History of The Bronx - Before 1914

Before 1914

See also: List of former municipalities in New York City

The development of the Bronx is directly connected to its strategic location between New England and New York (Manhattan). Control over the bridges across the Harlem River plagued the period of British colonial rule. Kingsbridge, built in 1693 where Broadway reached the Spuyten Duyvil Creek, was a possession of the lords of Philipse Manor. The tolls they charged were resented by Bronx farmers with crops and cattle to sell in New York. It was the angry farmers who built a "free bridge" across the Harlem River which led to the abandonment of tolls altogether.

Historical populations
Census	Pop.		%±
1790	1,781		—
1800	1,755		−1.5%
1810	2,267		29.2%
1820	2,782		22.7%
1830	3,023		8.7%
1840	5,346		76.8%
1850	8,032		50.2%
1860	23,593		193.7%
1870	37,393		58.5%
1880	51,980		39.0%
1890	88,908		71.0%
1900	200,507		125.5%
1910	430,980		114.9%
1920	732,016		69.8%
1930	1,265,258		72.8%
1940	1,394,711		10.2%
1950	1,451,277		4.1%
1960	1,424,815		−1.8%
1970	1,471,701		3.3%
1980	1,168,972		−20.6%
1990	1,203,789		3.0%
2000	1,332,666		10.7%
Est. 2008	1,391,903
Sources below.

The territory now contained within Bronx County was originally part of Westchester County, one of the 12 original counties of the English Province of New York. The present Bronx County was contained in the town of Westchester and parts of the towns of Yonkers, Eastchester, and Pelham. In 1846, a new town, West Farms, was created by division of Westchester; in turn, in 1855, the town of Morrisania was created from West Farms. In 1873, the town of Kingsbridge (roughly corresponding to the modern Bronx neighborhoods of Kingsbridge, Riverdale, and Woodlawn) was established within the former borders of Yonkers.

Among famous settlers in the Bronx in the 19th and early 20th centuries were the author Willa Cather, the tobacco merchant Pierre Lorillard, and the inventor Jordan L. Mott, who established Mott Haven to house the workers at his iron works.

The consolidation of the Bronx into New York City proceeded in two stages. In 1873, the state legislature annexed Kingsbridge, West Farms and Morrisania to New York, effective in 1874; the three towns were abolished in the process. In 1895, three years before New York's consolidation with Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, the whole of the territory east of the Bronx River, including the Town of Westchester (which had voted in 1894 against consolidation) and portions of Eastchester and Pelham, were annexed to the city. City Island, a nautical community, voted to join the city in 1896.

On January 1, 1898, the consolidated City of New York was born, including the Bronx as one of the five distinct Boroughs. (At the same time the Bronx's territory moved from Westchester County into New York County, which already contained Manhattan and the rest of pre-1874 New York City.)

On April 19, 1912, those parts of New York County which had been annexed from Westchester County in the past decades were newly constituted as Bronx County, the 62nd and last county to be created by the state, effective in 1914. Bronx County's courts opened for business on January 2, 1914 (the same day that John P. Mitchel started work as Mayor of New York City).

The South Bronx was for many years a manufacturing center, and in the early part of the 20th Century was noted as a center of piano manufacturing. In 1919, the Bronx was the site of 63 piano factories employing more than 5,000 workers.