How 7,500 more reader drawings changed our maps of New York
Since we published this highly detailed map of New York City neighborhoods last week, readers have submitted more than 7,500 new entries from across the city.
These entries put 36 new neighborhood names on the map (you can see them now!) – places like Starrett City, Beverly Square West, Lefferts Manor, Wingate, the Broadway Triangle, Pig city and The Hole.
(A 2004 New York Times article describes The Hole as a Wild West frontier town on the Brooklyn-Queens border, with “dusty streets, stray dogs, rickety corrugated iron buildings and even a cowboy or two.” Some of them remained horses.)
Names representing immigrant enclaves — such as Loisaida in Manhattan, Little Haiti in Brooklyn and Little Yemen in the Bronx — have also appeared on the map.
Below are all 36 new additions to the map.
The updates show more breakdowns of larger neighborhoods that have had a compass direction added, such as Crown Heights north, Southeast Annadale, south Village. Sometimes it’s hard to know whether such changes in direction are just describing the northern part of an existing neighborhood, or a different place entirely. Some make geographical sense, others don’t make sense at all. Some still have one established history; others, less so.
Take an established neighborhood, for example East Elmhurst, Queens. It’s not east of Elmhurst for the most part (it’s to the north), and it doesn’t even touch Elmhurst. They are separated by Jackson Heights.
South Midwood and West Midwood are both north of Midwood. The West Village and the East Village are both directionally “correct” in relation to Greenwich Village (also known as Greenwich Village). the Village), but they describe very different places. North Williamsburg and South Williamsburg (or the Southside or Los Sures) aren’t the same either, but most who filed them as a neighborhood still consider them part of all of Williamsburg. (Don’t get us started on East Williamsburg.) North of Little Italy, or NoLIta, is now its own place, stronger in some ways than what it is north of.
This also applies to Crown Heights north count as its own neighborhood, separate from Crown Heights? What did you think about West Chelsea? Or Hell’s Kitchen north? In our view, the goal is to be as inclusive as possible. If our data shows that more than 1 percent of people living there use these names to describe their neighborhood, we’ll add them.
So those three, and 33 others, are now on the map because enough people use them to describe their neighborhoods. We’ll see if they grow into their own, more distinctive places – shown on our map by getting your own color – like South Slope (nee Park Slope), South Ozone Park (nee Ozone Park), and East Harlem (nee Harlem).
The “West Bronx” is also on our list of additions, which makes sense considering what we’ve heard from many readers in the Bronx: that they don’t use neighborhood names (with the exception of Riverdale) as often or in the same way as the rest of the city, often preferring an important avenue or landmark to a real name. From one commenter:
Take it from someone who grew up in the West Bronx, who only knew West and East Bronx. I remember being confused when the language changed to South and North, with Fordham Road as the dividing line, and the “disappearance” of West and East Bronx.
And another:
When the Bronx was made infamous by the media for “burning,” the term “South Bronx” was supposedly coined, which goes from river to river. Gradually, this term continued to expand from the north, practically to Westchester.
Some argued that the neighborhood as a whole had a stronger sense of identity than the four others – da Bronx! – and “did not fall victim to self-differentiation.”
It’s an interesting idea: part of the reason neighborhoods are split into smaller units is to distinguish them from their surroundings and establish their own identity. Maybe that’s what keeps the Bronx just the Bronx.
And ultimately, that could determine whether Crown Heights North is as accepted as South Slope.
One final note. The map (just like the city!) is a living thing and we will continue to update it regularly as people submit more data. So if you agree or disagree with the neighborhood boundaries you see, draw your own boundaries here.