Some of the most charmingly pointless controversies on “my other blog”:http://brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/ have been about just what region is denoted by ‘Midwest’. (For prior installments, see “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/001580.html, “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/001568.html and “here”:http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Philosophy/tar/Archives/002519.html.) I think those are fun, but we seem to have run out of things to say on that word. So it’s time for something new. Just which parts of New York State are denoted by ‘upstate’?
This became topical because “some”:http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4508550§ion=news “news”:http://www.beliefnet.com/story/141/story_14164_1.html “articles”:http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=1861&dept_id=152366&newsid=11076095&PAG=461&rfi=9 have described New Paltz, where Mayor Jason West has been solemnizing gay marriages, as being upstate. This seems like a mistake to me. (And as someone who once lived in Syracuse and soon will live in Ithaca, I should know.)
Here’s where the border between upstate and not upstate is. It might be helpful if you have a map of the relevant area, like “this one”:http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com:80/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3bw2aqz8%3a%29zr25za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40b%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3bw2aqz8%3a%29zr25za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24×9%40. Draw a line connecting up the Massachusetts/Connecticut border with the northern edge of the New York/Pennsylvania border. North of that line is upstate, south of it is not. This is not to say that south of it is downstate or anything else in particular, it’s just not upstate.
As you can see on “the map”:http://mq-mapgend.websys.aol.com:80/mqmapgend?MQMapGenRequest=FDR2dmwjDE%3byt29%26FDJnci4Jkqj%2cMMCJ%3aHOEvq%3bw2aqz8%3a%29zr25za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40b%3aqyb%3al4b%3aTD%15JFE%3aHOHQJ%3bw2aqz8%3a%29zr25za%3a%26%40%24%3a%26%40%24×9%40, New Paltz (which is starred) is south of the line, so it shouldn’t be regarded as upstate. If I didn’t approve of what was going on in New Paltz, I’d start lobbying to stop these spurious connections being drawn between New Paltz and the wonderful upstate region.
{ 34 comments }
jacob 03.05.04 at 11:41 pm
I’m born and raised in Washington, so perhaps I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’ve understood Upstate to be that part of New York State which is not New York City or its suburbs. For this purpose I’d define “suburbs” as where most of the people commute southwards for work.
A similar question is where the line is in Connecticut between the New York area and New England. (There were several articles on this during the playoffs between the Red Sox and the Yankees.) I hold that on the coast, the line is in New Haven, but I’m not sure where it goes north of there.
LizardBreath 03.05.04 at 11:43 pm
A less geometric definition is that any part of New York State too far away from NYC to reasonably commute to work in the city daily is ‘upstate’ (this definition fails slightly at the East End of Long Island, which is outside commuting range but not ‘upstate’, but works otherwise).
Bob from Albany 03.05.04 at 11:52 pm
According to the New York Times, anything north of 125th Street is “upstate”.
Brett Bellmore 03.06.04 at 12:00 am
“Upstate” at least sounds better than what Detroiters call people in most of Michigan: “Outstate”. Excuse me, they perhaps think we live in Wisconsin?
bereft 03.06.04 at 12:29 am
In my day, we called it anything past the Metro-North commuter train to NYC, which ends at Poughkeepsie on the east side of the Hudson and Port Jervis on the west side (it curves around a little). Beyond that is upstate, since you can’t get to NY without taking a car or Amtrak.
Michael Tinkler 03.06.04 at 12:31 am
Upstate isn’t unitary, either. Once you get here (or, as I am, find yourself happily employed here except during Jan. and Feb.) you find there’s Western New York (certainly Buffalo, but probably not Rochester), Central New York (certainly Syracuse, but only maybe Rochester), the Southern Tier (the southern row of counties along the Pennsylvania line), the Adirondacks, Northern New York (Watertown, etc.), the Hudson River Valley, and then whatever they call the weird funnel shaped thing between the obvious Upstate and NYC.
Give me Tennessee. We have legal definitions for what counts as East, Middle, and West Tennessee complete with county lists.
Mike Jones 03.06.04 at 12:40 am
Oh, my. I’m near Albany, and I have three more-or-less serious definitions.
The least serious one is algorithmic; if you live south of Houston St, upstate starts at the Bronx. If you live in Manhattan, it starts at Yonkers. If you live anywhere else in NYC, it starts at the Westchester/Dutchess county line. If you live in Poughkeepsie, it starts at Kingston.
The more serious ones are that (a) upstate is everything except NYC, Long Island, Westchester and Rockland counties, and (b) upstate is anything not served by Metro-North.
