In 1929 the Merchants’Association of New York published a little almanac that cataloged the city’s prodigiousness:
To begin at the beginning, a baby is born in New York every 4 minutes and 6 seconds —a total of 126,332 in 1928.

Using a twelve-hour day as a basis of computation, couples are getting married in New York at the rate of 14 every hour — a total of 62,424 getting married in 1928. Everybody can’t get married, however, and stay within the law, because in the population of 6,065,000 it is estimated there are 15,000 more females than males.

Food Consumption

These 6,065,000 people are consuming food at the rate of approximately 3,500,000 tons a year, an average of more than 1,000 pounds of food being consumed or wasted by every man, woman and child.

These people use 2,659,632 quarts of milk a day, almost a pint a piece.

The Health Department estimates that they use 7,000,000 eggs a day.

Fifteen hundred freight cars are needed daily to bring the food that New York eats.

If placed together they would form a train twelve miles long.

35 Telephone Lines to Moon

More than 190 people in New York pick up the telephone receiver every second, on the average.

There are approximately 8,233,000 intra-City telephone calls every 24 hours.

In addition, the people make 508,000 commuting calls — calls within a 50-mile radius — and 34,383 long distance calls every day.

The city has 1,700,000 telephones in operation, almost one-fifth as many telephones as are in all of Europe. The 8,367,000 miles of wire in the City would string 35 lines between the earth and the moon.

681,818 Buildings

To house the activities of New York’s residents and visitors, there were, on October 1,1928, 681,818 buildings, including 277,118 one-family houses, 143,534 two-family houses, 121,557 non-elevator apartment buildings, and 3,970 hotels and elevator apartments.

There are 89,263 garages and stables to accommodate their automobiles and horses.

There are still 50,000 horses in New York City.

New York’s largest building (the Equitable) houses 12,000 people every day.

Tax Values

The assessed valuation of the real property in New York is $17,133,817,310.

To support the City’s public activities requires a budget of $538,928,697.

The City debt is $1,881,740,963, requiring interest payments of over $75,000,000 a year.

The City’s tax levy in 1928 was $441,357,774.

[In 1986 – 87 assessed valuation of real estate was $55,089,444,700; the 1988 budget is $23,159,000,000; the city’s total tax levy is $13,525,000,000.. No debt is expected to be incurred in fiscal 1988.]

9,000,000 Travel Each Day

New York’s population travels. This is shown by the fact that on an average business day over 9,000,000 passengers are carried on subway or elevated street car