Jack Kirby Way: How It Got Renamed and Why it Matters

In the summer of 2025, the corner of Delancey Street and Essex Street in New York City was renamed Jack Kirby Way for a few hours. This happened just in time for the release of Fantastic Four: First Steps, a blockbuster film featuring some of Kirby’s most famous characters. That could have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. Thanks to a sustained effort by Kirby fans who were committed to honoring his legacy, the street corner is now permanently known as Jack Kirby Way.

I had the pleasure of interviewing two people who were instrumental in getting this project across the finish line. The first is Roy Schwartz, author, commentator, and, along with Karen Green of Columbia University, a driving force behind the campaign. The second, Christopher Marte, a member of the New York City Council and enthusiastic proponent of the project.

This particular renaming effort took about a year, according to Schwartz, but it built on previous efforts made by others. In a way, it really started decades prior, when the campaigners first discovered the magic of Kirby’s work.

“I came across one of his 1970s Captain America comics and it immediately grabbed my attention,” Schwartz told me in an email interview. “It was completely impressionistic—nothing looked quite right, but everything looked totally awesome. It’s cliché to say, but it really blew my mind.”

Christopher Marte is also a big Kirby fan.

“My office is full of comic book and sci-fi fans, myself included, so it was a no-brainer for me to get on board,” he said via email. “[B]ecause Jack Kirby is less recognized than other comic book creators of the time, it’s important that we honor Jack Kirby’s contributions so that they are not forgotten.”

Kirby’s contributions have indeed been world-changing. Name the first five Marvel characters who come into your head, and I can guarantee that most, if not all, of them will be Kirby co-creations. Captain America, The X-Men, The Fantastic Four, The Hulk, Thor, and on and on. His work at DC was just as inventive, with his Fourth World still informing major storylines and reinventions to this day. Few artists of any era can hope to match Kirby’s level of creativity and body of work.

A lot of that work is indelibly associated with the Big Apple. Just one example: the Thing of the Fantastic Four is a thinly veiled “avatar” (to use Schwartz’s phrase) of Kirby himself. The Thing hails from Yancy Street, a fictionalized version of Delancey Street in the Lower East Side neighborhood where Kirby grew up. It is fitting that a street corner in this area should now bear his name.

As obvious as such an act might seem to you and me, convincing the city government to bestow the honor isn’t quite so simple.

“Believe it or not, it’s not easy to change a street name in New York City,” Schwartz told me.

Councilmember Marte provided an insider’s perspective at just how complex this process is:

An important distinction is that in New York City, we don’t rename streets, but rather ‘co-name’ them, meaning we aren’t getting rid of the original name of the street and replacing it with a new name, but rather we are adding another name and street sign to that street. While this process ultimately goes through the City Council, it starts at the most local level, at the Community Board […] [E]ach board has different guidelines for co-namings, but generally, Community Boards will require someone to organize a petition with a certain amount of signatures from local residents and businesses.

Once someone gets enough signatures, they will then present to the Community Board, explaining why they believe that person should be honored with a co-naming. The Community Board then votes on if they will support the co-naming, and if they do, it then goes to the local Council Member.

After all that, the councilmember has to submit the petition to the City Council, which gets the final vote. If approved, the councilmember is then required to get the Department of Transportation to create a new street sign and work with the campaigners to organize the unveiling ceremony.

Phew! No wonder, as Schwartz made sure to emphasize that this was a team effort from start to finish.

“It took a lot of work, on a lot of fronts,” he said. “I stood on the shoulders of previous attempts to have Kirby recognized, by people like Karen Green and Rand Hoppe [of the Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center].”

Everyone involved can be very proud of their efforts. The unveiling ceremony will take place at Jack Kirby Way on May 11, 2026, at high noon, and the public is invited. If you happen to be in the area that day, it’s worth taking the time to witness history in the making and pay tribute to a truly revolutionary artist!