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I also think people have to keep in mind that the Midwest has a lot variety as well. Ohio is different than North Dakota, which is also within the Midwest.
I think cities/areas around the Great Lakes are similar in terms of density and how they were designed. However, cities like Indianapolis and Columbus have more of a "Sun Belt" built environment due to city limits that sprawl due to annexation or almost complete amalgamation with its county in Indy's case.
People may not realize that Cleveland/much of NE Ohio was a part of the Case Western Reserve and was developed by people with roots in CT. So, some could argue that this region has a Northeastern look/feel.
Being familiar with Michigan, there are plenty of towns with the same name of towns/places in NY State like Lansing, Charlotte(pronounced like the Rochester neighborhood), DeWitt, Waverly, Onondaga, Williamstown, Farmington, Canton, Manchester, Ithaca, Mount Morris, Brighton, Romulus, etc., due to people from those places in NY settling in those areas of Michigan. Some even Underground Railroad history like some of the towns of the same name in NY. So, again, there is a Northeastern influence in parts of that Midwestern state.
I also think the issue is that people equate Northeastern with the Bos-Wash corridor, when that is essentially the Coastal Northeast versus to what I call the Interior Northeast. It is similar to people that hear New York and automatically think of NYC, without regard for the rest of the state north of the city/metro area.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 01-10-2016 at 07:02 AM..
Culturally, Buffalo is solidly Great Lakes Midwestern. Some examples:
* The prevalence of blue collar culture -- fish frys, bingo, bowling, polka, Monte Carlo/Vegas nights, meat raffles, VFDs, American cars, and so on -- compared to other Northeastern cities.
* Buffalo's dominant "old European" ethnic groups are Polish, German, Irish, and Italian - the mix is more like what one would find in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh, than Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica, where Italian-Americans are the dominant group.
* Buffalonians say "pop" instead of "soda", and it's ground zero for the Inland Northern accent and Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Heartland rock -- Bob Seger, John Mellenkamp, and even regional favorites like the Michael Stanley Band and Donnie Iris -- still has a huge following compared to elsewhere in the Northeast.
* Supermarkets always had Vernor's on the shelves, and Faygo was the default cheap or generic pop in the 1970s and 1980s.
When it comes to institutions, Buffalnians align themselves more with the Northeast. Some examples:
* College-bound students usually aim for schools in the Northeast - SUNY schools, UR, Syracuse, NYU, the Ivies, schools in Boston, and small Catholic and nonsectarian liberal arts colleges in NY and New England. In Cleveland, by comatison, college-bound students tend to look west - CWRU in town, OSU, UM and other big Midwestern land grant schools, Chicago, Northwestern, Valparaiso, Butler, etc. (The only overlap overlap seems to be Notre Dame.)
* Fans of professional baseball tend to cheer on the Yankees, not the Indians, Tigers, Cubs, etc.
* There's not much enthusiasm for college football or basketball, except some obligatory loyalty towards Syracuse and, for Irish-Americans, Notre Dame.
* Buffalonians don't do the summer-cottage-in-northern-Michigan thing.
Where they come together -
* Neighborhood look and feel - city neighborhoods outside the "Buffalo Rising Belt" west of Main Street can feel like an odd cross of Chicago and Queens. Outside the city, there's a mix of suburban Northeastern and Midwestern architecture, but with suburban Midwestern infrastructure (curbs, sidewalks, and tree lawns rather than soft shoulders, swales, and no sidewalks). Buffalo's eastern suburbs can fill in for Detroit's Downriver 'burbs.
For some reason, I see a lot more cars with Ohio license plates (and 18-Cuyahoga and 43-Lake county stickers) in Buffalo, than New York-plated cars in Cleveland.
Culturally, Buffalo is solidly Great Lakes Midwestern. Some examples:
* The prevalence of blue collar culture -- fish frys, bingo, bowling, polka, Monte Carlo/Vegas nights, meat raffles, VFDs, American cars, and so on -- compared to other Northeastern cities.
* Buffalo's dominant "old European" ethnic groups are Polish, German, Irish, and Italian - the mix is more like what one would find in Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Pittsburgh, than Rochester, Syracuse, and Utica, where Italian-Americans are the dominant group.
* Buffalonians say "pop" instead of "soda", and it's ground zero for the Inland Northern accent and Northern Cities Vowel Shift. Heartland rock -- Bob Seger, John Mellenkamp, and even regional favorites like the Michael Stanley Band and Donnie Iris -- still has a huge following compared to elsewhere in the Northeast.
* Supermarkets always had Vernor's on the shelves, and Faygo was the default cheap or generic pop in the 1970s and 1980s.
