Nathan's Hot Dog Stand, Coney Island, 1939

Nathan Handwerker, founder of Nathan's Famous, was born in Poland in 1892. Twenty years later he arrived in New York and began to work in the kitchen of Feltman's restaurant in Coney Island. By 1916 he had a hot dog stand of his own, and by 1920 he had opened this riot of signage at 1310 Surf Avenue, where it remains in business today. Nathan's signature product gained its first international exposure when President Franklin D. Roosevelt served the hot dogs to the King and Queen of England on their visit to Hyde Park in 1939, the same year in which photographer Andrew Herman (active 1930s) made this image.