207 Fun Facts About New York City

From which country was the Statue of Liberty a gift to the United States?

France: the statue, officially 'Liberty Enlightening the World', was proposed by Édouard de Laboulaye and paid for by the French public, on the understanding that Americans would supply the site and build the pedestal.

Which two landscape architects are credited with designing New York City's Central Park?

Central Park was designed by landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, whose 'Greensward Plan' won a design competition in 1858. Construction of the park began in 1857 and it was largely completed by 1876.

Which showman marched 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884?

P. T. Barnum marched the 21 elephants over on May 17, 1884, a year after the bridge opened, calming doubts about its strength and advertising his circus at the same time.

The subway's first line set off in 1904 from a now-closed station named for which landmark?

City Hall station, with its chandeliers and vaulted tile, was the showpiece when the first train left on October 27, 1904; it closed in 1945 because its short, curved platform could not be lengthened for longer trains.

Which president pressed a button in Washington to switch on the Empire State Building's lights at its opening?

Herbert Hoover pressed the button on May 1, 1931; the tower had gone up in just over 13 months, but the Depression left it so short of tenants that New Yorkers called it the 'Empty State Building'.

Which is the only New York City borough situated almost entirely on the North American mainland?

The Bronx is the only borough on the mainland, though one patch of it is legally Manhattan: Marble Hill was the island's northern tip until a canal cut it off.

Broadway's theatre district has been known by which nickname since the early 1900s?

The Great White Way was in print as a newspaper headline by February 1902; by one account the writer had Broadway under snow in mind, and the name only later came to mean the district's blaze of electric signs.

Roughly how many immigrants were processed at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?

About 12 million immigrants passed through Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954, and by one estimate some 40 percent of Americans today descend from someone who landed there.

What symbolic height did One World Trade Center reach when its spire was completed in 2013?

1,776 feet, echoing the year of the Declaration of Independence; the spire was completed in May 2013, and the tower had passed the Empire State Building as the city's tallest in April 2012.

On which Wall Street building's balcony did Washington take his oath of office in 1789?

Federal Hall hosted the inauguration on April 30, 1789 and the First Congress, which proposed the Bill of Rights there that September; the building itself was torn down in 1812.

Which county lies directly north of New York City, between the Hudson and Long Island Sound?

Westchester begins at the city line; its county seat, White Plains, is where Washington's army made a stand in October 1776 after being driven out of Manhattan.

Which director of New Netherland is credited with buying Manhattan Island from the Lenape in 1626?

Peter Minuit made the purchase soon after taking charge of New Netherland in 1626; the Dutch West India Company recalled him in 1631, and he ended his career founding a rival colony for another crown.

Which future president ran New York's police board just before the 1898 merger?

Theodore Roosevelt headed the police board from 1895 to 1897 and took to walking the beats at night to check that officers were on duty; he had left for Washington by January 1, 1898, when the five boroughs became one city.

Brooklyn's 2020 population nearly matched that of which US city?

Chicago counted about 2.75 million people in the 2020 census to Brooklyn's 2.74 million; Brooklyn was a city in its own right until 1898, and had it stayed one it would still be among the four largest in the country.

Manhattan shares its boundaries with which county?

New York County is Manhattan under its state name; at about 23 square miles it is the smallest of the five borough-counties, yet until 1914 it also took in the whole of the Bronx.

John J. Fitz Gerald popularized 'the Big Apple' in the 1920s while covering what beat?

Horse racing: Fitz Gerald wrote the 'Around the Big Apple' racing column for the New York Morning Telegraph after hearing stable hands use the term; the city revived the nickname in a 1970s tourism campaign.

Which Manhattan avenue's long-delayed subway finally opened its first stations in 2017?

The Second Avenue Subway opened three stations on January 1, 2017; digging had begun in 1972 but stopped three years later when the city ran out of money, leaving stretches of empty tunnel under the avenue for decades.

Which New York rail hub has 44 platforms, the most in the world?

Grand Central Terminal spreads its 44 platforms over two underground levels; a plan to build a tower on top of it was blocked under the city's landmarks law, a fight New York won in the Supreme Court in 1978.

Which Lower Manhattan skyscraper, the world's tallest when it opened in 1913, was nicknamed the 'Cathedral of Commerce'?

The Woolworth Building rose 792 feet on the profits of a five-and-ten-cent store chain; Frank Woolworth is said to have paid its $13.5 million cost in cash, and a clergyman supplied the churchly nickname in 1916.

Which church at the head of Wall Street holds the grave of Alexander Hamilton?

Trinity Church, chartered in 1697, looks straight down Wall Street; Hamilton was buried in its churchyard in July 1804 after his duel with Aaron Burr, and his wife Eliza lies beside him.

The 1792 Buttonwood Agreement was the origin of what institution?

The New York Stock Exchange traces its origin to the Buttonwood Agreement of May 17, 1792, named for the buttonwood tree the 24 brokers are said to have met beneath at 68 Wall Street.

In 2006, which show overtook Cats to become the longest-running musical in Broadway history?

The Phantom of the Opera passed Cats on January 9, 2006, so Andrew Lloyd Webber, who wrote both, lost the record to himself; Phantom ran on until April 2023, closing after 13,981 performances.

Which slugger did the Yankees buy from the Red Sox in 1920?

Babe Ruth arrived in 1920 and the Yankees won their first title in 1923; through 2025 they had 27, the most in baseball, while the Red Sox waited until 2004 for their next.

The Mets' blue and orange colors were chosen to honor which two baseball teams?

Dodgers blue and Giants orange: both National League clubs left for California after the 1957 season, and the Mets arrived in 1962 to fill the gap.

Madison Square Garden sits directly on top of what?

Pennsylvania Station lies beneath the Garden; the arena opened in 1968 after the original 1910 station was demolished, an act that spurred the city's 1965 landmarks law.

Which New York-area hockey team is one of the NHL's 'Original Six', the league's only clubs from 1942 to 1967?

The Rangers joined the NHL in 1926; the 'six' date only from 1942, when the city's older club, the Americans, dropped out and left the league with half a dozen teams.

Nathan's Famous began in 1916 as a Coney Island stand selling hot dogs for how much?

