Q. Did New York City ever have more than five boroughs?

A. No, but there was talk briefly of as many as 9 or 10, including ones named Harlem and Williamsburg.

Michael Miscione, Manhattan’s borough historian, explained why. Until 1898, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island were separate from New York City. What we now know as the Bronx had been annexed by 1895, but it was not yet known as the Bronx.

“In 1896 the Legislature passed the Greater New York Bill, a law that decreed that all the municipalities around New York Harbor — the Cities of New York, Brooklyn, Long Island City, and a patchwork of towns and villages on Staten Island and in Queens County — would be consolidated into one large city on Jan. 1, 1898,” Mr. Miscione said in an e-mail. “A state commission was appointed to write a charter that would spell out the new city’s governmental structure. Among other things, the drafters had to decide if Greater New York should be divided into smaller districts and, if so, how many of them there should be.”