Queens is the largest in area and the second most populous of the five boroughs of New York City, New York, USA. The borough is coterminous with Queens County, a county of New York State.

Located on the western portion of Long Island, Queens is home to two of the three major New York City area airports (John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia), the New York Mets baseball team, the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center (home of the annual U.S. Open), Kaufman Astoria Studios, Silvercup Studios, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and Queens Center (the most profitable per-square-foot mall in America).

As of the 2005 American Community Survey, immigrants comprise 47.6% of Queens residents making Queens the city's most diverse borough. With a population of 2.2 million it is the second most populous borough in New York City (behind Brooklyn) and the tenth most populous county in the United States. The 2.2 million figure is the highest historical population for the borough. 1 Were each borough an independent city, Queens would be the fifth largest city in the United States (and Brooklyn would be fourth).

Queens was established in 1683 as one of the original 12 counties of New York and was supposedly named for the then-queen consort, Catherine of Braganza, the Catholic wife of Charles II2 3 (this is not supported by contemporary documents). The borough is often considered one of the more suburban boroughs of New York City. Neighborhoods in central (except those situated along Queens Boulevard and the neighborhoods of Flushing and Jamaica), southern, and eastern Queens have a look and feel similar to the bordering suburbs of western Nassau County. In its northwestern section, however, Queens is home to many urban neighborhoods and several central business districts. Long Island City, on the Queens' waterfront across from Manhattan, is the site of the Citicorp Building, the tallest skyscraper in New York City outside of Manhattan.

History

European colonization brought both Dutch and English settlers, as a part of the New Netherlands colony. First settlements occurred in 1635, with colonization at Maspeth in 1642, and Vlissingen (now Flushing) in 1643. Other early settlements included Newtown (now Elmhurst) and Jamaica. However, these towns were mostly inhabited by English settlers from New England via eastern Long Island (Suffolk County) subject to Dutch law. After the capture of the colony by the English and its renaming as New York in 1664, the area (and all of Long Island) became known as Yorkshire.

Originally, Queens County included the adjacent area now comprising Nassau County. It was an original county of New York State, one of twelve created in 1683.