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Exploring New York City: A Quiz on Its History and Landmarks

Test your knowledge about New York City with this engaging quiz covering its history, geography, and landmarks.

#New York City #Geography #History #Landmarks #Quiz

1 How many square miles is New York City in area?

2 When was New York City established?

3 What is the leader of New York City called?

4 Which of the following titles did New York City have?

5 The city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the ________ and the twin towers of the former World Trade Center.

6 What is the total area of New York City in square km?

7 Reclamation is most prominent in ________, with developments such as Battery Park City in the 1970s and 1980s.

8 How many feet above sea level is New York City?

9 What is the postcode of New York City?

10 The ________, which has the largest collection of any public library system in the country, serves Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island.

đź’ˇ Interesting Facts

  • the 36-year-old Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund changed its name to LatinoJustice PRLDEF last year, partly due to fewer Puerto Ricans being in New York City's Latino population.
  • the 19th century New York City saloon Hole-in-the-Wall employed two female criminals as bouncers.
  • the battleship USS Recruit (pictured) was built in New York City's Union Square.
  • the 2008 NYPD subway sodomy incident has been compared to the 1997 assault of Abner Louima in New York City.
  • the 1948 Oscar Micheaux-directed film The Betrayal was the first race film to have its premiere in a Broadway theatre in New York City.
  • sociologist Bogdan Denitch of Queens College, City University of New York organized and chaired the Socialist Scholars Conference from 1983 to 2004 in New York City.
  • some 9,000 weddings a year are held in Queens Borough Hall in New York City, with Friday as the most popular day.
  • teenage aviatrix Elinor Smith, the "Flying Flapper of Freeport", had her pilot's license suspended for 15 days for flying under New York City's four East River bridges in 1928.
  • the Broadway opening of the musical Wildcat had to be postponed, because the trucks hauling the sets and costumes to New York were stranded as a result of a major blizzard.
  • the Empire State Building in New York City was illuminated with blue lights on April 5, 2005 to mark the 10th anniversary of National Poetry Month which is celebrated every April in the United States.
  • the Bowery Theatre in New York City was burnt down five times in 17 years.
  • the Brooklyn Hospital Center is the oldest hospital of the borough of Brooklyn in New York City.
  • the Central Park Mall leading to the Bethesda Terrace provides the only purely formal feature in the naturalistic original plan of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux for Central Park, New York.
  • the Auditorium Building in Chicago, Illinois was intended to rival New York City's Metropolitan Opera House.
  • the African Grove theater was founded by free blacks in New York City in 1821—when New York was still a slave state—and that it launched the career of the great black Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge.
  • the New York City government purchased the once-luxurious Concourse Plaza Hotel in The Bronx in 1974 and turned it into a senior citizens' residence.
  • the Waldorf Astoria in New York City sits on the site of the former home of William Waldorf Astor.
  • the 2010 Central Canada earthquake was felt as far away as New York City.
  • retired District of New Jersey judge William G. Bassler is currently teaching at three New York City area law schools.
  • personal injury lawyers mapped the sidewalks of New York City for defects, rendering the city liable for $600 million in judgments between 1997 and 2006.
  • due to a lack of freight crossings of the Hudson River, trains must take a 280-mile (450 km) detour, the Selkirk hurdle, to cross into New York City from the south or west.
  • during his 31 years as a federal judge in New York, Henry W. Goddard heard cases including William James Sidis's invasion of privacy suit against The New Yorker and the second perjury trial of Alger Hiss.
  • during the Dead Rabbits Riot of 1857, residents of Mulberry Street in New York City were forced to barricade themselves in their homes.
  • despite her illiteracy, Catherine Ferguson founded the first Sunday school in New York City which later became known as Murray Street Sabbath School.
  • comedian Freddie Roman eulogized Milton Parker, who bought the famed New York City deli with Leo Steiner, saying that "Carnegie Deli caused more heartburn to the Jewish world than anything I've ever heard of".
  • at Masa, an elite New York City restaurant, no menus are available, because the chef, Masa Takayama, cooks whatever he wants.
  • before her election to the New York State Senate, Carol Berman led the ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent the Concorde from landing at Kennedy Airport in New York City.
