Given the Orientalist and romantic allure of the city, almost all descriptions of Istanbul contain relevant sensory (sonic, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory) information. This paper is interested in the sonic information that Istanbul writings – if we can think of a genre as such – provide. In this paper, I intend to give a sense as to how Istanbul’s soundscape was shaped by ezan, street vendors, dogs, night watchmen, fires, and new infrastructural technologies (telegram, steamships, trams, trains, electricity) in the turn of the century. Despite the novelty of only the latter, most of these sounds were interpreted as “noise” in the beginning of twentieth century and a new scientific discussion started regarding anti-noise regulations. Those who followed the discussions in other European capitals embraced the idea that noise was an unhealthy reality of the modern city life that is threatening the psychological well-being of its inhabitants. A number of articles that appeared in the famous literary and scientific magazine of the period, Servet-i Fünun (Wealth of Sciences) introduced the reader to these discussions, together with the new technological developments regarding noise research and regulations in New York, Berlin, and Munich. Focusing on the preoccupation of urban administrators, city dwellers, and scientists on the impacts (and nuisance) of new (mostly infrastructural) city sounds/noises, this paper approaches the history of urban infrastructure from a social perspective.