bronx?
The small hamlet of San Francisco, CA is another place that’s called by the county name. However, it’s a combined city/county.
And there a few of those in the U.S.
And then we can open the numerous threads we’ve had on the differences between cities/counties/towns/townships/villages
One of the peculiarities of creating Greater New York in 1898 was the post office’s retention of old, pre-consolidation names. “New York, NY” is indeed synonymous with Manhattan in this system, and today only Manhattan/“New York” gets zip codes beginning 100. The Bronx (104), which had already consolidated with New York city by 1898 and only broke off as its own borough in 1915, is officially and uniformly the Bronx - although those in the ritzy section of Riverdale tend to use that name instead. Brooklyn (112) had absorbed all of Kings County in 1895, so that borough’s uniform, too. But Queens and Staten Island retained their rural qualities into the mid-20th century. I’m not sure about S.I. (103), but even now the Postal Service doesn’t really recognize a “Queens, NY” - instead the borough is divided into Long Island City (111), Flushing (113), Jamaica (114) and Rockaway (116), each with its own central post office. Unofficially, everyone just uses the old town or neighborhood name, such as Astoria, Kew Gardens, College Point or Rego Park.
Just a couple days ago I overheard a woman in the East Village ask her companion, “Does he live in New York or Brooklyn?” I gathered she was not a tourist. There’s nothing wrong with colloquially referring to Manhattan as “the city,” but excluding Brooklyn from New York City is wrong.
k2dave wrote:
“The other 4 were bedroom comunities for manhattan at one time (Brooklyn was an exception as it was a city itself).”
Not entirely true. Yes, Brooklyn was its own city, but it was easily the biggest bedroom community of the 4 outer boroughs. SI and Queens Borough were mostly farmland, so they sent relatively few commuters to Manhattan. The Bronx was transforming from farmland, to resort community, to suburb, so it sent a lot of commuters south to Manhattan – but nowhere near the throngs from Brooklyn that filled the Brooklyn Bridge and East River ferries every business day. (BTW, Brooklyn was not the ONLY city consolidated into NYC in 1898; Long Island City, a part of Queens was a fully-chartered city too. Williamsburg[h] had been a full-fledged city once, but it got swallowed up by Brooklyn way back in 1855.)
OxyMoron wrote:
“The Bronx (104), which had already consolidated with New York city by 1898 and only broke off as its own borough in 1915.”
Oxy, I usually love your NYC posts for their wealth of facts, but you got 2 goofs in this one sentence. Yes, the territory of the Bronx had joined NYC earlier (known as the Annexed District), but it was given its full BOROUGH status along with the other boroughs when they were created in 1898. I think you meant that it only became it’s own COUNTY in 1914 (not 1915).
~ stuyguy (who did a video documentary on this very subject)
I live in Connecticut, and if we are going to “The City”, its Manhatten. If we are going to any of the other Bouroughs, we just call them by their names. If we are going to any other city in Connecticut, we use the proper names (New Haven, Hartford etc.) Same thing if we are going to any other out of state cities (Boston or Providence), they get proper names. For poeple around here, “The City” is totally Manhatten.
Monty, BobT, I’m not asking about places where there the city and county share a name, or where there are no cities. I mean where is the city name different from the county name and the latter is used for postal reasons. (And k2dave, I mean outside the entirety of NYC, so “The Bronx” doesn’t count :))
The thing is that they aren’t different in this case - New York is the name of the city as well as the county. And it makes more sense to me that in “New York, NY”, the part before the comma refers to the city (as it was at the time the USPS, or whatever its predecessor was called, came into existence) rather than the county just as it does just about everywhere else in the States.
I’m open to convincing with proper cites, though 
Gee, ruadh. I thought I made it perfectly clear that there aren’t any cities in Arlington County. Since part of my youth was spent there, I think I’m at least a tad familiar with the place.
Nametag: San Francisco proper is San Francisco. People who live in neighboring areas often say: I live in San Francisco a statement which is untrue. I was born and raised in real San Francisco and people would generally say: I live in Burlingame, San Mateo, Sausalito, or what have you if they knew they were speaking to someone knowledgeable about the area. The City if used could mean Oakland, depending to whom one was using that term.
MadSam, I fear there’s a thread hijack involved in pursuing this, but I’m trying to figure out what you’re saying. I have never resided in San Francisco, but I have told people I am from “San Francisco” (especially while in foreign countries), as much as it pains me to do so. Most people in the world think of “San Francisco” as the Bay Area, since San Francisco is a miniscule town of 700,000 or so and the Bay Area is metropolitan area of 6 million. No one has ever referred to Oakland as “the City.” The Examiner (prior to its demise) had an editorial policy of referring to SF as “the City.” It’s one thing to use it colloquially, but for a newspaper to use it in writing is an abomination.
