subway. Streets The street grid aligns with the general East New York street grid, which contains streets that generally run north–south, though ten streets from the slightly diagonal street grid of Canarsie extend into Brownsville. The easternmost of these streets, East 98th Street, serves as the ending point for many main thoroughfares in central Brooklyn, including Church Avenue, Kings Highway, and Sutter Avenues. As a result of its Jewish heritage, there are several streets named after Jewish community figures in the western portion of Brownsville. In 1913, nine years after writer Theodor Herzl died, residents successfully petitioned to rename Ames Street to Herzl Street, marking one of the few streets outside Israel that are named Herzl Street. One block away, the incorrectly spelled Strauss Street was named after two former Macy's co-owners, brothers Nathan and Isidor Straus, the latter of whom died when his wife Ida gave up a seat on a lifeboat off the sinking RMS Titanic. One of Brownsville's main thoroughfares, Pitkin Avenue, is named after businessman John R. Pitkin of Connecticut. Pitkin developed East New York starting in 1835. Hopkinson Street, originally named after Declaration of Independence signer Francis Hopkinson, was renamed in honor of State Assemblyman Thomas S. Boyland, who served the neighborhood from 1977 until his death in 1982. Incidentally, many places in Brownsville, including two schools and a housing development, are named after Boyland and two of his family members (his brother William F. Boyland Sr. and his nephew William Boyland Jr.), who also went into politics and represented Brownsville in various levels of local government. Stone Avenue was renamed after Rosetta Gaston (1895–1981), founder of the Brownsville Heritage House on the avenue, as Mother Gaston Boulevard. Mother Gaston, as she was called, operated the Heritage House inside the Stone Avenue Library, a Jacobean Revival-style library built in 1914 by William Tubby. In popular culture The 1934 novel Call It Sleep, by Henry Roth, is about the Schearl family, who moves from Brownsville back to the Lower East Side. The main character, young David Schearl, must endure the "terror of poverty" on the Lower East Side. Brownsville, by contrast, is described in the book as a vast improvement over the Lower East Side. In addition, Alfred Kazin wrote about 1920s-era Brownsville in his memoir A Walker in the City. Notable people Masta Ace (born 1966), rapper Lyle Alzado (1949–1992), NFL All Pro defensive tackle