Named after Broadway and a street honouring the Marquis de Lafayette.
Lafayette Street honours the Marquis de Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolutionary War. John Jacob Astor cut Lafayette Place in the 1820s, named for Lafayette, who had returned to a rapturous reception in America the year before; between 1897 and 1905 it was joined to Elm Street to form Lafayette Street. Broadway is said to have begun as the Wickquasgeck trail; its name refers to its unusual width.