  • before she was disassembled for scrap in 1932, USS Holland, the first submarine commissioned by the U.S. Navy, spent many years as an attraction in Starlight amusement park in New York City.
  • early 20th-century immigrants to the United States are said to have seen New York for the first time from the decks of the ferryboat Yankee.
  • exhibits at the New York City Police Museum (pictured) include the machine gun used by Al Capone's gang in the 1928 murder of Frankie Yale.
  • in the 1850s the American architect Gamaliel King and his partner John Kellum erected in New York some of the first fully cast iron-fronted buildings in the world.
  • more than 700 of the caricatures on display at Sardi's restaurant in New York City were drawn by a Russian refugee in exchange for meals at the restaurant.
  • music critic Herman Klein wrote in New York City from 1901 to 1909 and advised Columbia Records, but he acquired an unfavorable view of American musical life and returned to Britain.
  • in eighteen years, baritone William Walker performed over 360 times at New York's Metropolitan Opera.
  • in 1955, black promoter Thurman Ruth booked the Selah Jubilee Singers, to perform in a music venue, New York's Apollo Theater, the first gospel group to play commercially.
  • for 25 years, Jack O'Brien conducted two parallel directing careers: Broadway musicals in New York City and Shakespeare in San Diego.
  • for New York City to receive up to $500 million from the Department of Transportation, its congestion pricing plan must be approved by August 2007.
  • in 1931, 15 Broad Street (pictured) in New York City was one of the 20 largest office buildings in the world.
  • the Chatham Garden Theatre in New York City went from haven for prostitution to Presbyterian chapel in the span of one year.
  • the City Hall Post Office and Courthouse in New York City, designed by architect Alfred B. Mullett, was known as "Mullett's Monstrosity" until it was torn down in 1939.
  • the founding father of physical education in Poland, Dr. Henryk Jordan, started a school for midwives during his stay in New York City in the late 19th century.
  • the ideas of Aesthetic Realism and Siegel's Theory of Opposites are the guiding principles of New York City's Terrain Gallery.
  • the original St. Sebastian Roman Catholic Church of Woodside, Queens, New York was built by Franz J. Berlenbach, Jr..
  • the former Smallpox Hospital (pictured) on Roosevelt Island is New York City's only landmarked ruins.
  • the former Rabbi of New York City's Fifth Avenue Synagogue, Emanuel Rackman, came under fire for helping agunot women obtain marriage annulments.
  • the first all-steel passenger car in the world was built by American Car and Foundry in 1904 for Interborough Rapid Transit in New York City.
  • the first passenger elevator in an American hotel was installed in the Fifth Avenue Hotel facing Madison Square, New York City in 1859.
  • the first person to formally convert to Buddhism in America was Charles T. Strauss, a New York businessman, in 1893.
  • the song "Run-Around" by jam band Blues Traveler was first played at the CBGB club in New York City.
  • the uncommon triangulated frame of Hearst Tower, currently under construction in New York City, requires about 20 percent less steel than a conventional perimeter frame.
  • while Auguste Achintre was traveling to New York City as Haiti's ambassador to the United States, the Haitian government was overthrown, revoking his role as ambassador.
  • while the New York Vauxhall Gardens drew in colonial New Yorkers with a wax museum and outdoor theater, a copycat competitor attracted them with ice cream.
  • with a voyage of 59 days, the SS American (pictured) set a 1901 record for the fastest New York – San Francisco ocean passage.
  • when the horse in her first maquette of The Scout was criticized for looking too "eastern", Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney shipped a horse from Buffalo Bill's ranch to her studio in New York.
  • when an elevated train derailed on Ninth Avenue in New York in 1905, some passengers escaped from one carriage through an apartment window.
  • the very first news article on what became known as AIDS appeared in the New York Native, a now defunct gay newspaper in New York City.
  • the windowless skyscraper at 33 Thomas Street (pictured) in New York City was designed to resist nuclear fallout and be self-sufficient for up to two weeks.
  • there are two Smithsonian Museums in New York City.
  • the famous Hit Factory recording studio in New York City recently closed down after 12 years of operation.
  • the death of John Lewis (better known as "Spanish Louie") was the first recorded use of a drive by shooting as a means of gangland execution in New York City.
  • the King Jagiello Monument (pictured) in Central Park, New York, was forced to remain in the United States after the Nazi invasion of Poland made its return from the 1939 New York World's Fair impossible.
