When the original Tuscaloosa street grid was laid out 200 years ago during the spring and summer of 1821, that were only two streets that were marked off in a due north to south direction. Those were East Margin Street (present-day Queen City Avenue) and West Margin Street (present-day MLK, Jr. Boulevard). These two streets ran along the township section lines. All other streets were laid out parallel to the angle of the intersection of Broad Street (present-day University Boulevard) and Market Street (present-day Greensboro Avenue). In about 1886, the city changed the name of East Margin to Queen City Avenue to commemorate the opening of a new railroad route called the QUEEN & CRESCENT ROUTE which connected Cincinnati with New Orleans. Tuscaloosa was along the Chattanooga and Meridian division of this route so to promote the new route the city renamed East Margin Street to Queen City after Cincinnati, popularly known as "Queen City of the West" because of a Longfellow poem. It is also my understanding that at the time, many Cincinnati investors began to speculate in Tuscaloosa real estate. There's an incredible Civil War story behind all this. The greatest Tuscaloosa collector of Civil War memorabilia I know of has his office walls covered in Erlanger Bonds, the bogus cotton futures bonds Confederate spies sold all over Europe to finance the Confederate cause. Well Erlanger was busy after the war because he financed the syndicate that created the QUEEN & CRESCENT ROUTE in the 1880s.