Council approves rash of BK street co-namings
Memorials planned for Joe Joyce, Buddy Scotto, pols’ parents, others
BY BEN BRACHFELD
The City Council approved
nearly 200 street co-namings,
including 23 in Brooklyn, at
its stated meeting on Dec. 15 —
and the vote was extra sweet
for two Brooklyn pols who will
get to see the honor bestowed
upon their parents
In Flatbush, the intersection
of East 45th Street and
Farragut Road will be conamed
for Marie Andrée Bichotte,
the mother of State
Assemblymember and Brooklyn
Democratic Party chair
Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn.
Meanwhile, a few miles north
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, the
corner of Quincy Street and
Malcolm X Boulevard will be
imparted the name of Dr. Robert
Cornegy Sr., the father of
outgoing City Councilmember
Robert Cornegy Jr.
Marie Bichotte, who died
earlier this year at age 82, was
a well-regarded seamstress and
boutique owner in her native
Haiti, and later in Brooklyn after
immigrating in the 1970s,
before embarking on a career
in the hotel industry. She later
served as a union delegate to
the Hotel Trades Council.
The younger Bichotte
told Brooklyn Paper that her
mother had, over the course of
50 years in Brooklyn, always
been a strong advocate for the
economic empowerment of the
borough’s immigrant community,
helping place recent immigrants
COURIER LIFE, D 16 ECEMBER 24-30, 2021
in homes and jobs,
and always welcoming struggling
recent immigrants into
her house to provide sanctuary
and support.
“Her house was like the
Harriet Tubman house,” Bichotte
Hermelyn said, of the
house on 45th and Farragut
where she grew up.
Cornegy Sr., meanwhile,
was the longtime pastor
at Mount Calvary Baptist
Church in Bed-Stuy, and Cornegy
the Younger has said
that that upbringing imbued
him with a “mantra of service
leadership.”
Many other notable Brooklynites,
most recently deceased,
also were formally
bestowed street co-namings
on Wednesday (though some
signs are already up), cementing
their legacies on the blocks
where they arguably had the
greatest impact.
Buddy Scotto, the unoffi -
cial “Mayor of Carroll Gardens”
who died last year, got
the honor in his beloved nabe.
In Clinton Hill, a section of
Fulton St is now co-named for
the late activist and teacher
Sam Pinn. In Bay Ridge, the
honor is going to Arab-American
Association founder Ahmad
Jaber and to Joe Joyce,
owner of iconic local bar JJ
Bubbles, while in Mill Basin
it’ll go to the late proprietor of
Pizza D’Amore, Frank Scollo.
Late District Attorney
Ken Thompson has gotten the
honor formalized in city law
after a co-naming soiree earlier
this year, as did Andreas
Stylianou, the victim of a 2019
car crash in Gowanus. Prospect
Lefferts Gardens will
be bestowed a co-naming in
honor of Lefferts Manor Association
president Ebenezer
“Ben” Edwards. And by the
Gowanus Houses NYCHA development,
the honor will go to
Nicholas Heyward Sr., whose
son was killed by a police offi
cer in 1994 on the premises,
after which the elder Heyward
devoted his life to ending police
brutality.
Nearly 200 new street co-namings have been approved, including ones in Brooklyn for people like Buddy
Scotto, Marie Andrée Bichotte and Joe Joyce, pictured in order. File photos