  • the Latting Observatory, described as "New York's first skyscraper", was the tallest building in the United States at 315 feet (96 m) during its brief life from 1853 until it burnt down in 1856.
  • the Lumber Exchange Building (pictured) in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1885) is the oldest remaining building in the United States outside of New York City with more than eleven floors.
  • the July 2010 Bronx tornado was only the second known tornado to touch down in the Bronx and seventh to impact New York City since records began in 1950.
  • the Jersey Shore, Pine Creek and Buffalo Railway, once promoted to connect the Pennsylvania-New York oil fields with New York City, instead became part of the New York Central's line to the coal mines around Clearfield, Pennsylvania.
  • the Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel (map at right) is a proposed underwater tunnel for rail transport of freight between central New Jersey and southern New York City, United States.
  • the Hart-Cluett Mansion (pictured) in Troy, New York, is the only intact example of the luxury homes commonly built in early–19th century New York City.
  • the Islamic Cultural Center of New York (pictured), which opened in 1991, was the first purpose-built mosque in New York City.
  • the New York Society Library, the oldest cultural institution in New York City, also effectively served as the first Library of Congress.
  • the O'Kane Building in Bend, Oregon, was built for Hugh O’Kane who, as a boy, came to the United States illegally from Ireland by stowing away on a New York bound ship.
  • the New York Sports Express, a free weekly newspaper designed to take a lighter look at sports, lasted only a little over one year on the hurried streets of New York City.
  • the High Bridge that still stands over the Harlem River in New York City was designed by John B. Jervis as part of the Croton Aqueduct project in the 1840s.
  • the death of Joseph Quinn prompted Bellevue Hospital of New York City to make significant improvements to its ambulance system.
  • the Champion passenger train connected New York City and St. Petersburg, Florida for forty years before Amtrak consolidated it with its former rival the Silver Meteor.
  • the Winter Garden Atrium was the first major structure in New York City to be completely restored following the September 11, 2001 attacks.
  • the Sheet Metal Workers International Association Local 28 in New York City negotiated the first pension plan in the construction industry.
  • the Skyscraper Museum in New York City, USA was forced to close temporarily as its space was commandeered as an emergency information center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
  • the Stillwell Avenue/Surf Avenue intersection in New York City is the site of the world's largest subway station.
  • as of 1981, New York City's Toy Center was the site of 95% of the toy business transacted in the United States.
  • as New York's General Counsel, Michael C. Finnegan ended a century-old debate over New York City's water supply when he brokered the New York City Watershed Agreement.
  • Bagel Bakers Local 338 controlled bagel making in New York City for decades, with a 1951 strike creating a "bagel famine" that resulted in sales of lox dropping up to 50% in area delis.
  • Benjamin Edwards, who expanded the privately-held A. G. Edwards into the largest U.S. brokerage firm headquartered outside of New York City, owned the world's largest collection of Imari porcelain.
  • Bracetti Plaza, an NYCHA development in the East Village, New York City, is named after Mariana Bracetti.
  • B&H Photo Video in New York City employs so many Satmar Hasidim, there is daily bus service to the store from Kiryas Joel, a Satmar enclave in Orange County, New York.
  • Arthur's Day benefit concerts—celebrating the 250th anniversary of Guinness (pictured)—will be held today in locations as diverse as Dublin, New York, Kuala Lumpur and YaoundĂ©.
  • 1050 AM ESPN Radio in New York City was launched by American politician Rob Astorino.
  • 66th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan was once proposed by Donald Trump as the site of a 150-story building that would have been the world's tallest.
  • Alfred J. Kahn spent 57 years on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Social Work, where he wrote multiple reports regarding child welfare in New York City for the Citizens' Committee for Children.
  • chocolate covered bacon (pictured) is sold as "Pig Lickers" at the Minnesota State Fair, "Pig Candy" in New York City and "Mo's Bacon Bar" in Chicago.
  • Coleman Coker's work has been featured in the Cooper-Hewitt National Museum, the New York City MoMA, the San Francisco MoMA, the Wexner Center for the Arts, and the National Building Museum.
  • Gurmeet Singh Dhinsa committed murder, kidnapping, racketeering, and tax evasion during the 1990s, all in an attempt to establish a chain of gas stations in New York City.
