Uptown Community Board To Discuss Quisqueya Heights Renaming

UPPER MANHATTAN, NY — Harlem's Community Board 9 will host a public discussion Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. about whether the neighborhoods of Hamilton Heights, Washington Heights and Inwood should be renamed to Quisqueya Heights.

The registration form for the virtual discussion has a yes or no question on whether you support the renaming.

The renaming resolution was introduced in Congress by Rep. Adriano Espaillat earlier in 2021 alongside two representatives from Texas.

As of October 2021, the resolution has still only been introduced to the House and has no timeline for its approval and subsequent actions.

"The thing that motivated us to have this public discussion is we received an unprecedented number of inbound inquires and expressions of concern to the community board," Barry Weinberg, the chair of Community Board 9, told Patch.

The discussion Wednesday night will not be the first time the Harlem Community Board discusses neighborhood name changes.

“People have very strong feelings about the names of the neighborhood where they live," Weinberg said. "I think a lot of people were surprised to hear about this because it wasn’t as if they signed a petition calling for this, or attended meetings, it just kind of appeared.”

Previously, in response to real estate marking that attempted to start using the acronym SoHa for a section of Harlem, Community Board 9 passed a 2017 resolution in support of the Neighborhood Integrity Act.

The act prohibits the renaming of neighborhoods without due process from the city that includes, among many other components, community input.

While Espaillat's resolution mentions Harlem's Hamilton Heights among the possible name changes, the majority of the area renamed would be above West 155th Street.

After Patch published the first renaming story in July, Washington Heights and Inwood Facebook community groups discussed the issue in threads that stretched far longer than the general back and forth.

Quisqueya is one of the names in the Taino language for the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic. It is also the name of a municipality within the Dominican Republic.

The resolution reads that the renaming will make the area a "cultural hub for Dominican Americans across the nation."

Read More:

• Congress Asked To Change Uptown's Name To Quisqueya Heights