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

Mon Jan 7 18:45:34 UTC 2013

No, Fifth Avenue above 96th St. would not have been "East Harlem," but
everything east of it would have been, more or less.

ISTR that the luxury buildings ended shortly before the avenue itself
concluded at 110th Street or so. At any rate, the decline was precipitous.

I can recall Park Avenue and 96th in the 50s.  On the south side of the
street, luxury. On the north side, squalor.

JL

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 1:25 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: NYC's Upper, Lower, and mid- East Sides
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Midtown East is the name of the 17th Police Precinct.
>
> Midtown is often left off lists of neighborhoods. 48th between Lex and
> Fifth would belong there.
>
> Most of the neighborhood names are concocted by real estate agents.
> Boundaries shift (does anyone think the people who live north of 96th
> St. in the older luxury buildings on Fifth Ave. or the new
> construction near Lexington and Third Aves. describe themselves as
> living in East Harlem instead of the UES?) ; names disappear (like
> Bellevue, which is now Kips Bay).
>
> Yorkville is unusual for being the name of an actual village
> eventually incorporated within the city
>
> The Lower East Side used to apply east of First Ave. all the way to
> 23rd Street -- Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village were
> considered to be in the Lower East Side when built.
> DanG
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
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> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: NYC's Upper, Lower, and mid- East Sides
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Jan 7, 2013, at 12:35 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >
> >>> 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
> >
> > I thought "Midtown East" might have been an NYPD designation, but I
> don't really know.  There's some possibly useful information here, or at
> least some nice photos:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midtown_Manhattan
> >
> > LH (< Chelsea 1945-48, Washington Heights 1948-57)
> >>
> >> 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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> >>>>>
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> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
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> >>> truth."
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
> truth."
> >>
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