Downtown

I've been wondering what people mean by "downtown." To me--I live in Hyde Park--it means roughly the area bounded on the west and north by the river, on the south by 12th St., and on the east by the lake. Near north to me is the area north of the river west to about Clark St. and north to about Division St. Sometimes a reply to a query places a restaurant several miles from my concept of downtown. It seems that the further from the center of the city people live the bigger the area they consider to be downtown becomes. I'm not trying to be critical--just curious.
Jane

For me, the notion of "downtown" probably extends as for north as Oak Street in some places, like the Michigan Avenue coridor.

I have had people tell me I live "downtown" and I live at 4000 North.

To me, "downtown" is roughly McCormick Place/I-55 to the south, Greek Town/Halsted Street to the West and North Ave. to the north, but that's just me.

It's generally the area bounded by the river, michigan, and congress for me.. although I consider Union Station downtown, so you may want to stretch the west boundary to clinton or canal.

-ed

cowdery wrote:I have had people tell me I live "downtown" and I live at 4000 North.

To me, "downtown" is roughly McCormick Place/I-55 to the south, Greek Town/Halsted Street to the West and North Ave. to the north, but that's just me.

Well, unknowing people, usually from the suburbs, consider anything in chicago "downtown".

My dad's students in riverside and brookfield would routinely say they went "downtown" over the weekend. Someone would ask them where, and they'd say lincoln park, or andersenville, or whatever.

-ed

Well, unknowing people, usually from the suburbs, consider anything in chicago "downtown".

Maybe some ... I usually hear people say they are going downtown, then they are headed for the loop. In my family, we often say, "We are going to the city."

Highland Park has multiple commercial districts, I happen to live near the central one. When we first moved to Highland Park I was ten years old, when my friends were talking about going to (downtown or central) Highland Park, it is always referred to as "Up town (or is it uptown)." For too long I'd correct them indicating Uptown is Chicago neighborhood until I finally gave up and joined in. The other two dominant districts are Ravinia and Braeside, though there are several others without distinctive names I am aware of.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:

Well, unknowing people, usually from the suburbs, consider anything in chicago "downtown".

Maybe some ... I usually hear people say they are going downtown, then they are headed for the loop. In my family, we often say, "We are going to the city."

Believe me that I didn't mean to imply everyone from the suburbs made that error... I grew up in Oak Park, after all.. It may also be more prevalent in younger people, who've spent less time living in the chicago area, and so don't necessarily know any better.

-ed

To me it is a lovely song from the 60s.

rocky29@sbcglobal.net wrote:I've been wondering what people mean by "downtown." To me--I live in Hyde Park--it means roughly the area bounded on the west and north by the river, on the south by 12th St., and on the east by the lake. Near north to me is the area north of the river west to about Clark St. and north to about Division St. Sometimes a reply to a query places a restaurant several miles from my concept of downtown. It seems that the further from the center of the city people live the bigger the area they consider to be downtown becomes. I'm not trying to be critical--just curious.
Jane

I'm not a native but I lived in some reasonable sense for many years "Downtown"... To me, north of the river, Mag Mile, Streeterville, that's still downtown... Past Oak Street is definitely beyond... So, for me, as ugly as most of it is, River North is still downtown... Streeterville, the Loop, the South Loop, all downtown... Roosevelt to Cermak, I could see somebody saying it's not but from a 'downtown perspective', I would say it really is downtown, especially nowadays... To the west, I don't know, the river is a nice boundary but I think people who actually live "downtown" think of Greektown as downtown; peripheral to be sure, but sort of pretty much 'downtown'...

The borders are all fuzzy but hyper-suburban viewpoints should be discounted, so too anything any real estate agent says...

From bucolic Drei-Schneider
(was wir hier nicht haben, brauchen wir nicht),
Antonius

That's a good question. Downtown used to mean the loop and now extends to the Michigan Avenue corridor. I find myself saying I'm going downtown when I'm going to the Water Tower Mall. I don't think of River North as downtown, though, I guess because it's a little too far north and a little too far west (from downtown) for me to construe that area as downtown. I think of the southside as beginning below Roosevelt Road and anything far north as being above, oh, I don't know, I guess Peterson.

Hi,

Since I am a hyper-suburbanite, I guess what I am about to offer is to be automatically dismissed.

Downtown is still the loop perhaps stretching to the Michigan Avenue shopping corridor. From my point of view, the southern outpost of downtown is Congress, not Roosevelt and definitely not Cermak Road. If downtown is the loop area, then Wacker Drive deliniates it both western and northern boundaries. If you extend downtown to Michigan Avenue shopping district, then northern boundary is the Drake Hotel on Michigan AVenue and Lake Shore Drive ... though like the Kennedy to OHare Airport, we are talking Michigan Avenue north of the river and not much more than that.

Greektown is certainly NEAR downtown, but it isn't downtown. You walk through a relatively lonely area, which is hardly bustling and lower rents than downtown to get there.

Maybe as recently as 15 years ago, when you went west of Ogilivie transportation center on Canal, you saw street people between there and the expressway. Though the street people are no longer there, beyond Canal there is sharp change in streetscape character from downtown.

&&&

Now if you really want to start a rip snorting conversation, define what is the North Shore. Once upon a time, it was defined entirely by communities along the lake period up to Lake Bluff. That is still my definition though I know it has been expanded greatly in many people's estimation.

Cathy2 wrote:Since I am a hyper-suburbanite, I guess what I am about to offer is to be automatically dismissed.

What I intended with that term were the people who rarely come to the city and think of almost everything as 'downtown'. If you like the term and wish to apply it to yourself, by all means, do so.

Greektown is certainly NEAR downtown, but it isn't downtown. You walk through a relatively lonely area, which is hardly bustling and lower rents than downtown to get there.

Well, I said it's on the periphery and I'll stick to that; living in the South Loop I never felt I was going somewhere far away when I went to Greektown and I would walk there quite often (ca. one mile and 15-20 minutes from Harrison and Dearborn). It's the first block past the highway and just a few blocks west of the Sears Tower. The rents out there in the "lonely" sector ain't so low either. For me, the Sears Tower is downtown and Greektown is in its shadow. Make of that what you will but I suspect that for lots of South Loopers, it's still roughly downtown or else as close to that as you can get.

Downtown is bigger than the Loop and the Loop in anything but the most non-current and narrow sense goes south of Congress. Limiting the southern end of 'downtown' with Congress is, in my experience, let's say, unusual, especially since it excludes all of the South Loop, which begins at Congress.

On further reflection, I'll agree that the zone between Roosevelt and Cermak isn't downtown; perhaps the propaganda of the real estate agents finally got to me. It's properly just plain old "Near South", which itself goes along with the South Loop being 'downtown'.

Also, even Midtown Manhattan has or at least had peripheral patches that were quite quiet during peak business hours -- the idea that 'downtown' is necessarily all bustling strikes me as a possible way to look at 'downtown' but not the only one.

Antonius

The Ravenswood/Brown line train stations have signs posted above the doorways to the stairs to the platform. One says "To the City" and the other says "From the City". When I began taking the CTA, I was at first puzzled by those signs. I thought they should've said "North" and "South" instead. I then remembered that the neighborhoods serviced by the Ravenswood/Brown line were at one time suburbs and that the City is what we think of as downtown.

As a burb-boy, almost any part of Chicago proper is kinda downtown to me, but I'd probably draw the line at, say, Montrose and the Kennedy at a generous border, or perhaps Belmont and the Kennedy as a more stringent border.

I've had fewer destinations throughout my life west of I-90, so I don't see that area as being 'downtown' as much as others. Oldtown definitely. Lincoln Park definitely. Wrigleyville less so. Rogers Park not.

Where does it end to the south? Hmm... probably doesn't include Chinatown, since that's really its own sub-section of the city.

The folks who say the river is the border are really thinking "Loop". Even Greektown and River North to me are still "Near Loop."

Everyone feels stongly about their own view of such things and that's both to be expected and not at all bad, discounting of course the ill-informed and silly extremes. Commercial and 95th is not downtown but it is in the city. Anyone who disagrees with that is a knucklehead. But 'downtown' is in one very legitimate sense a relative term and thus takes on different meanings from different perspectives. There is also an historical dimension to how one views the term and, for sure, for someone who set their notion of 'downtown' back in the 1960's or 1970's, there will inevitably be a different sense of the word than there is for someone who came to know Chicago intimately in the course of the 1990's.

If a number of people in Suburb X more or less regularly visit Chicago and/or have a reasonably good knowledge of the city and they all use the term 'downtown' amongst themselves in a certain mutually understood and not absurdly broad sense, than for them that is the definition of 'downtown'. One can't disagree with them except insofar as one wants to be a contentious jerk.

