers, typically though not uniformly called "Boulevards" or "Parkways".

Queens house numbering was designed to provide convenience in locating the address itself; the first half of a number in a Queens address refers to the nearest cross street, the second half refers to the house or lot number from where the street begins from that cross street, followed by the name of the street itself. For example, to find an address in Queens, 14-01 120th Street, one could ascertain from the address structure itself that the listed address is at the intersection of 14th Avenue and 120th Street and that the address must be closest to 14th Avenue rather than 15th Avenue, as it is the first lot on the block. This pattern does not stop when a street is named, assuming that there is an existing numbered cross-street. For example, Queens College is situated at 65–30 Kissena Boulevard, and is so named because the cross-street closest to the entrance is 65th Avenue.[184]

Many of the village street grids of Queens had only worded names, some were numbered according to local numbering schemes, and some had a mix of words and numbers. In the early 1920s, a "Philadelphia Plan" was instituted to overlay one numbered system upon the whole borough. The Topographical Bureau, Borough of Queens, worked out the details. Subway stations were only partly renamed, and some, including those along the IRT Flushing Line (7 and <7>​ trains), now share dual names after the original street names.[185] In 2012, some numbered streets in the Douglaston Hill Historic District were renamed to their original names, with 43rd Avenue becoming Pine Street.[186]

The Rockaway Peninsula does not follow the same system as the rest of the borough and has its own numbering system. Streets are numbered in ascending order heading west from near the Nassau County border, and are prefixed with the word "Beach." Streets at the easternmost end, however, are nearly all named. Bayswater, which is on Jamaica Bay, has its numbered streets prefixed with the word "Bay" rather than "Beach". Another deviation from the norm is Broad Channel; it maintains the north–south numbering progression but uses only the suffix "Road," as well as the prefixes "West" and "East," depending on location relative to Cross Bay Boulevard, the neighborhood's major through street. Broad Channel's streets were a continuation of the mainland Queens grid in the 1950s; formerly the highest-numbered avenue in Queens was 208th Avenue rather than today's 165th Avenue in Howard Beach & Hamilton Beach. The other exception is the neighborhood of Ridgewood, which for the most part shares a grid and house numbering system with the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bushwick. The grid runs east–west from the LIRR Bay Ridge Branch right-of-way to Flushing Avenue; and north–south from Forest Avenue in Ridgewood to Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn before adjusting to meet up with the Bedford-Stuyvesant grid at Broadway. All streets on the grid have names.

Bridges and tunnels
See also: List of bridges and tunnels in New York City

The Triborough Bridge connects Queens with Manhattan and the Bronx.
Queens is connected to the Bronx by the Bronx–Whitestone Bridge, the Throgs Neck Bridge, the Triborough Bridge (also known as the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge), and the Hell Gate Bridge. Queens is connected to Manhattan Island by the Triborough Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge, and the Queens–Midtown Tunnel, as well as to Roosevelt Island by the Roosevelt Island Bridge.

While most of the Queens/Brooklyn border is on land, the Kosciuszko Bridge crosses the Newtown Creek connecting Maspeth to Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The Pulaski Bridge connects McGuinness Boulevard in Greenpoint to 11th Street, Jackson Avenue, and Hunters Point Avenue in Long Island City. The J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge (a.k.a. Greenpoint Avenue Bridge) connects the sections of Greenpoint Avenue in Greenpoint and Long Island City. A lesser bridge connects Grand Avenue in Queens to Grand Street in Brooklyn.

The Cross Bay Veterans Memorial Bridge, built in 1939, traverses Jamaica Bay to connect the Rockaway Peninsula to Broad Channel and the rest of Queens.[187] Constructed in 1937, the Marine Parkway–Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge links Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn's longest thoroughfare, with Jacob Riis Park and the western end of the Peninsula.[188] Both crossings were built and continue to be operated by what is now known as MTA Bridges and Tunnels. The IND Rockaway Line parallels the Cross Bay, has a mid-bay station at Broad Channel which is just a short walk from the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, now part of Gateway National Recreation Area and a major stop on the Atlantic Flyway.

Notable people
See also: Category:People from Queens, New York and List of people from New York City
Many public figures have grown up or lived in Queens.[189] Musicians raised in the borough include Pepa of Salt-N-Pepa,[190] Nas, LL Cool J, The Ramones, Ace Frehley of KISS, A Tribe Called Quest, Mobb Deep, Onyx, Ja Rule, 50 Cent, Lloyd Banks, Tony Yayo, Run–D.M.C., Nicki Minaj,[191] Lil Tecca, Rich The Kid, Action Bronson, Nadia Ali,[192] and Tony Bennett.[193] Jazz greats Louis Armstrong and Norman Mapp both resided in Corona, as well as rock duo Simon & Garfunkel[194] and guitarists Scott Ian and Johnny Ramone.[195] K-pop rapper Mark Lee from the boy group NCT grew up in Queens before moving to Canada. Madonna, from 1979 to 1980, lived in Corona as a member of the band Breakfast Club.[196] Actors and actresses such as Adrien Brody,[197] Zoe Saldaña, Lucy Liu,[198] John Leguizamo, Susan Sarandon, and Idina Menzel[199] were born or raised in Queens. Actress Mae West also lived in Queens.[200] Writers from Queens include John Guare (The House of Blue Leaves) and Laura Z. Hobson (Gentleman's Agreement). Mafia boss John Gotti lived in Queens for many years.[201] Richard Feynman, a scientist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, was born in Queens and grew up in Far Rockaway, as was and so (respectively) rappers Chinx,[202] 3rd Bass' MC Serch,[203] and gospel singer Kelly Price.[204] Lee "Q" O'Denat, founder of WorldStarHipHop was from Hollis.

Donald Trump, a businessman who became the 45th President of the United States, was born in Jamaica Hospital Medical Center and raised at 81-15 Wareham Place in Jamaica Estates, later moving to Midland Parkway.[205][206][207] He was preceded in the White House by former First Ladies Nancy Reagan, who lived in Flushing as a child.[208] Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President, lived at Sagamore Hill in Oyster Bay from the mid-1880s until he died;[209] the area was considered part of Queens until the formation of neighboring Nassau County in 1899. Queens has also been home to athletes such as professional basketball player Rafer Alston[210] Basketball players Kareem Abdul-Jabbar[b][211] and Metta World Peace[c][212] were both born in Queens, as was Olympic athlete Bob Beamon.[213] Tennis star John McEnroe[214] was born in Douglaston. Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Whitey Ford grew up in Astoria.[215] Journalist Marie Colvin was a native of Queens.

New York City is composed of five boroughs: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. Each borough is coextensive with a respective county of New York State, making New York City one of the U.S. municipalities in multiple counties. The boroughs of Queens and the Bronx are also Queens County and Bronx County. The other three counties are named differently from their boroughs: Manhattan is New York County, Brooklyn is Kings County, and Staten Island is Richmond County.

All five boroughs came into existence with the creation of modern New York City in 1898, when New York County (including The Bronx), Kings County, part of Queens County, and Richmond County were consolidated within one municipal government under a new city charter. All former municipalities within the newly consolidated city were eliminated.

New York City was originally confined to Manhattan Island and the smaller surrounding islands that formed New York County. As the city grew northward, it began annexing areas on the mainland, absorbing territory from Westchester County into New York County in 1874 (West Bronx) and 1895 (East Bronx). During the 1898 consolidation, this territory was organized as the Borough of the Bronx, though still part of New York County. In 1914, Bronx County was split off from New York County so that each borough was then coterminous with a county.

When the western part of Queens County was consolidated with New York City in 1898, that area became the Borough of Queens. In 1899, the remaining eastern section of Queens County was split off to form Nassau County, thereafter making the borough and county of Queens coextensive with each other.


Contents
1 Terminology
2 Background
2.1 Changes
3 Description of the boroughs
4 Governance
5 Sixth borough
6 See also
7 References
Terminology
The term borough was adopted in 1898 to describe a form of governmental administration for each of the five fundamental constituent parts of the newly consolidated city. Under the 1898 City Charter adopted by the New York State Legislature, a borough is a municipal corporation that is created when a county is merged with populated areas within it.[1] The limited powers of the boroughs are inferior to the authority of the government of New York City, contrasting significantly with the powers of boroughs as that term is used in Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, where a borough is an independent level of government, as well as with borough forms used in other states and in Greater London.[2]

Background

The current five boroughs of Greater New York as they appeared in 1814. Bronx was in Westchester County, Queens County included modern Nassau County, Kings County had six towns, one of which was Brooklyn, and New York City is shown by hatching in lower Manhattan.
New York City's five boroughsvte
Jurisdiction Population GDP † Land area Density of population
Borough County Census
(2020) billions
(2012 US$) square
miles square
km persons/
mi2 persons/
km2
The Bronx
Bronx
1,472,654 $ 36.938 42.2 109.3 34,920 13,482
Brooklyn
Kings
2,736,074 $ 86.151 69.4 179.7 39,438 15,227
Manhattan
New York
1,694,263 $ 610.386 22.7 58.8 74,781 28,872
Queens
Queens
2,405,464 $ 82.328 108.7 281.5 22,125 8,542
Staten Island
Richmond
495,747 $ 14.270 57.5 148.9 8,618 3,327
City of New York
8,804,190 $  830.072 302.6 783.8 29,095 11,234
State of New York
20,215,751 $ 1,724.759 47,126.4 122,056.8 429 166
† GDP = Gross Domestic Product    Sources:[3][4][5][6] and see individual borough articles.
New York City is often referred to collectively as the five boroughs, which can unambiguously refer to the city proper as a whole, avoiding confusion with any particular borough or with the Greater New York metropolitan area. The term is also used by politicians to counter a frequent focus on Manhattan and thereby to place all five boroughs on equal footing. In the same vein, the term outer boroughs refers to all of the boroughs excluding Manhattan, even though the geographic center of the city is along the Brooklyn–Queens border.

