Staten Island is at the same time an island ( the island of Staten Island ) and one of the five districts (Borough) of the town of New York to the the United States, with Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Queens, the Bronx. In 2000, its population was of 443  728 inhabitants.

Staten Island coincides with the administrative cutting of the county of Richmond ( Richmond County ), administrative cutting of the State of New York.

Geography

The island of Staten Island is located opposite the southern end of Manhattan, on the other side of the principal basin of the port.

The surface of Staten Island is of 265 km ², including 151 km ² of emerged grounds. Its culminating point is Todt Hill to 125 Mr. C' is also the culminating point for the whole of New York.

Like district of New York, Staten Island includes/understands the island of Staten Island and also five small islands uninhabited:

• “Isle off Meadow”, (in the river “Fresh Kills”)
• Pralls island (in the river Arthur Kill)
• Shooters island (in Bay of Newark)
• Swinburne island (in the New York bay)
• Hoffman island (in the New York bay).

Staten Island is connected to the continent (New Jersey), by the bridge Bayonne, the Goethals bridge and the bridge Outerbridge Crossing, and in Brooklyn by the Pont Verrazano.

Staten Island is clearly divided into two, North Shore, in the North of Staten Island Expressway, and South Shore, in the south of the highway.

Demography

The district counted 443  728 inhabitants with the census of 2000, including 78% of “white” of European, majority origin of Italian or Irish origin, 10% of Afro-American S and 6% people of Asian origin.

History

At the 14th century, the island was inhabited by the tribes of the Algonquins, and in 1609 Henry Hudson establishes there a counter of trade for the Compagnie Dutchwoman of the Eastern Indies. It named the island Staaten Eylandt , according to the General states of the United Provinces, which were at the time in insurrection against the king d' Espagne.

Until 1661, no colony could settle there durably, because of the conflicts with the natives, then in 1667 it was yielded to the English, who occupied it later throughout all the war of Independence. It is at that time that one practiced an intensive deforestation there. Then with the advent of independence the English owners fled with the Canada. Like the others boroughs , Staten Island was unified with New York City in 1898.

The district of Staten Island remained rather rural to the opening of the Verrazano bridge in 1964, when its insular statute was tranformé in that of suburbs with strong urban development. Until this time, one could find still there cattle-breeding farms of poultry and milch cows, which caused sometimes a certain form of humor on behalf of the inhabitants of the other districts. At the end of the Years 1960, there were several quarrels on the environmental questions and the safeguarding of nature. Since, one arranged in the hills of the center of the island a series of public parks, connected well by footpaths (the Greenbelt ).

The island shelters since second half of the 20th century the most important site of hiding of waste of New York (the Fresh Kills Landfill ), closed beginning 2001 for its excessive production of Méthane (most important of the world), but reopened the same year to store there the remains of the World Trade Center.

During the Years 1980, under the mandate of the mayor of New York David Dinkins, there was a political movement so that the island makes secession of the remainder of the city. This movement was blown with the arrival of Rudolph Giuliani in 1993.

Policy

Staten Island is the republican bastion of the democratic city of New York.

Its mayors are almost always republicans and in 2004, Staten Island voted with nearly 60% for the republican president George W. Bush whereas the four other districts of New York chose largely the democratic candidate John Kerry.

Transport

A service of ferry ensures of the connections with the south of Manhattan. A railway line, of a type close to that of the subway of New York, the cross-piece of north in the south ( MTA Staten Island Railway ), but is not connected any more to the remainder of the network of the New Jersey.

Long strings of barges evacuate each day of New York 10  000 with 20  000 tons of waste urban. Their destination: immense discharge of Fresh Kills, on Staten Island.

External bonds

• Gallery Photographs Seen Air
• Photograph gallery devoted to the ferry of Staten Island
• To visit in photographs Staten Island

Simple: Staten Island

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