Elizabeth Street is one of those names that turns up everywhere and means something different every time.
There is a famous one in Lower Manhattan. There are major ones in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart. There is a café brand named after one of them that now operates in two American cities, neither of which is the one the street is in.
This page is the short answer to which one you are looking for.
Elizabeth Street, New York
About a mile of Lower Manhattan, running south from Bleecker Street through Nolita, Little Italy and Chinatown. The southern section was laid out in 1755 and the street was pushed north to Bleecker in 1816.
It is the main boutique and restaurant spine of Nolita, a neighbourhood whose name is a contraction of north of Little Italy. Between the 1880s and the 1940s it held the largest concentration of Sicilian speakers anywhere outside Sicily. Today the southern end is Chinese, and below Canal Street it carries a second name, Private Danny Chen Way, co-named in May 2014.
The things people come for are a one-acre sculpture garden that survived a thirteen-year fight with the city, the only Tadao Ando building in New York, and a block of shops that has been photographed more than most of Manhattan. If you only read one thing about it, make it the walk from end to end, because the street is really three streets wearing one name.
Elizabeth Street, Melbourne
One of the nine main streets of the Hoddle Grid, laid out in 1837, running north from Flinders Street Station up to Grattan Street.
Its defining feature is underneath it. The street sits on the lowest ground in the city grid and follows the line of Williams Creek, which was buried and now serves as Melbourne’s main stormwater drain. It has flooded severely in 1882, 1972 and 2010. In February 1972 the water reached about a metre and a half and swept cars along the road.
The best-known address on it is probably 152 Elizabeth Street, a WeWork occupying six floors of a 1925 department store, which shares its number with the Ando building in Manhattan by pure coincidence.
Above ground it is a retail street with a specific history: motorcycle dealers since 1903, and for 105 years one of Australia’s best-known camera shops. Trams 19, 57 and 59 run along it.
The naming is genuinely unresolved. It is presumed to be either for the wife of Governor Richard Bourke or for Elizabeth I, and no source settles it.
Elizabeth Street, Sydney
Originally Mulgrave Street, renamed in 1810 by Governor Lachlan Macquarie after his wife, Elizabeth Henrietta Campbell.
It runs roughly 8.6 kilometres south from Hunter Street, flanking Hyde Park and passing David Jones, then on through Surry Hills, Redfern and Waterloo to Zetland. It was a major tram corridor for the eastern suburbs until the lines closed in 1961, and it took over the Anzac Day parade route in 2016 during the George Street light rail works.
Along it: the Great Synagogue, the Downing Centre in the former Mark Foy’s department store, Central Station and Museum Station.
Elizabeth Street, Brisbane
One of the earliest streets in Brisbane, dating from the start of the Moreton Bay penal settlement. Its naming origin is not documented in the usual sources, so anyone telling you confidently where it came from is guessing.
It runs one way, west to east, parallel to and south of the Queen Street Mall, and it is a shopping street: the Myer Centre, Macarthur Central, Elizabeth Arcade. The Brisbane Hilton’s main entrance is on it, as is the Treasury casino.
Brisbane’s first theatre, the Theatre Royal, stood at 80 Elizabeth Street from 1865 until it was demolished in 1987. The street also stood in for downtown San Francisco in the 2015 film San Andreas.
Elizabeth Street, Hobart
Named by Macquarie after the same wife as Sydney’s, which makes the two a matched pair.
It runs about three kilometres from Sullivans Cove through the centre and out to the North Hobart strip, where it becomes the city’s restaurant and nightlife row and holds the State Cinema.
In the centre, one block between Collins and Liverpool Streets was pedestrianised in the 1970s as the Elizabeth Street Mall, now the largest shopping area in central Hobart and the city’s main busking spot.
Like Melbourne’s, it runs over a buried watercourse. The Hobart Rivulet valley is marked in the Mall by the remnant of the Wellington Bridge.
Elizabeth Street Café, which is in neither
A frequent source of confusion, so: there is a French-Vietnamese restaurant brand called Elizabeth Street Café, and it has nothing to do with any of the streets above.
The original opened in Austin, Texas at the end of 2011, on the corner of South First and a local Elizabeth Street, which is where the name came from. A second opened in New Orleans in 2021, at 1507 Magazine Street inside Hotel Saint Vincent. Both are run by MML Hospitality.
If you are searching for a café and getting Manhattan property listings, that is why.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Elizabeth Street?
There are several. The best known are in Lower Manhattan, New York, and in the central business districts of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Hobart.
What is Elizabeth Street in New York known for?
Nolita boutiques and restaurants, Elizabeth Street Garden, and a mile of street that passes through three distinct neighbourhoods. The landmarks along it include 211, a condominium whose facade was laid by hand by Irish masons, 210, which held a Michelin star for nine years and now holds Dante, 254, the first American shop Sézane ever opened, 301, which is called SoHo Court and is not in SoHo, and 41, built in 1920 as a sewing factory.
Who is Elizabeth Street named after?
It depends which one. Sydney’s and Hobart’s were both named by Governor Lachlan Macquarie after his wife Elizabeth. Melbourne’s is unresolved. Brisbane’s is undocumented.
Which Elizabeth Street has the garden?
New York. Elizabeth Street Garden sits between Prince and Spring Streets in Nolita.
A last thought
Two of these streets were named after the same woman by the same governor. Two are built over buried creeks. One of them lent its name to a restaurant in a different state entirely.
Not bad for a name that mostly ended up on street signs because somebody’s wife was called Elizabeth.
