Demonstrations, Disturbances, and a Papal Visit

After many years of planning and effort, the Municipal Archives launched online Collection Guides in October 2021. The Guides provide researchers with essential information about the Archives holdings in an easily searchable format.

The Guides have allowed patrons to discover resources that are relevant to a great variety of research topics and queries. Thanks to the Guides, patrons are now able to access records long-held by the institution, but rarely, if ever, examined due to imperfect intellectual control.

News clipping, Daily News, July 16, 1963. NYPD Demonstrations and Disturbances Records. NYC Municipal Archives.

This week For the Record highlights a series originally accessioned in 1973, that has recently informed research by several patrons as a result of its listing in the Collection Guides. The collection is titled, “New York Police Department (NYPD) Demonstrations and Disturbances Records.” Although small in quantity, less than four cubic feet, the eclectic contents include NYPD memoranda and correspondence, as well as reports, maps, pamphlets, and assorted ephemera. The materials date from the mid-1960s. Accessioned from the NYPD’s Ninth Police Precinct in 1973, the collection had been only minimally described. Patron interest in this small series has prompted City archivists to inventory the material and publish a resource record.

Scanning the folder inventory quickly reveals why researchers have found the contents of value. Folder headings range from “Police Department Committee to Study the Report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice,” to “Watts Riots, 1965,” and “Papal Visit to City of New York, 1965.”

Ephemera, 1964. NYPD Demonstrations and Disturbances Records. NYC Municipal Archives.

In the first box there are nine folders of NYPD records about racial “disorder” in Harlem during 1963-1965. Several are specific to demonstrations staged by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). One example is an NYPD Memorandum, dated June 12, 1963, concerning an “Afro-Asian Bazaar” scheduled to take place at the 69th Regiment Armory. The memo states that Malcolm X, “leader of the Nation of Islam in this city,” had been interviewed about the Bazaar. The NYPD confirmed that the Nation of Islam had approval from the Adjutant General in Albany to use the Armory, but also noted, “This situation will receive continued attention and new developments reported as they occur.” In another document, dated June 7, 1965, the NYPD discussed “possible trouble this summer,” specifically referring to “…groups of youngsters [who] are very dangerous and could easily set off further riots and disorders.”  

Three folders in this box document NYPD preparations for anticipated anti-draft demonstrations in 1967. Among the items is a multi-page mimeographed document helpfully listing the “Laws Relating to Public Demonstrations” that police officers might invoke when arresting persons at the planned demonstrations.

Other documents are more general in nature. The series includes a nine-page Memo dated June 10, 1966, Subject: Resume of Certain Police Problems Associated with the Summer Season.” Among the problems addressed in the list are Panic Triggered by Sudden Storms, Throwing Bricks and Debris from Roof Tops, Drag Racing, Fireworks, and Prevention of Swimming at Unauthorized Locations. More ominously, it also lists, Automobile Larceny, Vandalism in Schools, Narcotics, and Youth Gangs and Juvenile Delinquency.

Papal Mass Pamphlet, 1965. NYPD Demonstrations and Disturbances Records. NYC Municipal Archives.

News clipping, Daily News, October 1965. NYPD Demonstrations and Disturbances Records. NYC Municipal Archives.

Similarly, in another summer-related communication, a memo from July 19, 1966, to “All Commands,” discusses “Emergency Distribution of Hydrant Spray Caps.” In six detailed paragraphs the document provides very specific guidance to police patrols who were apparently tasked to distribute hydrant spray caps in areas “where there have been many unauthorized openings of hydrants.”

Not all of the items in this collection pertain to riots and disorder. There are several folders documenting the visit of Pope Paul VI to New York City in October 1965. Not surprisingly the files contain numerous memos and correspondence describing NYPD preparations for the Papal visit as well as several folders of clippings about the event carefully clipped from many local newspapers.

Presidential motorcade route map, October 1965. NYPD Demonstrations and Disturbances Records. NYC Municipal Archives.

There are notably fewer documents in this series about the visit by President Lyndon Johnson to the City at the same time. However, there is one item that at first glance seemed odd. It is titled “Hospitals located in proximity of routes used by the President traveling to and from Queens Airports.” But after a little thought, its purpose becomes obvious.

Some of the items in this series may be duplicative of the several NYPD Intelligence Bureau series, a.k.a. the Handschu Collection, also described in the Collection Guides. Now, thanks to the Guides and awareness of these related series such as the “Demonstrations and Disturbances” material, patrons can more easily explore the diverse and vast holdings of the Municipal Archives. Look for future For the Record articles about previously little-known resources.

