How Bed Stuy’s Marcy Avenue Got Its Name

Marcy Avenue and Kosciusko Street in 1941. Photo via NYPL

by
3

Marcy Avenue starts in the middle of Williamsburg and runs south through the entire length of Bed Stuy’s western portion. The avenue is a residential strip dense with historic, low-lying multi-family buildings and tenements and peppered with bodegas and other small commercial ventures.

Bed Stuy Brooklyn Marcy Avenue Name History Origins

Marcy Avenue and Lafayette Avenue in 1941. Photo via NYPL

Relatively short and quiet — as far as Brooklyn avenues go, anyway — Marcy’s roughly two-mile stretch includes a variety of stunning borough architecture, including two Romanesque Revival gems, the 20th century Bais Ruchel School for Girls (formerly the Eastern District High School) and the 19th century Boys High Schools.

Bed Stuy Brooklyn Street Name Origins History Lafayette Marcy THroop Avenue Macdougal Pulaski

Boys High School at 832 Marcy Avenue in Bed Stuy. Photo by Suzanne Spellen

As for the avenue’s name, it comes from former New York governor and senator William Learned Marcy, a secretary of war under President Polk and the man credited with inventing the concept of political “spoils,” according to Leonard Benardo and Jennifer Weiss’s Brooklyn By Name.

Related Stories

Email tips@brownstoner.com with further comments, questions or tips. Follow Brownstoner on Twitter and Instagram, and like us on Facebook.

Brooklyn in Your Inbox

* indicates required
 
Subscribe

What's Happening