Just as ships tend to be named after chicks, New York’s new-law tenement buildings also seem to have been given mostly female monikers. The names reflect popular girls’ names at the turn of the last century, when most tenements were constructed.
Perhaps they were the names of wives and daughters of the developers? Or maybe the builders just liked the way they sounded.
The Lilly and The Johanna are in the West Village:
The Aurora is in Sunset Park, the Brooklyn neighborhood that used to be home to many Norwegian immigrants:
Okay, Venus may not have been a top-10 girls’ name back in 1901. But it’s a terrific name for a tenement in South Williamsburg, isn’t it?
Tags: building names, new-law tenements, old-law tenements, popular girls names 1900
Ephemeral New York 
June 29, 2009 at 5:54 am |
[…] Here’s more on the women who gave their names to New York City buildings. […]