Curious question about New York City. (Windsor, Philadelphia: living in, land, areas)

[ryan_darling01]

Why is Manhattan the only borough that takes the New York, New York address?? The other boroughs is stil the city proper, right??

[Henna]

you might want to add to your question:
Why do all addresses in Brooklyn say Brooklyn, NY while addresses in Queens are spelled out with the entire neigbhorhood name (Sunnyside, NY; Whitestone, NY) with no reference to Queens. It took me until I was an adult, living in NY for a few years before I realized that the great aunt who used to visit us from Whitestone at holidays when I was a child actually lived in New York City!!

[SilkCity0416]

Simple. Consolidation of 1898. Prior to that, NYC was just Manhattan. Brooklyn was an independent city, Queens was a county (still is in a de facto way) made up of of several towns (such as Jamaica, Flushing, Newtown (now Elmhurst,etc). Samething for Staten Island (known then as Richmond). Bronx wasn't really a county. It was just a part of Westchester. Though some areas were a part of NYC (Manhattan island).

[apvbguy]

Originally Posted by Henna

you might want to add to your question:
Why do all addresses in Brooklyn say Brooklyn, NY while addresses in Queens are spelled out with the entire neigbhorhood name (Sunnyside, NY; Whitestone, NY) with no reference to Queens. It took me until I was an adult, living in NY for a few years before I realized that the great aunt who used to visit us from Whitestone at holidays when I was a child actually lived in New York City!!

It has to do with the history of the area, when the city unified in 1898, brooklyn was already a built up city while queens was still a collection of small towns. People in queens still refer to manhattan as the city, as in I'm going into the city

[UpstaterInBklyn]

It's practical too, given all of the duplicate street numbers and names.

Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens all use numbered streets and avenues.

[Henna]

Originally Posted by UpstaterInBklyn

It's practical too, given all of the duplicate street numbers and names.

Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens all use numbered streets and avenues.

The numbering in Queens has never seemed too practical to me. The numbering was instituted in the 1920's. check out this quote from wikipedia

"The streets of Queens are laid out in a semi-grid system, with a numerical system of street names (similar to Manhattan and the Bronx). Nearly all roadways oriented north-south are "Streets", while east-west roadways are "Avenues", beginning with the number 1 in the west for Streets and in the north for Avenues. In some parts of the borough, several consecutive streets may share numbers (for instance, 72nd Street followed by 72nd Place, or 52nd Avenue followed by 52nd Road, 52nd Drive, and 52nd Court), often causing confusion for non-residents. In addition, incongruous alignments of street grids, unusual street paths due to geography, or other circumstances often lead to the skipping of numbers (for instance, on Ditmars Blvd. 70th Street is followed by Hazen Street which is followed by 49th Street).

"This confusion stems from the fact that many of the village street grids of Queens had only worded names, some were numbered according to local numbering schemes, and some had a mix of words and numbers. In the early 1920s a "Philadelphia Plan" was instituted to overlay one numbered system upon the whole borough."

Maybe it's confusing because a Philadlephia plan was used in NY and it just doesn't fit right.

[UpstaterInBklyn]

I hear ya.

By "practical" I was referring to OP's question and the fact that a single "New York, NY" applied to all city addresses would cause confusion. For example, there is a "42nd street" in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The system in Brooklyn is confusing too. On the west side of the Borough, numbered streets run east-to-west and numbered avenues run north-to-south. But as you go East, numbered streets run north-to-south and are prefixed with either "East" or "West". However, these "East" and "West" prefixes don't refer to a contiguous street. (like in Manhattan, where 5th Ave. is the dividing line between "East" and "West"). They are totally separate streets.

This means that, for example, at 200 22nd street, you'd be near Windsor Terrace and Greenwood Cemetary, but at 200 E. 22nd St., you'd find yourself way over in Sheepshead Bay and 500 W. 6th St. would land you a couple of blocks from Coney Island!

Undoubtedly this is also a holdover from the days when the Borough was separate villages

[Concept]

i find bk streets easily the most confusing, theres no rhyme or reason to their system. but yeah, its like that from the old days.