Take A Hike, Dumbo. We're Going To Gairville!

Recently on PDNOnline: Brooklyn's Dumbo Courts The Photo Community.

In the course of reporting this story, I researched the history of the neighborhood. The name Dumbo, which is an acronym for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass, is a recent coinage. I couldn't find any reference to it earlier than 1998 1984. Honestly, that name has always struck me as a little cheesy, a little hokey, a little... Disney.

What was it called before? I found several articles that say Gairville. That name comes from the Robert Gair Company, a paper and box manufacturer that built a factory and a campus of industrial buildings along the Brooklyn waterfront in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

I shared this information with PDN creative director Darren Ching, who has just opened a gallery in Dumbo. Ever since, he's been referring the neighborhood as Gairville. Maybe we can make this stick?

(Further reading: A 2006 article by Ariella Cohen of The Brooklyn Papers looked at the various names for the neighborhood: Finding history in DUMBO.)

Comments

[Nathan Blaney]

A search of Google News for "Down Under Manhattan Bridge" turns up a couple mentions from 1995 and one from 1990.

[Daryl Lang]

Nathan is right. The New York Times archive has references back to at least 1984. I was relying on an Infotrac database that only goes back to the mid-1990s.

[Hide]

According to the residents in the 1970s, Dumbo was coined by local artists. Funny how they coined the name intending to make the area unattractive to investors:
http://dumbonyc.com/2007/05/21/how-dumbo-got-its-name/