to
Update
is the northernmost of the Five Boroughs of New York City and the newest of the 62 counties of New York State. It is located northeast of Manhattan and south of Westchester County. The Bronx is the only borough situated primarily on the North American mainland (while the other four are on islands, except for Marble Hill, a small portion of Manhattan.). In 2009, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the borough's population on July 1, 2008 was 1,391,903, living on 42 square miles (109 square kilometers) of land, making the Bronx fourth of the five boroughs in population, fourth in area, and third in density of population.
The Bronx is divided by the Bronx River into a hillier section in the west, closer to Manhattan, and the flatter East Bronx, closer to Queens and Long Island. The West Bronx was annexed to New York City (then largely confined to Manhattan) in 1874, and the areas east of the Bronx River in 1895. The Bronx first assumed a distinct legal identity when it became a borough of Greater New York in 1898.
(the County of Bronx), with the same boundaries as the borough, was separated from New York County (today coextensive with the Borough of Manhattan) in 1912 and began its own operations in January 1914. Although the Bronx is the third-most-densely-populated county in the U.S., about a quarter of its land is open space, including Woodlawn Cemetery, Van Cortlandt Park, Pelham Bay Park, the New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx Zoo in the borough's north and center, on land deliberately preserved in the late 19th century as urban development progressed northwards and eastwards from Manhattan with roads, bridges and railroads.
The indigenous Lenape (Delaware) American Indians were progressively displaced after 1643 by settlers from the Netherlands and Great Britain. The Bronx received many Irish, German, Jewish and Italian immigrants as its once-rural population exploded between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries. They were succeeded after 1945 by African-Americans and Hispanic Americans, together with immigrants from the Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica. In recent years, this cultural mix has made the Bronx a wellspring of both Latin music and hip hop.
While the Bronx contains the nation's poorest Congressional District (the 16th), it has a wide variety of neighborhoods, including the affluent Riverdale and Country Club. The Bronx, particularly the South Bronx, saw a sharp decline in population, livable housing and quality of life in the late 1960s and the 1970s, culminating in a wave of arson, but has shown significant signs of revival in recent years.