The Mystifying, High Sounding Street Names of Ditmas Park

A young couple got off the Q train at Newkirk Plaza recently in search of a dinner party at their friend’s house. The couple was new to the neighborhood and couldn’t easily navigate the change from numbered and lettered streets to named streets.

When the couple asked a local for directions to the address they’d written down, they were told to “walk past Rugby and Argyle and make a left on Westminster.”

The husband raised his eyebrows and the wife laughed.

“Are we in England right now?”

That’s exactly what they want you to think!

An article published in the December 15, 1901 edition of the Brooklyn Eagle chronicles the changes from almost all numbered streets (except major avenues) to “high sounding names to puzzle citizens” such as Stratford, Westminster, Argyle, Rugby, Buckingham, Marlborough and Farragut Roads.

As richer and more beautiful homes rose in the neighborhood, the residents demanded fittingly fashionable names.

The paper calls the renaming craze “the road fever,” but plenty of the changes came in “places” such as Kenmore, Elmore, Delamore, Mansfield and Amersfort, not to mention the birth of Foster Avenue.

On one hand, real estate in the area thrived as large new homes were built and sold regularly. On the other hand, at least a few of those lucky homeowners may have been a bit confused.

“Flatbushites are sitting up at nights trying to untangle the tangle and locating alright the new names of the streets in their mind,” concluded the paper. It’s been 111 years and a few of us are still half awake wondering.