A nickel, half the dime that rival Feltman's charged; Nathan Handwerker, a former Feltman's employee, opened the stand in 1916 with $300 in savings.

The High Line park was built on top of what?

A former freight rail spur of the New York Central Railroad carries the park; two neighbours founded Friends of the High Line in 1999 to save it, and went on to beat a demolition order signed by an outgoing mayor.

Which mayor made the Staten Island Ferry free in 1997 by scrapping its 50-cent fare?

Rudy Giuliani owed his slim 1993 win to Staten Island, which voted that same day to explore leaving the city, partly over the fare; the charge was dropped in July 1997 under a 'one city, one fare' scheme.

What wartime measure cancelled the Times Square ball drop in 1942 and 1943?

Dimout: with the city's lights turned down for the war, the crowds who still came in 1942 and 1943 saw in the new year with a minute of silence instead of the glowing ball.

The first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1924 featured live animals borrowed from where?

Central Park Zoo lent the live animals for the 1924 parade; giant balloons replaced them in 1927, beginning with Felix the Cat.

The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree is milled into lumber and donated to which organization?

Habitat for Humanity, which began receiving the milled lumber in 2007; the first tree, in 1931, was a 20-foot balsam fir put up by construction workers.

The 1969 Stonewall uprising, a turning point for gay rights, began at a bar in which neighborhood?

Greenwich Village: the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street was raided on June 28, 1969, and the site became the Stonewall National Monument in 2016.

Which singer, then 17, won one of the earliest Amateur Nights at Harlem's Apollo Theater in November 1934?

Ella Fitzgerald, 17, had come to dance, but a slick sister act went on before her, so she sang 'Judy' and 'The Object of My Affection' instead and took first prize on November 21, 1934.

A lone Callery pear stands among hundreds of oaks at which Manhattan memorial?

The 9/11 Memorial: its 'Survivor Tree' was found in the rubble in October 2001 with snapped roots and burned branches, nursed back to health by the Parks Department and replanted in 2010 among the plaza's swamp white oaks.

Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral-ramped Guggenheim Museum opened in 1959 — how long after his death?

Six months: Wright died on April 9, 1959 and the museum opened on October 21, 1959; visitors take the elevator up and stroll down the helical ramp beneath a skylight.

Mayor La Guardia named the two marble lions outside the New York Public Library's main branch what?

Patience and Fortitude, qualities La Guardia thought New Yorkers would need to get through the Great Depression; the pair had earlier been nicknamed Leo Astor and Leo Lenox.

Katz's Delicatessen, founded in 1888, is the setting of a famous fake-orgasm scene in which 1989 film?

When Harry Met Sally... shot the scene at Katz's, where a sign still hangs over the table; the punchline, 'I'll have what she's having', went to director Rob Reiner's mother, Estelle.

Despite its name, which New York City waterway is actually a tidal strait?

The East River is a tidal strait linking Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound; its Hell Gate channel wrecked so many ships that Army engineers dynamited the rocks in 1876 and again in 1885.

In 2018 New York corrected a decades-old misspelling in the official name of which crossing?

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge lost a z to a slip in its construction contract, and a college student's campaign, begun in 2016, got it restored; at its 1964 opening the 4,260-foot centre span was the longest of any suspension bridge.

Which bronze sculpture did Arturo Di Modica install in the Financial District overnight, without a permit, in December 1989?

Charging Bull: Di Modica paid for the bronze himself after the 1987 crash and left it under a Christmas tree on Broad Street as a gift to the city; police carted it off, and it was given a home at Bowling Green within days.

Which institution's Manhattan vault, 80 feet below street level, holds the world's largest known store of gold?

The New York Fed keeps the vault on Manhattan bedrock, 50 feet below sea level, yet owns none of the gold: it holds the bars for foreign governments, central banks and international bodies.

Who won the November 2025 election for mayor of New York City?

Zohran Mamdani beat former governor Andrew Cuomo twice in five months: in the Democratic primary in June, and again on November 4, 2025, when Cuomo ran as an independent.

Which three-term New York mayor took a $1 salary and banned smoking in bars and restaurants in 2003?

Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P., served from 2002 to 2013; his third term was possible only because the City Council voted in 2008 to stretch the two-term limit at his request.

The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and '30s was originally known by what name?

The New Negro Movement shares its name with The New Negro, the 1925 anthology in which Alain Locke gathered the work of writers such as Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston.

What was New York's main international airport commonly called before it was renamed for Kennedy in 1963?

Idlewild Airport, after the golf course on its site; it opened in 1948 as New York International and was renamed for Kennedy on December 24, 1963, a month and two days after the assassination.

Milton Glaser created the 'I ❤ NY' logo for a 1970s state tourism campaign on what terms?

Pro bono: Glaser took no fee, expecting the campaign to last a couple of months; his original sketch entered MoMA's collection, and the letters are set in American Typewriter.

John Lennon was murdered in December 1980 outside which Upper West Side apartment building, his home?

The Dakota, finished in 1884 for a Singer sewing-machine magnate, was Lennon's home; a memorial garden facing it across the street in Central Park was dedicated on his birthday in 1985.

The firehouse used as the Ghostbusters' headquarters is a working fire station in which Manhattan neighborhood?

Tribeca's Hook & Ladder Company 8, at 14 North Moore Street, supplied only the outside of the building; the interiors were filmed across the country, in a disused fire station in California.

John Peter Zenger's acquittal in a New York courtroom in 1735 is remembered as an early victory for freedom of what?

The press: Zenger sat in jail for months for printing attacks on the royal governor, until his lawyer argued that the truth cannot be libel, and the jury acquitted him although the judge had ruled otherwise.

After English, which language is most widely spoken at home in New York City?

Spanish is the home language of more than one New Yorker in five, a share that took off in the 1950s when air travel brought a great wave of Puerto Rican migrants; as many as 800 languages are spoken in the city.

In what year was New Amsterdam chartered as a city?

1653: New Amsterdam received its municipal charter on February 2 that year, the same year a wooden palisade went up along what became Wall Street.

New York was the first national capital under the Constitution until 1790, when the government moved to which city?

Philadelphia took over for ten years under the 1790 Residence Act, part of a bargain in which Hamilton won federal assumption of the states' war debts in return for a permanent capital on the Potomac.

Estêvão Gomes, who charted the mouth of the Hudson for Spain in 1525, had deserted which explorer's fleet?

Ferdinand Magellan lost a ship when Gomes, its pilot, seized the San Antonio near the strait and sailed home to Spain; Gomes then talked the emperor into funding a hunt for a shorter northern passage.

Henry Hudson sailed into New York Harbor in 1609 on behalf of which trading enterprise?

The Dutch East India Company hired Hudson to find a northern passage to Asia; he sailed the Halve Maen (Half Moon) up the river that bears his name in September 1609.

Before moving to Manhattan in 1625, the first Dutch settlers landed in 1624 on which island in New York Harbor?

Governors Island, which the Dutch called Noten Eylant for its nut trees, looked safer to the first settlers than the forested shore opposite; they built a fort and a sawmill there before crossing over.

Legend prices the 1626 purchase of Manhattan from its Native inhabitants at how many dollars' worth of goods?

$24 is how a New York historian of the 1840s converted the 60 guilders named in Pieter Schagen's 1626 letter, the earliest record of the deal; the unadjusted sum stuck as legend.

Who surrendered New Amsterdam in 1664 without a fight, after its own citizens refused to take up arms?

Peter Stuyvesant, the peg-legged director-general, wanted to hold out against the warships in the harbor, but the townspeople would not back him; he lived out his days on his farm, or bouwerie, at the end of the road now called the Bowery.

Under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, England kept New Amsterdam while the Dutch kept which colony they had just captured?

Suriname, seized from the English by a Dutch fleet only months earlier; the Treaty of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War by letting each side keep what it had taken.

What did the Dutch briefly rename New York after seizing it back in 1673?

New Orange lasted little more than a year: the Dutch retook the city in August 1673 and renamed its fort for their stadtholder, William of Orange, then handed everything back in November 1674 under the Treaty of Westminster.

Which 1776 battle, among the largest of the Revolutionary War, was fought within modern Brooklyn?

The Battle of Long Island, fought on August 27, 1776, left Washington cornered on Brooklyn Heights; two nights later he slipped his whole army across the water to Manhattan without losing a man.

Which holiday long marked the British departure from New York in 1783?

Evacuation Day marked November 25, 1783, when the last British troops sailed and Washington led his army into the city; the day ended with a celebration dinner at Fraunces Tavern.

Which American spy did the British hang in Manhattan in September 1776, the day after a great fire swept the city?

Nathan Hale was hanged on September 22, 1776, a day after his capture; the fire had just destroyed up to a quarter of the city, and the British, suspecting rebel arson, questioned more than 200 people.

Which waterway, completed in 1825, linked New York's port to the American interior by way of the Hudson?

The Erie Canal, opened in October 1825, ran 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo, linking the Hudson to Lake Erie and cementing the city's rise as the nation's trading hub.

Mayor Fernando Wood proposed in 1861 that New York secede as a 'free city' to protect its trade in which crop?

Cotton: the city's merchants and bankers grew rich handling the South's crop, so as the Union broke up Wood urged the council to declare a 'Free City of Tri-Insula', Latin for three islands.

By 1860, Irish immigrants made up roughly what share of New York's population?

Over a quarter: the 1860 census counted more than 200,000 Irish-born residents in a city of about 814,000, most of them arrivals after the Great Famine.

What trapped many workers in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire?

Locked doors: managers kept a stairway door shut to stop theft and unauthorised breaks, and the foreman with the key had already fled; the 146 deaths pushed New York into sweeping new factory safety laws.

The United Nations, now based in Manhattan, signed its charter in which city?

San Francisco hosted the 1945 conference, and Pacific nations wanted the headquarters there too; New York won when John D. Rockefeller Jr. offered $8.5 million to buy the Turtle Bay site, where the complex was finished in 1952.

Which president denied New York federal aid, prompting a famous 'DROP DEAD' headline?

Gerald Ford: on October 29, 1975 he vowed to veto any bailout, and the next day's Daily News ran 'FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD'; six weeks later, on December 9, he signed a bill giving the city federal loans.

Occupy Wall Street began at which Financial District location in September 2011?

Zuccotti Park, a privately owned plaza on Broadway, was occupied from September 17, 2011 until police cleared it on November 15; the protests spread the Occupy movement worldwide.

Hurricane Sandy forced Wall Street's first two-day weather shutdown since which event?

The Great Blizzard of 1888 was the last weather to stop trading for two days running until October 29 and 30, 2012, when Sandy's surge flooded the subway and all but one of the road tunnels into Manhattan.

Which is the only freshwater river in New York City?

The Bronx River once turned mills that made flour, paper and snuff, and by 1900 it was so fouled that an official commission called it an open sewer; a cleanup that began in the 1970s has brought it back.

What is the highest natural point in New York City?

Todt Hill on Staten Island rises a little over 400 feet, the highest natural point in the five boroughs; its name is taken to mean 'death', though whether for a nearby cemetery or its bare, rocky top is disputed.

The Bronx Zoo shipped 15 animals west in 1907 to help save which species?

American bison: the zoo's first director helped launch the American Bison Society in 1905, and the 15 animals it shipped to Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains started a wild herd on plains where only a few hundred bison survived.

More than three times the size of Central Park, which is New York City's largest park?

Pelham Bay Park covers 2,772 acres; its crescent of sand, Orchard Beach, is man-made, built in the 1930s when Robert Moses had the bed of Long Island Sound dredged to join Hunter Island to a neighbouring peninsula.

About how many people lived in New York City at the 2020 census?

8.8 million was a record for a city that had sunk to barely 7 million in 1980 after losing a tenth of its people in a decade.

Which metro area overtook New York as the world's most populous in 1955?

Greater Tokyo took a title New York had itself taken from London in the 1920s; in between, New York had become the first urban area on Earth to pass 10 million people.

Before moving to Flushing Meadows in 1978, the US Open was played at a tennis club in which Queens neighborhood?

Forest Hills hosted the championships at the West Side Tennis Club for all but three years between 1915 and 1977; the club's horseshoe stadium doubled as a concert venue, and the Beatles filled it for two nights in 1964.