Tracts, Farms, and the Great Reindexing Project of 1911-1917

Introduction: why archive? 

Archives preserve materials for many reasons, some of which are not immediately obvious. It’s certainly true that some archived items have obvious historic importance, such as the Grand Jury indictments for the murder of Malcolm X.

Indictment, People v. Hagan, Butler, Johnson, 1965, NYDA Closed Case File Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Other items combine artistic merit with their historic significance, such as Calvert Vaux’s drawings for the design of Central Park.  

Danesmouth Arch, Central Park, Rendering, 1859, Department of Parks Drawings Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Inventory List, Frederick Johnson, 1863, Draft Riot Claim Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Most archival collections derive their value from larger social or political themes that scholars discern in studying otherwise humble-appearing documents, such as a payment claim for losses incurred in the notorious New York City Civil War Draft Riots of 1863.    

In three related collections at the New York City Municipal Archives, thousands of cryptic slips of paper bear witness to an enormous but now nearly-forgotten project where dozens of New York City employees labored for years in the service of—you guessed it—Manhattan real-estate records. This is the tale of how New York devoted more than a million person-hours (well, man-hours according to personnel lists) to achieve an apparently quotidian goal: making Manhattan’s property deeds more accessible, in an era where digital searches weren’t possible and using a typewriter to store data was considered technologically advanced. Let’s unpack the story.

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The Problem: 600,000 deeds and no single index

Real estate has always ruled Manhattan. By the late 19th century, it was clear that the remaining tracts of open property uptown would soon be developed, and the traditional system of describing property by “metes and bounds”—using descriptors such as a mark cut into the trunk of a large oak tree near the river—was obsolete. Real estate law relies on an unbroken list of transaction records, called a “chain of title,” to assure that someone selling a piece of property is its legitimate owner. The New York State Legislature passed a law in 1891 requiring all subsequent real estate transactions in New York City to use a new block-and-lot system to describe property—the same one used today—but it failed to reckon with 200 years of conveyance records. How to take the 600,000 accumulated deeds, called “conveyances” that were stored in 2,000 fat volumes in the office of the City Register, and convert them to the block-and-lot system?

Furthermore, those old records weren’t organized geographically: the volumes (called “libers”) had been filled sequentially as deeds were brought to the City Register for filing and were indexed volume-by-volume based on the names of the buyers and sellers. Searching through these thousands of volumes was the province of title searchers. Title companies, frustrated with the primitive and archaic system of deed indexing, created their own proprietary indexes which made their searches more efficient and reliable—but assured that access to these public records was for all practical purposes controlled by private firms!

Deed, 1804, Office of the City Register.

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The Solution: Reindex 

In 1910 the state legislature addressed the problem by directing the office of the City Register to create its own index of real estate “instruments” that filled the gap between 1891 and the earliest recorded land grants of the 17th century, and to establish trustworthy title chains. The law allocated $100,000 per year for the task, which was expected to take a decade to complete. The City Register created a dedicated Reindexing Department and hired nearly 80 men at salaries ranging from $1,000 to $1,320 per year. The team was put to work preparing summaries of each deed, called an abstract. Once an Abstractor made sense of the deed description and summarized it on a slip of paper, a Locator interpreted the description and attempted to superimpose it on a modern block plan of Manhattan. Once located, a Draftsman drew a map summarizing the work of the Abstractor and the Locator. The work was checked by Examiners and finally signed off by the Chief Surveyor. An elaborate system of review was implemented because the City Register recognized that this was an effort that would never be repeated—it had to be done right the first time. Old property deeds were notoriously difficult to interpret—and often were a challenge just to read!    

Abstracting slip from the Reindexing Department, NYC Municipal Archives.

And yet just three years after the work began in January 1911, outgoing Register Max S. Grifenhagen called reporters into his office and announced that the index, “more comprehensive, more perfect, more exact than is to be found in any other large city in the world,” was complete.(1) The new index was organized geographically and took the form of 12 x 17.5-inch pages (typists were paid 25 cents for each completed index page) filled with chronologically-ordered conveyance data. Manhattan was divided into “key blocks,” each encompassing several city blocks. Every key block featured its own conveyance index with verified liber citations as well as a map showing the names of early owners during the period when Manhattan land was still owned in large pieces called “tracts.”       

Key block map and page from a reindexed block on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, NYC Municipal Archives.

