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More neighborhood history

Where some other Manhattan neighborhood names come from.

Battery Park City

Named for the Battery next door, the park at Manhattan's southern tip that takes its name from the cannon batteries that once guarded the harbor. The neighborhood itself is built on landfill.

Tribeca

Short for “Triangle Below Canal Street.” The name was coined in the early 1970s for a small triangle on city planning maps and later spread to the whole area.

SoHo

Short for “South of Houston Street.” Urban planner Chester Rapkin coined it in a 1962 study of the area. It also echoes Soho in London.

Nolita

Short for “North of Little Italy.” The name caught on in the mid-1990s, after promoters tried several others. A New York Times article in May 1996 covered the debate.

Bowery

From bouwerij, an old Dutch word for farm. The road linked the farms north of New Amsterdam, including Peter Stuyvesant's, to the town at the tip of the island.

NoHo

Short for “North of Houston Street.” The name came into use as artists moved into lofts here in the 1970s and 1980s, to set the area apart from SoHo.

Alphabet City

Named for Avenues A, B, C and D, the only Manhattan avenues with single-letter names. The nickname started showing up in print around 1980.

Stuyvesant

Stuyvesant Square, Stuyvesant Town and Stuyvesant Street are named for Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director-general of New Netherland, whose farm covered much of this area in the 1600s. Stuyvesant Town opened its first building in 1947.

Chelsea

Thomas Clarke, a retired British army officer, bought a farm here in 1750 and named his estate Chelsea after the Royal Hospital Chelsea, the London home for retired soldiers. His grandson Clement Clarke Moore later divided much of it into lots.

Tenderloin

According to the often-told story, police captain Alexander “Clubber” Williams gave the old vice district its name in 1876. On his transfer there, he is said to have remarked that he had been eating chuck steak and would now have “a bit of tenderloin,” meaning bigger bribes. The area sat roughly between today's Flatiron and Times Square.

Times Square

Until 1904 it was Longacre Square, named after Long Acre, London's carriage-making district. It was renamed when The New York Times moved into its new tower at the south end of the square.

Hamilton Heights

Named for Alexander Hamilton, who spent the last two years of his life at his country house, the Grange. The house has been moved twice and is now the Hamilton Grange National Memorial in St. Nicholas Park.

Washington Heights

Named for Fort Washington, which Continental Army troops built on the highest natural point in Manhattan. British and Hessian forces captured it on November 16, 1776.

Fort George

Named for Fort George, a Revolutionary War fort built in 1776 on the hill near today's Audubon Avenue and West 192nd Street. It was briefly called Fort Clinton. From 1895 to 1914 the hilltop was the Fort George Amusement Park.