Which Manhattan street is nicknamed 'Billionaires' Row' for its pencil-thin supertall apartment towers?

57th Street: developers bought up their neighbours' unused air rights to stack towers on tiny plots, and one of them, 111 West 57th, was built just 18 metres wide, as the skinniest skyscraper in the world.

The Empire State Building's mast was built to moor which aircraft?

Airships were meant to tie up above the 102nd floor, the top of the building's 102 storeys, but high winds made docking impossible, and the mast ended up carrying broadcast antennas instead.

What crashed into the Empire State Building in thick fog in July 1945?

A bomber: the Army's B-25, bound for Newark on July 28, 1945, struck the 79th floor and killed 14 people; one engine cut an elevator's cables, yet the young operator riding in the car survived.

What stood on the Empire State Building's site from 1893?

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel began as two hotels built side by side by feuding Astor cousins, the Waldorf in 1893 and the Astoria in 1897; both were razed in 1929, and the hotel reopened on Park Avenue in 1931.

Which 1933 film gave the two-year-old Empire State Building its first famous role on screen?

King Kong premiered in New York on March 2, 1933; its stop-motion ape climbing the tower to fight off biplanes turned the still-new building into a movie icon, the first of its many screen roles.

Which engineer built the Statue of Liberty's metal framework?

Gustave Eiffel was hired after the statue's first engineer, Viollet-le-Duc, died in 1879; he dropped the planned masonry core for a flexible iron skeleton that carries the copper skin.

Which New York tradition began during the Statue of Liberty's 1886 dedication?

The ticker-tape parade: as the dedication procession passed on October 28, 1886, traders threw ticker tape from their office windows, and the city later made the paper shower its welcome for heroes.

What lies at the Statue of Liberty's feet, partly hidden by her robe?

A broken chain and shackle: the chain vanishes under her robe and reappears by her left foot, marking the end of slavery in the United States, and is almost impossible to see from the ground.

Which publisher's newspaper drive raised money to finish the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?

Joseph Pulitzer's New York World raised more than $100,000 in 1885, mostly in gifts of a dollar or less, by promising to print every donor's name, which also sold a great many newspapers.

Which country's agents blew up the Black Tom munitions depot near the Statue of Liberty in 1916?

Germany: its saboteurs set off the stockpiled munitions on July 30, 1916, while the United States was still neutral in World War I, damaging the statue's torch-bearing arm.

Where in New York was the Statue of Liberty's torch-bearing arm displayed from 1876 to 1882?

Madison Square Park: after visitors climbed to its torch balcony at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the arm stood in the park until 1882 to drum up money for the pedestal.

The Brooklyn Bridge was the first suspension bridge to use cables made of what?

Steel wire: the cables were first designed in iron, then switched to galvanized steel, a first for a suspension bridge; when a contractor was caught supplying inferior wire, extra wires were added to each cable.

Who relayed the bedridden chief engineer's instructions and oversaw much of the Brooklyn Bridge's construction?

Emily Warren Roebling carried her husband Washington's instructions to the site for more than ten years after caisson disease left him bedridden, and she was the first person to cross the finished bridge.

Which fare card, launched in 1994, replaced the New York City subway token for good in 2003?

MetroCard: the magnetic-stripe card arrived in 1994 to spare riders carrying tokens, which the subway stopped accepting in May 2003; the card itself stopped being sold at the end of 2025.

What propelled the single car in Alfred Beach's demonstration subway under Broadway in 1870?

Air pressure: a giant blower nicknamed the Western Tornado pushed the car down a one-block tunnel and sucked it back; Beach had the tunnel dug under a permit meant for small postal tubes.

Which subway line to Harlem is named in the title of Billy Strayhorn's famous jazz standard?

The A train: the title of 'Take the A Train' is said to come from the subway directions Strayhorn was given to reach his new bandleader's Harlem home, and the tune became the orchestra's signature.

Which non-shuttle subway service never enters Manhattan?

The G: the Crosstown line is the only full service that skips Manhattan, and its trains are so much shorter than the platforms that riders learned the 'G train sprint' to catch them.

Grand Central Madison, opened in 2023, brought which railroad into the terminal?

The Long Island Rail Road arrived in January 2023, more than a decade behind schedule, on the lower deck of a two-level tunnel that had stood empty since the subway deck above it opened in 1989.

Times Square is the eastern end of which pioneering coast-to-coast road for cars, dedicated in 1913?

The Lincoln Highway: Carl Fisher, the Indianapolis promoter, proposed it in 1912 and asked carmakers to help pay for it; the route ran from Times Square to Lincoln Park in San Francisco.

The glass grandstand steps in Times Square's Duffy Square sit on top of a booth selling what?

Discount theatre tickets: the nonprofit Theatre Development Fund opened the TKTS booth in 1973 to sell same-day seats at up to half price; the statue beside it honours Father Duffy, chaplain of the 'Fighting 69th'.

Before theatres arrived, the Times Square area was the centre of which New York trade?

Carriage building: by 1872 the crossroads was the hub of the city's carriage industry, and the Winter Garden Theatre was later converted from one of the trade's old exchange halls.

Eisenstaedt's 1945 photograph of a sailor kissing a stranger in Times Square marked which event?

V-J Day: Eisenstaedt shot the kiss for Life magazine on August 14, 1945, as crowds celebrated Japan's surrender; he took just four frames and never got the couple's names.

Which Manhattan landmark opened in 1902 as the Fuller Building?

The Flatiron Building: the Fuller construction company named it for George A. Fuller, but New Yorkers kept the nickname of its wedge-shaped block, known as the Flat Iron before the tower rose.

Which skyscraper became the world's tallest thanks to a spire secretly assembled inside it?

The Chrysler Building: its architect had the spire built in secret inside the tower, then raised it in about 90 minutes in October 1929 to overtake 40 Wall Street; it stayed the world's tallest for only 11 months after opening.

One World Trade Center was first known by what patriotic name?

The Freedom Tower: the Port Authority dropped the name in 2009 in favour of the legal one, with estate agents saying a plain street address would be easier to lease.

