Jones and Jones

[Jesse Sheidlower]

On Fri, Aug 16, 2002 at 11:41:33AM -0400, James A. Landau wrote:
[...]

> While driving up Center Street from the Holland Tunnel, my daughter asked,
> "Don't they have numbered streets in Manhattan."  I said yes, they hadn't
> started up.  We promptly found a parking lot on what should have been 3rd
> Street but which according to all the signs was "Great Jones Street".
>
> I've heard of "Great Scott" but never "Great Jones".  Didn't she publish a
> magazine?
>
> And then there was the corner of Great Jones Street and Jones Alley.  There
> was no adjective on the alley's name, so we couldn't tell if it were the same
> person, an Ursa Major-Ursa Minor relationship, or a divorce settlement.
>
> What has happened to the numbered street names in the NYU area?

"Jones Street" came first--it's a small street just west of
Sixth Avenue, between Bleecker and West 4th St.

"Great Jones Street", apart from being the title of a book
by Don DeLillo, is newer than Jones Street and was given the
"great" appellation to disambiguate it from the exisiting
Jones Street. The Great one is very wide, the ungreat is the
width of a standard NYC sidestreet.

Jesse Sheidlower
NYC