Dionne Warwick is just weeks away from being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
But before then, she’ll accept another honor.
East Orange is renaming a street for her to celebrate her upbringing in the city.
Warwick’s name is coming to North Arlington Avenue.
“Can you imagine?” Warwick, 83, said in a video sharing the news. “A whole street in my name. So I want all of you to be there to celebrate with me, OK?”
The ceremony will be Oct. 11 at 1 p.m. on North Arlington Avenue at City Hall Plaza in East Orange.
Mayor Ted Green and the city council will be there to celebrate Warwick.
The music icon, a longtime resident of South Orange, grew up in East Orange and graduated from East Orange High School.
“Dionne Warwick, a truly incomparable legend, has always been a source of pride for East Orange,” Green said in a statement. “Her extensive body of work as a musician and her legacy as a humanitarian is truly remarkable. It is our honor to commemorate her enduring legacy with this street renaming right in the vibrant heart of our Arts District, where her influence will continue to inspire and uplift the next generation of talented artists each and every day.”
The Dionne Warwick Institute of Entrepreneurship and Economics on Central Avenue in East Orange stands as a tribute to the Grammy-winning singer.
The street renaming joins a long list of honors Warwick has received in recent years and beyond. Just last year she was celebrated at the Kennedy Center Honors. Of course, the tweeting public also anointed her Queen of Twitter, which made her a regular character on “Saturday Night Live.”
The documentary “Dionne Warwick: Don’t Make Me Over,” released in 2021, follows the course of Warwick’s life as an artist and her history of HIV-AIDS activism (along with that time she summoned Snoop Dogg and Suge Knight to her home to grill them about gangsta rap).
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