The Museum of Modern Art opened its doors just nine days after which historic event?

The Wall Street Crash: MoMA opened on November 7, 1929 in six rented rooms of a Midtown office building, launched by three women collectors just as the markets collapsed.

Which Van Gogh painting has hung in the Museum of Modern Art since 1941?

The Starry Night arrived in 1941 through the bequest of co-founder Lillie P. Bliss, whose will let the museum trade works from her collection for others it wanted more.

Which country gave the Metropolitan Museum of Art its Temple of Dendur, rescued from the waters of a new dam?

Egypt presented the temple to the United States in 1965 in thanks for help saving Nubia's monuments from the Aswan High Dam's rising lake; the Met has displayed it since 1978.

How many runners competed in the first New York City Marathon in 1970?

127 runners started the 1970 race, a set of loops around Central Park watched by about 100 people, and only 55 finished; the 2025 race had more than 59,000 finishers.

The New York City Marathon finishes beside which Central Park restaurant, once a sheepfold?

Tavern on the Green: the building went up in 1870 to house the flock that grazed the park's Sheep Meadow, and became a restaurant in 1934 when the sheep were moved out.

Which cartoon character first floated as a Macy's Thanksgiving parade balloon in 1934?

Mickey Mouse joined the parade in 1934; eight years later the balloons were grounded, and the parade was suspended from 1942 to 1944 because rubber and helium were needed for the war.

Which network began televising the Macy's parade nationally in 1953?

NBC has shown the parade nationally every year since 1953, though CBS put it on network television first, in 1948; the marching bands play live, but most singers on the floats lip-sync.

The Unisphere was built as the symbol of which event?

The 1964 New York World's Fair: a U.S. Steel division built the giant globe to mark the dawn of the space age, and its three rings stand for the tracks of early satellites.

Who is the Holland Tunnel named after?

Its initial chief engineer, Clifford Milburn Holland, who died in October 1924, shortly before the two tubes met under the Hudson; the tunnel opened in November 1927.

Which New York bridge almost doubled the world suspension-span record in 1931?

The George Washington Bridge: its 3,500-foot main span nearly doubled the old record, and it was designed to take a second deck, the six-lane lower level that opened in 1962.

Which bridge is Simon & Garfunkel's '59th Street Bridge'?

The Queensboro Bridge: its Manhattan end lands at 59th Street, hence the nickname in 'The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)'; it is a cantilever bridge, with no suspension cables at all.

Which island has been linked to Manhattan by a commuter aerial tramway since 1976?

Roosevelt Island: the tram, the first commuter aerial tramway in the country, was meant as a stopgap until the island's subway station opened, but the station took until 1989 and the tram stayed.

Which famed 1970s nightclub opened in a former opera house that CBS had used for television?

Studio 54: Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager opened the disco in April 1977 in the old Gallo Opera House, later a CBS studio; within three years both were in prison for tax evasion.

Which punk pioneers first played the Bowery club CBGB in August 1974?

The Ramones made their CBGB debut on August 16, 1974; owner Hilly Kristal had named the club for the country, bluegrass and blues he meant to book, but punk took over.

Whose orchestra became the Cotton Club's house band in 1927 and won national fame through its radio broadcasts?

Duke Ellington's orchestra took the job in December 1927 and stayed into 1931; weekly radio broadcasts carried the Harlem club's music nationwide, though the club itself admitted almost only white patrons.

Which singer paid for his own landmark live album, recorded at the Apollo Theater in October 1962?

James Brown: his label boss refused to fund a live record, sure nobody would buy one, so Brown paid for it himself; Live at the Apollo then spent 66 weeks on the Billboard album chart.

Which bohemian Manhattan hotel was built in the 1880s as a co-operative apartment house?

The Hotel Chelsea: Philip Hubert's co-op ran into money troubles and became a hotel in 1905, later home to Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas and Leonard Cohen.

Which storybook girl, created by Kay Thompson in 1955, lives at the Plaza Hotel with her nanny?

Eloise: Kay Thompson, who lived at the Plaza herself, wrote the books and Hilary Knight drew them; they sold so well that the hotel hung the character's portrait in its lobby.

What nickname does the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Morningside Heights carry?

St. John the Unfinished: begun in 1892, the cathedral had its whole design changed after 1909, saw its nave finished only in 1941, and still stands at about two-thirds of the planned building.

The twin-spired St. Patrick's Cathedral, dedicated in 1879, is a landmark of which architectural style?

Gothic Revival: James Renwick Jr. designed it, the cornerstone was laid in 1858, work stopped for years in the early 1860s, and the spires were not added until 1888.

Columbia University was founded in 1754 under what name?

King's College, chartered by George II in 1754; it was renamed Columbia College in 1784 after the Revolution.

Which house has been the mayor's official home since 1942?

Gracie Mansion: New York seized the riverside estate for unpaid taxes in 1896, and parks chief Robert Moses later persuaded officials to make the old merchant's house the mayor's official residence.

When New York's City Hall opened in 1812, it stood at which edge of the growing city?

The northern edge: the site was the old Common at the city's upper limit, and many thought the new hall too far uptown; to save money its rear wall was faced in brownstone instead of marble.

The bagel originated in the Jewish communities of which country?

Poland: Kraków's Jewish community rules of 1610 mention bagels as a gift for women in childbirth; Polish Jewish immigrants took them to New York, where one bakers' union made nearly all the city's bagels by hand.

Despite its name, a classic New York egg cream is made from chocolate syrup, seltzer and what?

Milk: the fountain drink holds neither egg nor cream, just milk, seltzer and syrup; it caught on in immigrant candy stores as a cheap copy of the fancier soda-fountain drinks sold uptown.

Which DJ's 1973 back-to-school party at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue is celebrated as the birth of hip-hop?

Kool Herc: in the building's recreation room on August 11, 1973, he used two copies of the same record to stretch out the drum breaks dancers loved, the trick that became the basis of hip-hop.

Which American writer spent his last years in a small Bronx cottage that is now a museum?

Edgar Allan Poe moved to the Fordham cottage in 1846 with his wife Virginia, who died of tuberculosis there the following January; he wrote 'Annabel Lee' in the house.

