Brooklyn, coextensive with Kings County, is the most populous of the five boroughs and counties of New York City. Located at the westernmost end of Long Island and formerly an independent city, Brooklyn shares a land border with the borough and county of Queens. It has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of Manhattan, across the East River, including the architecturally significant Brooklyn Bridge, and is connected to Staten Island by the Verrazzano–Narrows Bridge.
The borough, as Kings County, at , is the second most densely populated county, and New York City borough, in the U.S. after Manhattan (New York County), and the most populous county in the state, as of 2022.Highest Density States, Counties and Cities (2022) , United States Census Bureau. Accessed January 2, 2024. In the 2020 United States census, the borough had a population of 2,736,074.Table 2: Population, Land Area, and Population Density by County, New York State – 2020, New York State Department of Health. Accessed January 2, 2024.2010 Gazetteer for New York State , United States Census Bureau. Accessed September 18, 2016.Most Populaous States, Counties and Cities (2022) , United States Census Bureau. Accessed January 2, 2024. Had Brooklyn remained an independent city on Long Island, it would now be the fourth most populous American city after the rest of New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago. With a land area of and a water area of , Kings County, one of the twelve original counties established under British rule in 1683 in the then-province of New York, is the state of New York's fourth-smallest county by land area and third smallest by total area.2020 Census Gazetteer for New York State , United States Census Bureau. Accessed January 2, 2024.
Brooklyn, named after the Dutch town of Breukelen, was founded by the Dutch in the 17thcentury and grew into a busy port city on New York Harbor by the 19thcentury. On January1, 1898, after a long political campaign and public-relations battle during the 1890s and despite opposition from Brooklyn residents, Brooklyn was consolidated and annexed, along with other areas, to form the current five-borough structure of New York City in accordance with the new municipal charter of Greater New York."Consolidation of the Five-Borough City: 1898 ", NYC Archaeological Repository, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Accessed January 18, 2024. "On January 1, 1898, the separate jurisdictions of New York (Manhattan), Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island joined together to form a single metropolis: the City of Greater New York..... Resistance was strongest among residents of Brooklyn, who did not want to see their city's independent identity smothered by New York and their Republican government swamped by the huge numbers of Democrats in Manhattan. The question was put to a public referendum and in the end, the Greater New York movement won by a razor thin margin – 64,744 votes for consolidation, 64,467 against." The borough continues to maintain a distinct culture. Many Brooklyn neighborhoods are ethnic enclaves. With Jews forming around a fifth of its population, the borough has been described as one of the main global hubs for Jewish culture. Brooklyn's official motto, displayed on the borough seal and flag, is , which translates from early modern Dutch as "In unity there is strength".Sherman, John. "Why Is Brooklyn's Flag So Lame?" , Brooklyn Magazine, August 6, 2014. Accessed January 18, 2024. "If you aren't familiar, Brooklyn has a flag. And it's a bummer. It's plain white, first of all, with a sort of wonky blue oval shape at the center. Inside the oval is a bored-looking woman in a yellow robe, carrying a fasces, a symbol of unity. The oval is ringed with a motto, in Dutch, Een Draght Maekt Maght ('Unity Makes Strength'), and the words Borough of Brooklyn."
Educational institutions in Brooklyn include the City University of New York's Brooklyn College, Medgar Evers College, and College of Technology, as well as Pratt Institute, Long Island University, and the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. In sports, basketball's Brooklyn Nets and New York Liberty play at the Barclays Center. In the first decades of the 21stcentury, Brooklyn has experienced a renaissance as a destination for hipsters, with associated gentrification, dramatic house-price increases, and a decrease in housing affordability. Some new developments are now required to include affordable housing units. Since the 2010s, parts of Brooklyn have evolved into a hub for entrepreneurship, startup firms, postmodern art, and design.
Toponymy The name Brooklyn is derived from the town of Breukelen in the Dutch province of Utrecht."How Did the Boroughs Get Their Names?" , New York Historical. Accessed February 9, 2026. "Brooklyn refers to Breukelen, the Dutch village in the Netherlands." This form is made up of the words broeck, meaning bog or marshland, and lede, meaning small (dug) water stream, specifically in peat areas. Breuckelen on the American continent was established in 1646, and the name first appeared in print in 1663.
Over the past two millennia, the name of the ancient town in the Netherlands has been Bracola, Broccke, Brocckede, Broiclede, Brocklandia, Broekclen, Broikelen, Breuckelen, and finally Breukelen. The New Amsterdam settlement of Breuckelen also went through many spelling variations, including Breucklyn, Breuckland, Brucklyn, Broucklyn, Brookland, Brockland, Brocklin, and Brookline/Brook-line. There have been so many variations of the name that its origin has been debated; some have claimed breuckelen means "broken land". The current name, however, is the one that best reflects its meaning.
