Dukes

Updated 30 October 2026 · Fan site. Not affiliated with Rockstar Games or Take-Two Interactive.

Dukes is one of the four boroughs of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) and is modelled on Queens, New York. It shares an island with Broker, contains Francis International Airport and is the most suburban part of the city. It returns in The Lost and Damned, The Ballad of Gay Tony and Chinatown Wars.

Where is Dukes in GTA IV?

Dukes covers the eastern half of the big island it shares with Broker. GTA Wiki points out that these two are the only boroughs of the HD-era Liberty City that sit on the same landmass. Charge Island, an industrial patch in the Humboldt River, also belongs to Dukes. Across the water lie Algonquin to the west and Bohan to the north.

By GTA Wiki's count, Dukes is second only to Algonquin in both area and population. It is also the greenest borough, with more parks than any other, and the wiki describes it as broadly middle class and the most suburban of the four. Dukes has nine of the city's 65 neighbourhoods, fewer than some boroughs, but they are big ones. The game's own lore dates the borough to about 1664, shortly after the colony of New Rotterdam was renamed Liberty City, according to GTA Wiki. The same source says the in-game documentary A History of Liberty City offers a joke origin for the name that has nothing to do with royalty.

What is Dukes based on?

Wikipedia's article on Grand Theft Auto IV lists Dukes as the game's version of Queens. The name follows the same royal theme as the real borough. GTA Wiki matches most districts to a Queens neighbourhood, and the airport is the clearest case: it borrows from JFK, while its runway plan is said to follow LaGuardia.

What are the districts of Dukes?

East Island City is the urban core. Dukes Boulevard runs through it, and it holds office buildings, the LC24 Tower and a contemporary art museum, with older industry fading out to the south. Beechwood City is attached to it and runs into Broker. Cerveza Heights in the middle of the borough has the local hospital and police station and a shopping strip of small family businesses, with Italian, Hispanic and Chinese communities.

Willis has a Caribbean character and the Big Willis Mall. Steinway is a working-class Irish and German area with the borough's only housing projects and a beer garden. Meadows Park and Meadow Hills are the leafy, expensive end of Dukes. Francis International Airport is the largest district in the whole city, and Charge Island is the borough's second industrial zone.

What landmarks are in Dukes?

Francis International Airport takes up the eastern tip and works as Liberty City's international hub, with its own police and fire stations. Meadows Park contains the Meadows Park Museum and two structures that GTA Wiki describes as leftovers from a world's fair, the Monoglobe and the Liberty State Pavilion Towers. Other sights listed by the wiki include the National Union of Contemporary Arts (NUCA), the Liberty City Swingers stadium, Dukes Cemetery, Gantry Park and the sewage works on Charge Island.

How do you get to Dukes?

By road from Broker the Broker-Dukes Expressway does the job, while the Algonquin-Dukes Expressway links the airport with the Algonquin Bridge. The East Borough Bridge crosses Charge Island towards Algonquin and Bohan, and the Dukes Bay Bridge runs north to Bohan. The subway serves the borough too, with stations at Dukes Boulevard, Huntington Street, Lynch Street and the airport, according to GTA Wiki. Huntington Street is where the line's two loops cross, so it works as the borough's interchange. Public services are spread thinly for a borough this size. GTA Wiki lists police stations in East Island City and at the airport, a fire station at the airport and the Cerveza Heights Medical Center as the hospital.

Can you live in Dukes in GTA IV?

No. Dukes is one of the three areas open to Niko Bellic from the start, alongside Broker and Bohan, as Wikipedia notes. GTA Wiki says it opens with the first mission, The Cousins Bellic. Even so, it has no safehouse in GTA IV or in either episode, making it the only part of the map where none of the HD-era heroes lives.

Plenty of the cast does live there, though. GTA Wiki lists the McReary family, including Packie, among the borough's residents, along with Ray and Galina Bulgarin and Eddie Low. It also notes that Anthony "Gay Tony" Prince of The Ballad of Gay Tony grew up in Dukes and hides that fact from nearly everyone except Luis Lopez. In the episodes, the borough opens with the missions Clean and Serene (The Lost and Damned) and I Luv LC (The Ballad of Gay Tony).

Dukes in Chinatown Wars

Chinatown Wars (2009) keeps Dukes in its scaled-down map. Here it does get a home for the hero: GTA Wiki says Huang Lee's first safehouse is in Cerveza Heights, a district with many Chinese-owned businesses. In that game, the wiki says, Dukes opens after the mission Yu Jian.

Dukes trivia

GTA Wiki collects a few oddities. Dukes and Bohan are the only boroughs with no gun shop and no internet café. The borough's one Burger Shot, in Cerveza Heights, is closed, while Dukes and Algonquin are the only boroughs with a Cluckin' Bell you can enter. The wiki also says the borough's name has nothing to do with the Dukes muscle car found in the game.