Brooklyn's old Dutch motto, 'Een Draght Mackt Maght', translates as which phrase?

Unity makes strength: the phrase rings the figure on the borough seal and is also Belgium's national motto, a slogan first used that way by the Dutch Republic, whose colonists founded Brooklyn's first towns.

Broadway began as what, long before Manhattan's street grid was laid out?

A Native American trail: the Wickquasgeck path wound through swamps and rocks along the island, and the Dutch made its southern stretch their main road; farther north the old trail and Broadway part ways.

What crippled firefighters during New York's Great Fire of December 1835?

Frozen water: it was well below zero and the rivers had iced over, so firemen drilled through the ice only to see the water freeze around their hoses, until marines blew up buildings in the fire's path.

Which excursion steamboat's fire was New York's deadliest disaster before September 11, 2001?

The General Slocum caught fire on a church outing on June 15, 1904, killing an estimated 1,021 passengers, mostly women and children from one immigrant parish, and hastening the decline of their Lower East Side neighbourhood.

What set off New York City's blackout of July 1977?

Lightning strikes on lines north of the city on July 13, 1977 began the collapse; unlike the 1965 blackout, traced to a faulty relay in Ontario, this one brought widespread looting and arson.

The building where the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist fire broke out now belongs to which university?

New York University: the ten-story Asch Building, now part of the NYU campus, was known for its fireproof rooms and survived the fire, though the firemen's ladders stopped short of the factory's floors.

Thomas Nast's cartoons helped topple which Tammany boss?

William Tweed: Nast's Harper's Weekly cartoons hounded 'Boss' Tweed, and when he escaped custody and fled to Spain in 1875, a Nast drawing helped identify him; he died in the Ludlow Street Jail.

Robert Moses reshaped New York for over 40 years despite never doing what?

Being elected to any office: Moses lost his only race, for governor in 1934, yet held up to a dozen appointed posts at once, including Parks Commissioner and Triborough Bridge Authority chairman.

What did Mayor La Guardia read to children over WNYC radio during a 1945 newspaper strike?

The comics: during a July 1945 newspaper deliverers' strike, La Guardia read the Sunday funnies, Dick Tracy among them, over WNYC so children would not miss them.

Which 1980s mayor greeted New Yorkers by asking how he was doing?

Ed Koch, mayor from 1978 to 1989, greeted passers-by with 'How'm I doin'?'; in 2008 he bought a plot in one of the few Manhattan graveyards then taking burials, so that he need never leave the borough.

Which wooden roller coaster has thrilled Coney Island riders since 1927?

The Cyclone opened on June 26, 1927 and still reaches 60 mph; the city acquired it in the 1960s meaning to clear the site for the aquarium next door, yet it survived to become a city landmark in 1988.

Which Coney Island ride did Denos Vourderis buy in 1983, as promised in his marriage proposal?

The Wonder Wheel: proposing to Lula in 1947, Vourderis promised her the 150-foot wheel one day; 36 years later he bought it, and the family set about restoring it.

Which competitive eater downed a record 76 hot dogs at Nathan's Coney Island contest in 2021?

Joey Chestnut ate 76 hot dogs and buns in ten minutes on July 4, 2021; barred from the 2024 contest over a sponsorship with a rival brand, he returned in 2025 and won again.

The US Open's main stadium, the world's largest, honours which champion?

Arthur Ashe won the first US Open of the Open Era in 1968 while still an amateur, so he could not accept the $14,000 first prize, which went to the man he beat; the stadium opened in 1997.

Which heavyweight champion knocked out Max Schmeling at Yankee Stadium in 1938?

Joe Louis needed just 124 seconds before a crowd of 70,000, avenging the first defeat of his career, a knockout by Schmeling in the same ballpark two years earlier.

Radio City Music Hall's site was originally intended for what?

A Metropolitan Opera house: John D. Rockefeller Jr. leased the land for the opera's new home, but the plans collapsed after the 1929 crash, and the hall opened on December 27, 1932.

Which orchestra was Carnegie Hall's last resident company before moving to Lincoln Center in 1962?

The New York Philharmonic played at Carnegie Hall for seventy years before leaving for Lincoln Center in 1962; the old hall was slated for demolition until a campaign led by violinist Isaac Stern saved it.

Which two boroughs run their own public library systems instead of using the New York Public Library?

Brooklyn and Queens: both library systems date from 1896, before the boroughs merged into one city, and were never folded in, so the NYPL serves only Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island.

Brooklyn's Grand Army Plaza arch commemorates which war?

The Civil War: the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch, dedicated in 1892, honours the Union's army and navy, and the plaza around it was later renamed in honour of the Union's forces.

What colour are New York's 'boro taxis', introduced in 2013 for the outer boroughs?

Apple green, chosen to stand apart from yellow cabs; the 2013 program let them take street hails in the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan but not in the Manhattan core or at the airports.

Which word is set in the mosaic at Central Park's memorial to John Lennon?

Imagine: the mosaic is the centrepiece of Strawberry Fields, the garden dedicated on October 9, 1985, Lennon's 45th birthday, with plants and stones sent by countries Yoko Ono had invited to contribute.

The Lincoln Tunnel surfaces in which New Jersey town, also the site of the Hamilton–Burr duel?

Weehawken: the tunnel's first tube opened in 1937 beneath the cliffs where Burr and Hamilton had rowed over to duel in 1804, choosing New Jersey because it pursued duellists less keenly than New York.

Which two tidal straits separate Staten Island from New Jersey?

The Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kull take their names from the Dutch for a channel; the Kill Van Kull has been dredged ever deeper, and the bridge over it raised 64 feet, to let the largest container ships through.

The Corona ash dump cleared for the 1939 World's Fair appears as the 'valley of ashes' in which novel?

The Great Gatsby: the novel's characters pass the dump on the road into the city; in the 1930s its ash heaps were levelled to make the fairground that became Flushing Meadows–Corona Park.

Which architect of the Washington Square Arch was shot dead in 1906 at Madison Square Garden, which he also designed?

Stanford White modelled the marble arch on Roman triumphal arches; millionaire Harry Thaw, obsessed with White's past relationship with Thaw's wife, Evelyn Nesbit, shot him at the Garden's rooftop theatre.

