For more than a century, politicians and polite-sounding organizations have battled the din of New York. Browse slide shows, video and articles from the archive chronicling the never-ending quest for quiet.

The New York Times wrote in 1905:

“If, as a distinguished nerve specialist ventured, uproar is the smoke of noise, the twentieth century metropolis may be summarized as a bonfire of sound that is rapidly spreading beyond control of any ordinary extinguisher.”

The culprits?

“Trolley cars, boiler making, elevated roads, Subway trains, harbor sirens, and various steam whistles, riveting machines, trucks laden with slabs of iron and rails of steel, milk wagons banging over the pavements in the small morning hours, hand organs, phonographs with megaphone attachment, fish horns, knife-grinding serenades, yelling junkmen, hucksters and peddlers with cowbell distractions, cracked bells ringing day and night in churches and chapels.”

But what could be done?