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Tag: What’s in a Name?

What’s In a Name? The Fireman’s Memorial Garden

As we continue to document the research we have compiled on every building and site in the East Village, we run across some incredible stories of the neighborhood’s history. Such is the case for a site at 358-362 East 8th Street, a lush green oasis in the middle of the block between Avenues C and […]

What’s in a Name: Taras Shevchenko Place

If you’ve taken a trip to the new Cooper Union building or gone for a beer at McSorley’s, you’ve most likely noticed that small one-block street that runs between St. George’s Ukrainian Church and Cooper Union, between Seventh Street and Sixth Street.  This little off-the-grid street is known as Taras Shevchenko Place, named after the […]

What’s in a Name: Bleecker Street

It is hard to imagine Bleecker Street, with its high fashion boutiques, small businesses, cafes, and food shops as farmland, but then again it is hard to visualize any part of Manhattan in its rural state. Bleecker Street’s provenance is that of the Bleecker family, prominent New York City citizens who owned farmland in the […]

What’s in a Name?: The Saul Birns Building

Included within the boundaries of the Landmarks Preservation Commission’s proposed East Village/Lower East Side Historic District is the venerable limestone and terra cotta-clad Saul Birns Building, located on the west side of Second Avenue between 6th & 7th Streets. The building definitely stands out on Lower Second Avenue, which is lined primarily with converted early-to-mid-19th […]

What’s in a Name: Bank Street

Sometimes determining the provenance of a street’s name is fairly easy. It is true for Bank Street in Greenwich Village, which was named for … you guessed it … a branch of the Bank of New York, which located to the area during New York’s first yellow fever epidemic in 1799. Today we will look […]