Great Jones Alley, ca. 1980s.

Great Jones Street was named for a lawyer, Samuel Jones, who donated land to the city in 1789 and stipulated that his name be attached to the resulting road. The donation allowed the city to complete 3rd Street between Broadway and Bowery. A problem arose in that another street, in the West Village, had already been named for a Jones (Samuel's brother-in-law, a Dr. Gardiner Jones). The newer street had to settle for the "great" moniker.

The small alley that runs south from Great Jones Street, mid-block between Broadway and Lafayette, is called Great Jones Alley. According to rumors, the term “jonesin(g),” meaning an intense craving for a drug, can trace its inception to this small dead-end street where addicts hung out in the 1960s.