On that basis, I’d probably say that New Paltz is “upstate”, but it’s certainly not far from the border either way.
dfc 03.06.04 at 1:25 am
On your other blog I posted:
“In Syracuse we have these great billboards from the local newspaper:
‘Living it UPstate in Central New York!'”
nnyhav 03.06.04 at 1:36 am
Expressway signs in the Bronx (starting with the Triborough Bridge) clearly identify “Upstate” with Yonkers. (As noted above, Long Island is excluded from this denomination; but does “New England” include Long Island? or is the latter sui generis?) But Mr. Jones has best described common usage (with the possible exception of Rockland Co.).
Chicago has similar difficulties with “Downstate,” whilst Michigan is “Da U.P. State.”
Richard W. Crews 03.06.04 at 1:50 am
Deviating a bit; time is a dimension that influences geographic names. Ohio, in the 1800’s was the NorthWest. Minnesota STILL thinks that way : Northwestern National Bank (gone, swallowed by Wells Fargo) and NorthWestern Airlines are out of Minneapolis. It is instilled in the older generations; those that are 65+ yo.
twistedchick 03.06.04 at 2:00 am
I’ve lived in Rochester, Olean, Potsdam, Jamestown and a few other places. Here’s the divisions as I understand them: Rochester is part of Western New York. East of Monroe County, and south of there including all of the Finger Lakes, is Central New York. The Adirondacks should be self-explanatory as Northern New York; so should the St. Lawrence River Valley above the mountains. The line of small cities, villages and mountains across the bottom of the state is the Southern Tier until it turns in the Catskills. The Hudson River Valley is its own area, including the Capital District. All of these are, to one degree or another, upstate; all of them also have slight but distinct differences in culture, lifestyle, recreation and other interests, and all of which are distinct from the culture, etc., of New York City. Does that help?
mark 03.06.04 at 2:11 am
i’m from outside of albany, and i’ve always thought of upstate as being north of poughkeepsie or so.
Ophelia Benson 03.06.04 at 2:27 am
Hm. These are all a bit predictable, a bit tame and conservative, a bit color-between-the-lines.
Where I come from, upstate is everything north of Kansas, west of Arizona, east of Tennessee, south of Ottawa, above Bermuda, below Rockport, under the weather, outside chance, in trouble, off the wall, up the rebels, down the back stairs, out the winda, and who let the cat in. That’s where upstate is. Pull yourselves together. Eyes front, toes out, knees together, wipe that smirk off your face, go to your room.
drapetomaniac 03.06.04 at 3:46 am
anything north of washington heights. the end.
dave buhmann 03.06.04 at 4:10 am
In Illinois, everyplace outside of the Chicago metro area is considered ‘downstate’ or where the farmers live.
Michelle Dulak 03.06.04 at 4:16 am
When I was a kid, living in Monroe, NY (that’s in Orange County, sort of close to the NJ border, about an hour from NYC, roughly northwest), fellow classmates at Juilliard (I was in the Saturday pre-college program) would ask where I lived, I’d start explaining, and they’d cut me off with “oh, ‘upstate.'” As far as I could tell at the time, it meant literally everything but the Five Boroughs.
matt 03.06.04 at 4:27 am
I lived in Albany for 2 years. People there seemed to consider pretty much anything north of NY City upstate. That was okay, but the thing I really thought was odd was that lots of people in Albany would claim that it was part of “western New York”. I guess only long Island was in the east, then.
fontana labs 03.06.04 at 4:28 am
North of 125th? I thought it was north of 14th.
Katie K 03.06.04 at 4:49 am
As a Connecticut native (nutmegger), I argue that the line between the New York area and New England goes with Fairfield County. True CT people don’t think of Fairfield County as being part of us, whereas New Haven is definitely part of CT and in New England.
Katie K 03.06.04 at 4:49 am
As a Connecticut native (nutmegger), I argue that the line between the New York area and New England goes with Fairfield County. True CT people don’t think of Fairfield County as being part of us, whereas New Haven is definitely part of CT and in New England.
Chris Marcil 03.06.04 at 5:23 am
There are degrees of Upstateness, too, correlated in my mind with a hatred of New York City. Growing up in Amsterdam, NY (formerly the Rug City), I knew people that hated to drive to Albany; too much traffic.
My brother worked summers for the Montgomery County road department (Amsterdam with its population of 18,000 being the queen bee of Montgomery County); he and his friend Paul would get stoned in the morning, pick up the Village Voice, and go to work doing stuff like dragging deer off the shoulder of Route 5S in Canajoharie. One time one of the workers said to him, “You got three types of people in New York City. You got your hippies, you got your freaks, and you got your dopers.” My brother readily agreed.
