There are 62
counties in the State of
New York. The first twelve counties in New York were created immediately after the British annexation of the Dutch colony of
New Amsterdam, although two of these counties have since been abolished. The most recent county formation in New York was in 1912, when
Bronx County was created from the portions of
New York City that had been annexed from
Westchester County.
New York's counties are named for a variety of Native American words, British provinces, cities, and royalty, early American statesmen and generals, and state politicians.
Five of New York's counties are coterminous with the five
boroughs of
New York City and do not have functioning county governments, except for a few borough officials. New York City is considered the county seat of these five counties:
New York County (
Manhattan),
Kings County (
Brooklyn),
Bronx County (
The Bronx),
Richmond County (
Staten Island), and
Queens County (
Queens). Because each borough has a separate main post office (and Queens has four), the county seats of the five boroughs are often stated in terms of those main
post offices: New York (Manhattan), Brooklyn, Bronx, Staten Island, and
Jamaica (Queens), NY. However, the communities served by those main post offices are all within the city limits of New York. In contrast to other counties of New York state, the powers of the five boroughs of New York City are very limited, and in nearly all respects subordinate to the city's.
The
FIPS county code is the five-digit
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code which uniquely identifies counties and county equivalents in the United States. The three-digit number is unique to each individual county within a state, but to be unique within the entire United States, it must be prefixed by the state code. This means that, for example, while
Albany County,
New York is 001,
Addison County,
Vermont and
Alachua County,
Florida are also 001. To uniquely identify Albany County, New York, one must use the state code of 36 plus the county code of 001; therefore, the unique nationwide identifier for Albany County, New York is 36001. The links in the column FIPS County Code are to the Census Bureau Info page for that county.
Alphabetical list
Defunct counties
Proposed new counties
See also