When it comes to institutions, Buffalnians align themselves more with the Northeast. Some examples:
* College-bound students usually aim for schools in the Northeast - SUNY schools, UR, Syracuse, NYU, the Ivies, schools in Boston, and small Catholic and nonsectarian liberal arts colleges in NY and New England. In Cleveland, by comatison, college-bound students tend to look west - CWRU in town, OSU, UM and other big Midwestern land grant schools, Chicago, Northwestern, Valparaiso, Butler, etc. (The only overlap overlap seems to be Notre Dame.)
* Fans of professional baseball tend to cheer on the Yankees, not the Indians, Tigers, Cubs, etc.
* There's not much enthusiasm for college football or basketball, except some obligatory loyalty towards Syracuse and, for Irish-Americans, Notre Dame.
* Buffalonians don't do the summer-cottage-in-northern-Michigan thing.
Where they come together -
* Neighborhood look and feel - city neighborhoods outside the "Buffalo Rising Belt" west of Main Street can feel like an odd cross of Chicago and Queens. Outside the city, there's a mix of suburban Northeastern and Midwestern architecture, but with suburban Midwestern infrastructure (curbs, sidewalks, and tree lawns rather than soft shoulders, swales, and no sidewalks). Buffalo's eastern suburbs can fill in for Detroit's Downriver 'burbs.
For some reason, I see a lot more cars with Ohio license plates (and 18-Cuyahoga and 43-Lake county stickers) in Buffalo, than New York-plated cars in Cleveland.
Actually, Syracuse is more Irish, even though Italians are right up there. Syracuse's West Side and western suburbs are very Irish and Slavic(Polish and Ukrainian), except for Solvay and Lakeland, which a very Italian. Germans are/were on the city's North Side before/during the time Italians were/are there and many are in the northern suburbs, particularly the Liverpool area.
Utica also has a strong Polish presence on its West Side and into the adjacent suburbs, especially NY Mills and Yorkville.
Binghamton is more Italian and Slavic(Polish, Ukrainian and Slovak) as well due to the immigrants the Endicott-Johnson company used to work in its factories. Endicott is very Italian and Johnson City is/was more Slavic.
Another thing is that the Hispanics in Buffalo and other interior areas are more Puerto Rican versus the Midwestern areas where they are more likely to be Mexican, with NE Ohio being the exception. That area is more PR than Mexican.
Also, Buffalo has a relatively strong Native American community/population and outside of the small Mount Pleasant MI area, parts of WI, MN and the Dakotas, it is rare in the Midwest in regards to metro areas. Syracuse also has this and some smaller NY areas. Minneapolis is the best example of this in the Midwest in terms of a metro.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 01-10-2016 at 09:12 AM..
People may not realize that Cleveland/much of NE Ohio was a part of the Case Western Reserve and was developed by people with roots in CT. So, some could argue that this region has a Northeastern look/feel.
Central New York-style Greek Revival architecture seems more common in exurban Cleveland than around Buffalo.
The place names of many Cleveland suburbs and exurbs reflect the Upstate New York and New England roots of their settlers -- Leroy (founders from Le Roy, NY), Medina, Geneva, Amherst, Boston, Avon, Pittsfield, Aurora, etc. The CNY-style classical antiquity theme for town names also shows up in a few places - Euclid, Mentor, and Solon come to mind. The Seneca tongue-twisters of suburban Buffalo ... uhhh, no.
Also, Buffalo has a relatively strong Native American community/population and outside of the small Mount Pleasant MI area, parts of WI, MN and the Dakotas, it is rare in the Midwest in regards to metro areas. Syracuse also has this and some smaller NY areas. Minneapolis is the best example of this in the Midwest in terms of a metro.
My experience was that Buffalonians generally had a lot of respect for the Iroquois, but they had a very low profile compared to the Polish, Italian, Irish, Jewish, and African-American communities. Scattered on the West Side, and somewhat more visible along the South Shore. Lacrosse was huge in Buffalo's upper-middle class and preppy circles, though, even back in the 1970s.
Buffalo was far off the "Hillybilly Highway", and there was little in-migration from Appalachia compared to Cleveland, Detroit, and Pittsburgh. There was an Appalachian family on my block in Northeast Buffalo when I was a kid, but they were a rare exception. (To the younger folks here, Kensington was an unusually diverse neighborhood from the 1960s through the 1980s.) I can't speak for the deep Southtowns and beyond, where the Allegheny foothills start to rise.
