Fulton Street (Brooklyn)

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Fulton Street, covered with snow.
Fulton Street, covered with snow.

Fulton Street, named after engineer Robert Fulton, exists mainly in two parts in what are today two boroughs of New York City which Fulton linked by his steam ferries, and each segment has its own distinct identity. This entry deals with Fulton Street in Brooklyn, which now begins at the intersection of Adams Street and Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights. On March 10, 2005, Fulton Street was co-named Harriet Ross Tubman Avenue along most of its length from Rockaway Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant to Elm Place in Downtown Brooklyn, on the anniversary of the death of the legendary ex-slave and Abolitionist, which has been designated "Harriet Tubman Day of Commemoration" in New York State.

For a hundred years before the Fulton ferry monopoly, Fulton street was the Ferry Road through Jamaica Pass and, in the centuries before any ferry, an Indian path to the Hempstead Plains. It began at the Fulton Ferry Landing (near the Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn Heights) and climbed south through Brooklyn Heights, past City Hall to where it now begins at Adams Street. Part of the original Fulton Street survives as Old Fulton Street in Brooklyn Heights / DUMBO and as Cadman Plaza West. The segment of Fulton Street that traveled past Borough Hall has been turned into a pedestrian esplanade.

The initial segment of Fulton Street as it exists today is the Fulton Mall area between Adams Street and Flatbush Avenue. The Fulton Mall is an outdoor commercial center that primarily caters to African American clientele. East of Flatbush Avenue, Fulton Street becomes a major artery of Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene and Clinton Hill. At Franklin Avenue, Fulton then becomes the signature street of Bedford-Stuyvesant. At Broadway Junction in East New York the street is interrupted by the intersection of Broadway and Jamaica Avenue, but continues on the other side as a one-way residential street through East New York and Cypress Hills until it crosses the border in Woodhaven, Queens, where it becomes 91st Avenue.

The elevated BMT Fulton Street Line used to run over Fulton Street; the IND Fulton Street Line subway is now underneath.

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On co-naming:

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Major streets of Brooklyn
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