Upper Manhattan Street Renamed “George Carlin Way”

The late comedian George Carlin joined the list of notable New Yorkers to have street signs named after them with a ceremony Tuesday.

A section of West 121st Street in Morningside Heights near where the comedian grew up was renamed “George Carlin Way” Tuesday afternoon. Fellow comics Kevin Bartini and Colin Quinn joined city councilman Mark Levin, commentator Keith Olbermann and several of Carlin’s relatives at a ceremony marking the name change.

Carlin died in 2008.

Bartini and others fought for nearly a year to get the street renamed, according to the New York Times.

Initial efforts would have renamed the section of the street between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway, which the Times reports is where Carlin grew up. But Corpus Christi Church, also on that block, opposed the change. Carlin attended the church’s school and often targeted it in his humor.

Eventually the two sides compromised and the community board that oversees the neighborhood voted to rename the adjacent block, between Amsterdam Avenue and Morningside Drive, after Carlin.

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