Jones and Jones

[Mark A Mandel]

On Fri, 16 Aug 2002, 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?

You've got the sequence wrong. European settlement began at the southern
tip of the island where it faces the bay. Naturally, the streets in that
part of town are European old-town style, aka cowpaths with whatever
names seemed appropriate... like Wall Street, along the line of the wall
between the town and the howling wilderness.

The grid doesn't really start till about Fourth St., and parts of the
Old Chaos survive till about Fourteenth.

-- Mark A. Mandel, a Noo Yawk boy not born, but bred