We need to talk about Dahill Road, if only because it’s been some time since I gave it much thought. But on the Brooklyn street map, it’s fairly important. When I was a kid one parent or another would ride with me on the B16 bus, which trundled down Fort Hamilton Parkway, 56th Street, 13th Avenue, 36th Street, 12th Avenue, a short stretch on Dahill, Caton Avenue, St. Paul’s Place, Woodruff Avenue, to a terminal at Ocean Avenue. These days, that bus uses 14th Avenue eastbound, as 13th and 14th Avenues were made one-way, and it was also extended north to where Ocean meets Flatbush Avenue at Empire Boulevard.
I’d see the attached houses in the title photo, at Dahill Road between 12th and Caton Avenues, but didn’t think about them much; it would take awhile before I began to admire attached brick houses like these, with three-sided bays that let occupants look in three directions. I was on a mission to walk the entire length of Caton, which I had never done before. I was also fascinated by the unique names, Caton and Dahill, which are rare in gazeteers; I am aware there’s a Caton Avenue in Baltimore, but haven’t seen much Dahills anywhere.
Repeating from the linked page: Dahill Road runs in four separate sections in the heart of Brooklyn, in Kensington, Borough Park, Parkville and Mapleton, and serves as the dividing line between two separate street grid systems as well as being McDonald Avenue’s running buddy, accepting some of its traffic and lessening the load on the el-shrouded McDonald. If you look at a map of the area you will notice the streets changing orientation, from the NE-SW of the Borough Park-Bay Ridge-Bensonhurst-Park Slope, where the streets carry unadorned numbers for avenues and streets, to the more or less east-west-north-south orientation of mid-Brooklyn, where streets are prefixed East and West and the avenues carry letter names. It’s the dividing line between the numbered streets of original city of Brooklyn and the numbered/lettered streets of the original Town of Flatbush.
Prior to the 1920s, Dahill Road was called West Street (probably because it formed part of the western end of the town of Flatbush). Histories of Brooklyn are silent on how Dahill Road acquired its name. “Dahill” is an Irish name (rhyming with the similar Cahill) and derives from the Gaelic O Dathaill; the family originated in County Roscommon. Some Dahills arrived in New York in 1866, but again, the Brooklyn street did not get its name until the 1920s.
I should do a more comprehensive Dahill walk, and perhaps that mission will come soon.
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7/26/26
8 comments
Saying that it rhymes with “Cahill” doesn’t help, because in Ireland the Gaelic pronunciation is “Cah-hill,” not “Cay-hill.”
In America I’ve always heard CAY hill.
The section of Dahill Road that you mention ends at 18th Ave, It starts again at 20th Ave for a block and then turns it to 21st Ave. It picks up again at Ave M until Kings Highway and then stops before a West Street starts up again at Ave T. Did that all used to be one street?
Dahill Road and 20th Ave. made a little triangle between 50th and 51st Street. Dr. Schwartz, my PMD, had his office there. I grew up on 51st St. between 20th and 19th Avenues.
A tiny piece of Dahill Rd. (more like a ramp) cuts the corner of 47th Street and 19th Avenue. Another interesting quirk in the area is 49th Road, an access alley (possibly private) running from Dahill near Avenue I to 19th Avenue.
Is that marked?
Kevin,
49th Road is marked and was created to serve the housing development that was built over the tracks behind Shoprite.
My grandparents lived on Dahill just down from Avenue F. They lived in the last rowhouse on the block and were fortunate to have bought the empty lot next door, providing them with a driveway and nice yard with fruit trees. The new owners have built a triplex on that lot.