The Washington Square Arch marks the southern end of which famous Manhattan thoroughfare?

Fifth Avenue begins at the arch; the first one, a temporary arch of wood and plaster put up in 1889 for the centennial of Washington's inauguration, proved so successful that a permanent marble arch replaced it.

Which European garden inspired the founding of the New York Botanical Garden?

Kew Gardens: botanists Nathaniel and Elizabeth Britton visited Kew in 1888 and came home set on giving New York its equal; 250 acres of city parkland were set aside for it in 1891.

Which Spanish word for a wine cellar do New Yorkers use for a small corner grocery store?

Bodega reached New York through Puerto Rican and Cuban Spanish, where it meant a small grocery. The cats that live in the shops have a name of their own: bodega cats.

What do New Yorkers call the front steps of a brownstone, using a word left behind by Dutch settlers?

Stoop comes from the Dutch 'stoep', meaning a step or sidewalk. New York's raised entrances may themselves be a carry-over from the Dutch practice of building elevated houses.

A long sandwich known as a sub or a hoagie elsewhere goes by what name in New York City?

Hero has been the New York term since at least 1937, and locals usually write the plural as 'heros'. New England says grinder, and Boston has its own word, spuckie.

New York staples like 'schlep', 'schmooze' and 'chutzpah' entered the city's speech from which language?

Yiddish came to New York with the great waves of European immigration in the late 1800s and left its mark on the local accent too. To schlep is to drag or haul something.

Which two-word phrase do New Yorkers traditionally use for waiting in a queue, puzzling most other Americans?

On line is where Metro New Yorkers say they stand. Most other Americans, and even most people elsewhere in New York State, stand 'in' it instead.

In a New York pizzeria, what arrives at the table if a customer orders a 'pie'?

A whole pizza is a pie across the Northeast, and a New York one is typically 18 to 24 inches wide and cut into eight slices. The thin crust is soft enough to fold.

Which astrophysicist claims to have coined 'Manhattanhenge' for the sunsets that align with the borough's street grid?

Neil deGrasse Tyson named it after Stonehenge, which he visited as a child on an astronomer's expedition. He described the alignment in Natural History magazine in 1997.

Which nickname for New York City was borrowed from an English village famed in legend for its foolish residents?

Gotham is a real village in Nottinghamshire whose people, the story goes, faked idiocy to keep King John from visiting. Batman's Gotham City later made the name popular.

When a New Yorker steps outside and announces that it is 'brick' out, what is the weather like?

Extremely cold is what 'brick' means on a New York street, a usage shared with African-American Vernacular English. Speakers also double it up as 'brick cold'.

In New York slang, the word 'mad' in a phrase like 'mad expensive' does the job of which everyday word?

Very is the closest match: 'mad' is an intensifier, so the phrase means wildly expensive. It can also signal abundance, as in a street with 'mad traffic'.

At a New York bagel counter, a 'schmear' is a generous spread of what?

Cream cheese is the classic schmear, a word that simply means 'smear'. Add lox and the order becomes a staple of delicatessens in New York and Philadelphia.

A New Yorker who opens a sentence with the slang word 'deadass' is signalling what?

Total seriousness is the point of 'deadass', which grew out of the phrase 'dead-ass serious'. The word originated in New York City and spread in the late 1990s and 2000s.

At a New York deli counter, the bagel topping called 'lox' is a brined fillet of which fish?

Salmon is the fish, and traditional belly lox is cured but never smoked, which makes it intensely salty. The milder, cold-smoked version is known as Nova.

Which group of people do snobbish New Yorkers dismiss with the put-down 'bridge and tunnel'?

Commuters from off the island earn the label because they need a bridge or a tunnel to reach Manhattan. It covers the outer boroughs as much as New Jersey and Long Island.

On a Manhattan platform, a train marked 'uptown' is heading toward which point of the compass?

North is uptown and south is downtown. Used as a place name, uptown usually means the area above 72nd Street, while downtown lies below 14th.

Which bouncy rubber ball, the heart of New York stickball, is named for a local pronunciation of its maker?

Spaldeen is how the name Spalding came out in local speech. The first ones were tennis balls rejected for small defects and sold cheaply without their felt.

In New York lingo, which group of people are 'straphangers', named after the leather loops they once gripped?

Subway riders became straphangers because standing passengers held hanging leather straps to keep their balance. A New York riders' advocacy group calls itself the Straphangers Campaign.

In New York apartment listings, a building described as a 'walk-up' is missing which feature?

An elevator is what a walk-up lacks, so every floor is reached by stairs. The word covers both a single apartment and the entire block.

Older New Yorkers use the word 'dungarees' for which everyday item of clothing?

Blue jeans were dungarees to earlier generations of New Yorkers. The word possibly comes from Dongri, a dockside village near Mumbai.

A New Yorker who complains that a job paid 'bubkes' is saying the pay was what?

Hardly anything is what bubkes amounts to. The word is probably short for 'kozebubkes', which literally means goat droppings.

Tribeca's name is a shortened form of 'Triangle Below' which downtown thoroughfare?

Canal Street is the 'ca' in Tribeca, a name coined in the early 1970s. It first described one triangular block on city planning maps before a newspaper applied it to a far larger area.

Which downtown New York neighborhood is a protected historic district famed for its cast-iron building fronts?

SoHo is short for 'South of Houston Street', a name coined in 1962 by the urban planner Chester Rapkin. Its landmark district covers 26 blocks.

Which Manhattan neighborhood gained the alternative name 'Clinton' in 1959, in a bid to shed a rough image?

Hell's Kitchen stuck anyway: residents prefer it to Clinton, a name borrowed from DeWitt Clinton Park on Eleventh Avenue. Real estate listings try a third label, Midtown West.

Which New York neighborhood hosts the Feast of San Gennaro, which began in 1926 as a one-day religious commemoration?

Little Italy has shrunk to about five blocks of Mulberry Street as Chinatown grew around it. The feast honours the patron saint of Naples, the home city of the immigrants who founded it.

Which New York neighborhood holds both the Whitney Museum and the southern end of the High Line?

