Englewood is situated in the southern part of Bergen County's Northern Valley region, just north of the great Jersey meadowlands, three miles west of the George Washington Bridge and ten miles from Times Square. It occupies 4.9 square miles descending from a height of 410 feet on the western slope of the Palisades to almost sea level in the valley.

Many years before Europeans came to the Hackensack Valley, the Lenni Lenepe, the "very original people" (a part of the Delaware Nation of Native Americans) came from the west and settled here. The great peninsula of land we know as New Jersey, they call Scheyechbi, the "Land Along the Water." In 1607, when Henry Hudson sailed the Half Moon up the river which would later bear his name, he claimed for the Dutch both the river and the valley it drained. Hudson's journal says of the Lenni Lenepe: "The people of the country abord of us, seeming very glad of our coming, and brought green tobacco and gave us it for knives and beads. They go in deerskins, loose, well dressed. They desire clothes and are very civil." However, trouble broke out after the Europeans settled, and of the estimated two thousand native people who originally lived and hunted in New Jersey, only about fifty remained in 1832.

At present Englewood is a sophisticated city which combines much of its historic grace and charm with an exciting cosmopolitan atmosphere. It has many contrasts - between elaborate Victorian mansions and modern low-rise condominiums, between quiet tree-lined residential neighborhoods and the bustling central business district, between large estates and affordable apartments. Its proximity to New York City continues to be a significant feature, but it also has a vital and distinctive character of its own, forged from the richly heterogeneous backgrounds, interests and talents of its citizens.

Englewood's population is far more diverse than that of most suburbs, including many of its Bergen County neighbors.