Washington and Water streets in Brooklyn’s DUMBO district is a favorite destination for social media shooters capturing the view of the Empire State Building between the legs of the Manhattan Bridge.
A friend of mine commented recently that this area, now so popular with tourists, was not so long ago the kind of neighborhood where bodies might be dumped. I’m not sure that’s true, but he did prompt me to go back and look at when DUMBO became a thing.
The official story — yes, official, promulgated by the Dumbo Business Improvement District — is that local residents came up with the name in 1978. Some accounts say that the name was meant to be off-putting to real-estate developers who might seek to gentrify the area.
The earliest media mention I can readily find appeared as an item in the Dec. 13, 1981, edition of the New York Daily News:
“First there was SoHo, which stood for South of Houston. Then Tribeca, for Triangle Below Canal. Now an area of lofts and small businesses near Brooklyn Heights that is beginning to attract artist has been unofficially christened the District Underneath the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.”
Note the variation: “District Underneath” rather than “Down Under.” The original name may well have been “district” given the fact residents reportedly considered an alternate name: “District Around the Navy Yard Annex,” or DANYA.