The Grove Project

Streetwise

New York has its 5^th Avenue and Washington DC’s got Pennsylvania Avenue. Travelers to San Francisco usually visit the famous steep road called Lombard Street. Likewise, Wilmington has its popular haunts, places like Market and Water and Front Streets.

But look deeper into Wilmington’s street names and you’ll see a bit of everything – history, whimsy, reverence, nature, and not a few puzzlers. I decided to look deeper into this, and with the help of Google maps cataloged many of the city’s streets in several groupings. This started with a couple of obscure streets that have now become more visible since the opening of Costco. Just behind that Big Box are two streets called Lennon and Ringo. Try as you might, however, you won’t find the other two Mop Tops anywhere in the city. “Imagine” and “Yellow Submarine” yes, but no “Yesterday” or “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

When I called the city to discuss street names I spoke with a young woman who was basically no help at all as to their origins. “I’m only 24-years-old,” she said. “I think you might need to speak with a gray-haired old man about this.” She named a few but couldn’t provide contact information. I pushed on.

As in most cities the natural world inspires many street names, and we’re covered there. We have birds (Oriole Drive, Red Wing Lane, Marsh Hawk Drive, Eagles Nest, Sparrow Hawk Road, etc), fish (Cobia Drive, Tarpon Drive, Sea Robin Drive, etc) and flowers (Carnation Court, Crocus Court, Lilac Court, Zinnia Court, Foxglove Court). As my young friend in the City of Wilmington offices noted, rather disdainfully, “Most cities will have names like those.”

But the Port City, conflicted as its history is, also has a large bypass called Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. to go along with a small dirt road off Carolina Beach Road called Rosa Parks Lane. These relatively recent homages to two civil rights stalwarts stand incongruously against many streets named for Civil War generals. There’s an entire neighborhood devoted to Robert E. Lee and his fellow comrades in arms — Longstreet, Pickett, Hood, Reilly and Chalmers. Some get the full name treatment, like the aforementioned Lee (of course) but also Jeb Stuart and Stonewall Jackson. One general is a relatively obscure name, a chap called Bedford Forest. According to his Wikipedia entry, Mr. Forest “was a lieutenant general in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War. A divisive figure, he is remembered both as a cavalry leader and a leading figure in the postbellum Ku Klux Klan.” For the record, Wilmington also has a Lincoln Road and a North Lincoln Court.
When I brought mentioned these road names to my Wilmington bureacrat friend, she spat, “Are you from here?” Turns out she’s not from here either but she seemed to think I was attempting to start a race war. When I disabused her of this notion by explaining that I was just curious about street name origins, she calmed down a bit.

I moved onto a less controversial but no less curious topic. The city seems to have a fascination with all things English (the Beatles notwithstanding). The British Invasion also includes Lord Tennyson Road, Shakespeare Drive, Dickens Drive, Shelley Drive, Canterbury Road, Scarborough Drive, Hampshire Drive, Tottenham Court. Not content with mere English history, Wilmington street-namers also hung their hat on British legend: Consider Robin Hood Road, Little John Circle, and Sherwood Drive.

Fittingly enough, we also have a pirate theme (Buccaneer Road, West and East Blackbeard Road), and a war theme (Bunker Circle and Infantry Road). There’s a Control Tower Drive as well, which sits just across from the bucolically identified Deer Creek Lane (must everyone practice irony?)

Native Americans are remembered with a bevy of trails (Navaho, Cherokee, Mohawk, Seminole, Mohican), none of which are named for any local tribes.

I’ll end with these head-scratchers: Booger Woods Road and Lame. Like New York, they decided to name the latter twice, as in Lame Street and Lame Avenue.

Does any of this mean anything or have any bearing on the pulse of a city? Probably not. But Google Maps has this effect on people.

[where: Wilmington, NC]