8 Things New Yorkers Refuse to Call by Their Official Names
New York City has passed local laws co-naming nearly 2,500 streets, intersections, and parks since 2001.
The city keeps adding to that list every year.
Many New Yorkers still default to whatever name they learned growing up, no matter how many new signs go up.
These are the New York City landmarks locals still refuse to call by their official names.
1. Sixth Avenue
New York City renamed Sixth Avenue “Avenue of the Americas” in 1945 under Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, hoping Latin American countries would open consulates along it.
New Yorkers weren’t buying it.
A 1955 New York Times survey found residents were 8.5 times more likely to say “Sixth Avenue” than the new name, even with country-seal medallions bolted to nearly every lamppost.
Many of those medallions came down for good once the city swapped out its lampposts in the early 1990s.
New Yorkers won anyway.
Street signs at almost every corner still list both names, one official and one nobody uses.
2. Triborough Bridge
New Yorkers drive across the Triborough Bridge by the thousands every day, and many of them have never once used its official name.
New York City renamed the bridge the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge in 2008, forty years after the senator’s assassination.
New signs went up across the bridge, and traffic reports switched over almost overnight.
New Yorkers didn’t.
Cab drivers, dispatchers, and delivery apps still default to the bridge’s original name, Triborough, which it’s carried since it opened in 1936 to link Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan over the East River.
One Queens council member even objected that the renaming cost money while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was cutting subway service to his district at the same time.
Everyone just calls it the Triborough.
3. Queensboro Bridge
New York City’s own City Council renamed the Queensboro Bridge for former Mayor Ed Koch in 2011, timed to his 86th birthday.
New Yorkers kept the old name in their mouths.
The bridge opened in 1909 as the longest cantilever bridge in the country at the time, and generations of New Yorkers had already nicknamed it the 59th Street Bridge decades before Koch’s name went on it.
Simon & Garfunkel even built a song around that nickname, “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy).”
New Yorkers still reach for that nickname over Koch’s name, or the bridge’s own formal one.
Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge shows up on official maps.
Nobody says it out loud.
4. Grand Central Terminal
Grand Central Terminal has been officially a “Terminal” since it opened in 1913, but nearly everyone still calls it “Grand Central Station.”
The building also holds the Guinness World Record for the most railway platforms of any train station on Earth.
That’s backwards.
“Grand Central Station” is technically the name of the post office next door, not the train hub everyone rushes through.
Longtime New York City tour guide Justin Ferate has a blunt read on the mix-up: Call it “Grand Central Station,” and everyone around you clocks you as a tourist.
New Yorkers don’t take that chance.
Grand Central Terminal Is Building Number Three
Grand Central Terminal is the third building to carry a version of that name on the same spot in Manhattan.
Grand Central Depot opened there in 1871, and the city rebuilt it as Grand Central Station around 1900.
The Terminal that stands today opened its doors in 1913, eleven years after a fatal 1902 crash in the Park Avenue Tunnel forced the railroad to replace its steam engines with electric trains.
5. Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel
New York City renamed the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in 2012, honoring the governor who helped pull New York back from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s.
The MTA held a full dedication ceremony at the tunnel’s entrance.
New Yorkers barely noticed.
The tunnel opened in 1950, connecting Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan under the harbor, and it later served as a critical route for recovery crews after the September 11 attacks.
None of that history changed what people call it.
New Yorkers still say the Battery Tunnel, the same name it’s carried for more than seventy years.
6. Seventh Avenue
Fashion industry leaders convinced New York City to rename a stretch of Seventh Avenue “Fashion Avenue” in 1972, hoping to cement the city’s spot as a global fashion capital.
Designer Oscar de la Renta even lent his name to the celebration.
New Yorkers shrugged.
The new name covers the ten blocks between 26th and 42nd Streets, right through the heart of the Garment District, and it still shows up on some building addresses today.
Everyone in the neighborhood, including many of the people who work there, just calls it Seventh Avenue.
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7. West Side Highway
New York City rushed to rename the West Side Highway within weeks of Joe DiMaggio's death, unveiling the Joe DiMaggio Highway in 1999 with signs decorated in crossed bats and baseballs.
Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Yankees owner George Steinbrenner, and DiMaggio's own granddaughters showed up for the ceremony.
The highway stretches along the Hudson River from Battery Park up to West 72nd Street.
New Yorkers kept driving it under the old name anyway.
Nobody asks for it.
The West Side Highway is the only name that stuck.
8. Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge
New York City drivers crossing the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge have technically been saying the wrong name for decades, and a mistake buried in the bridge's original construction contract is why.
Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill correcting the spelling in 2018, adding the second Z that the bridge's namesake, explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, had all along.
It was one letter, fifty years late.
The law didn't order every road sign swapped out at once, either.
Old signs keep the single-Z spelling until they wear out and need replacing anyway.
New Yorkers, old signs, and many map apps still leave out the second Z.
Why the Old Names Keep Winning
New York City has passed local laws co-naming nearly 2,500 streets, intersections, and parks since 2001, and the rules behind each one are stricter than they look.
A council member sponsors the bill, the City Council votes, and the mayor signs it, the same process behind hundreds of honorary blocks across the five boroughs.
The Department of Transportation installs exactly one sign per co-naming, no matter how many blocks the law covers, and the honoree's name has to fit inside 36 characters to fit on the plate.
Families who want their own copy pay $32 plus shipping for a replica.
The old name stays the legal one on paper the whole time.
Officially, anyway.
Community boards usually make a sponsor wait until the honoree has been dead for at least six months, and some boards hold out for up to three years before they'll even hear the request.
The City Council typically reviews co-naming recommendations twice a year, each April and November, before bundling the winners into one omnibus bill for the mayor's signature.
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