We are going to go statistical on you for a few paragraphs and tell you something about the size of greater New York and the parts of it which you'll probably never get to see--and you don't know how lucky you are, at that. The population of the incorporated city of New York is approximately 8,000,000, one out of every 17 in the land. One of every 10 Americans lives in New York's metropolitan district, which includes the overlapping areas of Westchester and Nassau counties, New Jersey and Connecticut, within 45-minutes commuting distance from Times Square. Perhaps one of every 100 persons on earth--20,000,000--live within 100 miles of New York, are employed here, or are frequent visitors for business or pleasure. Manhattan Island, which is the county of New York, is the core of all this, but actually it is only second in population of the city's boroughs, having about 2,000,000 permanent residents. The balance of the metropolis' huge population sleeps elsewhere. Brooklyn, approaching 3,000,000, ranks by itself the second largest city in the nation; in area it sprawls all over the map, a maddening maze of crazy streets apparently without beginning or end. The unwary visitor to Brooklyn who asks a policeman how to get somewhere usually is directed to return to Manhattan and start all over again. The natives don't know their way about in this gigantic and illogical patchwork. The incorporated city of Greater New York, which was born in 1898, when the independent municipality of Brooklyn merged with Manhattan, consists of five boroughs, each coextensive with a county. They are: ==========+==========+=============+======= _Borough_ | _County_ | _Pop. 1950_ | _Rank_ ----------+----------+-------------+------- Manhattan | New York | 1,938,551 | 2 Brooklyn | Kings | 2,720,238 | 1 Bronx | Bronx | 1,444,903 | 4 Queens | Queens | 1,546,316 | 3 Richmond | Richmond | 191,015 | 5 ----------+----------+-------------+------- Brooklyn and Queens each occupy the westernmost end of Long Island. Manhattan is located on its island. Richmond occupies all Staten Island. The much-maligned Bronx is the sole borough on the mainland of the United States. Richmond, historically and geographically a part of New Jersey, from which it is separated by only a narrow kill spanned by a bridge, is five miles from Manhattan, half an hour by ferry. The other boroughs are all connected with each other by land borders, bridges or tunnels. Considerable confusion exists concerning New York's borough system, because it is the only city in the world including more than one county in its corporate limits. The counties are not called boroughs. They merely happen to have the same geographic boundaries as the boroughs. The five counties in New York City are, like all other counties in the state, political subdivisions of the State of New York. The boroughs, on the other hand, are political subdivisions of the City of New York.