Named after West 103rd Street, in the neighbourhood once called Clendening Valley.
103rd Street is one of the ordinary 60-foot cross streets of the 1811 grid. In the early 1800s John Clendening owned a farm covering much of this valley, roughly between 99th and 105th Streets, and the area was known as Clendening Valley. The estate was sold in 1845, but the name persisted until the 1880s. The present name, Manhattan Valley, caught on in the 1980s.