Famous New Yorkers

What is New York? It’s a place, an idea, a set of roads and buildings—but most importantly, it’s people—the people who built the city, the people who live in it, the people who love it or hate it or change it or preserve it. Which leads to the question, what is a New Yorker? It has nothing to do with being born here, although that definitely helps. As Thomas Wolfe explained in The Web and the Rock, “one belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.” And likewise, some people live in New York for years without ever belonging to the city. And, to make the question even more difficult, it’s clear that no two New Yorkers will ever agree on what it means to be a New Yorker. But there are a few qualities that everyone would agree on: To be a real New Yorker requires that you have a certain love for the city; that you have a certain willingness to suffer, at least in the winter; and that you have the necessary vanity to believe that a single individual can be important even in a teeming multitude of twelve million people. This section presents fifty people who were undeniably great New Yorkers, and who for better or worse have helped make it what it is today.

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