4. 1520 Sedgwick Avenue

Many say that hip hop’s beginnings can be traced back to a night in 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the South Bronx. Allegedly, on August 11th of that year, a DJ from Jamaica named Clive Mitchell who also went by the name DJ Kool Herc was playing music at his sister’s back-to-school party when he tried a new turntable-style technique called breakbeats, when he extended an instrumental beat and started rapping over it.

Tensions were high in the Bronx at that time: manufacturing jobs were moving out into Manhattan, immigrants were moving in, and Robert Moses‘s superhighways divided neighborhoods and decreased property values. DJ Kool Herc arrived when the Bronx was being overrun by a heroin epidemic and gang violence and arson. The city’s youth were hungry for a channel for their energy, and hip hop was a conduit for expression that helped to prevent violence and unified communities.

DJ Afrika Bambaattaa, who formed the famous non-violent hip-hop crew Universal Zulu Nation in the Bronx, and Grand Wizzard Theodore, who mastered the art of scratching, were important innovators in hip hop’s growth based out of the Bronx. The music soon became synonymous with the culture, art, dance, and community that grew from the South Bronx and Brooklyn out into the city and to the rest of the world.

Sedgwick Avenue now has a new name: Hip Hop Boulevard. Mayor Bill De Blasio approved the change in 2016. The signing was attended by DJ Kool Herc, DJ Afrika Bambaatta, and many more icons.