Amazingly Literal Street Names

A long time ago, someone said to me that numbered streets arranged on a grid represented a great lapse of imagination. That may be true, but it’s not what the title of this post is about. This post, which is arguably on the silly end of the spectrum, is about the little leftover streets that are given unimaginative names.

The picture above is an example. It’s cropped from this:

The Queensboro Bridge has two levels of traffic. The upper level exit to the north is the viaduct above; the lower level exit is the thing that looks like a street below, on the right. But it’s not really a street because nothing fronts on it and it leads nowhere for a pedestrian. It’s a highway ramp disguised as a street but – I guess because it intersects 61st Street at grade – the city Department of Transportation felt compelled to give it a name and a street sign. “Queensboro Bridge Exit” is as literal a name as a street can have. There are a number of these around the city at similar exit and entrance ramps for bridges and tunnels.

My favorite – or maybe it’s “favorites” is Marginal Street. This is the name that NYC (and as seen below, other places as well) assigns to a street facing the water that isn’t really a street. Here’s an example:

The light gray at the bottom is the east river. South Street is the 1800s street (after landfill was more or less done) along the river; the heavy yellow line is the elevated highway (the FDR Drive) above South Street. But there’s a little street-like thing that allows car traffic to get to a pier and it got named Marginal Street. It’s not alone:

I don’t think that list is exhaustive: I’m pretty sure there’s at least one Marginal Street in Queens.

The oldey-timey version of this phenomenon can be seen in lower Manhattan, starting a short block form our office. Once again, the Viele Map comes in handy:

The light and dark green is the original tip of Manhattan, the light tan is water, and the dark tan is landfill. The original street along the water the East River – the marginal street – was Pearl Street, named after the oysters and clams that were in the river. Its irregular path follows the original shoreline. As the landfill moved forward, new streets were created, one by one. First Water Street, which shows a certain literalness, and then Front Street, which is a popular name in the New York area and New England for a street along the water. South Street is less obvious, but because of the skewed geometry of Manhattan, much of South Street is more or less the southern edge of the island:

I have no idea if it would make sense to give highway ramps and marginal streets better names. But it could be amusing.