Where the Streets Had a Name

Walking around Yorkville, it occurred to me that one of the cultural depletions New York has suffered over the past two gentrifying, blandifying decades is a death in nomenclature.

Once upon a time, Gotham was such a colorful town that mere numbers were not enough to properly characterize streets and avenues. Colloquial nicknames, appropriate to certain drags, cropped up on their own, a function of popular perception among the street-level denizens of the time. 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth, for example, was Swing Street, owing to the number of jazz clubs and nite spots packed tightly into that happening block.

Some of these unofficial street names are still common parlance. 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth remains Restaurant Row to the world. 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth is still called Diamond Row. And 48th between Sixth and Seventh is Music Row—at last, for the next year or so. But many other names have dropped out of use as the city has careened toward willful homogeneity.

I've compiled a partial list of former New York street names, now only recalled by oldtimers and historians. Take a look and imagine what the town that held those throroughfares musta been like:

Now: Fourth Avenue between Astor Place and 14th Street
Then: Bookseller Row, home to countless used book peddlers

Now: Eighth Avenue from 42nd to 57th
Then: Minnesota Strip, because, in the 1970s, the area was swarming with teenage prostitutes from the Midwest

Now: 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues
Then: Swing Street (see above)

Now: Doyers Street
Then: The Bloody Angle, because the Chinese Tong gangs would fight it out on this short, crooked street

Now: Park Row
Then: Newspaper Row, the location of all the city's great papers

Now: Myrtle Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Then: Murder Avenue, for obvious reasons

Now: Eighth Avenue, in Bay Ridge
Then: Lapskaus Boulevard, home of a large Norwegian population

Now: Broadway, from 42nd Street to 57th
Then: The Main Stem, the Great White Way, Mazda Way, The Rialto, Coffeepot Canyon, all old terms from when Times Square was the center of American entertainment

Now: Broadway from the 50s to the 70s
Then: Automobile Row, home to many car dealers

Now: 72nd Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: Bohemian Broadway, the center of Czech life in New York

Now: 86th Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: German Broadway, the center of German life in New York

Now: 79th Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: Hungarian Broadway, the center of Hungarian life in New York

Now: Heath Avenue at Albany Crescent, in The Bronx
Then: Blood Alley, owing to the slaughterhouse nearby

Now: Alexander Avenue in the Bronx
Then: Doctors Row, where you went to get well

Now: West 133rd Street in Harlem between Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue
Then: Jungle Alley, home of many a nightclub

Now: Second Avenue between Houston and 14th Street
Then: Yiddish Rialto, the center of Jewish theatre in New York

Now: West 138th and West 139th between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Then: Striver's Row, a set of townhouse where upwardly mobile African-Americans moved in the early 20th century