# Brooklyn is part of NYC, right? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 14, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813 "2017-02-14T13:57:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/41 "2017-02-14T22:26:15Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > Queens alone is different. If you wanted to send me a letter at my old address, it would be in “Astoria, New York.” Other people live in “Forest Hills, NY” or “Flushing, NY” or “Maspeth, NY” or “Elmhurst, NY” or “Jackson Heights, NY.” A letter addressed to “Queens, NY” might arrive if the ZIP code is correct, but it would be very unusual. True Queens is different but a little more complicated, as noted above. For a long time the post office sorted mail in Queens according to one pre-unification ‘city’, Long Island City, and four old ‘towns’: Far Rockaway, Floral Park, Flushing and Jamaica. Zip codes were laid out according to those towns in the '60’s and from then on it didn’t really matter what people put for the city. Putting the neighborhood name (other than the 5 old city/towns) is a convention postdating zip codes, so has never mattered to the USPS. And as I mentioned above it’s still common for addresses in small neighborhoods in northern Queens (like Utopia) near Flushing to be styled ‘Flushing, NY’, similarly in the south for Jamaica. And it’s not actually that rare for an address to be listed as just ‘Queens’ in some smaller neighborhoods\*. IOW it’s a bit of a jumble, though I agree the general idea in recent times is [neighborhood], NY. And yeah, if the zip code is right it doesn’t matter. \*for example The Steinway middle school, in the Ditmars Steinway neighborhood next to Astoria, gives its address as just ‘Queens, NY’, though has a Google Maps window giving it the old way, ‘Long Island City, NY’ (as Astoria also used to be written). [http://www.is141.org/about-us](http://www.is141.org/about-us) ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/42 "2017-02-14T22:43:19Z")
> [@MichaelEmouse](#): > > So it’s not just the accent? > Could you go on about the distinctive personality, especially vis-à-vis Manhattan? There’s no such thing as a Brooklyn accent anymore, if there ever really was. I say that as descendant of several generations of Brooklynites. To some degree what people identify as ‘Brooklyn accent’ was always ‘working class NY accent’, or variations of ethnic accents. Italian-NY is the one people from outside NY usually to imitate as ‘the NY accent’. Irish and Jewish weren’t exactly the same. Nor was it necessarily closer among groups in Brooklyn than people of the same background in Queens, Manhattan or Hudson County NJ for that matter. Then it differed by education and social class too. With the outer boroughs now such a high % non-white, foreign born (especially Queens), and/or ‘hipsterized’ (especially Brooklyn) it’s an obsolete concept IMO. At most you’re back to the Italian American working class accent in _some_ neighborhoods of Brooklyn. I also doubt there’s a real Brooklyn personality for the same reason. One that spans immigrants from the Mideast, Central America and young white hipsters compared to otherwise similar people in Manhattan? Manhattan has a huge concentration of rich people unparalleled almost anywhere: it’s really different than the outer boroughs (again except to the extent Brooklyn, and Hudson Cty, are becoming more and more like it). But finding a deep distinction among the outer boroughs is more of an affectation IMO. ‘Proud of Brooklyn’ is fine but I don’t much social reality to it. NY as a whole does have a personality in my view, descended all the way from the Dutch in some respects, also in part from being the Jewish capital of the world outside Israel, and from being immigrant mecca over again and again in successive waves from every direction. ---
**Author:** ![jjakucyk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/3d9bf3/32.png) [@jjakucyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjakucyk)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/43 "2017-02-14T23:11:43Z")
Cincinnati seems to be an oddball in that everything gets addressed to “Cincinnati, OH” whether in the city itself (like Chicago), OR nearly every other jurisdiction within Hamilton County, whether unincorporated township or independent incorporated suburb. So if you’re in downtown or the city neighborhood of Hyde Park, “Cincinnati, OH”. If you’re in Anderson Township, “Cincinnati, OH”. If you’re in the suburbs of Blue Ash, Indian Hill, or Mariemont, “Cincinnati, OH”. What’s up with that? Of course if you’re across the river, then it’s “Covington, KY” or “Newport, KY” or whatever. I think people do tend to address stuff to Loveland, OH as you’d expect, and they’re always super busy processing outgoing Valentine’s Day cards with their own heart-shaped postmark. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2017, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/44 "2017-02-14T23:49:40Z")
My daughter lives on 5th St. between 5th Ave. and 6th Ave. In Brooklyn. 'Nuff said? Actually, I’m not sure there is a 5th St. in Manhattan, but there certainly are a 4th and an 8th St. in both boroughs. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/45 "2017-02-15T00:28:57Z")
