Mark Blumenthal (blumenidiot@21stcentury.net)
Wed, 22 Dec 1999 12:52:23 -0600
Mark Sullivan wonders,
> This has gotten me, an American, thinking about
"downtown," also.
> Obviously, the term works literally with New York,
where the city grew
> northward and Wall Street, the financial district,
the power structure
> are all in the "down" of low numbered streets. In
DC, the seat is in
> the low numbered streets, as with most east coast
cities I can think of.
>
> Of course, most river towns were built on rivers,
for the transportation
> and formed in rings around this downtown center.
Eventually, the rich
> move "up on the hill" so they will be "above" the
work.
>
> Is this uniform with US cities?
I think most American cities this follow this pattern. In
Philadelphia downtown is called 'center city.' In Chicago the
term is generally 'the loop'. I think when you get to big
cities built on the plains you keep the numbering idea but
usually lose the literal meaning of 'downtown', but that is
still the term generally usually used.
My wife suggests the idea that in England, as well as most of
Europe, when an area was settled, most of the people
initially lived in a castle which was built on the highest
point. Therefore, the people would always be going down when
they left the castle. As people began to settle around the
castle and build up towns, the literal term would have been
preserved. Maybe one of our English members could contribute
on this. Mark
-- # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Wed 22 Dec 1999 - 13:48:28 EST