Meatpacking District streets held some 250 slaughterhouses and packing plants by 1900. In 2004 New York magazine called the same blocks the city's most fashionable neighborhood.

The Tenement Museum on Orchard Street, whose buildings once housed 15,000 people, is in which New York neighborhood?

Lower East Side tenements took in wave after wave of newcomers. The museum's two buildings alone were home to people from more than 20 nations between 1863 and 2015.

Which New York neighborhood surrounds a fenced private park that only nearby residents holding a key may enter?

Gramercy residents around the park pay an annual fee for their keys, and the locks are changed every year. The name may come from a Dutch phrase meaning 'little crooked swamp'.

Which Manhattan neighborhood was severed from Manhattan Island when a shipping channel opened in 1895?

Marble Hill was cut off by a new channel for the Harlem River. The old creek on its far side was later filled with rock dug out for Grand Central Terminal, joining it to the mainland.

The United Nations headquarters stands in which Midtown East neighborhood, named after a long-vanished cove?

Turtle Bay was a riverside back yard of power plants and tenements until much of it was demolished in the 1940s and 1950s to make room for the UN. The cove itself was filled in by 1868.

Which New York neighborhood, home to the Vessel sculpture, was built on a platform above rows of parked trains?

Hudson Yards takes its name from the train storage yard hidden beneath it. The public square at its centre doubles as a ventilation area for the tracks below.

Which stop, sharing a name with the cemetery outside its doors, is the northern end of the 4 train?

Woodlawn station stands just outside Woodlawn Cemetery, which opened in 1863 and was at first as popular for strolls and picnics as for burials.

At which elevated 4 train stop do baseball fans get off for Yankee Stadium?

161st Street is the last elevated stop heading downtown: just beyond it the 4 dives underground. B and D trains stop at the same complex on a separate line below street level.

The 4 train runs express down the East Side of Manhattan beneath which avenue?

Lexington is the avenue, and the four-track line beneath it has carried more riders a day than the whole transit systems of Chicago or Boston. For decades it was the only one directly serving the Upper East Side.

Which downtown stop, beside New York's oldest public park, is the 4 train's last before leaving Manhattan?

Bowling Green is where the 4 slopes down into the Joralemon Street Tunnel on its way off the island. Until that tunnel opened in 1908, the tracks beyond the station led only to South Ferry.

Which arena, home of the NBA's Nets, shares the name of the 4 train's Atlantic Avenue stop?

Barclays Center is on the signs because the bank paid: in 2009 the transit authority sold the station's naming rights for $200,000 a year, one of the few such deals in the system.

At which 4 train stop do moving 'gap fillers' slide out to meet the doors along a sharply curved platform?

Union Square has gap fillers that sense an arriving train and extend once it has stopped. Moving the curved platform to get rid of them was judged prohibitively expensive.

Above which Bronx avenue, tied to Winston Churchill's grandfather, do the 4 train's elevated tracks run?

Jerome Avenue recalls the Jerome Park Racetrack, opened in 1866 by the financier Leonard Jerome. His daughter Jennie became the mother of Winston Churchill.

Which civil rights leader is named on the 4 train's Franklin Avenue stop, after a nearby City University college?

Medgar Evers, assassinated in 1963, gave his name to a college established in central Brooklyn in 1970. A state law passed in 2019 added the college to the station's name.

Daytime 4 trains end their run in Crown Heights at an avenue sharing the name of which upstate New York city?

Utica Avenue is the daytime end of the line, though the station has no exit at Utica itself: both stairways surface mid-block. Overnight, 4 trains run seven stops further to New Lots Avenue.

Which 4 train stop became Brooklyn's first subway station when the tunnel under the East River opened in January 1908?

Borough Hall station is named for the 1848 building above it, once the City Hall of an independent Brooklyn. Its land was donated by the Remsen and Pierrepont families, whose names live on in nearby streets.

Peter Stuyvesant governed New Amsterdam after losing what in an attack on the island of Saint Martin?

A leg, his right, was amputated and replaced with a wooden peg studded with silver nails, which earned him the nicknames 'Peg Leg Pete' and 'Old Silver Nails'.

New Amsterdam was renamed in 1664 after a royal duke who later ruled England as which king?

James II was Duke of York when the English captured the Dutch colony, and both the province and its port took his title. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

The Bowery in Lower Manhattan takes its name from 'bouwerie', an old Dutch word meaning what?

Farm is the meaning: the road linked outlying farmland and estates to the heart of the Dutch town. Peter Stuyvesant retired to his own Bowery farm in 1667.

Coney Island's name is most often traced to 'konijn', the Dutch word for which animal?

Rabbit is the most popular explanation, since wild ones were said to overrun the spot the Dutch mapped as Conyne Eylandt. Rival theories credit a settler family named Conyn.

Which animal appears twice on New York City's official seal, recalling the fur trade that built New Amsterdam?

Beaver pelts were prized in Europe because the fur could be felted into waterproof hats. One early shipment home from the colony carried 7,246 skins.

The 23 Jewish refugees who reached New Amsterdam in 1654 had fled a Dutch colony in which present-day country?

Brazil's port of Recife had fallen to the Portuguese that January. Peter Stuyvesant tried to turn the refugees away, but his employers in Amsterdam overruled him.

The Flushing Remonstrance of 1657 challenged Peter Stuyvesant's ban on worship by which religious group?

Quakers were defended by some thirty Flushing residents, none of whom belonged to the faith. Their petition is considered a precursor of the Bill of Rights guarantee of religious freedom.

Which author invented Diedrich Knickerbocker, the fictional Dutch historian who gave the Knicks their name?

Washington Irving promoted his 1809 satire with a hoax, telling newspapers that the historian Diedrich Knickerbocker had vanished from his hotel. The name later came to mean any New Yorker.

Staten Island is named after the Staten-Generaal, which was what in the 17th-century Dutch Republic?

Its parliament, the States General, lent the island its Dutch name, Staaten Eylandt. Legally, though, the borough was called Richmond until 1975.

Which notorious 19th-century slum, the setting of the film Gangs of New York, stood where Chinatown is today?

Five Points took its name from an intersection where crossing streets made five corners. The crowded, disease-ridden slum lasted more than 70 years on land that had once been a pond.