Changes
All five boroughs were created in 1898 during consolidation, when the city's current boundaries were established.

The Bronx originally included parts of New York County outside of Manhattan that had previously been ceded by neighboring Westchester County in two stages; in 1874 (southern Yonkers, and the towns of Kingsbridge, West Farms, and Morrisania) and then following a referendum in 1894 (towns of Westchester, Williamsbridge, and the southern portion of Eastchester). Ultimately in 1914, the present-day separate Bronx County became the last county to be created in the State of New York.

The borough of Queens consists of what formerly was only the western part of a then-larger Queens County. In 1899, the three eastern towns of Queens County that had not joined the city the year before—the towns of Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay—formally seceded from Queens County to form the new Nassau County.[7]

The borough of Staten Island, concurrent with Richmond County, was officially the borough of Richmond until the name was changed in 1975 to reflect its common appellation, while leaving the name of the county unchanged.[8]

Description of the boroughs
Further information: Neighborhoods in New York City and List of parks in New York City
There are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs of New York City, many with a definable history and character to call their own.

Manhattan (New York County) is the geographically smallest and most densely populated borough; is the symbol of New York City, as home to most of the city's skyscrapers and prominent landmarks, including Times Square and Central Park; and may be locally known simply as The City.[9][10] Manhattan's (New York County's) population density of 72,033 people per square mile (27,812/km2) in 2015 makes it the highest of any county in the United States and higher than the density of any individual U.S. city.[11] Manhattan is the cultural, administrative, and financial center of New York City and contains the headquarters of many major multinational corporations, the United Nations Headquarters, Wall Street, and a number of important universities. Manhattan is often described by Americans as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world.[12][13][14][15][16]
Most of the borough is situated on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River. Several small islands are also part of the borough of Manhattan, including Randall's Island, Wards Island, and Roosevelt Island in the East River, and Governors Island to the south in New York Harbor; Liberty Island, on which the Statue of Liberty stands, is a Manhattan exclave. Manhattan Island is loosely divided into Lower, Midtown, and Uptown regions. Uptown Manhattan is divided by Central Park into the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side, and above the park is Harlem. The borough also includes a small neighborhood on the mainland, called Marble Hill. Marble Hill was originally part of Manhattan Island, but is now contiguous with the Bronx after having been severed from Manhattan Island by the construction of the Harlem River Ship Canal south of the neighborhood, and having been connected to the mainland by the subsequent filling in of the Harlem River's original path to the neighborhood's north. New York City's remaining four boroughs are collectively referred to as the outer boroughs.
Brooklyn (Kings County), on the western tip of Long Island, is the city's most populous borough. Brooklyn is known for its cultural, social, and ethnic diversity, an independent art scene, distinct neighborhoods, and a distinctive architectural heritage. Downtown Brooklyn is the largest central core neighborhood in the outer boroughs. The borough has a long beachfront shoreline including Coney Island, established in the 1870s as one of the earliest amusement grounds in the country.[17] Marine Park[18] and Prospect Park are the two largest parks in Brooklyn. Since the early 2010s, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship and high technology startup firms,[19][20] and of postmodern art[21] and design.[20]
Queens (Queens County), on Long Island north and east of Brooklyn, is geographically the largest borough, the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,[22] as well as the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world.[23][24] Historically a collection of small towns and villages founded by the Dutch, the borough has since developed both commercial and residential prominence. Downtown Flushing has become one of the busiest central core neighborhoods in the outer boroughs. Parts of Queens such as Bellerose and Forest Hills are relatively suburban in character. Queens is the site of Citi Field, the baseball stadium of the New York Mets, and hosts the annual U.S. Open tennis tournament at Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. Additionally, two of the three busiest airports serving the New York metropolitan area, John F. Kennedy International Airport and LaGuardia Airport, are located in Queens. (The third is Newark Liberty International Airport in Newark, New Jersey.)
The Bronx (Bronx County) is New York City's northernmost borough and the only New York City borough that is part of the United States mainland, aside from Marble Hill, Manhattan. It is the location of Yankee Stadium, the baseball stadium of the New York Yankees, and home to the largest cooperatively owned housing complex in the United States, Co-op City.[25] It is also home to the Bronx Zoo, the world's largest metropolitan zoo,[26] which covers 265 acres (107 ha) and houses over 6,000 animals.[27] Directly to the zoo's north is the New York Botanical Garden, a botanical garden and National Historic Landmark. Pelham Bay Park is the largest park in New York City, at 2,772 acres (1,122 ha).[18]
Staten Island (Richmond County) is generally the most suburban in character of the five boroughs. Staten Island is connected to Brooklyn by the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge and to Manhattan by way of the Staten Island Ferry, a free commuter ferry and popular tourist attraction which provides unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and Lower Manhattan. In central Staten Island, the Staten Island Greenbelt spans approximately 2,500 acres (10 km2), including 28 miles (45 km) of walking trails and one of the last undisturbed forests in the city.[28] Designated in 1984 to protect the island's natural lands, the Greenbelt comprises seven city parks.
Chinatown in Manhattan, the most densely populated borough of New York City, with a higher density than any individual American city
Chinatown in Manhattan, the most densely populated borough of New York City, with a higher density than any individual American city

