Named after 125th Street, co-named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and often called Harlem’s ‘Main Street’.
Under the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, 125th Street was one of 15 east–west streets 100 feet wide; other streets were 60 feet. At its western end the street now follows what was called Manhattan Street until 1920, and its original stretch there became La Salle Street. The New York Times lamented the changes, noting that the city’s ‘Aldermen like French names’.