New York City

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Manhattan Island was inhabited by Munsee-speaking Lenape around 1624. By then, Dutch colonists had established Fort Amsterdam as a center of trade on the island. The settlement was named New Amsterdam in 1626 and was chartered as a city in 1653. The city came under English control in 1664 and was temporarily renamed New York after Charles II granted the lands to his brother, the Duke of York, before this name was permanently adopted in 1674. Following independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, the city was the national capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. The modern city was formed by the 1898 consolidation of its five boroughs. Anchored by Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District, New York City has been called both the world's premier financial and fintech center and the most economically powerful city in the world. As of 2024, the New York metropolitan area is the largest metropolitan economy in the world, with a gross metropolitan product of over US$2.44 trillion. The city is home to the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization of their listed companies: the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq.

In Their Own Story

In the pre-Columbian era, the area of present-day New York City was inhabited by Algonquians, including Munsee-speaking Lenape. The first documented visit to New York Harbor by a European was in 1524, by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano. In 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson rediscovered New York Harbor while searching for the Northwest Passage to the Orient for the Dutch East India Company. A permanent European presence near New York Harbor was established in 1624, with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1626 Peter Minuit, the director of New Netherland, purchased the island of Manhattan from the Canarsie, a small Lenape band, for 'the value of 60 guilders' (about $900 in 2018). In 1664, unable to summon any significant resistance, Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to English troops, led by Colonel Richard Nicolls, without bloodshed. The settlement was promptly renamed 'New York' after the Duke of York.

Reader's Guide

New York City is the most populous city in the United States, with an estimated population of 8,584,629 in July 2025, distributed over 300.46 square miles (778.2 km2). It is the most densely populated major city in the United States. More than 20.1 million people live in New York City's metropolitan statistical area, and over 23.5 million people live in its combined statistical area as of 2020. An estimated 800 languages are spoken in New York City, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City metropolitan region is home to the largest foreign-born population of any metropolitan region in the world, numbering approximately 5.9 million people as of 2023. As of 2025, New York City is the most expensive city in the world for expatriates and has the highest residential rent costs of any American city. New York County (Manhattan) is by a significant margin the most expensive U.S. county in terms of average home price per square foot and produces the highest U.S. county GDP by both absolute and per capita measures. New York City is home to the highest number of billionaires, individuals of ultra-high net worth (greater than US$30 million), and millionaires of any city in the world by a significant margin.

Did You Know?

• New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the country's second-most populous city.
• The New York metropolitan area's economy is larger than all but nine countries.
• Despite having a 24/7 rapid transit system, New York also leads the world in urban automobile traffic congestion.
• In 1664, New York was named in honor of the Duke of York (later King James II of England).
• The first non–Native American inhabitant of what became New York City was Juan Rodriguez, a merchant from Santo Domingo who arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–14.