where did the monopoly property names come from
History of the board game Monopoly It was in Indianapolis that Ruth Hoskins learned the game, and took it back to Atlantic City.[46] After she arrived, Hoskins made a new board with Atlantic City street names and railroads, and taught it to a group of local Quakers.[47] It has been argued that their greatest contribution to the game was to reinstate the original Lizzie Magie rule of "buying properties at their listed price" rather than auctioning them, as the Quakers did not believe in auctions.[48][49] Another source states that the Quakers simply "didn't like the noise of the auctioneering."[28] Among the group taught the game by Hoskins were Eugene Raiford and his wife, who took a copy of the game with Atlantic City street names to Philadelphia.[50] Due to the Raifords' unfamiliarity with streets and properties in Philadelphia,[50] the Atlantic City-themed version was the one taught to Charles Todd, who in turn taught Esther Darrow, wife of Charles Darrow.[51] After learning the game, Darrow then began to distribute the game himself as Monopoly and never spoke to the Todds again.[28] Darrow initially made the sets of the Monopoly game by hand with the help of his first son, William Darrow, and his wife. Their new sets retained Charles Todd's misspelling of "Marvin Gardens" and the renaming of the Shore Fast Line the Short Line.[51] Charles Darrow drew the designs with a drafting pen on round pieces of oilcloth,[52] and then his son and his wife helped fill in the spaces with colors and make the title deed cards and the Chance cards and Community Chest cards. After the demand for the game increased, Darrow contacted a printing company, Patterson and White, which printed the designs of the property spaces on square carton boards. Darrow's game board designs included elements later made famous in the version eventually produced by Parker Brothers, including black locomotives on the railroad spaces, the car on "Free Parking", the red arrow for "Go", the faucet on "Water Works", the light bulb on "Electric Company", and the question marks on the "Chance" spaces, though many of the actual icons were created by a hired graphic artist.[53][54][55] While Darrow received a copyright on his game in 1933, its specimens have disappeared from the files of the United States Copyright Office, though proof of its registration remains.[56]