Robyn Rihanna Fenty, What's My Name Music Video Set, Tribeca, Manhattan, New York City, United States

Lispenard Street, a single block immediately below Canal Street, is wide on the Church Street side but is narrower at Broadway. Thus, it appears as a triangle on City maps, not like a rectangle as most city blocks are depicted. The Lispenard Street residents decided to name their group the Triangle Below Canal Block Association, and, as activists had done in SoHo, shortened the group’s name to the Tribeca Block Association.
A reporter covering the zoning story for the New York Times came across the block association’s submission to City Planning, and mistakenly assumed that the name Tribeca referred to the entire neighborhood, not just one block. Once the “newspaper of record” began referring to the neighborhood as Tribeca, it stuck. This was related by former resident and councilmember for the area, Kathryn Freed, who was involved in the 1970s Tribeca zoning effort.