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To the news!
Story of the Day: Kazimiroff Boulevard Re-Renamed
It is said that Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff, a jack of many trades (dentist, naturalist, Indiana Jones wannabe) and the Bronx’s first historian, once removed a tooth from a lion’s mouth in the Bronx Zoo. He had become such a legendary borough figure that, just a year after his death in 1980, a section of the winding road that runs from East Fordham Road to Allerton Avenue and cuts between the New York Botanical Garden and Fordham University was remaned Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff Boulevard.
For years, the Garden and Fordham complained that the new street name confused drivers who wanted access to its institutions. (Current Bronx historian Lloyd Ultan was skeptical about this claim). In any case, they finally got their way Monday when Mayor Bloomberg signed into law a bill, sponsored by Bronx City Councilman Oliver Koppell, renaming the street Southern Boulevard, as it was known before it took on Kazimiroff as its namesake. Kazimiroff’s widow, Emilia, who still lives close to her husband’s former street, wasn’t happy about the change, which is apparently such a rarity that Henry J. Stern, a former parks commissioner who reportedly knows everything about New York City (“a living compendium of New York trivia”), couldn’t remember it ever happening before. “It is sort of a slap in the face,” she told the Times. Dr. Theodore L. Kazimiroff will remain the unofficial and honorary name of that stretch of Southern Boulevard.
Quick Hits:
Speaking of street renaming, honorary or otherwise, Community Board 3 is considering a proposal to rename Jennings Street, between Prospect and Union avenues, after The Chords, a Bronx rhythm and blues band that crossed over into pop stardom with their hit, “Sh-Boom,” which ruled the summer of 1954.