55 Facts About Brooklyn

Brooklyn is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U S state of New York.

Brooklyn is New York City's most populous borough, with 2, 736, 074 residents in 2020.

Brooklyn has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan across the East River and the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge connects it with Staten Island.

Brooklyn was an independent incorporated city until January 1, 1898, when, after a long political campaign and public relations battle during the 1890s, according to the new Municipal Charter of "Greater New York", Brooklyn was consolidated with other cities, towns, and counties, to form the modern City of New York, surrounding the Upper New York Bay with five constituent boroughs.

Since the 2010s, Brooklyn has evolved into a thriving hub of entrepreneurship, high technology start-up firms, postmodern art and design.

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Name Brooklyn is derived from the original Dutch town of Breukelen.

Brooklyn became a part of the West Riding of York Shire in the Province of New York, one of the Middle Colonies of nascent British America.

Fervent in the Union cause, the city of Brooklyn played a major role in supplying troops and materiel for the American Civil War.

Brooklyn is referred to as the twin city of New York in the 1883 poem, "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus, which appears on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty.

Economic growth continued, propelled by immigration and industrialization, and Brooklyn established itself as the third-most populous American city for much of the 19th century.

Sports became big business, and the Brooklyn Bridegrooms played professional baseball at Washington Park in the convenient suburb of Park Slope and elsewhere.

Brooklyn had reached its natural municipal boundaries at the ends of Kings County.

Brooklyn elected a mayor from 1834 until consolidation in 1898 into the City of Greater New York, whose own second mayor, Seth Low, had been Mayor of Brooklyn from 1882 to 1885.

Since 1898, Brooklyn has, in place of a separate mayor, elected a Borough President.

In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was completed, transportation to Manhattan was no longer by water only, and the City of Brooklyn's ties to the City of New York were strengthened.

Question became whether Brooklyn was prepared to engage in the still-grander process of consolidation then developing throughout the region, whether to join with the county of Richmond and the western portion of Queens County, and the county of New York, which by then already included the Bronx, to form the five boroughs of a united City of New York.

However, Kings County, coterminous with Brooklyn, is New York State's fourth-smallest county by land area and third-smallest by total area.

Brooklyn contains dozens of distinct neighborhoods representing many of the major culturally identified groups found within New York City.

Many hospitals in Brooklyn were started by Jewish charities, including Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park and Brookdale Hospital in East Flatbush.

Over 200, 000 Chinese Americans live throughout the southern parts of Brooklyn, primarily concentrated in Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, Gravesend and Homecrest.

Brooklyn is the borough that is home to the highest number of Chinatowns in New York City.

Brooklyn is home to the largest community of West Indians outside of the Caribbean.

Brooklyn has an annual, celebrated Carnival in the tradition of pre-Lenten celebrations in the islands.

Brooklyn is home to many Russians and Ukrainians, who are mainly concentrated in the areas of Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay.

Smaller concentrations of Russian and Ukrainian Americans are scattered elsewhere in south Brooklyn, including Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Homecrest, Coney Island and Mill Basin.

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Brooklyn's Polish are historically concentrated in Greenpoint, home to Little Poland.

Brooklyn is home to a large and growing number of same-sex couples.

Various neighborhoods in Brooklyn, including Williamsburg, DUMBO, Red Hook, and Park Slope evolved as popular neighborhoods for artists-in-residence.

In 2010, Brooklyn had some neighborhoods segregated based on race, ethnicity, and religion.

Brooklyn has played a major role in various aspects of American culture including literature, cinema, and theater.

The Brooklyn accent has often been portrayed as the "typical New York accent" in American media, although this accent and stereotype are supposedly fading out.

Brooklyn Museum, opened in 1897, is New York City's second-largest public art museum.

Brooklyn is served by the major New York dailies, including The New York Times, the New York Daily News, and the New York Post.

Forty-four percent of Brooklyn's employed population, or 410, 000 people, work in the borough; more than half of the borough's residents work outside its boundaries.

Strong international immigration to Brooklyn generates jobs in services, retailing and construction.

Since the late 20th century, Brooklyn has benefited from a steady influx of financial back office operations from Manhattan, the rapid growth of a high-tech and entertainment economy in DUMBO, and strong growth in support services such as accounting, personal supply agencies, and computer services firms.

Jobs in the borough have traditionally been concentrated in manufacturing, but since 1975, Brooklyn has shifted from a manufacturing-based to a service-based economy.

In 2004, 215, 000 Brooklyn residents worked in the services sector, while 27, 500 worked in manufacturing.

Rezoning of Downtown Brooklyn has generated over US$10 billion of private investment and $300 million in public improvements since 2004.

Brooklyn is attracting numerous high technology start-up companies, as Silicon Alley, the metonym for New York City's entrepreneurship ecosystem, has expanded from Lower Manhattan into Brooklyn.

Brooklyn once had a National Football League team named the Brooklyn Lions in 1926, who played at Ebbets Field.

In Rugby league, existing USARL club Brooklyn Kings joined the professional North American Rugby League competition for its inaugural 2021 season.

Brooklyn has one of the most active recreational fishing fleets in the United States.

Since its consolidation with New York City in 1898, Brooklyn has been governed by the New York City Charter that provides for a "strong" mayor–council system.

Brooklyn has 16 City Council members, the largest number of any of the five boroughs.

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Brooklyn has 18 of the city's 59 community districts, each served by an unpaid Community Board with advisory powers under the city's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.

Education in Brooklyn is provided by a vast number of public and private institutions.

Brooklyn Tech is noted for its famous alumni, its academics, and a large number of graduates attending prestigious universities.

Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, and was the first public coeducational liberal arts college in New York City.

The Brooklyn campus has strong science and medical technology programs, at the graduate and undergraduate levels.

Brooklyn has smaller liberal arts institutions, such as Saint Joseph's College in Clinton Hill and Boricua College in Williamsburg.

Brooklyn was once served by an extensive network of streetcars, but many were replaced by the public bus network that covers the entire borough.

Much of Brooklyn has only named streets, but Park Slope, Bay Ridge, Sunset Park, Bensonhurst, and Borough Park and the other western sections have numbered streets running approximately northwest to southeast, and numbered avenues going approximately northeast to southwest.

Brooklyn was long a major shipping port, especially at the Brooklyn Army Terminal and Bush Terminal in Sunset Park.

Brooklyn's makes regular ports of call at the Red Hook terminal on her transatlantic crossings from Southampton, England.