Last month I poked some fun at names of buildings and developments. Now it’s time to pick on street names. Can you name all the streets you lived on? I’ll start. My first home was an apartment building on Fairmount Avenue. This is probably a family name, also a prominent hill where William Penn intended to build his manor house. I assure you — there are no manor homes on the Fairmount Avenue where I live. When I was five years old, my family moved to our first house, a multi-family, multi-generation home on Stegman Parkway. (No relation to the current Chapel Hill Mayor Pro Tem, Karen Stegman). The name is derived from the German word “steg” meaning “footpath” or “footbridge.” It was likely the name used by someone living near a narrow path or a bridge of which, neither apply to the Stegman Parkway I lived on in Jersey City.
East 21st Street. Most streets in New York City, and other major cities in America, are known by numbers. Easier to keep track of the grid. Fun facts about NYC, odd numbered streets move traffic to the west and even to the east. There are a few “cross-town” streets that move in both directions: Houston, 14th, 23rd, 33rd, 42nd, 57th, etc. Again a pattern of every 10 blocks or so to help keep track of the grid. Avenues move north and south and of course the most famous named street in NYC is Broadway. If you keep this in mind when you visit the city, you will almost always walk in the correct direction to get to your destination. My opinion, the only way to get around NYC is to walk. (I think Tom Jensen agrees).
NW 95th Avenue. Yeah, kind of boring. This wasn’t in a city setting more like urban/suburban sprawl. I guess the developer and city planners had no imagination when it came to naming this development. Luckily there was a huge park and community center across the street named Central Park and of course the street name was Central Park Drive. Ha! Central Park. There are a lot of parks named “Central” in America.
Calhoun Street. Named after John Calhoun, who served as Vice President under John Quincy Adam and Andrew Jackson. He was a defender of slavery who fought to protect the interests of the white South. Calhoun Street is one of 38 streets and parks in New Orleans that honor leaders of the Confederacy under review by the City Council to be renamed. Twomey Street is the recommendation from the “Street Naming Commission.” Louis Twomey was a social justice organizer who pushed for racial equality and workers rights while an official at Loyola University.
Collumns Road. My spell check is saying “no” to this way of spelling “column.” We all know that a column is a pillar-like support structure made from stone or concrete, also a division between paragraphs on a page, and a vertical alignment of data. But what is a collumn? Once again I am guessing it was the landowners name or some made up spelling to confuse drivers.
Oldham Place. Well this was fun because when people asked to repeat the address I would slow it down and say Old-Ham. Most of the street names in the development are named for places in the UK. Oldham is a town in greater Manchester, England. My theory is the builder loved his English roots so he classed up the town a bit by naming the streets in the Ironwoods development after his favorite towns in the UK. (Ironwoods is named for the old mine that ran through the property in the late 1880’s. There is a historic marker on Ironwoods Drive.)
Mulberry Street. “And to Think That I Saw It All on Mulberry Street.” I didn’t even know Mulberry Street existed until I found a cute 12 unit multi-family complex tucked back by the railroad tracks in downtown Carrboro. I’m pretty sure it’s not named after the Dr. Seuss book, but rather the huge Mulberry Tree that sits on Pleasant Avenue which leads to Mulberry Street.
Modern urban development street names are typically proposed by the developer based on traits they want people to associate with the neighborhood, kind of like naming nail polish or lipstick colors. In the US most streets are named after numbers, landscapes, trees (a combination of landscape and trees i.e. “Oakhill”), or as we see a lot in Orange County, the surname of an important individual in history or just a family name. (Yep back to the first born child Elliot).
The US Census tracts information about road and street names. In 2020 there were over one million streets with the most common name “Park” (9640), followed by “Second” (8232). The longest street name is located in Chicago- “Jean Baptiste Point du Sable Lake Shore Drive”, a multilevel street/expressway that runs alongside the shoreline of Lake Michigan, better known as “Lake Shore Drive”.
I discovered some crazy street names while doing research for this column and some really fun names. Some are hard to say (maybe on purpose) and some are hard to spell. Some of my favorites in no particular order:
- Tchoupitoulas Street – New Orleans, LA
- Loch Ness Road – Towson, MD
- Margarita Road – Temecula, CA
- Liquid Laughter Lane – Columbia, MD
- Memory Lane – Madison, MS
- Bomb Proof Road – Fayetteville, NC
- Kno Place – Rapid City, SD
- No Name Road – South Londonderry, VT
- Frying Pan Road – Herndon, VA
- Squeezepenny Lane – McKinney, TX
Until next time!
Penny and her family moved to Chapel Hill in 1998. She soon joined the Town of Chapel Hill’s Telecommunications and Technology advisory board and was appointed by the town to the OWASA board of directors where she served 6 years and held the Vice Chair position. In 2009 she ran and was elected to the town council in Chapel Hill, and in 2012 ran and was elected to the BOCC where she served 8 years, the last two as chair of the board. Penny owns and operates a personal chef and catering company and has been published in Cary Magazine, Gourmet Magazine, INDY Week, Southern Neighbor and News14. She lives in Carrboro with her mom Jersey Jacky. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram
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There are a number of streets named after confederate war criminals in the Wild Wood neighborhood of southern Hillsborough: Wade Hampton, Walter Clark, George Hamilton, Alexander Stewart.