Wouldn’t it be sweet to live on a Manhattan street called Love Lane? Too bad we’re at least 200 years too late.
This 18th century country road seems to have started at Broadway (then called Bloomingdale Road) and followed a path along 21st Street through today’s Chelsea.
Based on old maps (like the one at left or below, from the Randel Survey) and descriptions, it appears to have cut across a long-defunct thoroughfare known as Fitz Roy Road.
It then curved through 22nd to 23rd Street, meandering over to Tenth Avenue and hugging the water line.
Love Lane is memorialized in old city history guides and newspaper articles as a shaded street that “figures romantically in the early history of New York,” according to a 1920 New York Times article.
“Before the war, Love Lane was [a] popular route for buggyride courtships, highlighted with a romantic trip along the Hudson River that ran along what is now Tenth Avenue,” states the Chelsea Reform Democratic Club website.
Luckily Brooklyn didn’t obliterate their Love Lane. This historic alley has a romantic back story.
Tags: country roads Colonial New York City, Love Lane Brooklyn, Love Lane Chelsea, old maps of New York City, old streets of New York, Randel Survey Map, streets of old Chelsea
Ephemeral New York 
February 6, 2013 at 9:43 am |
In the 1970s and 80s those same West Side night streets were used by hookers and johns for their own love making, dark and romantic, well, at least 10 dollars a trick. See my 100 Whores
http://www.100Whores.com
June 27, 2013 at 7:00 pm |
[…] have been a number of theories as to how Love Lane got its name. Ephemeral New York says that in pre-colonial days, the lane was an Indian trail that led to the East River. It […]
May 1, 2018 at 8:59 pm |
[…] have been a number of theories as to how Love Lane got its name. Ephemeral New York says that in pre-colonial days, the lane was an Indian trail that led to the East River. It […]
February 10, 2020 at 6:56 am |
[…] century Chelsea used to have a meandering road called Love Lane; some city parks also had Lovers’ Lanes. And Brooklyn Heights still has its own Love Lane, a […]