"The society for the Suppression of Unnecessary Noise was founded by a physician named Julia Barnett Rice in 1906."

Rice believed noise was unhealthy, and enlisted New York City’s gentry (including Mark Twain) to lobby for things like rules governing steamboat whistles, and silence pledges from children who played near hospitals. The group met in posh spaces like the St. Regis hotel, but Rice insisted that she was not solely interested in protecting New York’s upper class.... In 1909, the organization celebrated the passage of an ordinance that prohibited street vendors (many of them immigrants) from shouting, whistling, or ringing bells to promote their wares.....  Attempts to regulate the sounds of the city (car horns, ice-cream-truck jingles) continued throughout the 20th century, but... in the ’90s[, t]he city started going after boom boxes, car stereos, and nightclubs.... In 1991, the NYPD launched Operation Soundtrap, a campaign in which cops would trawl streets—often in majority-Black-and-brown communities—hunting for and confiscating cars with enhanced stereo systems.... When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, he used a cabaret-license law to force clubs out of gentrifying neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and Chelsea....New York was effectively codifying an elite sonic aesthetic: the systemic elevation of quiet over noise...."

From "Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? The sound of gentrification is silence" by Xochitl Gonzalez (The Atlantic).