Named after 135th Street, planned in 1811 as a wide crosstown street.
The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 made 135th Street one of fifteen crosstown streets 100 feet wide. Here it meets Lenox Avenue, part of Sixth Avenue until it was renamed in 1887 for the philanthropist James Lenox, and co-named Malcolm X Boulevard in 1987. The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture was founded in 1905 as the New York Public Library's 135th Street Branch.