Fun Maps: Renaming Well-Known NYC Locations For Celebrities

If you ask an average New Yorker, they probably won’t know the origins of the names city streets like King Street and Prince Street in Manhattan. Neighborhood X has created a fun, interactive map of renamed New York City locations based on the premise that “no one seems to know history anymore.” The map is chock full of cultural references, from famous people to television shows. Some of the witty pop-culture references include (Kobe) Bryant Park, (King Henry the) 8th Avenue, (Brian) Wilson Avenue, (Kate) Middleton Street and (Downton) Abbey Ct. Locations in all of the New York City boroughs, minus Staten Island, are included on the map.

(Kate) Middleton Street – Photo via NeighborhoodX

Constantine Valhouli of NeighborhoodX says the idea for the project began as a Facebook post. “This actually started as a thread on my Facebook page when we began free-associating ideas and riffing on street names, and after about 200 comments from friends, we realized that there might actually be something here,” he says. 

(Kobe) Bryant Park – Photo via NeighborhoodX

Valhouli says a lot of the projects on NeighborhoodX involve pouring over real estate data, so they wanted to execute a fun project. Other fun map projects that Valhouli and NeighborhoodX has created include an interactive map that locates song references on a map and the faux history plaque about an argument over the Oxford Comma written about by The Atlantic.

(King Henry the) 8th Avenue – Photo via NeighborhoodX

Next check out Fun Maps: Discover the Natural Parklands in all 5 Boroughs of NYC and Muhammad Ali Way Street Signs Appears on West 33rd Street.