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Tourism Group Proposes Street Sign To Honor Its Founder, Stan Brooks' Wife

By Maya Rajamani | July 23, 2016 10:06am | Updated on July 25, 2016 8:19am
 Stan Brooks' street sign at the northeast corner of West 43rd Street and 10th Avenue.
Stan Brooks' street sign at the northeast corner of West 43rd Street and 10th Avenue.
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DNAinfo/Maya Rajamani

HELL’S KITCHEN — A street sign honoring beloved radio broadcaster Stan Brooks could soon pay tribute to his late wife as well.

Big Apple Greeter hopes to add its founder Lynn Brooks’ name to a sign at the northeast corner of West 43rd Street and 10th Avenue that reads “Stan Brooks Way,” or to put up a new sign in her honor, its director of programs and volunteers Gail Morse said.

Lynn Brooks started the nonprofit — which staffs volunteers who give free tours of New York City to thousands of out-of-town visitors each year — in 1992.

She and her husband Stan Brooks, a longtime 1010 WINS reporter, lived at Manhattan Plaza on West 43rd Street for more than two decades, Morse said.

“Wherever they went and said they were from New York City, they always got a big smile," Morse told Community Board 4’s transportation committee on Wednesday. "But people would say, ‘I’d love to go to New York, but it’s too big, too scary, too overwhelming,’”

“This is how she thought the rest of the world should get to know New York — by getting to know a New Yorker,” she said.

In the 1960s, Lynn Brooks worked with the National Conference of Christians and Jews to improve race relations and civil rights, Morse said.

She became executive director of the New York City International Center, which provides English-language tutoring services to foreign students, diplomats, immigrants and refugees, in 1985.

Big Apple Greeter, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, was a passion project for its founder, Morse said.

West 43rd Street was officially renamed “Stan Brooks Way” in 2014, the year after he and his wife passed away seven months apart.

"We lost them both that year, and this is a great way to honor her," Morse said. “She wanted the rest of the world to know New York City as she did."