Whatever happened to lovely Livingston Street?

Brooklyn Heights still has its Livingston Street, named after the old New York family that counts 19th century state governor Hamilton Fish as a descendent.

But what about Manhattan’s Livingston Place—a pretty little London-esque lane (seen here on a midcentury map) which served as a bookend for the east side of Stuyvesant Square since 1836?

Lovely Livingston Place lost its original moniker in the 1950s, when the city decided to rename the road, which stretched two narrow blocks from 15th to 17th Streets alongside Beth Israel Hospital.

The new name: Perlman Place. Nathan D. Perlman was a judge as well as vice-president of Beth Israel who died in 1952.

Plans to honor Perlman by putting his name on this picturesque lane (here in the 1930s) was not universally well received.

“In a city as rich with history as New York street names should not be changed without overwhelmingly good reason, long consideration, and ample public debate,” The New York Times weighed in in 1954. “Such changes are confusing to the public, they make maps obsolete, they break the traditions of the past.”

The City Council approved the name change anyway—and Manhattan lost a slender connection to its colonial beginnings.

[Middle photo: NYPL Digital Collection]

A New York street helps coin the term “hooker”

Corlears Hook was named in the 17th century for the Van Corlears family, early Dutch settlers who had a farm near this spit of land jutting into into the East River.

In the 18th century, the British renamed it Crown Point (on the 1776 map below), and in the 19th century it reverted back to its New Amsterdam moniker.

But it wasn’t farmland anymore. By the 1830s it became the city’s most notorious red-light district, attracting sailors and the women who serviced them.

The women of Corlears Hook
“. . . where the lowest and most debased of their class. They were flashy, untidy, and covered with tinsel and brass jewelry,” states Seafaring Women, by David Cordingly. “Their dresses are short, arms and necks bare, and their appearance is as disgusting as can be conceived.”

“The latter area is generally credited with giving rise to the term ‘hooker’ and certainly had its fair share of rough characters, male and female,” adds Cordingly.

By the 20th century, Corlears Hook had become a lovely park, which today offers views of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges—and no hint of its importance in creating a popular term for ladies of the night.