New York City
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207 free New York City trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
51 free New York City trivia questions with answers. New York City is the most-quizzed city on Earth, and most NYC trivia online recycles the same five facts. This set goes deeper: how the five boroughs came to be one city in 1898, why Wall Street is called that, which bridge had its name misspelled for half a century, where the world's biggest pile of gold actually sits, and who is running City Hall right now. The 207 questions run from easy warm-ups (which borough is the most populous, what the Staten Island Ferry costs) to genuinely hard ones about the Guggenheim, the Apollo Theater and a certain Tribeca firehouse. It suits commuters, transplants, bar-trivia hosts and anyone who has ever argued about the best slice. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia or an official source, and the sentence that establishes it is shown under each question, so you can settle the argument on the spot.
30 of 207 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which country was the Statue of Liberty a gift to the United States?
France
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.
Q 02Which two landscape architects are credited with designing New York City's Central Park?
Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux
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.
Q 03Which showman marched 21 elephants across the Brooklyn Bridge in 1884?
P. T. Barnum
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.
Q 04The subway's first line set off in 1904 from a now-closed station named for which landmark?
City Hall
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.
Q 05Which president pressed a button in Washington to switch on the Empire State Building's lights at its opening?
Herbert Hoover
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'.
Q 06Which is the only New York City borough situated almost entirely on the North American mainland?
The Bronx
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.
Q 07Broadway's theatre district has been known by which nickname since the early 1900s?
The Great White Way
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.
Q 08Roughly how many immigrants were processed at Ellis Island between 1892 and 1954?
12 million
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.
Q 09What symbolic height did One World Trade Center reach when its spire was completed in 2013?
1,776 feet
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.
Q 10On which Wall Street building's balcony did Washington take his oath of office in 1789?
Federal Hall
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.
Q 11Which county lies directly north of New York City, between the Hudson and Long Island Sound?
Westchester
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.
Q 12Which director of New Netherland is credited with buying Manhattan Island from the Lenape in 1626?
Peter Minuit
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.
Q 13Which future president ran New York's police board just before the 1898 merger?
Theodore Roosevelt
Q 21The 1792 Buttonwood Agreement was the origin of what institution?
New York Stock Exchange
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.
Q 22In 2006, which show overtook Cats to become the longest-running musical in Broadway history?
The Phantom of the Opera
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.
Q 23Which slugger did the Yankees buy from the Red Sox in 1920?
Babe Ruth
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.
Q 14Brooklyn's 2020 population nearly matched that of which US city?
Chicago
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.
Q 15Manhattan shares its boundaries with which county?
New York 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.
Q 16John J. Fitz Gerald popularized 'the Big Apple' in the 1920s while covering what beat?
Horse racing
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.
Q 17Which Manhattan avenue's long-delayed subway finally opened its first stations in 2017?
Second Avenue
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.
Q 18Which New York rail hub has 44 platforms, the most in the world?
Grand Central Terminal
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.
Q 19Which Lower Manhattan skyscraper, the world's tallest when it opened in 1913, was nicknamed the 'Cathedral of Commerce'?
Woolworth Building
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.
Q 20Which church at the head of Wall Street holds the grave of Alexander Hamilton?
Trinity Church
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.
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.
Q 24The Mets' blue and orange colors were chosen to honor which two baseball teams?
Dodgers and Giants
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.
Q 25Madison Square Garden sits directly on top of what?
Pennsylvania Station
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.
Q 26Which New York-area hockey team is one of the NHL's 'Original Six', the league's only clubs from 1942 to 1967?
Rangers
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.
Q 27Nathan's Famous began in 1916 as a Coney Island stand selling hot dogs for how much?
A nickel
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.
Q 28The High Line park was built on top of what?
A former freight rail spur
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.
Q 29Which mayor made the Staten Island Ferry free in 1997 by scrapping its 50-cent fare?
Rudy Giuliani
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.
Q 30What wartime measure cancelled the Times Square ball drop in 1942 and 1943?
Dimout
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.