While more than 600,000 people commute through Penn Station on an average day, few travelers remember the majestic terminal it replaced. The original Pennsylvania Station (1910)-- designed by the architects McKim, Mead and White to house the operations and tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad and Long Island Railroad-- was cherished as one of the city’s most beautiful buildings. Many New Yorkers, including the preservationists who fought unsuccessfully to save it from the wrecking ball in 1963-1966, lamented the loss of its grand interior spaces, elegant windows and skylights, and sculptural details. The present building remains the busiest train station in North America.

Although the original Penn Station is long gone, New Yorkers can still savor its great contemporary rival, Grand Central Terminal. Designed by engineer William Wilgus, the firm of Reed and Stem, and the architect Whitney Warren to provide a central hub for the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad system, the building opened in 1913. It replaced the original depot first opened by tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1871 and extensively renovated in 1898- 1900. With its vast Main Concourse, ceiling mural of the night sky with constellations, and subterranean tracks, passageways, and restaurants, the terminal recalls a bygone age of travel in which railways played a role akin to that of airlines today. New Yorkers can thank dedicated activists (including Jacqueline Onassis) for winning a U.S. Supreme Court decision protecting the terminal from drastic alterations in 1978.

Since 1934 the Apollo Theater has gained world renown as the main stage of Harlem, the recognized capital of 20th-century black America. While nearby playhouses, jazz clubs, and educational institutions helped generate the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, the Apollo hosted a decades-long "Who's Who" of African-American talent and activism, not least through its star-making "Amateur Nights in Harlem" broadcast nationally via radio. Those who have commanded its stage include Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, the Jackson 5, Richard Pryor and many others. Today the Apollo remains a lively venue for concerts, performances, symposia, telecasts, and historic tours.

La Marqueta, East Harlem’s famed marketplace, opened as the Park Avenue Retail Market in 1936 as part of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia's campaign to bring local pushcart vendors (shown here) indoors off the streets. Located under the viaduct of the New York Central Railroad (now Metro-North) on Park Avenue at 116th Street, the market became a focal point for shopping and socializing as the surrounding neighborhood, rechristened El Barrio by its Puerto Rican residents, became one of the major urban centers of the Spanish-speaking world. La Marqueta served as a centralized place to buy wares from some 500 vendors, meet friends and neighbors, and exchange news. Today, as immigrants from the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and many other Latin American nations have joined Puerto Ricans in enriching New York City’s community life, a smaller La Marqueta continues as a public vending site and rendezvous.

In 1992 the monument Gay Liberation by sculptor George Segal was installed in Christopher Park to commemorate the men and women who launched the modern LGBT rights movement, as well as those who have followed in their footsteps. Near the park in June 1969, gay New Yorkers tired of harassment fought back against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay club and bar at 51-53 Christopher Street. Following the riots, the surrounding Greenwich Village neighborhood, long a haven for gay people and other “non-conformists,” continued to incubate activism for gay civil and legal rights, AIDS awareness and treatment, and transgender rights. In 2016 the Stonewall Inn and Christopher Park became part of the 7.7 -acre Stonewall National Monument, the first U.S. National Monument dedicated to LGBT rights and history.

One of the city’s most iconic symbols, the Brooklyn Bridge is also an engineering marvel. Designed by John A. Roebling and built between 1869 and 1883, it was the world’s longest suspension bridge (with a main span of 1,595 feet) until the Williamsburg Bridge opened in 1903.The bridge’s two granite towers were Manhattan’s and Brooklyn’s tallest structures when completed. By 1890, about 250,000 people used the bridge every day. From the start the bridge was a source of pride for Brooklyn, the fourth largest city in the nation (until it was absorbed into the first largest, New York City, in 1898). As a Brooklyn department store proclaimed in 1883, “Babylon had her hanging garden, Egypt her pyramid… so Brooklyn has her Bridge.

It was Coney Island’s pristine beach and soothing ocean breezes that first lured city dwellers to its shores during the 19th century. By the 1880s, when steamboats and railroads drew pleasure-seeking crowds, the island sported hotels, saloons, and waterfront entertainments. Reinvented again at the turn of the 20th century, Steeplechase Park, Luna Park, and Dreamland made Coney Island a global watchword for amusement parks and thrill rides. Today its beach, boardwalk, amusements, and the New York Aquarium recall its colorful and kaleidoscopic past. So do annual events such as the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest (July 4th), and wintertime swims by the Coney Island Polar Bear Club.