Between 1914 and 1917, the abstracting work was extended to hundreds of thousands of mortgage records. At the same time, the Reindexing Department turned its attention to working out the boundaries of approximately 200 old “farms and tracts” that had once made up most of the privately-owned property above 14th Street. Many of these bore familiar names from Manhattan history: Dyckman, Stuyvesant, Delancey, Astor, Roosevelt. The old conveyance deeds did not contain sufficient information for this task, so the team also drew upon “records on file in the various city departments, historical societies, libraries and in the offices of Trinity Church, Trustees of Columbia College, Sailor’s Snug Harbor and many other similar offices.”(2) As the data was gathered in the form of 6.5 x 10-inch slips organized into more than 1,000 “Tract Reports,” draftsmen distilled the information into 46 plates collectively called the General Map of Tracts and Farms, encompassing all of Manhattan. The draftsmen used an interesting system of lettering:  the names of owners were written in a mashup of styles and sizes designed to make it easier to distinguish overlapping names.    

Tract and Farm Plate 34, R.D. Map Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

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Job (almost) Done! 

The Reindexing team still wasn’t finished—they next converted data on each original farm or tract into a narrative document called a Farm History. A Farm History begins with narrative text from 2 to 22 pages long describing the extent of the original property and presenting an outline of the transactions that broke it into pieces. Many of the Farm Histories include one or two beautiful maps superimposing the farm onto a modern Manhattan block map, as well as a kind of descendancy chart akin to a family tree, with landowners’ names presented as if they were generations of children who bought or inherited pieces of the original farm. Each line of descent terminated in a reference to the city blocks that make up the land owned by the most recent names on the chart. In a 1917 summary of the work of this office, City Register John J. Hopper wrote that “a reference to the proper farm history is made in the front of each block,”(3) by which he meant in the conveyance index volumes. This was never done, nor do the farm histories appear to be complete: only about two dozen out of 120 bear approval dates, and many lack texts, maps, or descendancy charts. Genealogist and historian Aaron Goodwin has speculated that World War I may have interfered with the project’s completion.(4) 

James W. De Peyster Farm, Farm Histories Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.

Ownership Descendancy Chart for the Dutch colonial era farm of Jacobus Van Orden, Farm Histories Collection, NYC Municipal Archives. 

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So, How Much of this Stuff is in the Municipal Archives? 

This largest output from the Reindexing project were hundreds of index volumes.  Those remain in the City Register’s office in Jamaica, Queens, because after more than 100 years, they’re still in active use! The original conveyance libers through 1886 have been scanned and are available online.(5) The Municipal Archives holds three collections at its 31 Chambers Street location:

• ACC 1983-037, consisting of large original sheet maps that show the location and boundaries of old tracts and farms together with the names of their owners and Tract Report references. 

• ACC 1983-038, consisting of approximately 1,000 Tract Reports on slips of paper that were used to create ACC 1983-037 and ACC 1983-039. 

• ACC 1983-039, consisting of approximately 100 Farm Histories with text, maps and descendancy charts of ownership. The Farm Histories are available on a microfilm in the Reading Room of the Municipal Library at 31 Chambers Street.   Please consult the Municipal Archives Collection Guide for additional information about the Office of the City Register Reindexing Department maps, tract reports, and farm histories. 

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A Final Word 

Returning to the theme of modest-looking archival materials that bear witness to colossal efforts made by city employees performing tasks that must have been tedious at best, the efforts of the World War I-era Reindexing Department of the City Register have benefitted generations of property owners, local historians, and—yes—attorneys. The names and addresses of the Reindexing Department team members were published in The City Record along with their salaries and hire dates.(6) A handful were even photographed for a 1913 newspaper story about the department,(7) so let them be anonymous no more!  

Members of the Reindexing Department, July 1916, NYC Municipal Archives. 

The reindexing team at work in 1913, NYC Municipal Archives. 

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(1) “Title searching in N.Y. County Simplified.” NY Tribune 21 Dec 1913, page 34.

(2) John J Hopper 1917, Four Years Report Showing the improvements made during the years 1914-1917 in the Register’s Office, of New York County, with recommendations for its future growth and advancement, pages 43-44

(3) Hopper, loc. cit.

(4) Aaron Goodwin. 2016 New York City Municipal Archives: An Authorized Guide for Family Historians, page 104

(5) “United States, New York Land Records, 1630-1975.” https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/2078654

(6) The City Record 31 Jul 1916 Supplement 9, page 245.

