midtown

[Laurence Horn]

At 11:49 AM -0500 9/11/00, GEORGE THOMPSON wrote:
>
>         Would not the term "midtown" be used most in towns that rejoice in
>the elongated street pattern of Manhattan?  Brooklyn doesn't have a
>"midtown".   The term"the center" is also widely used.
>
I think a related factor might be that Manhattan really has (at
least) two separate "downtown"s, the business district that was the
original downtown, and the newer one including Times Square (Midtown
West), Fifth Avenue between Grand Central and the Plaza (Midtown
East), and areas in between and nearby.  That, and of course the
prior existence of an "Uptown" (traditionally including Harlem).  Yet
another factor is the north-south orientation.  If any other city,
especially an elongated, grid-oriented one as George notes, with an
old downtown at its extreme southern point and an uptown toward its
northern end, were to grow a second downtown in between, I would
(humbly) predict that that newer shopping area would be "midtown".

larry