Map: Martin Luther King Jr Place(s) Around the City

View Larger Map
Did you know that there's a Martin Luther King Jr Way in Brooklyn? It seems not many people do. The NY Times zeroes in on the tiny one-blocker in Bed-Stuy, which is located between Marcy and Tompkins Avenues. They note that it houses a handful of buildings, a playground and a small city park ("all pavement, no grass to speak of"). While it was one of the first to be named for the civil rights activist, it isn't the best known.

The one everyone seems to know about, the one in Harlem, is also called 125th Street, and the one in the Bronx is also known as University Avenue. The city also has a Martin Luther King Jr. housing project, less than a dozen blocks south of the Harlem street; a Martin Luther King Jr. High School, near Lincoln Center; and a Martin Luther King Triangle, in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx. It is a park one-sixteenth of an acre in size.

The Brooklyn block used to be called Floyd Street, but was changed on June 11th, 1974. Sadly, the small stretch isn't always the pride of the neighborhood, as some residents told the paper that it's well known to gangs and drug dealers. This is often a stereotype that streets named after the activist get, and Chris Rock once said: "If you find yourself on Martin Luther King Boulevard, run!" Unrelated to the bad rap, and depicted in the map above, there are two boroughs that haven't honored King with a street name yet—what's the delay Queens and Staten Island?