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See Also: New York City , highlighting Brooklyn.]] in 1890 , seven years after opening.]] Brooklyn is the most populous of the five Borough s of New York City with about 2.5 million inhabitants. An independent city prior to 1898 , Brooklyn developed out of the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island , named after Breukelen in the Netherlands . Were it still a city, and not a borough, it would be the fourth-largest city in the United States after New York City itself, Los Angeles and Chicago . Despite being part of the City of New York, Brooklyn in character is its own city, as opposed to The Bronx which historically and characteristically could be better described as a northern extension of Manhattan . Kings County, coterminous with Brooklyn, is also the most populous County in New York . It was named in honor of King Charles II Of England . Variously called the "City of Trees," "City of Homes," or the "City of Churches" in the 19th Century , Brooklyn is now often styled the "Borough of Homes and Churches" or even sometimes called "The Planet", popularized by Guru from the rap duo Gangstarr , for its large Diversity , population, and size. As a promotional gesture by the current ," " Oy Vey! ," and "How Sweet It Is." One sign identifies the borough as: "Home to Everyone From Everywhere!" GEOGRAPHY Brooklyn is located in the westernmost part of Long Island . It shares its only land boundary with Queens to the northeast. The westernmost section of this boundary is defined by Newtown Creek , (crossed by the Kosciuszko Bridge , the Pulaski Bridge , the Grand Street Bridge , and the Metropolitan Avenue Bridge ) which flows into the East River . Following the waterfront south and then counterclockwise from Newtown Creek , the lower East River forms the northern coast of Brooklyn, with connections to Manhattan at Williamsburg Bridge , Manhattan Bridge , the Brooklyn Bridge and the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel . The western coast lies on Upper New York Bay and features the Red Hook peninsula and the Erie Basin , home to a Container Port , and separated from Governors Island by Buttermilk Channel . South of this is Gowanus Bay , connected to the Gowanus Canal . At its westernmost section, Brooklyn is closest to Staten Island at The Narrows , and the two are connected there by the Verrazano Narrows Bridge , where the Upper and Lower New York Bays meet. The southern coast includes the peninsula encompassing Coney Island , Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach . The southeastern coast lies on island-dotted Jamaica Bay and is connected to Rockaway by the Marine Parkway-Gil Hodges Memorial Bridge , named after the Brooklyn Dodgers ' first baseman who made his home in the borough. The remainder of the Brooklyn-Queens border is defined for the most part politically, and skirts or divides “border” communities including Lindenwood , Ozone Park , Cypress Hills , Ridgewood , and Bushwick . The highest point of Brooklyn is the area around Prospect Park and Green-Wood Cemetery , rising approximately 200 feet above sea level. There is also a minor elevation in Downtown Brooklyn known as Brooklyn Heights . According to the United States Census Bureau , the County has a total area of 251.0 Km&2 (96.9 Mi&2 ). 182.9 km&2 (70.6 mi&2) of it is land and 68.1 km&2 (26.3 mi&2) of it is water. 27.13% of the total area is water. HISTORY Six Dutch towns The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle in the area that is today Brooklyn, a western part of Long Island then largely inhabited by the Canarsie Native American Tribe . The area was considered a part of New Netherland , and the Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original towns (listed here first by their later, more common English names):
Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's early (1824) compilation [http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/30/ ''Notes Geographical and Historical, relating to the Town of Brooklyn, in Kings County on Long-Island'']. Toward a united City of Brooklyn What is today Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664 , to become a part of the Colony Of New York . The English organized the six old Dutch towns of southwestern Long Island as Kings County on then established in New York. This tract of land was recognized as a political entity for the first time, and the municipal groundwork was laid for a later expansive idea of Brooklyn identity. was fought across Kings County]] On August 27 , 1776 , the Battle Of Long Island (also known as the Battle of Brooklyn) was one of the first major engagements fought in the American Revolutionary War . British troops forced Continental troops off the heights near the modern site of Green-Wood Cemetery , Prospect Park , and Grand Army Plaza . The American positions at Brooklyn Heights consequently became untenable and were evacuated a few days later, leaving the British in control of New York Harbor . The surrounding region was controlled by the British for the duration of the war, and the British military was largely supported by a dominant Loyalist sentiment in Kings County. New York only changed