New York Map
Five boroughs, five counties, and about 8.48 million people in 2024 — the largest city in the United States, built around the mouth of the Hudson River.
Where is New York?
New York sits at the southeastern corner of New York State, where the Hudson River empties into the Atlantic. Only one borough, the Bronx, is on the American mainland: Manhattan and Staten Island are islands, and Brooklyn and Queens occupy the western end of Long Island. The city is about 95 miles northeast of Philadelphia, roughly 190 miles southwest of Boston, and about 225 miles northeast of Washington — the anchor at the top of the Northeast Corridor.
New York at a glance
| State | New York |
| Counties | Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, and Richmond counties |
| Population | 8,478,072 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 1 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Eastern Time |
| Region | Northeast (Mid-Atlantic division) |
Nothing on the list is close. New York's 8,478,072 residents outnumber the next two cities — Los Angeles and Chicago — combined. Buffalo is the only other New York city on the list. One city government therefore accounts for about 43% of New York's 19.87 million people. The five counties it covers add up to the city and nothing else: Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens and Richmond.
New York in New York
New York City holds a little under half of New York State's population, and the rest of the state stretches 300 miles north and west of it to Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. The state capital, Albany, is about 150 miles up the Hudson. The five boroughs are five separate counties, so they appear individually on the New York county map; the only other city in the state's top 100 is Buffalo, at the far western end. See the New York state page for the wider picture.
The harbor and the Hudson
The reason the city is where it is: a deep, sheltered, ice-free harbor at the seaward end of a navigable river. The Hudson is tidal as far north as Troy, and the Erie Canal once carried that traffic on to the Great Lakes, which made New York the outlet for the interior. The Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn form the harbor entrance; the East River is not a river but a tidal strait linking the harbor to Long Island Sound. The city sits on the Atlantic coast, and Manhattan's hard schist bedrock is the practical reason its towers cluster where they do.
Cities near New York
Down the corridor are Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington; northeast is Boston, and Newark and Jersey City face Manhattan across the Hudson. To see how the whole list lines up, use the US map with cities.