It’s often easy to forget that New York was a city made by the sea, a port whose wealth and growth were once utterly reliant on waterborne trade. The city’s maritime past still echoes through the landscape of Staten Island’s Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden, founded as Sailors' Snug Harbor during the 1830s as a home for retired seamen on the bequest of former ship captain Robert Randall. Built on an 83-acre site facing New York harbor, the institution housed and served generations of aging merchant seamen (including the African-American gentleman shown here) until it relocated to North Carolina in 1976. Today Snug Harbor is one of the city’s most distinctive public cultural sites, inviting visitors to explore its art galleries, gardens, historic buildings, performances, and more.

Not all New York City landmarks stay in one place. The Staten Island ferry, for example, shuttling back and forth between Whitehall Terminal in lower Manhattan and St. George Terminal on Richmond County’s north shore, has long been a symbol of New York harbor. In the colonial era, sailboat ferries represented a lifeline connecting the outlying farmlands of Staten Island, Long Island, and New Jersey to Manhattan’s seaport. In the 19th century, steam- powered ferries became crucial vehicles of daily transit, enabling tens of thousands of commuters to work in the city while dwelling across the water in what later became outer boroughs. Today, the eight boats operated by the New York City Department of Transportation run 24 hours a day and seven days a week (although a special schedule has now been put in effect due to the COVID-19 emergency). And with no fare charged, the 25-minute trip across 5.2 miles of one of the world’s most scenic harbors remains, perhaps, Gotham’s greatest bargain.

On the eve of World War II, the futuristic, needle-like Trylon and globular Perisphere served as ubiquitous symbols for the 1939-1940 World’s Fair in Flushing, Queens. City construction czar Robert Moses converted 1,200 acres of tidal flats and ash dumps at Flushing Meadows into a dazzling vision of an automated post-Depression world that was toured by 44 million people. A quarter-century later, Moses returned and remade it as the site of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair. Architecture vestiges of the later fair-- most notably the global Unisphere and architect Philip Johnson's New York State Pavilion-- still adorn Flushing Meadows-Corona Park and were featured in the Men In Black movies.

The Swingline building on Skillman Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, was long a daily landmark for commuters who peered up at its rooftop sign emblazoned with the company logo and an image of a giant stapler. Founded by immigrant Jack Linsky in 1925 to manufacture office staplers, the company employed 450 workers before moving its operations to Mexico in 1999. The building, erected in 1949 and today consisting of rental space, evokes New York's mid-20th-century manufacturing heyday, when over 30,000 factories and workshops produced goods sold and used around the world.

After persuading Dutch officials to allow him to worship as he pleased, Quaker John Bowne returned to this farmhouse in Flushing, Queens, from which governor Petrus Stuyvesant had banished him for religious nonconformity in 1662.The rural village of Flushing (originally named for the town of Vlissingen in the Netherlands) was a hub of activity for a group of Quaker settlers and their sympathizers. In 1657 they had drafted the Flushing Remonstrance, now viewed as one of the earliest American pleas for religious freedom and tolerance. Bowne and his fellow members of the Religious Society of Friends later worshipped in the Old Quaker Meeting House (1694) nearby on Northern Boulevard-- today a protected historic site, like the Bowne House itself.

New Yorkers were the original baseball fans. The modern game took shape at the hands of players in and around the city during the 1840s, and eight decades later one of the sport's most storied structures arose on 10 acres near the Harlem River in the Bronx. Completed in 1923, the 58,000-seat Yankee Stadium became "the House that Ruth Built" in the team's first golden era, dominated by Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and it went on to be the setting for some of baseball's most memorable moments and most glorious victories. Along with Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, and Shea Stadium, the old Yankee Stadium would eventually vanish. In 2009 the new Yankee Stadium (able to hold over 100,000 fans sitting and standing), replaced it on a site close by the original location.

Founded by a group of well-heeled New Yorkers (including Theodore Roosevelt) and opened in 1899 with 843 animals, the Bronx Zoo has delighted and educated visitors young and old ever since. Over the decades, residents of adjacent Bronx neighborhoods have sometimes drifted off to sleep to the growls and roars of the zoo’s lions! This photograph shows the Elephant House, designed in the Beaux- Arts style by the architects Heins & LaFarge in 1908 and now known as the Zoo Center. The Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo and has its headquarters there, today works to protect over 2 million square miles of wild places worldwide.