Sex, Drugs and Violence: The Stories Behind 10 Brooklyn Streetnames
Cranberry, Orange, Pineapple, Poplar, and Willow Streets
You can eat your fruit and walk on it too, thanks to one really pissed off and persistent lady. In the decade before the Civil War, these fruit streets in Brooklyn Heights originally bore the names of prominent local families. For reasons unknown, this enraged Miss Middagh (a member of the Brooklyn aristocracy) and she proceeded to vent by tearing down the street signs and replacing them with botanical titles (the pineapple was a symbol of hospitality back then, though her actions proved otherwise). The city tried undoing Middagh’s damage but she repeated her rampage until the authorities gave in and accepted her signs as the new official names. However, Middagh’s family got to keep its street name. We smell hypocrisy!
