New York metropolitan area passed through ports in New York or in one of the surrounding towns. The five boroughs of New York City — The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island — were consolidated into a single city in 1898. The newly unified New York City encouraged both more physical connections between the boroughs and the growth of bedroom communities. The New York City Subway began operating in 1904 as the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, one of three systems (the other two being the Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Corporation and the Independent Subway System) that were later taken over by the city. Railroad stations
Demographics of New York (state) those with roots in Caribbean Islands like Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad and Haiti, as well as recent immigrants from Sub-Saharan African countries. The Bronx has a large population of blacks that are of Latin American origin, but so does northern Manhattan (Harlem) and Brooklyn which had American-born black majorities since the 1920s, as well the largest African American population of any state. New York City has 1 million of New York State's 1.4 million Asian Americans. At 520,000 of New York State's over 600,000 Chinese Americans, New York City has a higher total number of Chinese Americans than Los Angeles