from a British colony to an American state with the Treaty Of Paris in 1783 . The first half of the 19th century saw the beginning of the development of urban areas on the economically strategic East River shore of Kings County, facing the adolescent City of New York confined to Manhattan Island. The first center of Urbanization sprang up in the Town of Brooklyn, directly across from Lower Manhattan , which saw the incorporation of the Village of Brooklyn in 1816. Town and Village were combined to form the first, kernel incarnation of the City of Brooklyn in 1834. In parallel development, the Town of Bushwick, a little farther up the river, saw the incorporation of the Village of Williamsburgh in 1827, which separated as the Town of Williamsburgh in 1840, only to form the short-lived City of Williamsburgh in 1851. But the East River shore was growing too fast for the three-year-old infant City of Williamsburgh, which, along with its Town of Bushwick hinterland, was subsumed within a greater City of Brooklyn in 1854. Taking a thirty-year break from municipal expansionism, this well-situated coastal city established itself as the third-most-populous American city for much of the 19th century. As 'Twin City' to New York, it played a role in national affairs that is only now shadowed by its modern submergence into its old partner/rival. Throughout this period the peripheral towns of Kings County, far from Manhattan and even from urban Brooklyn, maintained their rustic independence. The only municipal change seen was the secession of the eastern section of the Town of Flatbush as the Town of New Lots in 1852. The building of Rail Links such as the Brighton Beach Line in 1878 heralded the end of this isolation. ]] Toward the end of the 19th century, the City of Brooklyn experienced its final, explosive growth spurt. In the space of a decade, it annexed the Town of New Lots in 1886, the Town of Flatbush, the Town of Gravesend, and the Town of New Utrecht in 1894, and the Town of Flatlands in 1896. Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the ends of Kings County. The question was now whether it was prepared to engage in the still-grander process of consolidation now developing throughout the region. Brooklyn as New York borough In 1898, Brooklyn residents voted by a slight majority to join with Manhattan , The Bronx , Queens and Richmond (later Staten Island) as the five Borough s to form the modern City Of Greater New York . Kings County retained its status as one of New York State's counties. The loss of Brooklyn's separate identity as a city was met with some consternation by some residents at the time, and later; the merger has been known as the "Great Mistake of 1898", as it was called by many newspapers of the day, and the phrase still denotes Brooklyn pride among old-time Brooklynites. NEIGHBORHOODS OF BROOKLYN of Downtown Brooklyn seen from the East River ]] Borough and state government buildings are mostly found in the Brooklyn Civic Center area (including Brooklyn Borough Hall and Kings County Supreme Court ) in downtown Brooklyn, near the Brooklyn Bridge and Brooklyn Heights . Brooklyn, the 'Borough of Homes', can be understood as a collection of and Chinese American . Most sections of Brooklyn are indeed decidedly residential, fulfilling the borough's historic role as 'bedroom of New York'. Its residential character may seem strange to many not familiar with the borough, who tend to associate it with Brownstone s; however, brownstones are predominantly located in the northwestern neighborhoods between the Brooklyn Bridge and Prospect Park . Some have noted that the parts of Brooklyn more distant from Manhattan are actually less recognizably New York City than many parts of Queens , a borough often incorrectly associated with suburbia. This symbiotic mating of the Residential city with the business center of Manhattan has profoundly shaped Brooklyn from its beginning. It only accelerated with the building of the Brooklyn Bridge and other connections, to the near-death of Brooklyn Industries and a winnowing of Commerce to a basic consumer level in the years following World War II . It is only at the start of the 21st century that business and industry have begun to revive around the borough amid something of a general renaissance. Many Brooklyn ethnic neighborhoods established in the first half of the 20th century developed to accommodate second-generation Americans escaping the Slum s of Manhattan. Today, however, new Immigrants are just as likely to set down their first American roots in Brooklyn. The constant inward movement of new immigrant groups, as well as the expanding horizons of long-established groups, brought a dynamism to Brooklyn's neighborhoods. In recent years a series of Artists' Colonies have developed along the East River across from Manhattan as a refuge for artists fleeing the sky-high rents of SoHo . Such was the development of the artistic community in Williamsburg , with consequent recent rent hikes there spurring a further exodus, to DUMBO (Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), and even to Red Hook . Brooklyn is politically organized as 18 Community Boards :
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