Lou Gehrig Birthplace

The neighborhood of Yorkville once held a dense population of German immigrants, and it was within the humble tenements of this area that baseball legend Lou Gehrig was born on June 19, 1903. His early life was marked by extreme poverty and personal tragedy, as he was the only one of his four siblings to survive past infancy. You are standing near the site where the New York Yankees once placed a commemorative plaque, though the exact tenement building where he entered the world remains a subject of historical debate. Some accounts point to a site on East 94th Street, while others suggest the family lived just a few blocks away on Second Avenue. Regardless of the precise floor or street number, these streets defined the early years of a boy who would eventually become known to the world as The Iron Horse.