Ranked: The Biggest U.S. Cities (1790-2025)

Ranked: The Biggest U.S. Cities (1790-2025)

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Key Takeaways

• New York has been the largest city in the United States for over two centuries.
• Los Angeles first surpassed Chicago in population in 1984.
• Southern and Western cities have increasingly outgrown their Northeastern counterparts in recent decades.

As the United States has grown into a global superpower with the world’s third-largest population, its economic center of gravity has shifted to the west and south.

This interactive graphic ranks the 15 largest American cities from 1790 to 2025 using the most recent available data (2026) from the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 1790, all but two of the new country’s largest cities were located in the Northeast. In contrast, as of 2025 only two northeastern cities, New York and Philadelphia, remained in the upper echelon of American cities.

New York City Has Been America’s Largest for 200+ Years

Despite never becoming the U.S. capital, New York has been the most populous American city for over 200 years. The major port city and metropolis, which was first founded as the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam in the colonial era, is the largest municipal economy in the world.

In 1790, only about 33,000 people lived in New York, while by 2025 this figure has grown to reach 8.6 million inhabitants across the five boroughs.

The table below lists the 15 most populous American cities from 1790-2025.

Despite doomsayers’ predictions throughout the 1970s and early 2020s, New York has never lost its allure as the most important American city and a world capital for finance, entrepreneurship, and the arts.

In 1898, the city consolidated by absorbing nearby Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, having previously integrated The Bronx. Newspapers at the time warned that failure to consolidate could see a then-ascendant Chicago eventually surpass New York in population.

Today, New York not only contains the densest part of the entire country, in the form of Manhattan, but the city’s total population is roughly comparable to the combined population of the next three largest cities: Los Angeles (3.87 million), Chicago (2.73 million), and Houston (2.39 million).

The Decline of Northern U.S. Cities

New York may not have declined in recent decades, but some of its peers cannot quite say the same. Historically powerful and central cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Philadelphia have all seen population declines in recent years.

The case of Baltimore is particularly dramatic: in 1830, the city was the nation’s second-largest, while by 2025 it had fallen out of the national top-15 ranking.

Former industrial and manufacturing hubs like these have faced massive demographic shifts and fiscal crises in recent decades. They have also been marked in most cases by rising crime and poverty rates, especially as wealthier residents have left for other cities.

Chicago, which spent much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries as America’s “Second City,” was surpassed in population by Los Angeles for the first time in 1984.

Rise of the South and the West

L.A.’s ascent in population rankings isn’t unique to the City of Angels. The last few decades has seen a steady increase in population throughout the West Coast and American South. Today, these two regions house over two-thirds of the nation’s 15 most populous cities.

The data table below shows the latest population figures by the U.S. Census Bureau for 2025 of the top 15 cities:

Population growth in California came first, with booms in cities like Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco throughout the 1900s. More recently, Texas is a center of population growth, with Houston soaring in growth after the 1950s and eventually being joined by Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, and San Antonio near the turn of the century.

In sum, the center of gravity of the U.S. has shifted over the centuries, away from the Northeast and Midwest towards more southern cities in what is now known as the Sun Belt. This population shift has implications for not only elections and the national economy, but for the changing nature of American culture.

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