Queen Elizabeth II, whose death Thursday at age 96 ended the longest tenure in the history of the British monarchy, visited dozens of countries all around the world during her 70 years on the throne — and New York City was no exception, with Her Majesty having visited Gotham three times during her reign.
The English monarch first visited the Big Apple in 1957, just a few short years into her reign, where she made like many a tourist, taking in the Statue of Liberty from a ferry boat and climbing to the top of the Empire State Building. Everywhere she went, she was received with a sea of admirers lining the streets and tossing ticker tape. She spoke at the United Nations, ate at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, and whisked off from JFK Airport (then known as Idlewild) after just one day.
She returned in 1976, by then a quarter-century into her tenure on the throne, a seasoned monarch at the age of 50, as part of America’s bicentennial celebrations. The Queen participated in a ceremonial settling of debts at Trinity Church as the United States paid back what it owed from revolutionary times: 279 peppercorns.
She had afternoon tea at the historic Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, and later went back downtown and perused the aisles at Bloomingdales. She was declared an honorary New Yorker by then-Mayor Abe Beame.
The Queen made her final visit to the Five Boroughs in July 2010, when she again addressed the United Nations and also took time to visit Ground Zero.
With then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and then-Governor David Paterson, she and her husband Prince Philip also dedicated the British Garden at Hanover Square, a memorial to the British victims of the September 11 attacks. In 2012, the garden was formally renamed in her honor to the Queen Elizabeth II Garden.
The British monarch died with her family by her side on Thursday at Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Her reign coincided with that of 15 British Prime Ministers — starting with Winston Churchill — and 14 American Presidents, starting with Harry Truman, and notably saw the independence of most of the Empire’s colonial subjects. The only monarch most Brits have known in their lives, she tended to project an air of stability even amidst political, economic, and cultural turmoil in the United Kingdom.
She has been succeeded by her 73-year-old son, Charles, who has officially assumed the throne as King.
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