 
A view down a street with rowhouses in brown, white, and various shades of red
Landmark nineteenth-century brownstones in the Greenpoint Historic District of Brooklyn, New York City's most populous borough

 
The Unisphere in Queens, the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world[23][24]
The Unisphere in Queens, the most ethnically diverse urban area in the world[23][24]

 
The Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City and the only borough situated on the United States mainland
The Bronx, the northernmost borough of New York City and the only borough situated on the United States mainland

 
Borough Hall in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, the most suburban borough of New York City
Borough Hall in the St. George neighborhood of Staten Island, the most suburban borough of New York City

Governance
Main article: Borough president

The percentage of New York City population residing in each borough (from bottom to top): 1. Manhattan, 2. Brooklyn, 3. Queens, 4. The Bronx, and 5. Staten Island. Populations before 1898 are for the areas now enclosed in the present boroughs.
Since 1914, each of New York City's five boroughs has been coextensive with a county of New York State – unlike most U.S. cities, which lie within a single county or extend partially into another county, constitute a county in themselves, or are completely separate and independent of any county.

Each borough is represented by a borough president. Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island each have a Borough Hall with limited administrative functions. The Manhattan Borough President's office is situated in the Manhattan Municipal Building. The Bronx Borough President's office used to be in its own Bronx Borough Hall but has been in the Bronx County Courthouse for decades. Since the abolition of the Board of Estimate in 1990 (due to a 1989 ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court[29]), the borough presidents have minimal executive powers, and there is no legislative function within a borough. Executive functions in New York City are the responsibility of the Mayor of New York City, while legislative functions reside with the New York City Council. The borough presidents primarily act as spokesmen, advocates, and ceremonial leaders for their boroughs, have budgets from which they can allocate relatively modest sums of money to community organizations and projects, and appoint the members of the 59 largely advisory community boards in the city's various neighborhoods. The Brooklyn and Queens borough presidents also appoint trustees to the local public library systems in those boroughs.

Being coextensive with an individual county, each borough also elects a district attorney, as does every other county of New York State. While the district attorneys of Manhattan and Brooklyn are popularly referred to as "Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance, Jr.", or "Brooklyn D.A. Kenneth P. Thompson" by the media, they are technically and legally the district attorneys of New York County and Kings County, respectively. The same goes for Staten Island. There is no such distinction made for the district attorneys of the other two counties, Queens and the Bronx, since these boroughs share the respective counties' names. Because the five district attorneys are, technically speaking, state officials (since the counties are considered to be arms of the state government), rather than officials of the city government, they are not subject to the term limitations that govern other New York City officials such as the mayor, the New York City Public Advocate, members of the city council, or the borough presidents. Some civil court judges also are elected on a borough-wide basis, although they generally are eligible to serve throughout the city.

In some document collections the boroughs used to be designated with a one-letter abbreviation: K for Brooklyn; M for Manhattan; Q for Queens; R for Staten Island, Richmond County; X for the Bronx.[30]

Sixth borough
Main article: Sixth borough
The term "sixth borough" is used to describe any of a number of places that have been metaphorically called a part of New York City because of their geographic location, demographics (they include large numbers of former New Yorkers), special affiliation, or cosmopolitan character. They have included adjacent cities and counties in the New York metropolitan area as well as in other states, U.S. territories, and foreign countries.[31][32][33] In 2011, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg referred to the city's waterfront and waterways as a composite sixth borough during presentations of planned rehabilitation projects along the city's shoreline,[34][35][36][37][38][39] including Governor's Island in the Upper New York Bay.[40] The Hudson Waterfront in the U.S. state of New Jersey lies opposite Manhattan on the Hudson River, and during the Dutch colonial era, was under the jurisdiction of New Amsterdam and known as Bergen. Jersey City and Hoboken in Hudson County, New Jersey, are sometimes referred to as the sixth b