Now, is there an externally set, invariable definition of 'downtown'? It seems not, though obviously there is a universally agreed upon core. The Loop is downtown. The northen stretch of the Mag Mile is now downtown. Beyond that, I guess the borders are fuzzy, though I still say that for the folks who live in the central part of the city, the South Loop is unquestionably 'downtown', as is Streeterville and the West Loop east of the river. Definitions that exclude those areas strike me personally as anachronistic but in the end, it's no skin off my back.

Perhaps they should build a wall and create an official 'downtown'. They could sell tickets at the "Downtown City" gates.

Antonius

So far all the answers seem to fix on geography. I nominate adding a layer to that, as to me downtown is by definition an area of commerce. Entertainment is a small part of the mix and residential even smaller. My geographic definition matches a few previously offered -- the Loop up to Michigan Ave. (but not River North, devoted to entertainment, or Streeterville, with too many residential areas).

BobS wrote:downtown is by definition an area of commerce

Exactly how I consider it.

Dictionary.com confirms this opinion:

The lower part or the business center of a city or town

Hmmm, Dictionary.com...

The Oxford dictionary offers a slightly more reasonable and broader definition:

"lower or more central or business part of a town or city".

The relativity remains and commercial activity may be one person's crucial criterion but not another's.

Antonius

Bob S. wrote:So far all the answers seem to fix on geography. I nominate adding a layer to that, as to me downtown is by definition an area of commerce. Entertainment is a small part of the mix and residential even smaller. My geographic definition matches a few previously offered -- the Loop up to Michigan Ave. (but not River North, devoted to entertainment, or Streeterville, with too many residential areas).

Bob,

This definition may have to change as more and more residential properties are added to the core of what everyone agrees is downtown. Have you checked out the construction and conversion of commercial space to condos lately? There is a relatively large and rapidly growing population of downtown dwellers in Chicago.

Cathy2 wrote:
Dictionary.com confirms this opinion:

The lower part or the business center of a city or town

That is so New York centric. What about the rest of the world?

My relatives in the SW suburbs call the entire city "downtown." Of course, everything out to Naperville will be described as "Chicago" to folks from other parts of the country.

To my mind, downtown Chicago is everything relatively near the Loop and the lake that is not in a traditional neighborhood, the places where a tourist might end up. Think about Chicago the way an out of towner does, and you might agree that Soldier Field is a cool staduim because its right downtown, near the museums. Oak Street Beach is like that too. Certainly, Gibson's, Morton's and the big hotels must be downtown. The back door to downtown is defined by Greektown, West Randolph, the East Bank Club, and Franklin in River North -- all the places where a tourist might stroll without getting too nervous about being lost.

I'm glad I started this; I've enjoyed reading all the responses. Pretty obviously there's no hard and fast way of drawing downtown's boundaries. This is probably true for almost any named area--whether my home is in Hyde Park or Kenwood could be debated, I suppose.

My dictionary the AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY, 3rd Edition, gives this definition of "Loop." "The central business district of Chicago, Illinois. The Loop was originally named for a loop in the elevated railroad tracks." I have heard that the name actually antedates the el; it derived from a cable car loop, in more of less the same location, that operated before the el was built.

One thing that seems clear (probably to everybody who reads this), it would be best to be more specific about the location one is interested in--proximity to a well known place or, maybe street boundaries.

I usually tell people I live downtown, even though I am West of Franklin and North of the river. Not that it really makes a difference to me.

In my experience, people will sometimes stretch the neighborhood description of where they actually live to a nice area nearby. So while someone might take issue with me saying I live in Lincoln Park or the Gold Coast, I have yet to meet anyone who would tell me that I don't really live downtown. In fact, my neighborhood was largely industrial for much of the city's history, and was not a place where people lived at all, so this whole River North thing is really just made up anyway. I think we should change the neighborhood's name to Chilpancingo, in celebration of it's greatest restaurant whose chef puts so much work into making new and innovative dishes that not enough people try. So come visit me in Chilpancingo.

Rich4 wrote:I usually tell people I live downtown, even though I am West of Franklin and North of the river. Not that it really makes a difference to me.

Rich:

That seems right to me. As a said above, from the perspective of people who live in and immediately around the Loop -- your area, Streeterville, South Loop, West Loop (to the river for sure, perhaps to the highway too (which is nowadays probably a more noteworthy boundary than the river) -- that whole area is 'downtown'; friends of mine who live in further outlying neighbourhoods of the city seem generally if not universally to think of the South Loop and Streeterville as downtown and I suspect they would agree about your area too.

