Named after DeKalb Avenue, which honours Baron Johann de Kalb (1721–1780).
Born in Germany, de Kalb served in the French army and then as a major general in the Continental Army in the American Revolutionary War; he was mortally wounded at the Battle of Camden in 1780. The book Brooklyn By Name counts him, with Lafayette and Kosciuszko, among the foreign supporters of the Revolution whose names replaced Tory ones in Brooklyn.