Williamsburg Block Named For Late Longtime Deli Owner

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — A years-long effort to name a corner in Williamsburg after a late longtime deli owner will finally become official, the City Council decided last week.

The corner of Graham Avenue and Conselyea Street was approved to be co-named "Cono D'Alto Way" as part of a bill that renamed 86 streets and places across the city for significant community members.

This co-naming honors the longtime owner of Mamma Maria Salumeria, which once stood on the southwest corner of the intersection that will now bear his name. D'Alto died in 2009 and residents and elected officials have been trying since then to get the name added to the block, according to articles from the time.

Friends, family and community leaders even went as far to unofficially dedicate the street corner themselves in 2012 after the city rejected an application for the co-naming, GreenpointNews reported.

Then Council Member Diana Reyna said that the naming would help remember D'Alto as a "loving neighbor, entrepreneur, veteran, and family man."

The co-naming request back in 2012 was submitted along with nearly 1,000 signatures from residents.

The Williamsburg corner was far from the only Brooklyn spot that got a new co-name through the council bill.

In Park Slope, 7th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues will now be known as "Joe and Flo Leopoldi Way" for the late longtime hardware store owners, whose family still runs the shop on Fifth Avenue. A corner at 6th Street and Prospect Park West will also become "Rose and Edward Dunn Way" under the bill to honor two more significant community members who volunteered with or led a number of organizations.

Also on the list was a block in Clinton Hill that will be renamed Walt Whitman Way to honor the Brooklyn poet. The intersection, on the corner of Ryserson Street and Dekalb Avenue, is just a few blocks from one of Whitman's former homes, which activists with The Walt Whitman Initiative have been trying to preserve for the last few years.