Named after William L. Marcy, Governor of New York and US Secretary of State.
Marcy Avenue runs from Williamsburg south through western Bedford–Stuyvesant. William Learned Marcy (1786–1857) was a US senator, Governor of New York, Secretary of War under President Polk and Secretary of State. In 1832 he used the phrase ‘to the victor belong the spoils’, from which the term ‘spoils system’ for political patronage is derived.