(7) “Title Searching in N.Y. County Simplified,”loc. cit.

Happy Thanksgiving

We wish everyone a happy and safe Thanksgiving…

And share some archival footage from the 1968 Macy’s Parade:

Macy's Day Parade, raw footage, November 28, 1968. Recorded by Deluenthal. NYPD Photo Unit collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Birthday Greetings, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge!

Five hundred years ago, in a mission to find the Northwest Passage to Asia, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazano sailed along the northeastern coast of North America. He voyaged from present day North Carolina, to Nova Scotia, and became the first European known to have sailed into New York Harbor. 

Aerial View Of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge with construction almost completed, from Brooklyn looking toward Staten Island, ca. 1964. Department of Ports & Trade photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

More recently, on November 21, 1964, the Verrazano-Narrow Bridge, named in honor of the explorer, opened to traffic. New Yorkers like to describe features of their city as the tallest, the biggest, etc., but the Verrazano bridge is truly the embodiment of superlatives. The 693-foot towers are so tall that they are 1-5/8 inches farther apart at the top than the bottom because the 4,260-foot distance between them made it necessary to take the earth’s curvature into account. When completed in 1964 it was longest suspension bridge in the world. There is enough steel in the structure to build three Empire State Buildings. The wire in the four main cables would encircle the earth nearly six times.

Aerial View Of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge with construction almost completed, from Brooklyn looking toward Staten Island, ca. 1964. Department of Ports & Trade photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Researchers will learn these facts, and many more, from resources in the Municipal Library. The vertical files, for example, contain an eclectic assortment of source materials. One such item, the Winter 2001-2002 edition of From the Archive, a publication of MTA Bridges and Tunnels, is especially informative and includes numerous historical photographs documenting construction of the bridge. According to the narrative, New York State authorized construction of a bridge across the narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn in 1946. Nine years later, the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA), together with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, announced a proposal to build a 12-lane double deck suspension bridge. Ground was broken on August 13, 1959, and the $320 million structure opened to traffic on November 21, 1964.

Aerial View Of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge with construction almost completed, from Brooklyn looking toward Staten Island, ca. 1964. Department of Ports & Trade photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

It should come as no surprise that master builder Robert Moses played a significant role in planning and construction of the bridge. As Chairman of the TBTA (now MTA Bridges and Tunnels), Moses saw the Verrazano as the last of the suspension bridges needed to complete his web of arterial highways connecting the five Boroughs with each other and the mainland.

Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Cable Spinning, March 7, 1963. Triborough, Bridge and Tunnel Authority. NYC Municipal Library.

Chart, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Cable Spinning, March 7, 1963. Triborough, Bridge and Tunnel Authority. NYC Municipal Library

The vertical file contains a small pamphlet titled, “Remarks of Robert Moses . . . at the Cable Spinning Ceremony at the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Thursday, March 7, 1964.”  In a short speech transcribed in the pamphlet, Moses said of the bridge, “You see here the buckle in the chain of metropolitan arterials devised and approved by federal, state and local agencies, departments and officials too numerous to mention individually, a framework of bypasses and through routes of the most modern design which still requires years to finish.”  In a not very subtle allusion to the considerable opposition voiced by residents of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, whose homes were demolished to make way for the bridge, Moses went on to say, “The obstacles in our way become more formidable, the opposition more vociferous, the support less steady and certain, the courage or, if you please, obstinacy of those in charge less durable and the cost immeasurably greater as time goes on.”

Aerial view of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Photo taken from a helicopter, July 15, 1965. HPD Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Moses persevered, as he did, and the bridge was completed just a few months later. According to clippings from the Staten Island Advance, “The day dawned blustery and cold, but no dampers were put on the spirit of the Verrazano-Narrows bridge opening...”  (November 23, 1964.)  Other Advance stories reported how the cold weather discouraged politicians from making long-winded speeches. Spectators cheered Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s announcement that “I think I’ll file my speech for the record.”  

Aerial view of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Photo taken from a helicopter, July 15, 1965. HPD Collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

The Story of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Triborough, Bridge and Tunnel Authority. NYC Municipal Library.

Reading through the chronologically arranged vertical file, an article dated March 3, 1962, from the World-Telegram, hints at stories that would dominate later coverage: “Staten Island: Goodbye to a Way of Life—Verrazano Bridge, Now Building, Will Double Population, End Rural Refuge.” Indeed, clippings from 1984, on the occasion of the bridge’s twentieth anniversary, echo the earlier prediction: “The Bridge took a toll on the Island’s mores,” headlined the Advance on November 18, 1984.

