The names of the NoHo streets have a provenance as interesting as the current residents. Here is a review of how these streets obtained their names. This column deals with the streets North and South.

The heart of NoHo is Broadway, named so because of its width, much greater in lower Manhattan in the city’s early history than it is now. This old Indian trail was called Heere Straat by the Dutch and Great George Street by the British. It was officially named ‘Broadway’ on February 14, 1899.

Our other mainstay going north is Lafayette Street, named after the Marquis de La Fayette. A hero in the American Revolution and a leader in the French Revolution, La Fayette was very popular in New York and given a hero’s welcome when he returned to New York for a visit in 1824. Lafayette Street was originally Lafayette Place, a three-block-long, broad and leafy dead-end street on which John Jacob Astor’s son William B. erected mansions for himself and his sisters. At that time, Lafayette Place began at Great Jones Street and ran to Astor Place (named after John Jacob). The city then cut through the south dead-end and lengthened Lafayette Place to the thoroughfare that it is now.

Mercer Street to the west was named after Hugh Mercer, a Revolutionary War officer killed in the preliminaries of the Battle of Princeton in 1777. A Scottish-born surgeon, Mercer became a brigadier general in the American Army, and it was he who advised General Washington to undertake the March on Princeton that resulted in the defeat of part of Lord Cornwallis’s forces.

Finally, Mulberry Street, whose name appears on a map as early as 1767, is named after. . . .A mulberry grove on the site!

This excerpt from: The Street Book, by Henry Moscow.