The Honor of Co-named Streets

Terrence McNally Way

People have been honored here in New York with co-naming of streets or places for them. Typically, you can find the special green signs below the other street signs. However, although CM Rivera had this naming approved in 2022, there is no McNally sign at the designated spot. Check out nycstreets.info/honorstreet

Photo and text by Brian J. Pape, AIA.

Terrence McNally Way

Terrence McNally (1938-2020) was a playwright, screenwriter and librettist who won several Tony Awards over his 60-plus year career. McNally was born in 1938, in St. Petersburg, Florida, to two transplanted New Yorkers of Irish Catholic backgrounds. He attended Columbia College in 1956, graduating in 1960. In his early years in New York City, McNally’s interest in theater brought him to meet Edward Albee. They functioned as a couple for over four years, but he was frustrated by Albee’s lack of openness about his sexuality. In 2003 McNally entered a civil union with Tom Kirdahy, a Broadway producer and a former civil rights attorney.

Best Play awards included Love! Valour! Compassion and Master Class. Other awards included a 2019 Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement; an Emmy Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant, two Lucille Lortel Awards, two Obie Awards and three Hull-Warriner Awards. He was vice-president of the Council of the Dramatists Guild from 1981 to 2001. McNally is credited with bringing depictions of gay life to mainstream Broadway and Off-Broadway performances.

McNally donated his papers to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.