During the 1980s and 90s, stories about the bridge tolls proliferate in the clipping files. On June 22, 1983, The New York Times reported “New Law Gives S.I. Drivers a 25-cent Discount on Verrazano.” And beginning in 1970, thanks to the annual New York marathon that kicks off on the Verrazano Bridge on the first Sunday in November, the great suspension bridge always receives lots of media attention. 

Verrazano Bridge - Aerial, March 29, 1966. Department of Ports and Trade photograph collection. NYC Municipal Archives.

Giovanni da Verrazzano, The Discoverer of New York Bay, 1964. NYC Municipal Library.

Searching Municipal Library shelves revealed an illustrated pamphlet, Giovanni da Verrazzano, The Discoverer of New York Bay. Published in 1964, on the occasion of the inauguration of the bridge, it chronicles the life and history of the explorer. According to the introduction, “Here we wish to . . . help awaken interest in the daring, adventurous nobleman who gave New York its very first name of Angouleme, recorded its exact position on a map, and opened the path to the other voyagers who have come to these shores in ever-growing numbers from then on. Meet Giovanni da Verrazzano, the discoverer of New York Bay!” What the pamphlet apparently fails to mention is that he is believed to have been eaten by cannibals in the West Indies, according to the Encyclopedia of New York City. But there is a bronze statue of Verrazano in Battery Park and a beautiful suspension bridge to remind New Yorkers of his place in our history.      

Trivia Night at the Archives!

Question 1: 

Infamous NYC Parks Commissioner Robert Moses left an indelible mark upon the landscape of NYC including each of the following projects except:

1. 1964 World’s Fair

2. Queensboro Bridge 

3. Gowanus Expressway

4. Lincoln Center

Question 2: 

Designed by Central Park architects Olmsted & Vaux, 10,000 cyclists took to the road for the 1896 opening of the nation's first bike lane on this Brooklyn thoroughfare. What was this thoroughfare: 

1. Ocean Avenue 

2. Eastern Parkway 

3. Ocean Parkway 

4. Bedford Avenue 
   

Commissioner Pauline Toole welcomed trivia players to the Surrogate’s Court atrium. Trivia Night at the Archives, November 14, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

Chilly outdoor temperatures yesterday evening did not deter more than 90 trivia fans at DORIS’ first Trivia Night. Held in the grand atrium at the Surrogate’s Court building at 31 Chambers Street, the event tested participants’ knowledge of New York City-related trivia. Mr. Austin Rogers, a twelve-time Jeopardy champion presided over the fun evening. Rogers developed a program that enables multiple players to participate in-person or virtually. His app also tracked responses in real time, automatically calculating each team or individual players’ point total.

Austin Rogers mc’d the program. Trivia Night at the Archives, November14, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

City archivists Cynthia Brenwall and Katie Ehrlich developed fifty questions based on their knowledge of City history and Municipal Archives collections. The categories included sports and the City, the City in film and screen, and Name that Borough!   

Rogers called out the multiple-choice questions. Participants simultaneously viewed the questions on monitors in the atrium, and on their phones or other devices. With up to sixty seconds to deliberate, participants clicked on their responses.  

Deliberating the correct answer. Trivia Night at the Archives, November 14, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

Between trivia rounds, guests were treated to video clips of music performances from the Municipal Archives’ digital collection. Selections included Duke Ellington and his band performing at City Hall in 1969, Ray Santos and his orchestra “The Caribbean Music Experience” on WNYC-TV in 1995, performances by Princess Nokia and Sweet Honey in the Rock at Declaration of Sentiments: The Remix in 2015, and more.  

And the winner is....  

After fifty questions, challenging for even the most informed New Yorker, the audience cheered the winning team, “Naka.” The team “Flatlanders” took second place. “The Pizza Rats” took the honors for “Cool Team Name Winner.”  

“Naka,” the winning team stands to accept cheers from the audience. Trivia Night at the Archives, November 14, 2024. NYC Municipal Archives.

 Question 3.  

Which of the following is not in the time capsule installed in 1870 beneath the base of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s outdoor installation of the obelisk popularly known as “Cleopatra's Needle?”

1. Complete Works of Shakespeare 

2. Declaration of Independence 

3. 1870 NYC Census

4. Portrait of George Washington 

Question 4. 

This Brooklyn-born blonde bombshell spent time in the Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary for obscenity charges stemming from her 1927 play “Sex.” 

