Why is it called DUMBO in New York?

DUMBO is short for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. The name was chosen in 1978 by a small committee of artists and other residents of the empty factory lofts by the Brooklyn waterfront. They wanted to name their neighbourhood before developers did, and they picked something they hoped no one would pay serious money to live in. It didn't work.

Gairville

The streets between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges were built for industry. Their biggest name was Robert Gair, who came to Brooklyn from Edinburgh as a boy of fourteen and went into the paper bag business.

In 1879 a metal rule on one of his presses, there to crease bags, slipped out of place, and the press cut clean through a run of 20,000 seed bags. Gair saw that a press that could cut and crease in one stroke could turn flat card into boxes by the thousand. He patented the idea, and the folding carton was born.

In 1888 he moved his works to the corner of Washington and Water Streets. Over the next three decades he filled the blocks around it with concrete factories, and the area became known as Gairville. His Clock Tower building at 1 Main Street, finished in 1914, was called the tallest reinforced concrete building in the world. The Manhattan Bridge opened overhead at the very end of 1909.

The lofts empty

In the second half of the twentieth century the factories left, and many of the big lofts stood empty. Artists and other young people moved in for the space and the low rents. By the late 1970s they could see that developers would follow.

The naming committee

In 1978 a naming committee was set up: Selby Beebe, Crane Davis, Monte Davis and John Donovan. Crane Davis later explained the thinking: as development looked inevitable, "if we were to die, at least we should be buried under a name of our choosing."

There were two candidates. One was DANYA, the District Around the Navy Yard Annex. The other was DUMBO. The vote was held at a large loft party, and DUMBO won by a landslide. Davis described the name as having just the right kind of Dadaist anti-marketing to protect their turf. The bet was that nobody would spend real money on a loft in a place called DUMBO.

The bet was lost. A developer, David Walentas, and his company Two Trees began buying up the old warehouses and turning them into flats, offices, galleries and shops. In 2007 the city made DUMBO a historic district, and the old factory lofts are now some of the priciest homes in Brooklyn. The name stuck.

Where to stand

Stand on Washington Street between Front and Water Streets, on the cobbles, and face the river. The Manhattan Bridge crosses the street ahead, and in the arch of its far tower, across the river, the Empire State Building stands framed. The corner just ahead, Washington and Water, is where Gair moved his works.

Hear it where it happened

The Trevlo tour Brooklyn Bridge & DUMBO starts at the Manhattan entrance across from City Hall Park and crosses the Brooklyn Bridge on its walkway: the Manhattan tower on its bed of sand, the cables with their crooked wire, Emily Roebling's plaque on the Brooklyn tower and the anchorage the elephants crossed. Then it takes the stairs down into DUMBO, tells this story on Washington Street, and ends at Fulton Ferry Landing. Seven stops, about nineteen minutes of listening, at your own pace.

The first stop is free to play on this page, and your first tour in the app is free.