They Called It What?
While poring through old maps and street directories I occasionally see some great old street names that I wish had been retained. Brooklyn still has a couple, like Force Tube Ave. (there had been a high-pressure conduit running under it that connected the newly-designated parkland at Ridgewood Reservoir with to a large pumping station that stood until the mid-1960s at Atlantic Ave. and Conduit Blvd.). It was part of a water system connecting Freeport in Nassau County where the Milburn Pond was tapped in the 1890s to supply water to the then-city of Brooklyn. A water conduit through southern Nassau and Queens was constructed along streets which came to be known as Conduit Ave. and Boulevard. Aqueduct Racetrack, which sat near the conduit, was also named for it.
In Queens, some colorful names have survived, such as Fresh Pond Rd., Juniper Valley Rd., and Dry Harbor Rd. Some more are scattered about, like Staten Island’s Arthur Kill Rd., an English translation of a Dutch phrase meaning “the other strait,” or achter kil.
Above is Exchange Alley at Broadway in the Financial District. At a width of just 25 feet, Exchange Alley is the thinnest street in Manhattan that’s open to vehicular traffic. It runs one block between Broadway and Trinity Pl. and appears as a thin crack between #61 Broadway, the former Adams Exchange Building (constructed from 1912-1914) and One Exchange Plaza, a brick and glass tower built from 1982-1984. Trinity Pl. was one of the first streets laid out in Lower Manhattan beyond the city wall and was originally called Lumber St. until renamed in 1846.
Exchange Alley and its eastern continuation, the wider Exchange Pl., go back to the Dutch era. Most of it was called Tuyn St. and its later English translation, Garden St., but Exchange Alley, during the era of British occupation, had a more colorful name.
Oysters, in beds in the surrounding rivers and bays of Manhattan and Long Islands, were a prime means of sustenance for the Lenape Indians and then New York City residents for decades after independence. While the British controlled NYC, this was also the case and a common British delicacy is the “pasty,” an empañada-like treat that featured a pastry crust with various meat, cheese or vegetable filling. Thus, “pasties” were consumed by the tonnage in the Manhattan of that era. However, the alley wasn’t directly named for the food. Exchange Alley had been used as the path to British fortifications informally known as “the oyster pasty” likely because of its shape (my guess) and thus, must have acquired the name Oyster Pasty La. or Oyster Pasty Alley.
Nassau St. between its south end at Wall St. north to about Maiden La. was called Pie Woman’s La. for a while during the colonial era. The street still retains the narrowness of its early days. Though NYC has shucked off most of the names associated with British domination in the years from 1664 through 1783, Dutch names still abound. Prince William of Nassau was the namesake of Nassau St.; he later became King William III of England, Ireland and Scotland in 1689.
There’s an L-shaped alley issuing from Lafayette St. just south of Bond St. in NoHo, which ends at Bleecker. It’s an eastern continuation of Jones Alley, but for many years it had a separate name of its own: Shinbone Alley. The DOT used to mark it with a street sign, but it kept getting stolen so the city finally gave up. It’s fenced off now, used as a driveway by adjoining businesses, but if you look through the chicken wire you can see it still has some Belgian block pavement.
Bronxdale is a small Bronx neighborhood east of Bronx Park between about Allerton Ave. and Pelham Parkway. Bronxdale Ave., meanwhile, cuts across the Bronx street grid from White Plains Rd. southeast to East Tremont Ave. It’s a Native-American trail and one of the first routes through the neighborhoods that became Bronxdale, Van Nest and Morris Park, and from the colonial era through the early-20th entury, it was named Bear Swamp Rd.
A large marshy area called Bear Swamp covered over 180 acres east of White Plains Rd. in the present-day Bronxdale and Van Nest neighborhoods. The area was able to support one path through the region, which came to be called Bear Swamp Rd. The Siwanoy Indians did hunt and trap black bears here; they used teeth and claws for ornaments and talismans, and the pelts for coats and blankets. Bear meat is not commonly found at the Stop & Shop, but the Siwanoy considered it a delicacy, and the fat was drained for use as hairdressing or bug repellent. In the early-20th century the road gained the more prosaic name, Bronxdale Ave. We see it here at its intersection with Cruger Ave., which has also been granted the name of Regis Philbin Ave.
In Fresh Meadows, Queens, there was a road named Quarrelsome Lane that ran generally east between what is today Parsons Blvd. and Utopia Parkway, but in the 1800s was between the Jamaica and Flushing Rd. and Fresh Meadow La. There was a slight bend between today’s 169th and 172nd Sts. Today, the lane, undoubtedly a dirt trace through a forest in the 19th century, is the pleasant 75th Ave. Detached homes, most built after World War II, run along its length. There’s no hint that it’s a colonial, and perhaps pre-colonial pathway that was once called Quarrelsome La. The reason behind the name remains a mystery; perhaps there were rival families.
Sunset Ave. cuts across the modern-day street grid in the Willowbrook neighborhood in central Staten Island. Willowbrook Rd. runs south from the junction of Forest and Port Richmond Aves., and then oddly turns east at the Staten Island Expressway, running as far as Bradley Ave. However, Sunset Ave. was once Willowbrook Road’s east end; once Willowbrook was extended east to Bradley, the diagonal part was “orphaned” and first named Gun Factory Rd. before it was changed to the more prosaic Sunset Ave. Had the name survived to the modern era, it’d likely be changed now.
Today Glen St. is a service road of the West Shore Expressway, wedged between the expressway and the ancient Sylvan Cemetery at the far end of Victory Blvd. in the small town of Travis, formerly known as Linoleumville after the tile product manufactured there. Long ago, Glen St. lost its more descriptive name of Burying Hill Rd. Sylvan Cemetery, once overgrown and decrepit, dates back to the colonial era and has been nicely cleaned up in recent years.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)