The Bronx is a borough of New York City.and a county within New York State.

The Bronx is named in memory of the areas first European settler, the Swede, Jonas Bronck. The earliest settlement in The Bronx took place along the Harlem River in 1639, in what is now Mott Haven. The Bronx originally was part of Westchester County. In 1841, the New York and Harlem Railroad began regular commuter service between The Bronx and Manhattan, and by 1895 the area had become a part of New York City. At the turn of the century, the quiet suburban streets and farms of The Bronx began to yield to rapidly expanding factories and urban neighborhoods. In 1914, the borough’s main thoroughfare, the Grand Concourse, was completed; it had been inspired by Paris’ great boulevard, the Champs Elysées. By the 1920s the Fordham Road-Grand Concourse intersection was a great commercial nexus and a center of tree-lined avenues, with luxurious homes and apartment buildings designed in the latest Art Deco and modernist styles.

The last decade of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century were the formative years, too, for many great landmarks which continue to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors to The Bronx every year. The Bronx Zoo, one of the largest zoos in the world; the beautiful park-like New York Botanical Garden; the Hall of Fame for Great Americans at Bronx Community College (the former campus of New York University) and, of course, Yankee Stadium, are just a few of the borough’s many outstanding attractions.

The Bronx is the home of New York's two greatest landmarks, the Bronx Zoo and Yankee Stadium.

The area was named after the Dutch settler Jonas Bronck, who had claimed the area as his farm back in 1636. The Bronx is the only borough of New York that is physically connected to the mainland of the United States. The borough was largely undeveloped and consisted mostly of cottages, farmlands, and wild marshes until a large swell of Irish and Italian immigrants inhabited the area. Immigrants still come to the Bronx, but today they are Russian and Hispanic.

General areas in the Bronx