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At the retreat of the ice sheet, Staten Island and Long Island were not yet separated by the Narrows, which had not yet formed. Geologists reckoning of the course of the Hudson River have placed it alternatively through the present course of the Raritan River, south of the island, as well through present-day Flushing Bay and Jamaica Bay.

The Hudson and its tributaries—notably the Mohawk River—drain a large area, and the river is navigable for a great distance. The Erie Canal, opened December 26, 1825, connected the Hudson River to Lake Erie, enabling shipping between cities on the Great Lakes and Europe via the Atlantic Ocean.

The Long Island Rail Road, Long Island Expressway, and Northern and Southern State Parkways (the latter three all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses) make east-west travel on the island straightforward, if not always quick.

Manhattan is an island bordering the lower Hudson River. It is one of the five boroughs that comprise the City of New York. The borough is coterminous with New York County and includes the Island of Manhattan, as well as several other smaller islands and a small portion of the mainland.

Upstate New York includes the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains, the Shawangunk Ridge, the Finger and Great Lakes in the west and Lake Champlain, Lake George, and Oneida Lake in the northeast, and rivers such as the Delaware, Genesee, Hudson, Mohawk, and Susquehanna. The highest elevation in New York is Mount Marcy in the Adirondacks.

On April 1, 1788, the entire Massachusetts preemptive right -- comprising some 6,000,000 acres (24,000 km²) -- was sold to Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, both of Massachusetts. This sale was of the preemptive right for all land west of a line running from the mouth of Sodus Bay on Lake Ontario, due south to the 82nd milestone on the Pennsylvania border near Big Flats (the "Pre-emption Line") all the way to the Niagara River and Lake Erie.

The phrase "Wall Street" is also used to refer to the financial markets as a whole. Interestingly, most New York financial firms are no longer headquartered on Wall Street (JPMorgan Chase, the last major holdout, sold its headquarters tower at 60 Wall Street to Deutsche Bank in November 2001), but elsewhere in lower and midtown Manhattan. When contrasted to "Main Street", it can refer to big business interests as against those of small business.

The court system in New York is notable for its "backwards" naming: the state's trial court is called the New York Supreme Court, while the highest court in the state is the New York Court of Appeals.