> [@Pleonast](#): > > I was made the mistake of mentioning that Brooklyn was on Long Island within earshot of someone from there. Hooboy was she offended, as only a New Yorker can be. :eek: > > Yes, in LA, the neighborhoods are typically addressed directly (only the zip code matters to the post office). Note that Beverly Hills actually is its own city, but that hardly matters. To Angelenos, the whole metropolis is called “Los Angeles” and the difference between a neighborhood in the City of LA and an “independent” city across the street is minimal. (There’s also unincorporated parts of LA, too–still called by name as if they were a city.) Municipal boundaries, zip codes, school districts, etc don’t always coincide anyway. > > Here’s a nice map to drill down into the different subdivisions of “Los Angeles”. > [Mapping L.A. - Los Angeles Times](http://maps.latimes.com/neighborhoods/) Yes, when I send mail to my parents it goes to “Studio City, CA”. Studio City is part of Los Angeles. ---
**Author:** ![panache45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/panache45/32/64_2.png) [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/46 "2017-02-15T00:54:45Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > My daughter lives on 5th St. between 5th Ave. and 6th Ave. In Brooklyn. 'Nuff said? Actually, I’m not sure there is a 5th St. in Manhattan, but there certainly are a 4th and an 8th St. in both boroughs. There’s an E. 5th Street in Manhattan, running intermittently from Cooper Square to Avenue D. But there’s no W. 5th Street. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/47 "2017-02-15T01:20:23Z")
> [@Amateur\_Barbarian](#): > > Nothing much but ZIP codes has mattered for quite a while, anyway. Street address or box number and zip code will get a letter anywhere in the US. Town and even state are a holdover/convenience for manual sorting. This is the correct answer. Mail is sorted by zip code. If you have the correct zip code & a valid street address within that zip, you could put “Hell, NY” or “Heaven, NY” or even “Chicago, NY” and it would get delivered. The sorting is all automated via computerized optical readers, and nobody at the post office would even notice the city name you used. Except when it gets to your actual local carrier; he or she might get a chuckle out of that, if it’s noticed ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/48 "2017-02-15T01:24:49Z")
Well, the city name can’t be completely ignored, because a letter with the wrong zip code will still usually eventually make its way to the correct destination. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/49 "2017-02-15T02:23:30Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Well, the city name can’t be completely ignored, because a letter with the wrong zip code will still usually eventually make its way to the correct destination. Well, sure. It basically acts like an error check in case the ZIP code is wrong or illegible/misread/whatnot. But for correctly addressed mail, the city/state can be safely ignored. I’ve sent mail with street address and zip code only when I was in college just to see if it worked, and it worked fine. Or with what I thought were oh-so-clever abbreviations like “EV IL” for “Evanston, Illinois.” Yeah, I don’t do that anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/50 "2017-02-15T02:46:13Z")
Another interesting case is Silver Spring, Maryland. If you consider it as a city, it’s the fourth largest one in the state by population and the second largest one in the state by area. The problem is that it’s not a city. It’s just a mailing address. I frequently go to downtown Silver Spring, and I (and most people) always think and talk of the place as being Silver Spring. Something like nine high schools draw their students (at least partially) from the area considered to be Silver Spring. The area considered to be Silver Spring includes parts of a number of incorporated towns and some non-incorporated area. So despite not being an incorporated town or a school district, it’s recognized as being a distinct place by pretty much everyone in Maryland: > **[Silver Spring, Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring,_Maryland)** > > Silver Spring is a census-designated place (CDP) in southeastern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States, near Washington, D.C. Although officially unincorporated, in practice it is an edge city, with a population of 81,015 at the 2020 census, making it the fifth-most populous place in Maryland after Baltimore, Columbia, Germantown, and Waldorf. > Downtown, next to the northern tip of Washington, D.C., is the oldest and most urbanized part of the community, surrounded by several inner suburba... ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/51 "2017-02-15T03:26:15Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Another interesting case is Silver Spring, Maryland. If you consider it as a city, it’s the fourth largest one in the state by population and the second largest one in the state by area. The problem is that it’s not a city. It’s just a mailing address. I frequently go to downtown Silver Spring, and I (and most people) always think and talk of the place as being Silver Spring. Something like nine high schools draw their students (at least partially) from the area considered to be Silver Spring. The area considered to be Silver Spring includes parts of a number of incorporated towns and some non-incorporated area. So despite not being an incorporated town or a school district, it’s recognized as being a distinct place by pretty much everyone in Maryland: > > [Silver Spring, Maryland - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Spring,_Maryland) just like los angeles no one lives in la its self… its the la area … ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/52 "2017-02-15T04:13:04Z")
