The area was known to American frontiersmen and colonists as Ayer's Hill in honor of a fortification built by the English commander Ayers in the mid-1700s. Sometime near the Revolutionary War and throughout the 19th century the area was referred to as Boyd's Hill in the expanding frontier and then industrial city. The name is said to have been given to the neighborhood after a newly arrived businessman swayed by Hugh Brackenridge, left his downtown office and hanged himself on the hill.