George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin

New York, NY

From 1923 to 1929, novelist and playwright Edna Ferber lived here during the most productive stretch of her career, writing fiction marked by sweeping American settings and strong female characters. While at this address she published the Pulitzer Prize–winning So Big in 1924 and Show Boat in 1926, the latter adapted into a landmark American musical. She would later be best known for the novel Giant.

New York, NY

Along this walk, a living memorial of trees was planted to honor the great sea fights of World War II — from the surprise blow at Pearl Harbor in December 1941 through the carrier duels at the Coral Sea and Midway in 1942, the desperate night actions off Guadalcanal at Savo Island and Cape Esperance, the far-northern clash near the Komandorski Islands, and the climactic Pacific battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. Dedicated in the mid-1940s, the tablet turns a quiet promenade into a roll call of the naval engagements that decided the war at sea. Each named battle marks a turning point where American and Allied fleets blunted and then rolled back Axis power across two oceans.

New York, NY

From 1974 until his death in 1987, Pop artist Andy Warhol lived at this New York address, at the height of his fame as the era's defining chronicler of American consumer culture. Best known for his silkscreens of Campbell's Soup cans and icons like Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy, he also founded Interview magazine and produced experimental underground films. His quip that 'everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes' entered the language.

New York, NY

John Steinbeck, one of America's great chroniclers of the common person, spent the last five years of his life at this New York address. The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Grapes of Wrath gave voice to ordinary people swept up in economic and political forces beyond their control, in novels such as Of Mice and Men and East of Eden. In 1962 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.