Getting a Street Named After Jerry Orbach is Hard

There's Joey Ramone Place and Peter Jennings Way. But getting a street named after the city's arguably most famous TV detective who was also a Broadway legend is no easy task. The NY Times has the full story about the quest for Jerry Orbach's name to grace a street corner. Specifically the corner of West 53rd and 8th Avenue, where he and his wife Elaine Orbach lived.

It turns out that Community Board 5, which controls the western edge of the intersection, doesn't like streets to be named after celebrities. Orbach's widow Elaine will be appealing to the board tomorrow, along with Orbach's 96-year-old mother (!) and one of their sons. From the Times:

[Elaine Orbach] said that after seeing how quickly a block of West 66th Street was named for Peter Jennings, the ABC News anchor who died seven months after Mr. Orbach, she assumed that getting a corner renamed was mostly a matter of asking. That notion was reinforced, she said, when a stretch of West 103rd Street was named last summer for Humphrey Bogart.

Indeed, the City Council, which can override a community board’s advisory opinion, renames blocks and street corners in bunches. In October, it passed a bill to honor 64 people that way, many of them victims and heroes of 9/11 whose names would adorn signs in boroughs other than Manhattan. (These renamings, which the Council calls co-namings, are symbolic and do not affect the actual names of city streets.)

CB 5 district manager Gary Parker says, "It’s no reflection of the person that is to be honored or the institution to be honored. It’s a concern about keeping the cityscape as clean and clear as possible.” Hmm, then we expect less tall condos and office buildings to be built.

But doesn't being named a Living Landmark count for anything? If CB5 rejects Elaine Orbach's and Jerry's old mother plea, all is not lost: Community Board 4 controls the other side of the street. But, really, the civic thing to do would be to name the street after Jerry.

Here are some Lennie Briscoe quote pages: Lennie Briscoe One Liners, the Quotable Lennie Briscoe and The Quotes. All of 'em are great: "All this evidence kind of takes the fun out of it.", ""He confessed so fast, I thought I'd have him do the paperwork.", and "My grandmother had an apartment like this, only it was on Delancy, not Madison." And here's a clip of Jerry Orbach singing "Try to Remember" from The Fantasticks.

Photograph of Jerry Orbach filming one of his last scenes as Detective Lennie Briscoe taken in 2004

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment, News on March 7, 2007 12:10 PM

Comments [rss]

fbl

I love the idea of a street named after Jerry.

Those of you who don't think so, may have no idea how many people adored him.

In a world filled with so much anger and confusion, it's comforting to find a common happiness...

(He was the friggin' candlestick voice in the animated Beauty & the Beast for Christ's sake!!!)

Jeri

TVsquad linked to this article. Thanks for the extra publicity for this.I found this astonishing. More tv viewers world wide know NYC through the eyes of Jerry Orbach than from any other tv show. I found the website of the council. www.nyccouncil.info

If you go down to the bottom of the page, there's a link to email the Community Council speaker. Please let her know that Mrs. Orbach's wishes, the tribute to Jerry Orbach, should be considered. Her target is 53rd Street and Eighth Avenue, where she and her late husband lived for 25 years before he died in December 2004 at age 69. Thanks!

jtg

Woah! Biggest movie star ever? I'll buy that he was a bigger star than Jerry but let's not get carried away here.

nick

#8.. humphrey bogart could be considered the biggest movie star ever. orbach was a talented character actor.

he doesn't compare, even in new york. im sorry.

Ass-in-nine

Sorry, but what exactly did this actor do to deserve a street corner named after him? Perhaps we should start naming parking meters and blocks of pavement after famous people too, because god forbid a celebrity passes on and we don't name something after him or her!

amen

Nick, nationwide, Jerry doesn't compete with Humphrey, but he does in New York. He's iconic as Lennie Briscoe and was a Broadway star. As for Neuman, I'm surprised it took seven comments before someone made that joke, haha.

Neuman

Nobody put Baby in the corner, and apparently nobody will put Jerry in the corner either...

Tim N.

With all due respect to the CB (you could probably name ever streetlamp after someone in the Broadway district), naming the corner for Jerry is inevitable, and in politics the last place you want to be is on the wrong side of inevitable.

nick

while i love jerry orbach and think he should be honored... trying to compare him to HUMPHREY BOGART is a bit, um, of a stretch.

miranda wright

He should be remembered as Baby's daddy. and for some reason, I thought he was one of the bad cops in "the Marcus-Nelson murders".

Did he ever play a corrupt cop?

Michael

I love Jerry Orbach and Law and Order, but the proper thing to do is >wait

Wait five years after someone dies... and then if there is still a groundswell of interest in naming something after them, consider it.

Immediately after someone dies, there's a lot of "sympathy interest"... if we start naming street after every dead New Yorker of note, the city will be awash in meaningless signs.

tehroxorz

I liked Jerry Orbach too. But why get so up in arms over an actor? The city council has much bigger problems to deal with than renaming streets for a celebrity. What a waste of time and money.

Crunchyface

The city council does nothing but meddle, and is an absolute joke. Entertainers like Orbach impacted more lives than any of the council members. What kind of time and money do you think is being committed to this project anyway, genius?