Whitehall recalls a governor’s house; South Ferry an old ferry to Brooklyn.
Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant built a house at today’s Pearl and Whitehall Streets. After the British took New Amsterdam in 1664, it became known as the ‘Whitehall’, after England’s seat of government in London. South Ferry is named not for Manhattan’s southern tip but for a ferry founded in 1836 on a more southerly route to Brooklyn than earlier lines.