A New York Beauty is a quilt made with the basic design of spiked quarter circles wedged in the corners of rectangular or square blocks. The term also retroactively applies to quilts from the pre-1930s. It’s a genre that includes many different pattern names and a family of pattern variations. The southeastern United States is where these quilts first came from in the middle of the 19th century. The pattern was also famous by various names, including Rocky Mountain, Surveyor, President Polk in the White House, Sunrise/Sunrise in the Pines, and Crown of Thorns, to mention a few. It wasn’t until 1930 that Mountain Mist created a pattern under the name New York Beauty that the term came into usage. These quilts weren’t made in New York, though. However, there were several significant occasions in the history of the 20th-century quilt that made New York Beauty the name that was most well-known and utilized. The term New York Beauty would have felt more fitting for the design in the 1930s than some of the older, less well-known names. The Chrysler Building’s May 1930 completion and the Statue of Liberty’s crown decoration were both evoked by the song “New York Beauty.” Both of these American urban landmarks—one neoclassical and the other art deco—are part of the New York City skyline and are connected to the quilts’ visual design. Both were in the lore surrounding the pattern. A cover article in Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine’s April 1981 issue was a critical occasion that increased the New York Beauty Quilt’s reputation. From the Bryce and Donna Hamilton collection of Minneapolis, Minnesota, the quilt used as the cover was a Mountain Mist New York Beauty, made in 1935.