Are Utica’s Street Names Sexist?

You probably don't give much thought to the names of the streets you drive down each day and where those names come from. But a geography teacher from Rome, Italy has and thinks that a disproportional amount of the world's streets are named after men. We decided to take a quick survey of the streets of Central New York.

A BBC Magazine article reports the Roman researcher found that 45% of the Italian city's streets are named after men while just 3 percent are named after women.

In Utica, we have streets named for men (John Street, for example) and women (Mary, Blandina and Elizabeth Streets) and plenty of gender neutral streets whether they're numbered, named after trees or any myriad other inspirations. However it appears we do have a vast amount of streets named in honor of men. Here are a few major ones:

Jay Street named in honor of Chief Justice John Jay

Horatio Street and Seymour Ave named for Governer Horatio Seymour

Rutger and Bleeker named for Rutger Bleeker

Coventry Ave for Alexander Coventry

Kirkland Ave for Samuel Kirkland

Noyes Street for John Humphrey Noyes

York Street for the Duke of York

Lansing Street for John Lansing

Conkling Street for Roscoe Conkling

Steuben Street for Baron Von Steuben

Varick Street for NYC mayor Richard Varick

What Utica city streets have I missed?