Touch of immortality

If we are to believe Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical masterpiece — and the Ron Chernow biography — Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was obsessed with not just his legacy, but mortality itself.

It’s made quite evident in several parts of the Broadway hit, but probably no better than where Hamilton and then bestie Aaron Burr talk about fallen comrade, Brig. Gen. Hugh Mercer, whose sacrifice in the Revolutionary War’s Battle of Princeton was memorialized through a Manhattan street.

“The Mercer legacy is secure,” Burr tells Hamilton. “And all he had to do was die.”

New York City is much bigger today than it was in Colonial times, with more than 6,000 miles of street at our disposal. But securing legacies of our most prominent people is near impossible, since everything that can be named has been. More or less.

But there is an alternative. One that can honor those deserving of such, without forcing neighbors or businesses to officially change their address.

Honorary street naming has existed in the city for decades. A few years back, a retired city planner named Gilbert Tauber started compiling those names into a searchable database at NYCStreets.info. There, you’ll discover well over 1,500 such names — including more than 380 in the Bronx alone.

There’s Regis Philbin Avenue on Cruger Avenue near Little Yemen where the late television personality grew up.

And then there’s Big Punisher Way at the intersection of West Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse, named for the Bronx rapper who died in 2000.

Television writer and actor Carl Reiner earned his intersection at Arthur Avenue and East 188th Street just last year thanks to then-councilman Ritchie Torres.

More locally, we have Vincent Giudice Place on West 236th Street, the 50th Precinct officer killed in the line of duty back in 1996. A few blocks down is Chuck Seidner Way named for the longtime Loeser’s Deli manager, itself not far from Loeser’s Deli Place, which received that distinction just months before decades-old Kingsbridge business shuttered for good.

Whether they were internationally famous or simply made a difference in our neighborhoods, how lucky we are to have a way to honor each and every one of them. It’s something that is sometimes made over-complicated unnecessarily, when in the end, it’s just intended to say “thank you.”

Community Board 8 has taken the first steps to honor Bill Stone, a longtime public servant we lost back in 2020, with his own honorary street naming. And Councilman Eric Dinowitz did what his predecessor refused to do and honor Villa Rosa Bonheur developer John McKelvey Sr., in Spuyten Duyvil.

Burr simplified what’s required to gain immortality: It’s not about dying. It’s about living, and making how we all live even better. And we say thank you.

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