Mr Ripley 03.06.04 at 1:49 pm
I still want to know whether Missouri’s southern or midwestern. Or maybe certain regions of it are southern, as is the case with Maryland?
Ophelia Benson 03.06.04 at 2:57 pm
Yes, well of course the ambiguity about Missouri goes back to the Missouri Compromise. Been with the state as long as it’s been a state. It should have been Midwestern, but became Southern because of the Compromise. And what a can of worms that was.
When in doubt about Missouri just think Huck Finn and Jim.
chujoe 03.06.04 at 4:53 pm
From Syracuse to the Canadian border is “the north country.”
Rich 03.06.04 at 5:59 pm
I’m born and raised in Manhattan, and went to college in Albany before ultimately returning to Manhattan (following grad school out of state). My understanding is that “upstate” is a euphemism for “prison.” eg, if you refer to someone as being upstate, it means he’s in Sing Sing, Attica, etc.
Matt Weiner 03.06.04 at 6:19 pm
Rich is right that upstate can mean prison, but it doesn’t only mean that; I think this comes from the fact that most prisons are outside NYC.
drapeto, my mom’s from Inwood, and I’m afraid you have a blood feud on your hands. :-)
carpeicthus 03.06.04 at 7:51 pm
As a former resident of WAY upstate Plattsburgh and Lake Placid and now resident of the Bronx, I can definitively say that upstate is anything North of the Tappan Zee.
Nyack? Champlain? Buffalo? All the same.
Zizka 03.07.04 at 3:48 am
Well, as far as “Midwest” is concerned, it’s not Eastern Seaboard, not New England, not Southern, not Border, and not Western. Ranches (as opposed to farms) and mountains define the West.
I have an agenda, all right, and being Canadian is OK. The southern agricultural parts of Saskatchawan, Manitoba, and Western Ontario are Midwestern. Alberta isn’t.
Drawing the Iowa-Missori line straight east and west and the dipping up North would catch it. So Western Pennsylvania and New York would be included. But Southern Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio wouldn’t.
Missouri and Kansas are tempting but no go; too Southern. (My sister lived in Kansas and I have nothing good to say about the state, and especially not about Liddy Dole. Kansas has a distinct culture of awfulness which she embodies perfectly). Kentucky is not even tempting. Nebraska and some part of Eastern Montana might be included. The Black Hills in S.D. are Western.
Everyone calls Ohio Midwestern, and if it is, then Pittsburgh and Buffalo have to be.
Al 03.07.04 at 5:43 am
North of 125th? I thought it was north of 14th.
What? We here in Chelsea are definitely not upstate.
Upstate begins at 59th Street, since, obviously, the UPPER East/West Sides are UPstate.
Tom Runnacles 03.07.04 at 3:07 pm
My brother is a Brit transplanted to NY, and thus pretty much aims for the ‘more of a New Yorker than the locals’ label.
His view seems to be that upstate starts at about 14th Street. When I visited recently, he strongly resisted my plan to go up to 48th on the grounds that ‘they’re not like us up there’.
Stentor 03.07.04 at 6:54 pm
At least New Yorkers know that there is an upstate out there somewhere. I lived in Pennsylvania most of my life, but until a few weeks ago I hadn’t known that Philadelphians considered the rest of us to be “upstate.”
Having lived unambiguously upstate in NY for four years (Hamilton), I say that anyone who chooses to inhabit the gray area between Albany and NYC is just asking for trouble.
bza 03.08.04 at 12:26 am
Late to the game, but I have to disagree with Zizka: I grew up in Missouri and can report that, at least in the parts of the state that are flat, everybody considers it to be the Midwest. I think that indicates a pretty fair criterion, actually: flat farmland in the middle of the coutry gets to count as Midwest.
Doug Turnbull 03.08.04 at 2:52 pm
Tossing in my two cents about Illinois, downstate really is everything South of I-80, which is close but not quite the same thing as “everything outside of the Chicago metro area.”
As for the midwest, I think your past discussions of it miss an important regional factor, which is college athletic conferences. The Midwest consists of the original Big Ten (meaning no Penn State), and the old Big 8 (which merged with the Southwestern Athletic conference and brought in Texas/OK/OK St.
This definition of the midwest both fits the correct boundaries and also explains why the Dakotas are not normally considered midwest.
Oh, and Upstate New York is, to outsiders, anything north of NYC.
The Good doctor 03.10.04 at 6:13 am
For a real update on the varieties of “upstate” about to tangle your heels, go to my remarks on the subject at http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2004/03/upstate.html, /s’il vous plait./
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