  • Haskel Lookstein, who succeeded his father Joseph Lookstein as Rabbi of New York City's Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in 1979, was Newsweek magazine's second-ranked U.S. pulpit rabbi in 2008.
  • Hassard Short was born into the English landed gentry but moved to New York as an actor in 1901 and later became one of Broadway's greatest musical theatre directors and lighting designers.
  • Gilberto ZaldĂ­var's New York City-based Repertorio Español, called "a national treasure ... unmatched by any other Spanish-language theater company", has staged over 250 productions in 40 years.
  • Georg J. Lober′s sculpture of Hans Christian Andersen in New York City's Central Park was funded in part by contributions from Danish and American schoolchildren.
  • Conservatory Water in Central Park, New York City, shelters a seasonal population of the unusual freshwater medusa Craspedacusta sowerbyi.
  • Director Park in Portland, Oregon, was designed by Laurie Olin, who also designed Bryant Park in New York City.
  • Flocabulary is an educational New York City-based project that uses hip hop music to teach SAT-level vocabulary.
  • American journalist Alan Cabal was one of the luminaries of New York City's occult movement during the "occult renaissance" started in the 1960s.
  • American actress Susan Oliver, after surviving a plane crash that almost ended her life, became the first woman to fly a single-engined aircraft solo from New York City across the Atlantic Ocean.
  • New York City authorities asked the Museum of Sex not to locate itself within 500 feet of a church or school.
  • New York City has been working on the Second Avenue Subway project since 1919.
  • New York City's Ramaz School, with 1,100 students in 2007, was named for Rabbi Moses Margolies and founded by his grandson Rabbi Joseph Lookstein, whose son was in the opening class of six in 1937.
  • Leo Tolstoy's play The Living Corpse played in New York City in both Yiddish (1911) and German (1916) before it was ever presented there in English (1918).
  • Hal the Central Park Coyote got his nickname from his temporary lair in Hallett Nature Sanctuary (pictured) in Central Park, New York City.
  • architecture critics praised the Art Deco Ghostbusters Building, in New York City, when it opened in 1929.
  • Australian singer Lana Cantrell, a 1968 Grammy Award nominee for Best New Artist, later became an entertainment lawyer in New York City.
  • Edgar Allan Poe wrote "The Raven" while living at what is now called Edgar Allan Poe Cottage in the Fordham section of The Bronx in New York City.
  • New York City's Central Park West Historic District contains only one building not felt to contribute to its historic character.
  • New York City's General Motors Building sold for the record high price of $1.4 billion in 2003.
  • New Yorker Marcey Jacobson had planned to visit Chiapas for 10 days in 1956, but ended up staying there for most of the next 50 years, taking 14,000 photos of daily life in Southern Mexico.
  • Republican New York City City Councilman Dan Halloran is also the leader of the New Normannii Reik of Theodish Belief, a neopagan religious group.
  • 1960's Tropical Storm Brenda, which made its initial landfall in Florida, dropped record-breaking rainfall on New York City.
  • New York's Sony Building (pictured), with its distinctive Chippendale roof, was originally built by AT&T as its headquarters, but they no longer needed the space after the Bell System divestiture.
  • New York writer and socialite Anthony Haden-Guest is both son of the 4th Baron Haden-Guest and the brother-in-law of actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
  • New York City's Stock Exchange Luncheon Club closed in 2006 after more than a century on Wall Street.
  • New York City-based hip hop poetic theater ensemble Universes were sponsored by the US State Department to tour six countries in Africa, Asia and Europe in 2008.
  • New York City-born mathematician Judith Roitman serves as the guiding teacher of the Kansas Zen Center.
  • Jack Brod was the last remaining original tenant of the Empire State Building, New York City, at the time of his death in 2008.
  • Jacob Aaron Westervelt (pictured), the former Mayor of New York City, attempted to uniform the Police of New York, a move seen by some as "un-American".
  • Jewish-Polish historian Lucjan Dobroszycki who survived the Litzmannstadt Ghetto (pictured) in World War II was known as the New York City YIVO's "research consultant to the stars".
  • Rabbi Stephen Wise founded New York City's Free Synagogue in 1907 after turning down a position at Temple Emanu-El because its trustees would review his sermons.
  • Rev. Frederick B. Williams at the Church of the Intercession in New York City created the first program of any religious community in the United States to respond to the AIDS epidemic.
  • British actor Terence Stamp's brother Chris, a New York City psychodrama therapist, co-managed and produced rock band The Who from 1964 to 1975.
  • The City Sun, a black-owned newspaper, told David Dinkins, New York City's first African American mayor, that he was "beginning to look like a wimp".