Well, yes and no. Los Angeles is a single incorporated city which happens to be the second largest city in the country. You can use either Los Angeles or the names of some of what are actually neighborhoods of the city as the mailing address. Silver Spring is nothing but a mailing address, even though people think of a certain area as being downtown Silver Spring. I just noticed that certain other places in Maryland which people think of as being cities are also just mailing addresses - Columbia, Germantown, Glen Burnie, etc.: > **[List of municipalities in Maryland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Maryland)** > > Maryland is a state located in the Southern United States. According to the 2020 United States Census, Maryland is the 18th most populous state with 6,177,224 inhabitants and the 9th smallest by land area spanning 9,707.24 square miles (25,141.6 km2) of land. The state is divided into 23 counties and contains 157 municipalities consisting of cities, towns, or villages. Its municipalities cover only 4.4% of the state's land mass but are home to 26.2% of its population. As Maryland does Municipal... ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/53 "2017-02-15T17:34:05Z")
> [@john\_b\_2](#): > > …One could write either the name of the city or the village and male would get there either way… What’s his name? > [@friedo](#): > > Downtown Brooklyn is centered around Atlantic Terminal. That’s where you’ll find the federal and state courthouses (our federal district court is separate from the one in Manhattan because of course it is)… Well, it’s a big state with no fewer than four U.S. district courts: > **[United States district court](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_district_court#Busiest_district_courts)** > > The United States district courts are the trial courts of the U.S. federal judiciary. There is one district court for each federal judicial district. Each district covers one U.S. state or a portion of a state. There is at least one federal courthouse in each district, and many districts have more than one. District court decisions are appealed to the U.S. court of appeals for the circuit in which they reside, except for certain specialized cases that are appealed to the U.S. Court of Appe... > **[United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Second_Circuit)** > > The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (in case citations, 2d Cir.) is one of the thirteen United States Courts of Appeals. Its territory covers the states of Connecticut, New York, and Vermont, and it has appellate jurisdiction over the U.S. district courts in the following federal judicial districts: > The Second Circuit has its clerk's office and courtrooms at the Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse at 40 Foley Square in Lower Manhattan. > Because the Second Circuit ... > [@pulykamell](#): > > …I’ve sent mail with street address and zip code only when I was in college just to see if it worked, and it worked fine. Or with what I thought were oh-so-clever abbreviations like “EV IL” for “Evanston, Illinois.” Yeah, I don’t do that anymore. From time to time I address envelopes to addresses in Shaker Heights, Ohio with “SHO 44120” or to East Liverpool, Ohio with “ELO 43920,” and they always get there. ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/54 "2017-02-15T18:21:42Z")
It’s a county. It’s one of the five boroughs of NYC. ---
**Author:** ![john\_b\_2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a9a28c/32.png) [@john\_b\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/john_b_2)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2017, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/55 "2017-02-15T20:04:56Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Interesting. Here, within the city limits, everything is Chicago, IL. Yes, every zip code has its own post office and name. I live in Archer Heights; my mail is collected at the Elsdon post office. But everything is addressed as Chicago, IL. I have never seen a piece of mail anywhere in Chicago with the neighborhood name or community area name on it (sometimes they are the same, sometimes different.) > > So mail to neighborhoods within Boston also get addressed with neighborhood names, or am I misunderstanding? Interesting about Chicago mail system… As to Boston, yup, but not for every neighborhood. The use of neighborhood name is probably a survival/vestige of the city having annexed many towns in the 19th century, thus many sections of the city have “identities” of their own, which is to say characteristics unique unto themselves. My neighborhood is one such, and one of the last if not THE last of the old annexed sections of the city (1905, I believe). Most of the northern and central part of the city, in and around the downtown/uptown, are just Boston, MA (Back Bay, Beacon Hill, South End, North End, etc.). These kinds of arrangements seem unique to certain cities. I wonder if it’s less common elsewhere (Midwest, Far West). In older cities there was often a problem of their being surrounded by cities and towns with histories of their own that didn’t, in many cases, want to join the larger city. A local example if this is the town of Brookline, which Boston wanted to annex just as it had annexed next door Roxbury, but Brookline residents chose to (literally) secede from Suffolk county and join Norfolk county, thus removing it from potential “takeover” (so to speak). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/56 "2017-02-16T00:09:58Z")
Cleveland has a few neighborhoods that were annexed cities, too, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen, say, Ohio City used in a mailing address. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/57 "2017-02-16T01:03:49Z")
> [@D\_Odds](#): > > Richmond Hill and Jamaica are next to each other. My RH zip code comes up as Jamaica on a bunch of automated forms - I guess it depends on which information source map the coder used. It used to be (don’t know if it’s still true) that there were three or four “main” post offices in Queens and the others were somehow connected to one of them- so that all the 113XX zips were part of Flushing and 114XX was part of Jamaica, etc. That’s why mail to any of he 113XX zips might say Flushing , NY and any of the 114XX ones might say Jamaica NY. And just to point out something I believe was mentioned earlier - zip codes don’t necessarily have anything to do with any other boundaries, whether it is neighborhood, county or city. Rikers Island has a Queens mailing address because that’s the PO that processes and delivers its mail- but it is actually part of the Bronx. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/58 "2017-02-16T16:32:17Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > It used to be (don’t know if it’s still true) that there were three or four “main” post offices in Queens and the others were somehow connected to one of them- so that all the 113XX zips were part of Flushing and 114XX was part of Jamaica, etc. That’s why mail to any of he 113XX zips might say Flushing , NY and any of the 114XX ones might say Jamaica NY. > And just to point out something I believe was mentioned earlier - zip codes don’t necessarily have anything to do with any other boundaries, whether it is neighborhood, county or city. Rikers Island has a Queens mailing address because that’s the PO that processes and delivers its mail- but it is actually part of the Bronx. Despite living in Queens for the majority of my 1/2+ century, I did not know either. Thank you (and **Corry El** ). Rikers is also part of Queens Community Board 1, and the only bridge onto the island goes to Queens, but politically it is part of the Bronx. How that works in the dysfunctional world of NYC politics, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Odds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/d_odds/32/2882_2.png) [@D\_Odds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Odds)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2017, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813/59 "2017-02-16T16:43:10Z")
> [@Corry\_El](#): > > There’s no such thing as a Brooklyn accent anymore, if there ever really was. I say that as descendant of several generations of Brooklynites. To some degree what people identify as ‘Brooklyn accent’ was always ‘working class NY accent’, or variations of ethnic accents. Italian-NY is the one people from outside NY usually to imitate as ‘the NY accent’. Irish and Jewish weren’t exactly the same. Nor was it necessarily closer among groups in Brooklyn than people of the same background in Queens, Manhattan or Hudson County NJ for that matter. Then it differed by education and social class too. With the outer boroughs now such a high % non-white, foreign born (especially Queens), and/or ‘hipsterized’ (especially Brooklyn) it’s an obsolete concept IMO. At most you’re back to the Italian American working class accent in _some_ neighborhoods of Brooklyn. > > I also doubt there’s a real Brooklyn personality for the same reason. One that spans immigrants from the Mideast, Central America and young white hipsters compared to otherwise similar people in Manhattan? Manhattan has a huge concentration of rich people unparalleled almost anywhere: it’s really different than the outer boroughs (again except to the extent Brooklyn, and Hudson Cty, are becoming more and more like it). But finding a deep distinction among the outer boroughs is more of an affectation IMO. ‘Proud of Brooklyn’ is fine but I don’t much social reality to it. NY as a whole does have a personality in my view, descended all the way from the Dutch in some respects, also in part from being the Jewish capital of the world outside Israel, and from being immigrant mecca over again and again in successive waves from every direction. While the “_Brooklyn_” accent was never ubiquitous and I agree that it more a Brooklyn working class accent, it was enough different from the similar class Bronx accent or Queens accent to be noticeable, provided one had significant exposure to all 3. As the years roll on, all 3 regional accents are dying out, pretty much confined to a few ‘old immigrant’ neighborhoods. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/brooklyn-is-part-of-nyc-right/779813.md?page=2)