Names of New York
Discovering the City's Past, Present, and Future Through Its Place-Names
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror
In place-names lie stories. That’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods.
Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, and successive waves of immigrants have left their marks on the city’s map. He excavates the roots of many names, from Brooklyn to Harlem, that have gained iconic meaning worldwide. He interviews the last living speakers of Lenape, visits the harbor’s forgotten islands, lingers on street corners named for ballplayers and saints, and meets linguists who study the estimated eight hundred languages now spoken in New York.
As recent arrivals continue to find new ways to make New York’s neighborhoods their own, the names that stick to the city’s streets function not only as portals to explore the past but also as a means to reimagine what is possible now.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jelly-Schapiro (Island People), a geographer and scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute for Public Knowledge, delivers a fascinating look at how the names of New York City's streets, neighborhoods, parks, and buildings have shaped the city's identity. Jelly-Schapiro gathers a smorgasbord of New York City lore, including the origins of the word jonesing in reference to an alley near Great Jones Street where junkies hung out in the 1960s. He also delves into theories about the etymology of Mannahatta and explains that the York in New York derives from a Celtic term for "place of the yew tree." Real estate magnates have left their mark all over the city, sometimes unintentionally: the founders of Astoria in Queens hoped to raise money from John Jacob Astor by naming their village in his honor, but he never visited and only coughed up $500. More recently, New York streets have taken on new names in honor of illustrious residents: Ruby Dee and Ozzie Davis have his-and-her street signs on their old Harlem block. Throughout, Jelly-Schapiro maintains a light touch, even when acknowledging the city's history of wealth inequality and racial discrimination. Lovers of the Big Apple will delight in this unique and informative history.
