Named after Eighth Avenue, one of the long avenues of Manhattan's 1811 plan.
Eighth Avenue is one of the original avenues of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 to run the length of Manhattan. It begins at Bleecker Street, where Hudson Street becomes Eighth Avenue. At Columbus Circle it turns into Central Park West, and north of 110th Street it is Frederick Douglass Boulevard, a stretch renamed in 1977 but sometimes still unofficially called Eighth Avenue.