But of course, the term is relative and different perspectives need to be accepted.

A

rocky29@sbcglobal.net wrote:I have heard that the name actually antedates the el; it derived from a cable car loop, in more of less the same location, that operated before the el was built.

You are correct, sir! Although I'm not sure it weas actually a cable car. Might have been a streetcar.

It's an interesting question precisely because there is no right answer.

And since when is "entertainment" not "commerce"?

One extreme is the position that the loop is downtown, period, amen, end-of-story.

The other extreme is that any part of the city that looks "urban" is downtown, so East Rogers Park (for example) is downtown but West Rogers Park (west of Western) is not.

And while I say there is no right answer the most nearly right answer is mine.

Isn't distance an issue? Downtown to someone in Lincoln Park is probably very different (and more tightly defined) than it is to someone who lives in McHenry.

In reply to Steve Z:

Not that if matters, but the original loop was the cable for the cable cars. I had a vague recollection of an older relative telling me about them when I was a child, so, with the help of Google, I found this web this web site:
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/html/ccmain.html
It has a lot information about cable cars in quite a few cities.

Jane

You guys have definitely hit one of my favorite topics. So be prepared for a rant...

I think I'm going to take the definition of "downtown" as put forth by University of Chicago Geography God (not to mention my professor), Michael Conzen. Conzen sees "downtown" as the most dense area of the city, with a concentration of office, entertainment, retail and public gathering space. It's where city becomes theater, shopping mall, and workplace all in one. So by this "technical" definition, downtown includes the Loop west to the Dan Ryan Expressway and south to Roosevelt (not Greektown or River West), the State/Rush/Michigan shopping and entertainment area north to Division Street, the residential district known as the Gold Coast, the South Loop to about 18th Street (including the Prairie Avenue Historic District), and River North up to Division and west to Sedgwick.

That area pretty much defines downtown in the "informal" sense for U of C students, as well. The four areas known to U of C undergrads outside their home neighborhood are "downtown" (basically refers to the places I mentioned above, and usually involves shopping, eating, or cultural activities), "Belmont" (which takes in all Middle North Side neighborhoods including Wicker Park, Bucktown, and Lincoln Park, and usually means shopping), "Up by Northwestern" (Rogers Park, Evanston, and Andersonville), and "Wow, that's far," which takes in everything else in the city limits with no apparent relation to distance. 44th and Pulaski (home of Pete's Fresh Market) is 40 minutes from Hyde Park, and is in the "wow, that's far" category, while the intersection of Clark and Belmont, 45 minutes on a good day, is not, and the answer to the question "Where will the new Hot Doug's be?" is "About two miles west of Belmont," which makes no sense to anyone other than Chicago undergrads.

Evan B. Druce wrote:You guys have definitely hit one of my favorite topics. So be prepared for a rant...

I think I'm going to take the definition of "downtown" as put forth by University of Chicago Geography God (not to mention my professor), Michael Conzen. Conzen sees "downtown" as the most dense area of the city, with a concentration of office, entertainment, retail and public gathering space. It's where city becomes theater, shopping mall, and workplace all in one.

Well, that's A nice and reasonable definition but hardly overwhelmingly right for all, judging from some of the above, and in this regard, there can exist no single universal truth when perspective of the viewer is an integral part of how the term is defined; cf. the OED definition cited above which seems to be a better fit to the actual range of usage.

So by this "technical" definition, downtown includes the Loop west to the Dan Ryan Expressway and south to Roosevelt (not Greektown or River West), the State/Rush/Michigan shopping and entertainment area north to Division Street, the residential district known as the Gold Coast, the South Loop to about 18th Street (including the Prairie Avenue Historic District), and River North up to Division and west to Sedgwick.

You're not following the technical definition you cite. What is south of the South Loop down to 18th Street just doesn't fit well at all into the category of "the most dense area of the city, with a concentration of office, entertainment, retail and public gathering space." I would say that from an historical standpoint a certain part of that zone has the feel of being downtownish but beyond Roosevelt, from a current perspective, one is pushing it. Insofar as Dearborn Park is part of the South Loop (but is south of Roosevelt), one might say that that area might get to be considered 'downtown' because the South Loop is 'downtown'. But that's about it. Maybe one day, but not yet. And I would far sooner regard Greektown as downtownish than the stretch between 15th and 18th from Clark to Indiana. And I think I know that area well for I've been going there several times per week for the last few years.

Ultimately, the question is as much or actually more a linguistic one than one of geography or urban planning.

Antonius