How Bed Stuy's Marcy Avenue Got Its Name
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 historic tenements and peppered with bodegas and other small commercial ventures.
Marcy Avenue and Kosciusko Street in 1941. Photo via NYPL
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.
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.
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.
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