Nathan's Famous Original Stand: The Birthplace of the Hot Dog
Why is it significant?
Gaze at the legendary green and yellow neon signs commanding the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues: Nathan's Famous. In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker and his wife Ida opened a tiny nickel-frankfurter stand here with three hundred dollars of borrowed savings.
Key Facts
| Place | Nathan's Famous Original Stand: The Birthplace of the Hot Dog |
|---|---|
| Address | 1310 Surf Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11224, USA |
| Geo Coordinates | 40.57530, -73.98150 |
| Part of Walk | New York: Coney Island Boardwalk and Vintage Amusements |
| Generated | Generated |
Gaze at the legendary green and yellow neon signs commanding the corner of Surf and Stillwell Avenues: Nathan's Famous. In 1916, Polish-Jewish immigrant Nathan Handwerker and his wife Ida opened a tiny nickel-frankfurter stand here with three hundred dollars of borrowed savings. Using Ida's secret spice recipe of garlic, paprika, and all-beef kosher-style casing, Nathan charged just five cents for his hot dogs—half the ten-cent price of his former employer, Charles Feltman, who had invented the hot dog on a bun decades earlier.
When suspicious customers worried that a five-cent hot dog must be made of low-grade meat, the shrewd Handwerker hired actors in white doctors' coats to stand by the counter conspicuously eating frankfurters, convincing the public that his food was pure and wholesome. The gamble paid off brilliantly. Soon, crowds waited in lines half a block long to savor the snappy, sizzling franks alongside crinkle-cut fries served with wooden forks. Handwerker's humble immigrant triumph embodies the classic American dream, proving that uncompromising culinary quality, clever marketing, and relentless dedication could build an international culinary empire from a modest wooden counter.
Nathan's grew into an international culinary empire visited by Al Capone, Cary Grant, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, who famously served Nathan's hot dogs to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth at Hyde Park in 1939. Every Fourth of July, this very corner hosts the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest, broadcast live to millions of television viewers as competitive eaters consume upwards of seventy hot dogs and buns in ten minutes.
Order a hot dog at the historic corner counter and taste the unmistakable garlic snap that has defined New York street food for over a century.
Walk down West Twelfth Street toward the boardwalk to stand beneath the turning steel wheel that has defined Coney's skyline for a century.