Located in the Manhattan Center Studios building on West 34th Street, the Hammerstein Ballroom was originally constructed in 1906 by Oscar Hammerstein as the Manhattan Opera House. Oscar wanted to create an alternative to the more expensive Metropolitan Opera, and his plan was evidently successful (he was paid $1.2 million by the Metropolitan Opera to stop producing operas for ten years). This opened the door for vaudeville performers to use the ballroom.

From October 28-29, 2001, the Beastie Boys hosted a New Yorkers Against Violence concert. The fundraiser was created in response to the events of September 11, and the it was the first time the Beastie Boys had performed live since the Tibetan Freedom Concert of 1999. The B-Boys shared the stage with the Strokes, the B-52's, Afrika Bambaataa, Mos Def and the Roots, as well as the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion over the two days. The proceeds were donated to the New York Women's Foundation Disaster Relief Fund and the NY Association for New Americans.

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The Beastie Boys were reading the Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods while they were on their first tour. They read about the Zep-"mudshark" incident and decided to stay at the Edgewater.

The Beastie Boys tried to go fishing, but by the mid-80's all of the fish were gone. So they threw all their furniture out their window and into the Puget Sound.

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There was a dispute over whether this origami crane with goldfish was actually a Banksy piece until he claimed it on his website. It's located in Lyme Regis right down the road from here on Coombe St. on the side of a building next to the canal.

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Banksy's sweatshop laborer on the side of a Poundmark store in North London. This one has been covered by plexiglass with some of that union jack bunting preserved between the plexiglass and the wall.

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The writer/creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars was born at this address on September 1, 1875.

The fourth son of Civil War veteran and businessman Major George Tyler Burroughs (1833–1913) and his wife Mary Evaline (Zieger) Burroughs (1840–1920), Edgar Rice Burroughs attended several schools in the area until he left Chicago because of the influenza epidemic for his brother's ranch on the Raft River in Idaho.

In the ensuing years, Burroughs was a soldier in the Arizona Territory, performed ranch work, and worked for his father's firm. In 1911, he was working as a pencil sharpener wholesaler and was reading a great deal of pulp fiction. It was at this point that he decided to begin writing.

As he stated: "...if people were paid for writing rot such as I read in some of those magazines, that I could write stories just as rotten. As a matter of fact, although I had never written a story, I knew absolutely that I could write stories just as entertaining and probably a whole lot more so than any I chanced to read in those magazines."

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