‘Not Much of a Block,’ but It’s Named for a King

‘Not Much of a Block,’ but It’s Named for a King

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

Martin Luther King Jr. Place in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, was named for the civil rights leader six years after his assassination.


By JAMES BARRON

It is a little street, only a block long, between two big housing projects in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. It has only a handful of buildings that anybody lives in, a sprawling schoolyard playground and a small city park — all pavement, no grass to speak of.

On a gray afternoon in January, other streets probably look as forlorn. But this is the only one in Brooklyn named for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who will be remembered on Monday, the federal holiday celebrating his birth 80 years ago last Thursday.

A fast check of a Hagstrom’s New York City atlas indicated that two boroughs — Queens and Staten Island — have no streets named for Dr. King. The one everyone seems to know about, the one in Harlem, is also called 125th Street, and the one in the Bronx is also known as University Avenue.

The city also has a Martin Luther King Jr. housing project, less than a dozen blocks south of the Harlem street; a Martin Luther King Jr. High School, near Lincoln Center; and a Martin Luther King Triangle, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. It is a park one-sixteenth of an acre in size.READ MORE...[NYT]