Lou Gehrig

New York, NY

Fiorello H. La Guardia—the 'Little Flower' and among the first Italian-Americans elected to Congress—spent the last years of his life here. As New York's reform mayor from 1934 to 1945 he rewrote the city charter and expanded parks, public housing, and social services, becoming one of the city's most beloved leaders.

New York, NY

High above the Hudson in what is now Riverside Park stands one of Manhattan's oldest and most touching memorials: the grave of St. Claire Pollock, a boy of about five who died in 1797. By long tradition the child of an Irish merchant family fell from the rocky bluff near their country estate, and his grieving relatives marked the spot; the small monument has been tended here for more than two centuries. It is one of only a handful of private graves preserved on New York City public land.

New York, NY

In the Conservatory Garden at the north end of Central Park stands a quiet bronze fountain honoring Frances Hodgson Burnett, the English-born American author whose children's books—most enduringly The Secret Garden—shaped generations of young readers. The fountain's two children, a boy playing a flute and a girl holding a bowl, echo Mary and Dickon from that beloved 1911 novel, set in a walled garden much like the one that surrounds them here. Dedicated in the 1930s after Burnett's death, the memorial was a gift meant for the children of the city, tying the author's imaginative world to a real public garden they could wander.

Paramus, NJ

Long before it was suburban, this corner of Bergen County was Dutch farming country, and locals knew it by the odd name "Sluckup." According to the marker, the name grew from a bit of local legend involving a Dutch farmer and a shirt that seemed to be swallowed up. Such nicknames preserve the everyday Dutch culture that shaped colonial and Revolutionary-era New Jersey.