Sunday, February 25, 2007

Brooklyn Streets That Are No More

When I bike out to Coney Island along Ocean Parkway, judging how close I'm getting by where I am in the alphabet of street names that starts at Avenue D and ends at Avenue X, I often wonder what happened to the missing letters. There's no A, B, or C, or for that matter, no E, F or G. (I must note, though, that except for E, each of these streets starts with the appropriate letter (Ablemarle, Beverly, Clarendon, Farragut, Glenwood)). And, in fact, both Farragut and Glenwood used to be the more simple Avenues F and G.

If you want to see other Brooklyn streets that used to be known by another name, check out Steve Morse's list, which compiled by poring over old maps and city directories.

Some streets haven't just changed names - they've disappeared altogether. For those, the master is Kevin at Forgotten NY. Many of the Brooklyn streets that he catalogues were destroyed by construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, Cadman Plaza, city and government buildings, or by Robert Moses' construction of the BQE.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is an Avenue F, it runs between the coney island bound ocean parkway and dahill road .

Chris Kreussling (Flatbush Gardener) said...

There is also a stretch of Avenue C. It's eastern limit is Coney Island avenue. I haven't looked at a map to see how far West it goes.

Albemarle and Beverly used to be Avenues A and B. They were renamed during the real-estate boom of the late 1890s and early 1900s.

Anonymous said...

Avenue C crosses Ocean Parkway between Beverley and Cortelyou.

Anonymous said...

Avenue A and Avenue B still exist in the vicinity of Linden Boulevard and Rockaway Junction and run to Remsen and Ralph Avenues.