The county's name, Kings County, was named after King Charles II of England, who ruled from 1660 to 1685.
History
The history of European settlement in Brooklyn spans more than 350 years. The settlement began in the 17th century as the small Dutch-founded town of "Breuckelen" on the East River shore of Long Island, grew to be a sizeable city in the 19th century and was consolidated in 1898 with New York City (then confined to Manhattan and the Bronx), the remaining rural areas of Kings County, and the largely rural areas of Queens and Staten Island, to form the modern City of New York.
Colonial Era
New Netherland The Dutch were the first Europeans to settle Long Island's western edge, which was then largely inhabited by the Lenape, an Algonquian-speaking American Indian tribe often referred to in European documents by a variation of the place name "Canarsie". Bands were associated with place names, but the colonists thought their names represented different tribes. The Breuckelen settlement was named after Breukelen in the Netherlands; it was part of New Netherland. The Dutch West India Company lost little time in chartering the six original parishes (listed here by their later English town names):Brooklyn Daily Eagle , "Map of six townships" Gravesend: in 1645, settled under Dutch patent by English followers of Anabaptist Deborah Moody, named for 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands, or Gravesend, England; Brooklyn Heights: chartered as Breuckelen in 1646, after the town now spelled Breukelen, Netherlands. Breuckelen was along Fulton Street (now Fulton Mall) between Hoyt Street and Smith Street (according to H. Stiles and P. Ross). Brooklyn Heights, or Clover Hill, is where the village of Brooklyn was founded in 1816; Flatlands: chartered as Nieuw Amersfoort in 1647; Flatbush: chartered as Midwout in 1652; Nieuw Utrecht in 1652, named after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands; and Bushwick: chartered as Boswijck in 1661.
The colony's capital of New Amsterdam, across the East River, obtained its charter in 1653. The neighborhood of Marine Park was home to North America's first tide mill. It was built by the Dutch, and the foundation can be seen today. But the area was not formally settled as a town. Many incidents and documents relating to this period are in Gabriel Furman's 1824 compilation.
Province of New York
Present-day Brooklyn left Dutch hands after the English conquest of New Netherland in 1664, which sparked the Second Anglo-Dutch War. New Netherland was taken in a naval action, and the English renamed the new capture for their naval commander, James, Duke of York, brother of the then monarch King Charles II and future king himself as King James II. Brooklyn became a part of the West Riding of York Shire in the Province of New York, one of the Middle Colonies in England's North American colonies.
On November 1, 1683, Kings County was partitioned from the West Riding of York Shire, containing the six old Dutch towns on southwestern Long Island,N.Y. Col. Laws, ch4/1:122 as one of the "original twelve counties". 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 a Brooklyn identity.
Lacking the patroon and tenant farmer system established along the Hudson River Valley, this agricultural county unusually came to have one of the highest percentages of slaves among the population in the "Original Thirteen Colonies" along the Atlantic Ocean eastern coast of North America.
Revolutionary War
On August 27, 1776, the Battle of Long Island (also known as the 'Battle of Brooklyn') was fought, the first major engagement fought in the American Revolutionary War after independence was declared, and the largest of the entire conflict. British troops forced the Continental Army under George Washington off the heights near the modern sites of Green-Wood Cemetery, Prospect Park, and Grand Army Plaza.McCullough, David. 1776. Simon & Schuster. 2005.
Washington, viewing particularly fierce fighting at the Gowanus Creek and Old Stone House from atop a hill near the west end of present-day Atlantic Avenue, was reported to have emotionally exclaimed: "What brave men I must this day lose!".
The fortified American positions at Brooklyn Heights consequently became untenable and were evacuated a few days later, leaving the British in control of New York Harbor. While Washington's defeat on the battlefield cast early doubts on his ability as the commander, the tactical withdrawal of all his troops and supplies across the East River in a single night is now seen by historians as one of his most brilliant triumphs.
The British controlled the surrounding region for the duration of the war, as New York City was soon occupied and became their military and political base of operations in British-held North America for the remainder of the conflict. The Patriot residents largely fled or changed their political sentiments, and afterward the British generally enjoyed a dominant Loyalist sentiment from the residents in Kings County who did not evacuate, though the region was also the center of the fledgling—and largely successful—Patriot intelligence network, headed by Washington himself.
The British set up a system of prison ships off the coast of Brooklyn in Wallabout Bay. More American prisoners of war died on these prison ships than were killed in action on all the battlefield engagements of the war combined. One result of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 was the evacuation of the British from New York City, which was celebrated by New Yorkers into the 20th century.
Post-independence era Urbanization
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 New York Navy Yard operated in Wallabout Bay (border between Fort Greene and Williamsburg) during the 19th century and two-thirds of the 20th century.