About Queens

Queens is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Queens County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located on Long Island, it is the largest borough of New York City in area; it is bracketed by the borough of Brooklyn at the western tip of Long Island to its west and Nassau County to the east. Queens also shares water borders with the boroughs of Manhattan, the Bronx, and Staten Island (via the Rockaways). With a population of 2,405,464 as of the 2020 census, Queens is the second most populous county in New York State, second to Kings County (Brooklyn), and is therefore also the second most populous of the five New York City boroughs. Were it a city, Queens would rank as the fourth most-populous in the U.S.. Approximately 47 percent of the residents of Queens are foreign-born. Queens is the most linguistically diverse place on Earth and is one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the United States.Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of the Province of New York. The settlement was presumably named for the English Queen Catherine of Braganza (1638–1705). From 1683 to 1899, the County of Queens included what is now Nassau County. Queens became a borough during the consolidation of New York City in 1898, combining the separate towns of Long Island City, Newtown, Flushing, Jamaica, and western Hempstead.