City of Greater New York towns and cities in Kings County. Only the western part of Queens County was part of the consolidation plan. In 1899, its three eastern towns separated to form the new Nassau County. While remaining a county in relation to the state, each county became a borough within the city, with the Bronx reunited to form a fifth borough that shared New York County with Manhattan. A separate Bronx County was established in 1914, making the present New York County co-extensive with the Borough of Manhattan. The term "City of Greater New York" was never a legal or official designation as
New York City dominated by Tammany Hall, a political machine supported by Irish and German immigrants. Several prominent American literary figures lived in New York during the 1830s and 1840s, including William Cullen Bryant, Washington Irving, Herman Melville, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, John Keese, Nathaniel Parker Willis, and Edgar Allan Poe. Public-minded members of the contemporaneous business elite lobbied for the establishment of Central Park, which in 1857 became the first landscaped park in an American city. The Great Irish Famine brought a large influx of Irish immigrants, of whom over 200,000 were living in New York by 1860, upwards of a quarter of