If you say Upstate New York what region are you referring to?
I suspect this will break down into two different responses:
(1) The incorrect version which classifies anything other than New York City as Upstate New York. This is wrong because there is nothing “Upstate” about, say, Binghamton.
(2) The correct version which classifies Upstate New York as the eastern part of the state that is roughly defined by the watershed of the Hudson river. This is right because it allows you to logically divide the eastern part of New York into Upstate and Downstate (though no one uses Downstate). The western part is classified by the very clever “Western New York”. If you want to break it down even further you can add the Finger Lake region.
This thread is 90% PSA and 10% poll. I’m sure that there will be someone that will argue that Upstate New York is everything but NYC, but let me assure you in advance that you are wrong.
I’d say as far south as Westchester, as far north as Saratoga, maybe Lake George, but by then you’re into the Adirondacks, so maybe we’ll compromise and say Glen’s Falls. As far east as the borders between CT, MA and VT, and as far west as Cooperstown.
Upstate New York is Rochester to me. I know there are people who say Buffalo or Albany. But being born and bred in The Roc, I will always think Rochester when I hear ‘Upstate’.
To me it means “Everything not in NYC”. But I’ll readily admit that while I’m sure New York state is a lovely place with a rich tapestry of history, geography and peoples, all I really know of it is that there’s a big city and then there’s a bunch of real estate which isn’t the big city. I can name a few other cities in the state (Buffalo, Syracuse, Albany, etc) but I couldn’t tell you jack about them, much less their relation to the Hudson river watershed.
If I was under the gun (and hadn’t read the OP) to try to come up with better definition, I’d assume it meant the northern half of the state. I’d be wrong but that’s what I’d say.
Do you consider it Western New York? I pretty much only ever consider Rochester and NYC as NY at all. I know that sounds crazy, but, Buffalo and Syracuse leave me cold. I never got the appeal of the Finger Lakes. Yes, I have seen the leaves in Autumn and the vinyards. Still, it doesn’t do it for me.
Growing up in Buffalo I remember the grocery stores sold a brand of milk called Upstate – I remember it because the logo used the “U” as a cows head. I would assume it’s the same as these guys and that they’ve just changed their logo in the last 20 years:
Just one example. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t consider Western New York part of Upstate. I personally place the upstate/downstate boundary at Poughkeepsie, but I leave room for debate on that one.
The boundary I’ve always used is I-84. Anything south of that, in NYS, is downstate, and anything north or west of that line is upstate.
I’ve heard people talking about only the Adirondak park and North really should be upstate, so the OP’s definition is not new to me.
Of course, while I was working for ConEd, my co-workers were using upstate to refer to Westchester. Rochester was literally unimaginably far… (I found this out when I explained that I was going to have a busy weekend, going to get my stuff to move down to NYC from Rochester, the second or third weekend after I started.)
You must be very easily bugged. I lived in Rochester for six LONG years, and everyone there referred to it as “Upstate New York”.
I’ve lived in Binghamton, too, and would definitely classify it as “Upstate New York”.
I’ve never heard anyone use the restricted “Only Eastern New York State” definition you insist on.
But I agree that “anything north of New York City” is inappropriate. By that standard, White Plains and Yonkers are “Upstate”, and that’s just wrong.
Upstate is everything other than Rockland, Westchester, New York City and Long Island. If I’m feeling charitable, I might accept Putnam and Orange as border counties.
Upstate/Downstate is a bilateral division. Sure you can further divide upstate into Western New York, Northern New York, the Hudson Valley, the Southern Tier, the Finger Lakes or whatever, but it’s all upstate.
Ask yourself, would anybody from Rochester traveling to Albany say “I’m going Upstate”?
I wouldn’t say Albany was an Upstate destination, but growing up in Buffalo, I would think it was perfectly normal to say I was going Upstate if I was going to the Adirondack or the Thousand Islands. It would never have occurred to me to consider Buffalo to be part of Upstate. Upstate was the part of the state that goes up, it seems perfectly obvious if you look at a map.
Now that I live in NYC, I’ve completely given up on this and just say Upstate for the entire rest of the state, because it confuses people otherwise if I try to specify Western NY.