As long as we’re on the subject, how annoying is “San Fran”?
When my sister lived in Brooklyn, I used to visit her there. Sometimes she would suggest we go to “New York,” by which she meant Manhattan. She only lived there a few years, but her boyfriend had lived in Queens and Brooklyn his whole life and he also meant Manhattan when he referred to “New York.”
Bringing this hijack back to the OP. When talking to people outside of the area I will say I am in the NYC metro area, NYC area, or greater NYC area which tharts the question - ‘oh where’s that?’ unless they know the area and they want more details.
As my screen name indicates, I grew up in Queens. Specifically, in Astoria, which is right across the East River from Manhattan.
Now, oddly enough, Queens is legally part of New York City, and geographically part of Long Island… and yet, no one who lives there FEELS like part of “the City” or “the Island,” even though it’s actually part of both!
When an old lady from Astoria intends to shop in Manhattan, she says, “I’m going to the City.” And if she plans to visit her daughter in Manhasset, she says, “I’m going out to the Island.”
Well, isn’t that interesting? Of course, only now that you’ve pointed it out do I remember that what I was thinking about was the creation of the county. Anachronism on my part - in today’s NYC the boroughs have almost no meaning separate from the counties, other than to provide additional opportunities for patronage and corruption. E.g.: Borough presidents now are little more than highly-paid cheerleaders, issuing proclamations, attending ribbon-cuttings, and sloughing money around through smallish discretionary budgets. Penny-ante royalty, really - with slightly less real work and power than Mayor McCheese. (Who at least gets that stylish sash.)
And of course I’ll cede on the date, too :D.
If I ever want to rankle my friends who live in Brooklyn/Queens, I’ll just start a conversation on this. To them, “The Island” starts after the Queens border. To me, if I have to go over a bridge to get there, it’s on The Island. Yes, it belongs to the city of New York, it just happens to sit on Long Island. They still don’t get it.
I agree with Biggirl about calling Manhattan “the city”. In high school, the kids who referred to Manhattan as “the city” were looked upon as hicks who couldn’t tell the difference between Manhattan and the whole of NYC. For some reason, I’ve always felt that Guiliani might be one of these people.
Er … what’s your point? I said I wasn’t talking about places (such as Arlington County) where there are no cities.
In equivalent cases, I usually say that I live “near San Francisco”. Unless the other person is familiar with Bay Area geography, that usually satisfies him or her. If he or she asks, I can be more specific.
Ed
More nit-picks from stuyguy
Lure wrote:
“The consolidation had nothing to do w/any rivalry as to who’s biggest,from my past readings.More the praticality to oversee a more or less homogenized entity that was duplicating services or infrastucture-or a Tammany power grab.”
A couple of points:
-
The city fathers of Gotham were certainly aware of the galloping growth of Chicago (as Markxxx has pointed out). While the desire to outpace Chicago in one fell swoop was not the primary reason that many advocates fought for the consolidation of 1898, it certainly was one of the secondary reasons; the pro-consolidation writings of the day mention it often enough.
-
The consolidation movement began as an effort to bring the territory around NY harbor under the honest and efficient control of one municipal administration. This admirable object was eventually eclipsed by darker political motives, but not a Tammany power-grab. In fact, quite the opposite: it was a Republican power-grab. The Republicans hoped to dilute Tammany majorities in NYC by capturing the Republican-inclined voters in the hinterlands of the outer boroughs.
Interesting.from what I read on the Times site,the whole idea (or push behind the idea) was from a Dem named Green,IIRC,then championed by the GOP’ers in power after the Tweed thing?-but the 1st mayor was a Dem (Van Wyck),who gave us at least a name for one of the shortest stretches of freeway I’ve ever encountered.
Do you know of any links other than the Times site-that has more info on this period?I surfed for more,but none other than the Times fleshed it out more.
Given that there are borrough Presidents (and, I assume, burrough councils for each borrough), how is the city government of New York City organized? The Mayor is popularly elected, where do the borrough presidents interact with him - as a sort of cabinet-style advisory role on City-wide issues but mayoral-style power in their own borroughs?
Plnnr - who is from VA, where cities and counties are separate political entities (that’s why there are not cities “in” Arlington County).