1. Fay Wray 

2. Mae West 

3. Greta Garbo 

4. Clara Bow 

Okay, here are the answers.  Question 1. - Queensboro Bridge; Question 2. - Ocean Parkway; Question 3. Portrait of George Washington; Question 4. - Mae West. 

How did you do?  Ready to join us for the next Trivia Night at the Archives? Stay tuned:  it will be in the spring! 

A Wikipedia for Street Names

Earlier this week, the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) launched an interactive map, accessible on both desktop and mobile devices, to help people connect with the stories behind nearly 2,500 co-named streets, intersections, parks and other locations throughout the City.   

NYC Honorary Street Names Map. Department of Records and Information Services, 2024. 

Perhaps you’ve seen the markers. They are usually attached to a signpost just beneath the street name. For example, a sign at the corner of Park Row and Spruce Street in Manhattan informs us that it is co-named “Elizabeth Jennings Way.”  By clicking that location on the map you will learn that the City Council designated Park Row between Beekman and Spruce Streets in honor of Jennings, a Black teacher who integrated the City’s trolleys in 1854 by refusing to “get off” when instructed.

Just a block away, at the northeast intersection of Park Row and Beekman Street, a sign says it is also known as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton Corner. Map users will find out that in 2004 the Council honored the two women’s suffrage pioneers for their contributions to gender equality.

Street Sign, Susan B. Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton Corner, 2024.

The origins of the map initiative date to 2023 when the New York City Council passed legislation sponsored by Councilmember Gale Brewer mandating online access to biographical and/or background information about persons or entities honored by the Council with a co-named street, intersection, park, or playground.

Mayor Eric Adams designated DORIS as the agency responsible for posting co-named street information on its website. Initially, DORIS published the City Council local laws containing the information online in the Government Publications Portal. To make the co-named street data more accessible, the agency’s application developers and interns created an interactive map that people walking around the city can access on their phones.

Street Sign, Elizabeth Jennings Place, 2024.

Using mapping software from the Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI), DORIS’ application developers built the map. They created a form to enter the biographical or background information contained in local laws termed “street renaming bills” that have been passed by the City Council between 2001 and the present. The data on the form is linked to the appropriate location on the map. During the summer of 2024, a team of interns from CUNY and the PENCIL programs  transferred  the data about locations and each of the 2,496 individuals into the form.

The map is searchable by the name of the individual, zip code, and categories such as “firefighter” or “police officer.” So far, there are 1,610 co-named intersections, and 886 co-named streets.

Residents of the Astoria neighborhood in Queens are not likely to be surprised by the co-named Tony Bennett Place at the intersection of 32nd Street and Ditmars Boulevard. The co-naming by the Council in 2024 honored Astoria-native Bennett for his lifetime in music that included 20 Grammy Awards, and more than 50 million records sold worldwide.

NYC Honorary Street Names Map, Lieutenant Theodore Leoutsakos Way, Astoria, Queens. Department of Records and Information Services, 2024. 

Not all co-named streets honor famous people. For example, there is Lieutenant Theodore Leoutsakos Way, just two blocks away from Tony Bennett Place, at the intersection of 29th Street and 21st Avenue in Astoria. In 2016, the Council honored Lt. Leoutsakos for his service as a first responder during the 9/11 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center. A United States Air Force Veteran who served during the Vietnam War, Leoutsakos was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer as a result of his time spent at Ground Zero. The diagnosis came shortly after he retired from 24 years as a New York State Court Officer.

In 2002 and 2003, local laws enacted by the City Council included co-named streets for more than 400 first responders killed on 9/11. Many of those streets lack biographical information. DORIS is working with the Council to gather the biographical information for inclusion in upcoming local laws.  The information will subsequently be added to the map.

NYC Honorary Street Names Map, Tillie Tarantino Way, Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Department of Records and Information Services, 2024. 

In the event that you detect an error in the biographical information, contact your local City Councilmember. Changes to the information on the map will be made after the Council includes the correction in a new street renaming law. 

If a sign with the name of the co-named street is missing from its designated location, go to nyc.gov/311 or call 311 to report it.

DORIS will continue to add data to the online map, using the information in local laws pre-dating 2001.

At the launch of the map, Councilmember Gale Brewer remarked that “Our City’s history is long and deep, and we need tools to remember those who came before us—whether their name is on a building or on a street sign—and why they’re being honored. Think of this as Wikipedia for street names!”