  • WRNY began television broadcasting in August 1928 to thousands of New York City viewers with home made television sets (pictured).
  • The New York Times moved in 1858 to a building at 41 Park Row, making it the first newspaper in New York City housed in a building built specifically for its use.
  • Henry Eckford, built in New York in 1824, was the world's first steamship to be powered by a compound engine.
  • a gangster threw sulfuric acid in the face of crusading newspaper columnist Victor Riesel on a public street in New York City in April 1956, blinding him.
  • a PRR Class E6 steam locomotive powered train equipped with a mobile darkroom for developing newsreels en route, delivered footage from Washington to New York faster than a chartered plane.
  • after Charles W. Morse started scandals that toppled a New York City mayor and sparked the Panic of 1907, he faked illness by eating prison soap to convince President Taft to commute his sentence.
  • after retiring from the entertainment industry, actress/singer Francine Everett took a clerical job at Harlem Hospital in New York City.
  • although the Park Theatre was considered the highest-class playhouse in New York, Edgar Allan Poe criticized it for being infested by rats.
  • after Basque writer JesĂşs GalĂ­ndez was kidnapped from the streets of New York, his body was never found.
  • actor Jason Beghe became best friends with John F. Kennedy, Jr. and David Duchovny when they attended Collegiate School in New York City.
  • a traffic accident in New York City's Times Square eventually led to the downfall of the Joe K spy ring, headed by Kurt Frederick Ludwig.
  • a century ago this year, 20,000 women participated in a successful strike in New York's garment industry.
  • a street corner in New York City is named after IRA member Joe Doherty, who was convicted in absentia for the murder of the highest ranking SAS officer killed during The Troubles.
  • The Steinettes, an a cappella quartet from New York City, appeared in Robert Altman's rarely seen 1980 comedy HealtH.
  • Cameronia was the first British ship to arrive at New York after the start of the Second World War.
  • Laurie D. Cox performed the first comprehensive tree census in New York City in 1915, finding that most street trees in Manhattan were in bad condition.
  • Leslie Buck designed the Grecian-themed Anthora coffee cup, a cultural icon of New York City, to appeal to the city's Greek American restaurant owners.
  • Maggie Cogan was the first female horse and buggy driver in New York City's Central Park.
  • Juniper Valley Park in New York City used to be a swamp owned by Arnold Rothstein, who in the 1920s tried to sell it to the city for use as an airport.
  • Josiah Failing became the fourth mayor of Portland, Oregon less than three years after moving there from New York City.
  • James Brady and his gang, the Yakey Yakes, forced their rivals, the Eastman Gang and the Five Points Gang, to "do their fighting north of Catherine Street" in New York City.
  • John Daly, a New York City criminal, was rumored to be paying $100,000 a week in protection money to the New York Police Department in the late 1800s.
  • Jonathan Leavitt was the leading publisher of theological and religious books in New York City during the early 1800s.
  • Margaret Chin is the first Asian American to represent New York City's Chinatown district on the city council.
  • Mike Davis envisioned making recreational boats available on the Hudson River in New York City after seeing how boats could be rented in Istanbul and rowed on the Bosporus.
  • Randi Weingarten, the openly gay president of the United Federation of Teachers, has been called one of the 25 most powerful women in New York City business.
  • Robert M. Webster studied New York City utilities in the 1930s to determine the best way to bomb an enemy's industrial base.
  • Roy Staiger played for both New York Major League Baseball teams, the Mets and Yankees, but for no other Major League teams.
  • Percival Goodman, described as "the most prolific architect in Jewish history" by The Forward, was also an urban planning theorist who criticized Robert Moses' ideas for parkways in New York City.
  • Paul Secon was an unemployed writer and musician living in New York City when he co-founded Pottery Barn with his brother in 1950.
  • Mimi Weddell, whose acting career started in her mid-sixties, was named as one "The Most Beautiful New Yorkers" by New York magazine in 2005 at age 90.
  • School Chancellor Irving Anker resisted demands to cut the school budget in 1974, saying "we cannot write off the children of New York City without calling into question every value we live by".
  • Owen Thomas, managing editor of New York City-based gossip and news blog Valleywag, writes most of the website's articles.
  • African-American gay and transgender Ali Forney, once homeless himself, had a homeless LGBT youth center in New York City named after him for his work helping other youths.
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