Washington Street in Dumbo has a very popular view.
An online petition sponsored by the progressive activist group MoveOn is hoping to get a stretch of Fifth Avenue between East 56th and 57th Streets named in honor of Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States. Not coincidentally — though the petition language doesn’t mention it — that stretch of Fifth Avenue is where Trump Tower, President Donald Trump’s private residence, is located.
While neither Obama nor Trump currently have New York City streets named for them, just about every other U.S. president does — or at least has a street bearing their surname. Here are just a few of those presidents, and the story of their streets.
President George Washington Streets in NYC
There are a total of 16 streets in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Staten Island named for the first president, George Washington, as well as Washington Square Park, the Washington Bridge spanning the Harlem River, and the George Washington Bridge spanning the Hudson River. Brooklyn’s Washington Street, shown above, is a favorite photography spot for tourists, since, as luck would have it, the spire of the Empire State Building is visible from many angles through the struts of one of the Manhattan Bridge towers.
Fort Greene’s Washington Park was partially designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the architects who went on to develop Central and Prospect Parks. It was constructed beginning in 1847, officially opened in 1850, and redesigned in 1867 by Olmsted and Vaux; in 1897 the park was renamed for Fort Greene, which by then had become a handsome residential neighborhood. Oddly, the two-block stretch of Cumberland Street lining Fort Greene Park’s eastern side is still called Washington Park.
On Lincoln Avenue in the Bronx.
President Abraham Lincoln Streets in NYC
New York City was a bastion of Confederate supporters, writes author John Strausbaugh in his book, “City of Sedition,” and was comprised of only the island of Manhattan during that era. Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that only a few official locales in Manhattan were named for the 16th president, including Lincoln Center at Broadway and Columbus Circle, which was originally Lincoln Square; and the uptown Lincoln Houses, where Park Avenue meets FDR Drive. Abraham Lincoln kicked off his 1860 campaign for president in a speech at then-new Cooper Union, at Third Avenue and Astor Place, and local lore has it that afterward, he had a drink at nearby McSorley’s on East 7th Street.
In the Bronx, Lincoln Avenue runs for a few blocks in Mott Haven through what used to be a piano manufacturing district. The monumental, clock-towered Estey piano factory, which decades ago became residential housing, stands majestically at Lincoln Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard.
The Gardiner Tyler Mansion on Staten Island.
President John Tyler Streets in NYC
The Gardiner Tyler Mansion, 27 Tyler Avenue between Bement Avenue and Clove Road in Sunnyside, Staten Island, was constructed circa 1835, when most of the surrounding region consisted of farms and fields. President John Tyler’s widow, Julia Gardiner Tyler (1820-1889), resided in this house during the Civil War. Virginian John Tyler, the 10th president, was the first U.S. president to be married during his administration. His widow moved here after his death in 1862; even though she was born in New York, she ardently supported the Confederacy. John and Julia Tyler are buried in Richmond — Virginia, that is, not Staten Island.
In an amazing quirk, two of President Tyler’s grandsons are still around in 2019 — even though Tyler was born in 1790. Tyler had eight children with his first wife, Letitia, and seven with his second wife, Julia. One of his sons with Julia, Lyon Gardiner Tyler (1853-1935) is the father of Lyon Gardiner Tyler, Jr. (born in 1924) and Harrison Ruffin Tyler (born in 1928); they reside in Tennessee and Virginia, respectively. Lyon G. Tyler fathered the two sons at age 72 and 75!
President Chester Arthur Streets in NYC
G. Addeo & Sons Bakery is located on Arthur Avenue, in the heart of the Bronx’s Little Italy Belmont district. The avenue was named for the 21st President, Chester Alan Arthur, as Catherine Lorillard of the tobacco-producing family, who owned a large amount of property in Belmont, supported Arthur, and Mrs. Lorillard sponsored the statue of him that stands in Union Square.
With his muttonchop sideburns, President Arthur (1830-1886) looked the very model of a modern U.S. president in the Victorian age. Born in Vermont but a transplanted New Yorker, he was elected as James Garfield’s vice president and assumed office when Garfield was assassinated. As president from 1881 to 1885, he reformed civil service and introduced the merit system in federal employment. Despite Mark Twain’s support, he did not get the Republican nomination in the 1884 elections. It may have been just as well, because Arthur knew by then that he had a terminal kidney illness.
During the Civil War, Arthur purchased a townhouse at 123 Lexington Ave., between East 28th and 29th streets. After Garfield’s assassination on Sept. 19, 1881, Arthur took the oath of office there early in the morning of the following day, and again in Washington on Sept. 22. At the time, Arthur was mourning the recent death of his wife Ellen, a former opera singer; their son William had died in infancy. Garfield and Arthur had disagreed politically, and were only on the same ticket because Garfield wanted a New Yorker on the ballot to increase his chances for election.
Arthur passed away at his Lexington Avenue townhouse from a cerebral hemorrhage on Nov. 18, 1886. His significance in U.S. presidential history is mostly forgotten.
President John F. Kennedy Streets in NYC
It’s a little harder to find streets named for relatively recent presidents, but you can find one in Oakland Gardens, Queens, where there is a traffic circle at 68th Avenue and 218th Street named for John F. Kennedy, the 35th president, who was elected in 1960 and assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
John Kennedy did have a New York City address, and it was as far from this location as you can imagine. For a few years in the 1920s, JFK’s father, Joseph Kennedy, and his family lived in a 20-room, two-story stucco mansion at 5040 Independence Ave. at West 252nd Street in Riverdale, Bronx, near both Wave Hill and Riverdale Country School. But Joe Kennedy was unsatisfied with the house and moved to a larger one in Bronxville, New York, after two years.
Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)
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