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
Richmond Hill (Manhattan) Richmond Hill (Manhattan) Richmond Hill was a colonial estate in Manhattan, New York City, that was built on a parcel of the "King's Farm" obtained on a 99-year lease in 1767 from Trinity Church by Major Abraham Mortier, paymaster of the British army in the colony. Part of the site is now the Charlton-King-Vandam Historic District of Manhattan. The house stood southeast of the modern intersection of Varick and Charlton Streets and some 100 to 150 yards west of the informal footpath that crossed the ditch in Lispenard's Meadows with a plank, and connected the city with Greenwich Village, which