NYC's Upper, Lower, and mid- East Sides

[Jonathan Lighter]

> Nowadays--by which I mean at least the last 20 years...

Convicted by your own words!

"Midtown East," clearly a real estate confection, sounds as ludicrous to me
as "SoHo" and "NoHo."

JL

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:30 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> I meant "Yorkville," not "Yorktown."
>
> See, one part of my mind was anticipating the "town" in "Germantown" while
> the other was obviously thinking of the American Revolution. The older you
> get, the more this happens. Thinking of the American Revolution, I mean.
>
> "Yorkville" is correct.
>
> JL
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:15 PM, Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com>wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: NYC's Upper, Lower, and mid- East Sides
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> As a twenty-year resident of Midtown East (or East Midtown), I can
>> assure you that it is a real neighborhood and that is really called
>> that. There are other neighborhoods in the area (including the ones you
>> mentioned, as well as Kips Bay and more diffuse things like "the Sutton
>> Place area") too. Agreed that the UES starts at 60th and goes to 96th,
>> with its own subneighborhoods (Yorkville, Carnegie Hill, etc. etc.).
>>
>> Nowadays--by which I mean at least the last 20 years--the LES is
>> regarded as a separate neighborhood from the East Village (or its
>> subneighborhoods, like NoHo, Alphabet City, etc.) It would be really
>> unusual to regard the East Village as part of the LES. I'd agree that
>> the LES would refer to the below-Houston, east-of-Allen area (north of,
>> say, East Broadway).
>>
>> Maryam Bakht, at Hunter, sent out a questionnaire last month about these
>> exact issues. I don't know if she's published the results.
>>
>> Jesse Sheidlower
>> OED
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 05:56:20PM +0100, Michael Newman wrote:
>> > For me:
>> >
>> > The Upper East Side is from 60th to 96th. Above that is East Harlem.
>> East Side is just a vague way of saying east of 5th Avenue above Washington
>> Square and Bway below it. There is no neighborhood called "The East Side"
>> > The Lower East Side is ambiguous. Some days it's below 14th St, but
>> other days the East Village gets in the way, and in that case, it's below
>> Houston and east more or less of Allen. The question is whether I consider
>> the East Village part of the LES, which is a variable for me. Actually,
>> Kara Becker has a great discussion of this in her 2010 NYU Diss, which I
>> hope she publishes one day. The basic idea is that the whole East Village
>> area was once part of the LES until real estate interests promoted the name
>> East Village during the late 60s if I remember right. As far as I know the
>> Upper East Side hasn't changed in my lifetime.
>> >
>> > There is no Mid East Side. There is talk now of Midtown East, but that
>> seems recent to me. Traditional names are Turtle Bay, Gramercy Park, and
>> Murray Hill, all of which are distinct neighborhoods, all of which are in
>> what might be thought of generally as Midtown East.
>> >
>> > BTW, the Upper West Side goes right up to about 110st, and of course
>> there is no Lower West Side.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Michael Newman
>> > Associate Professor of Linguistics
>> > Queens College/CUNY
>> > michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > On Jan 7, 2013, at 5:18 PM, "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:
>> >
>> > > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> > > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> > > Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>> > > Subject:      NYC's Upper, Lower, and mid- East Sides
>> > >
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> > >
>> > > Where did New Yorkers use to place, and where do they now place --
>> > >
>> > > the Upper East Side?  Do I correctly remember a definition of "above
>> > > 96th Street"?
>> > >
>> > > the Lower East Side?  Below what?
>> > >
>> > > the mid East Side?  And what term is used for that region?  (Aside
>> > > from "the fashionable East Side".)
>> > >
>> > > Joel
>> > >
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>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
>



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