Named after Eighth Street and New York University, whose main campus it serves.
Eighth Street was laid down in the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811; until the 1890s it was also called Clinton Place, in memory of politician DeWitt Clinton, whose widow lived on nearby University Place. NYU was chartered in 1831 as the University of the City of New York; popularly called New York University from the start, it took that name officially in 1896.