How Much Do You Know About New York City History?

In the mid-20th century, New York City banned what may seem a very harmless pastime: pinball. In the 1940s, the arcade game was considered the scourge of society, contributing to juvenile delinquency, crime, and immorality. One key factor was the introduction of flippers, which some argued made it a gambling machine. Mayor LaGuardia accompanied police officers on photo ops where machines were smashed to pieces. Finally, in the 1970s, New York overturned the ban, deciding pinball was a game of skill rather than of luck.

Before team owner Walter O'Malley moved the Dodgers west to Los Angeles, where they've been since 1958, they were one of three Major League Baseball teams in New York, along with the Yankees and the Giants. Founded in the late 19th century as the Bridegrooms (and later referred to as the Robins), the Dodgers played at Washington Park and Eastern Park before making their home at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn's Flatbush neighborhood. The team played their final game as the home team in Brooklyn in 1957, and Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960.

On October 27, 1904, New York City Mayor George B. McClellan descended the stairs from his office to the brand new subway underneath City Hall. The 9.1-mile line ran from City Hall through 28 stations to 145th Street in Harlem. After the mayor's inaugural ride, the subway opened to the general public, and more than 100,000 people paid a nickel to ride on NYC's first subway line on its first day of operation.

When New York City's Grand Central Terminal was in danger of being demolished in the 1970s, preservationists rallied to save it — with help from none other than Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "If we don't care about our past, we can't have very much hope for our future," the former First Lady said at a press conference in the terminal's famed Oyster Bar in 1975. Ultimately, the preservation efforts succeeded, and more than 40 years later, Grand Central still stands.

The Steinway piano factory was built in Queens' Astoria neighborhood in the 1870s, and the company still manufactures the iconic instruments there today. Several of the buildings in Astoria on 20th Avenue and 41st Street were actually part of Steinway’s company town. No housing existed around the factory when it was first built, so the company constructed rowhouses for workers.

Some of the most expensive places to live in the United States are located in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, earning it the nickname the “Silk Stocking District.” There’s also a stretch of Fifth Avenue (near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and Central Park) lined with many historic mansions, called “Millionaire’s Row.”

New York City’s now-ubiquitous nickname is often credited to 1920s sports journalist John J. Fitz Gerald. In horse-racing terms, a Big Apple referred to major prize money that was available at larger races, and the biggest horse races at that time were in New York City. Fitz Gerald heard two stablehands use the term to describe the city itself, and he adopted and popularized it in his column.

From the 1910s to the 1930s, Black residents poured into Upper Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood as part of the Great Migration — not just from other parts of New York City but from all around the country. That spurred the Harlem Renaissance, a development that turned the neighborhood into an epicenter of Black culture. Literature and music took off, producing luminaries like Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and many others.

In the 1850s, freight trains running along 10th and 11th Avenues (known as “Death Alley”) regularly struck and killed pedestrians. The city came up with a solution: the West Side Cowboys, who rode ahead of trains on horseback to warn people. The riders waved red flags or held lanterns to get pedestrians’ attention. By the 1930s, the city built safer elevated rails for the trains.

Looking to see your name in lights on the Great White Way? Head to Broadway, specifically the Theater District between 42nd and 53rd streets in midtown Manhattan. In 1880, nearly a mile of Broadway was illuminated by electric lights — one of the first streets in the world to do so, which inspired the neighborhood’s “Great White Way” nickname.

Neither glamorous nor dark, Gotham means "Goat's Town" in old Anglo-Saxon. In the early 19th century, Washington Irving (famed author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” among other works) began using the word to refer to New York in his satirical journal, "Salmagundi." Irving was poking fun at the city, but New Yorkers either didn't know or didn't care and embraced the epithet.

The massive New York City subway system has seven numbered routes and 15 lettered routes (not including shuttle service). The system skips the letter “I” because it too closely resembles the number one, which marks a current train that connects lower Manhattan to the Bronx. The letters “U” and “Y” were also nixed because they sound like the actual words “you” and “why.”

The transit system in 19th-century New York relied on elevated lines, which transported steam-powered wooden cars along Manhattan’s streets. But the system was quickly revealed to be impractical when the Great Blizzard of 1888 paralyzed the city. The elevated trains couldn’t run in the snow, leaving people completely isolated. The first underground line of the subway opened six years later, in October 1904.

Fraunces Tavern is about as old school as it gets in New York City. This historic landmark, opened in the early 1700s, served the likes of George Washington and is where the Sons of the Revolution secret society often met before the war. You can still drink and dine in this pre-revolutionary tavern, with colonial fare like shepherd’s pie and oysters on the menu.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Greenwich Village — located south of 14th Street and north of Houston Street in Manhattan — was the neighborhood for artists of all types. The 10th Street Studio building in the neighborhood was built specifically for artists and their needs; Winslow Homer was one of the many selling his art there. The neighborhood’s Hotel Albert hosted the likes of Mark Twain, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock.

In 1664, the Dutch surrendered their city New Amsterdam to British forces. The British renamed the city for King Charles II’s brother, James II the Duke of York and Albany, who had organized the military mission. New York became the first city in the colonies to receive a royal charter.

The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969, and would prove to be a catalyst for activism within the LGBTQ+ rights movement not only in New York, but around the world. The bar was the starting point of the first gay pride parade in 1970, and was later designated a national monument in 2016.

In 1929, Alfred E. Smith, the leader of a group of investors behind the Empire State Building, announced that the building's height would be increased by 200 feet, to 1,250 feet tall. The plan was for the extra 200 feet to include a mooring mast for Zeppelins and other dirigibles. But the project was never practical and never used by commercial travelers. According to “The New York Times,” only one dirigible was ever able to connect to the tower, and the connection lasted just three minutes.

New York City is divided into five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island. The smallest is Manhattan, which covers an area of roughly 22.6 square miles. The Bronx sits north of Manhattan, Staten Island is located to the south, and Brooklyn and Queens are to the east of Manhattan, across the East River.

Modern-day Times Square, located at the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, is one of New York City’s busiest tourist attractions, filled with iconic towering billboards and brightly lit advertisements. But its original name was Long Acre Square, and it wasn’t until 1904 that the spot was renamed Times Square, in honor of the construction of “The New York Times” headquarters. Today, the publication’s headquarters are at the nearby New York Times Building, on Eighth Avenue in between 41st and 42nd Streets, completed in 2007.

The colony of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company in 1624 and included present-day New York City as well as parts of Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey. A Dutch settlement on the southern tip of Manhattan Island was named New Amsterdam.