Simon and Garfunkel — Forest Hills, Queens, New York

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, meeting as sixth-grade classmates at PS 164 and beginning to perform together as teenagers in the late 1950s under the name Tom and Jerry. Their childhood neighbourhood — a middle-class Jewish enclave in outer Queens with rows of brick apartment buildings and Tudor-style houses — is the origin point of one of the great partnerships in American music. Forest Hills Stadium, just blocks from where they grew up, was a concert venue where Bob Dylan famously performed his electric set in 1965; Simon and Garfunkel played there later in their career.

The duo's career arc — folk duo to folk-rock act to global pop stars to celebrated breakup to occasional reunion — produced some of the most enduring songs in American popular music: 'The Sound of Silence,' 'Mrs Robinson,' 'The Boxer,' 'Bridge Over Troubled Water,' 'America,' 'Scarborough Fair,' 'El Condor Pasa.' The Sounds of Silence album (1966) and the Bookends album (1968) in particular are landmarks of the singer-songwriter era, and the Graduate soundtrack — Mrs Robinson especially — made them a cultural touchstone of the late 1960s.

Forest Hills, Queens, is accessible by the E, F, M, and R subway trains. The neighbourhood retains its residential, middle-class character. The stadium where Bob Dylan played electric in 1965 still hosts concerts as Forest Hills Stadium. There is no formal Simon and Garfunkel landmark in the neighbourhood, but the PS 164 school on Yellowstone Boulevard is where the partnership began.