My Regards to Broad Street and Other Manhattan Names

In Lower Manhattan, traces of New York City’s past can be gleaned from its street names—unlike farther uptown, where they are hidden behind numbers. Broad St., seen here at Federal Hall on Wall St., was the widest street in the area other than Broadway, and it got that way because tall-masted Dutch ships once sailed down a waterway in the middle called the Heere Graft. That waterway was filled in by the 1700s, leaving an especially wide roadway. Old Slip, Peck Slip, Market Slip and other Manhattan...