NONPAVED roads are now quite rare in NYC, but I have one all the way in the north end of Riverdale in the Bronx, between Spender and Huxley Avenues south of West 259th Street. It’s so out of the way that the paper maps I used until some years ago (Hagstrom, Georgaphia) didn’t show it at all and today, Google Maps misnames it as “Thorns Lane.” Nevertheless, Thorne’s the name (like former Mets radio/TV announcer Gary Thorne). In fact, Open Street Map makes the same error. No properties face on it, just the backs of houses on Mosholu and Huxley Avenues.
The plot thickens as a recent Google Street View (2022) shows a new sign with the “Thorns” spelling. This could be an error from the Department of Transportation that both GSV and OSM have picked up on.
Why Thorne? According to the late Bronx historian John McNamara in History in Asphalt, he believes the road is named for the Thorn brothers, Thomas and William, who owned a grain and feed warehouse on Spuyten Duyvil Creek in the 1880s. I think it’s a bit of a stretch unless it can be shown the Thorns owned property here.
The warehouses was located on a lost inlet of the creek named Thorn’s Basin. It was deep enough for ships and barges and was located where the creek, since dedged to become the Harlem River, met Tibbett’s Creek, since relocated underground, though plans call for it to be “daylighted.”
It all goes to indicate that ancient lanes can point to past history…
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11/16/23
7 comments
From poking around on Google Street View it looks as if Thorne Lane’s sole purpose is providing access to a landscaping or similar business located to the rear of a house on 259th.
It is the custom of my people to put a gate at either end and claim it as our own
The actual street signage also has it as Thorns lane
So they changed the sign since I was there a few years ago?
Per the City’s tax lot maps, this Lane seems to have stretched in a straight line from Huxley Avenue to Tyndall Avenue at one time.
A Google Maps satellite view seems to bear that out. You can see where the lane extended a few blocks further to Tyndall Avenue.
Thorne is an old colonial name of a family from Flushing in the 1600s – and as there was a lot of contact between Flushing and the Bronx in the early years of European settlement
that is the likely source.