The Five Burroughs
New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. The county governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county, all being governed by the expanded city. The term borough was adopted to describe a unique form of governmental administration for each of the five fundamental constituent parts of the newly consolidated city.
Throughout the boroughs there are hundreds of distinct neighborhoods, many with a definable history and character to call their own. If the boroughs were each independent cities, four of the boroughs (Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the United States.