Buffalo also doesn't have the same concentration of Southeast Europeans -- Hungarians, Serbians, Slovaks, Croatians, etc -- as Cleveland, Chicago, and Pittsburgh. Riverside had a small concentration of Hungarians back in the day, and it still has a Hungarian social club. Otherwise, WNY has far more -skis and -czaks than -itchs and -vics.
To those saying WNY is more like the Midwest ethnically, culturally, and linguistically, I need to point few things out:
Great Lakes culture didn't originate in the Midwest. It originated in WNY. If anything, these other places like NE Ohio, Michigan, NE Illinois, and Eastern Wisconsin (which honestly form a very small part of the Midwest) were influenced by New York via the Erie Canal rather than the other way around. This country was settled West rather than Eastward.
Also, that Great Lakes culture and accent you guys refer to only covers a small portion of the Midwest. Most of the Midwest doesn't have a high concentration of Eastern and Southern European people the way the Great Lakes do.
Certainly say it has more in common with the Great Lakes than the Bos-Wash corridor, but in the same vain, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee have more in common with the Great Lakes than they do with the Midwest. You don't see a ton of Serbians in Indianapolis but you do around the Gary metro. You don't hear nasal "eeaccents" in much of the Midwest outside of the Great Lakes, either. They sound more like your average Pennsylvania native than they do like Buffalonians.
Also, the Rust Belt encompasses a large region, including West Virginia and Maryland. Most people don't claim those states are in the Midwest.
Certainly say it has more in common with the Great Lakes than the Bos-Wash corridor, but in the same vain, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee have more in common with the Great Lakes than they do with the Midwest. You don't see a ton of Serbians in Indianapolis but you do around the Gary metro. You don't hear nasal "eeaccents" in much of the Midwest outside of the Great Lakes, either. They sound more like your average Pennsylvania native than they do like Buffalonians.
You write that as if the Great Lakes isn't part of the Midwest, instead among the more populated if not the most populated subsection of Midwest.
It's located in the Northeast but it shares relatively little with areas typically considered "the Northeast". I'm a WNY native who lived in Albany for 10 years. The orientation of the two areas is very different. One
attempts to ape Boston and NYC while the other recognizes its kinship with Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee. The only reason that Buffalo gets compared to NYC at all is because the two cities are in the same state.
The same goes for Western PA and Pittsburgh, although with the nickname "Pennsyltucky", the area is more like Appalachia than the Midwest -- and certainly the Northeast. What you've got is two states, NY and PA, that spread across two different regions. They're like Kentucky and Tennessee where the eastern parts of those states are mountainous, poor, and historically Scots-Irish and much more like West Virginia, western Virginia, and western NC than they are the rest of the South, which lives with a much greater legacy from its plantation and slave-economy past. The central and westenr parts of Kentucky and Tennessee have a totally different history, ethnic/racial make-up, and considerably more prosperity from the eastern parts of those states. They are much more like "the South" that people think of than the eastern parts of those states.
Western New York aligns with NYC than the Midwest cities. That is what I, and many more people think about Western New York. That said, Pittsburgh aligns with the Midwest more.
You write that as if the Great Lakes isn't part of the Midwest, instead among the more populated if not the most populated subsection of Midwest.
Is it really? It encompasses two regions and technically includes two Northeastern states. I mean many of the state's are in the Census designated Midwest, but like the coastal Northeast is different than the interior Northeast, the "coastal" Great Lakes region is different than the Midwest.
Heck, even when people refer to a Midwest culture of the heartland, people usually think of places like Central Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. These places are vastly different than the Great Lakes.
I think with how different WNY is from the coastal Northeast, and how different NE Ohio, Michigan, NW Indiana, NE Illinois, and Eastern Wisconsin are from the rest of the Midwest is enough reason to just separate the Great Lakes from either the Northeast or the Midwest. It's its own thing and to say it belongs in either doesn't take history into account.
Why should the Great Lakes be considered more Midwestern, anyway? It includes a good portion of the Northeast. Also, settlement patterns anyone??? Nobody from the Midwest made a large move to WNY at any point.
Western New York aligns with NYC than the Midwest cities. That is what I, and many more people think about Western New York. That said, Pittsburgh aligns with the Midwest more.
The relationship is more like that of other cities that are so far removed the state's dominant city, their relationship to that city, and even the state as a whole, is weak at best. Think Las Cruces, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Spokane, Washington; the Metro East suburbs of St. Louis in Illinois, and "Da' Region" (Gary, Hammond, Munster, etc) in Indiana. Even others in the same state tend to dismiss those areas -- "Las Cruces, so far from heaven, so close to El Paso", Ohioans joking about how they really lost the Toledo War, etc.
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