My Regards to Broad Street and Other Manhattan Names

In Lower Manhattan, traces of New York City’s past can be gleaned from its street names—unlike farther uptown, where they are hidden behind numbers. Broad St., seen here at Federal Hall on Wall St., was the widest street in the area other than Broadway, and it got that way because tall-masted Dutch ships once sailed down a waterway in the middle called the Heere Graft. That waterway was filled in by the 1700s, leaving an especially wide roadway. Old Slip, Peck Slip, Market Slip and other Manhattan “slips” were once waterways where ships “slipped in” to dock. Meanwhile, Bridge St. crossed the Broad St. canal, and Wall St. was built to keep marauding Brits and Native-Americans out —though they never materialized.

While many streets in lower Manhattan have changed their names since 1776, the Maiden La. has stuck. After the British evacuated in 1783, plenty of streets associated with Royal rule were renamed and thus, Crown Street became Liberty, one Queen St. became Cedar and another became Pearl, King St. became Pine, and streets like Prince (the downtown Prince) and King George St. are now buried under Brooklyn Bridge ramps. NYC has weeded out most of its odder street names, but Maiden La. persists.

It’s said the street received its name because it was built atop a stream, since redirected into the sewer system, in which women washed clothes in the Dutch colonial era, when the path beside it was called Maagde Paetje. That’s the story given in my sources, but I’d say that these theories are conjectural, unless there’s an official record somewhere.

This isn’t the only Maiden La. in NYC. There’s one in Tottenville, Staten Island, while another in Maspeth, Queens was renamed Mazeau Street several decades ago. Meanwhile, there are several scattered around New Jersey, including short lanes in Jersey City and Newark.

An obscure street in lower Manhattan, this is also one of the few L-shaped streets on the island. It changes directions at its halfway point, running from Beaver and New Sts. south, then east to Broad St.; Commerce St. in Greenwich Village is another such street with an “elbow.”

The street’s an English transliteration of the Dutch marktveldt, or “market-field.” Before lawn bowling became a craze in the Dutch colonial days, a produce and livestock market was located at Bowling Green and this street once ran past it, becoming Battery Pl. further west. After the British took over, the street was occasionally known as Petticoat La. In the past it’s also been named Exchange St., Field St., Fieldmarket St. and Oblique Rd.

New Amsterdam’s first French Huguenot church was built on the narrow lane in 1688, between what is now Whitehall and Broadway. This part of Marketfield St. is no longer there, eliminated by the construction of the since-razed NYC Produce Exchange between 1882 and 1884.

One of Manhattan’s oldest streets was named early on, in the 1660s, and commemorates the paddle-tailed, dam-building, aquatic rodent whose pelts made up the chief avenue of commerce between Dutch settlers and the already established Native-Americans during New Amsterdam’s earliest days from the 1620s through the 1650s.

Even after sales of beaver pelts fell off, the animals were prized for centuries, so much so that the wealthiest man in America during his time, John Jacob Astor, made his fortune on beaver fur. Representations of the beaver are seen in the official seal of New York City, and terra cotta beavers can be seen in the Astor Place station of the 6 train, which is named for John Jacob.

Beaver St. runs from Whitehall St. at Bowling Green east to Pearl St. just south of Wall. For much of the colonial era and afterward, Beaver St. ran between just Bowling Green and Broad St. The block between Broad and William was variously called Prince or Princess St., depending on spelling and the whim of the mapmaker, and there was just an L-shaped section between William and Pearl. According to Gil Tauber’s Old Streets, this was a short lane called Slote, or Sloat, Street, named for the Dutch sloot, or drainage ditch, which we can guess was its original purpose. After 1807, Sloat became Exchange and later, Merchant St. Finally, after 1835, Beaver St. was extended to its present length and the remaining section of Merchant St. was then called Hanover St.

Coenti(e)s Slip was one of the largest of lower Manhattan’s boat slips. It’s kept its old slanted shape, too. The slip was filled in around 1870.

The name “Coenties” is old Dutch since it recalls an early landowner from New Netherlands era, Coenraet Ten Eyck, a tanner and shoemaker. He was nicknamed Coentje, or “Coonchy” to the British, and over time settled into this spelling. Ten Eyck St. in Brooklyn’s East Williamsburg was also named for him. Another story has it that the name’ a contraction of “Conraet’s and Antje’s”—Coenraet Ten Eyck and his wife Antje. Ten Eyck’s descendants spread out, with some winding up in Kings County. William Ten Eyck was a prominent churchman, a deacon at the Second Dutch Reformed Church in Bushwick, according to Benardo and Weiss in Brooklyn By Name.

One of lower Manhattan’s more intriguingly-named streets isn’t even there, though the city continues to mark it with a sign. Temple St. ran for just one block, from Cedar north to Liberty. It was reduced to one block from two in 1907, when the Trinity and U.S. Realty Buildings, tall Gothic towers built to complement Trinity Church, were constructed on both sides of Thames St.

In 1967, it was decided that Ernest Flagg’s 1908 Beaux Arts skyscraper Singer Tower, one of the most identifiable buildings in the Manhattan skyline on Liberty and Broadway, should come down. The forbidding U.S. Steel Building, later renamed One Liberty Plaza, was constructed in its place, opening in 1973. The small parcel across the street between Broadway, Trinity Pl., Cedar St. and Liberty St. became Liberty Plaza Park, and the last piece of Temple St. was eliminated.

Liberty Plaza Park, later renamed Zuccotti Park, was transformed by the destruction of the World Trade Center a block away in 2001, and was used for months thereafter as a staging area for emergency vehicles and equipment. Formerly a large, relatively shade-free concrete plaza, the park was given a rehabilitation in 2006-2007 when dozens of honey locust trees were planted and new fluorescent lighting was installed under the pavements, in an unusual arrangement. Later, Zuccotti Park was the base camp for Occupy Wall Street‘s protest against economic inequality. Today, the sign is all that remains of Temple St.

—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens.