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NEW YORK — If you walk down any street in New York City, you’ll find streets named after people who came long before us. They’re the people who made the city what it is today.
The old stories are now being brought back to life using new technology.
“I’m hoping to keep a lot of these legacies alive,” said Amelie Shiro of the New York City Department of Records and Information Services.
A team of city interns is sorting through the city’s vast archives to create a digital interactive map of all the honorary streets co-named after someone. Anyone can click on a street on the map to learn the story behind the person.
“I’m helping to cement all of these stories in a digital format,” said Shiro. “This map allows people to slow down, connect with their neighbors, discover decades of city history that they might otherwise pass by.”
There are well traveled roadways we all know about, like FDR Drive, named after the former president. But there are other streets named after people who lived centuries ago, like Peter Minuit Plaza at the tip of Manhattan.
“He was the first real estate dealer in New York and he made the biggest and best deal in the history,” said Harold Holzer, the Manhattan borough historian.
Minuit bought what was then called New Amsterdam from the native Lenape people for about $25.
“He started it all for white settlement and he ended it all for the native population, the beginning of the end,” said Holzer.
Further north in the city, you’ll find Juan Rodriguez Way.
“He is considered the first nonindigenous settler of New York,” said Holzer.
Rodriguez was the city’s first immigrant who spoke multiple languages and who worked as a translator.
In Washington Heights, you’ll see Margaret Corbin Drive.
The drive is near the location where she fought in the Revolutionary War alongside her husband.
“And when he died at his post, she simply took over the cannon and she defended Washington Heights and was renowned for that and celebrated for that,” Holzer said.
Another woman who made history alongside her husband was Emily Warren Roebling. She helped finish the building of the iconic Brooklyn Bridge after her husband got sick.
“It was Emily who went back and forth and transmitted his instructions to the engineers on site,” Holzer said.
In Greenwich Village, many people have heard of the Stonewall Riots, but may not know Sylvia Rivera, where nearby, a street is named after her.
“A fighter for human rights, who was in the streets,” Holzer said. “She would hang out at Stonewall and she was there when the riots and the uprising began and there’s a legend that she threw the first bottle at police.”
There are also hundreds of streets named after 9/11 victims and first responders, like Keithroy Maynard, who was a second-generation Brooklyn firefighter who fought for representation in the department.
“The throughline in all of this is that the peoples’ voices, diverse voices, matter,” Holzer said.
