Named after Wilson Avenue, which honours President Woodrow Wilson.
Before 1918 the street was Hamburg Avenue, in honour, Forgotten New York says, of the area’s many German immigrants; a 1912 list of old names says it had earlier been Johnson Avenue, then Hamburg Street. After the United States entered the First World War in 1917, anti-German feeling led to a change: in 1918 it became Wilson Avenue, after the sitting president, the 28th.