Talk:List of former municipalities in New York City

Manhattan

There was never a Village of Greenwich or a Village of Harlem. Nonsense. I removed them.

There was a very obscure Town of New Harlem in the colonial period. The most easily found source, New Harlem Past and Present by Carl Horton Pierce, 1903, is not mentioned by later historians and I am not prepared to say how much of it should be relied upon. However other sources do at least verify the one-time existence of such a Town, and I footnoted one, a Colton map that shows the precise boundary line.JoeBrennan (talk) 22:01, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't find the Pierce book reliable, since it's thesis is that descendants of the original townspeople can make a fortune by claiming Harlem real estate. A 1907 history states that as of 1730, New York City included all of Manhattan, and strongly implies that that was the case in 1686:

The Out Ward comprised all of the land of Manhattan Island beyond the limits of the city proper, and the city jurisdiction covered almost all of the waters and islands of the rivers and the bay.

— John Austin Stevens, The Physical Evolution of New York City in a Hundred Years [1]

It seems likely that Harlem was, at most, semi-autonomous, perhaps only briefly. Fitnr (talk) 18:24, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Harlem may have had more legal autonomy for much longer than some may wish to believe. I put this on the discussion page for Harlem, but I'll re-post it here:

According to this New York Times article, from September of 1852, the author, a native of Harlem, notes that Harlem "is not represented in the same Council where the affairs of the City are so well and so wisely administered." The author also compares Harlem and the City as if they are two separate entities, though both within New York County, and notes that the thousands of readers of the paper, most of whom are New York City residents, have probably never heard of Harlem. Though the website requires a subscription, you can view the article for free by clicking the PDF link. 98.221.141.21 (talk) 17:38, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Village, Town and City of Brooklyn

When the City of Brooklyn was chartered in 1834 it took over the entire territory of the Town of Brooklyn. It was not created 'within' the Town of Brooklyn. I've inserted references for this, there are also number of maps from the 1840s and 1850s that show Brooklyn City stretching to modern Sunset Park and Bed-Stuy. For more verification, an 1835 New York State law set up a commission to lay out streets in Brooklyn, the result is shown here. Fitnr (talk) 14:26, 17 January 2013 (UTC)