Great Lakes Cities

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right. I'm not saying you can't find similarities between some cities in New England, and some cities in Ohio, but the comparison is weird. Like why doesn't Cleveland have a "Wisconsin feel"? Or an "Oregon feel"? I can find lots of similar streets. Why is it a "New England feel"?

I think because New England is where the vernacular emanated from. Not from Wisconsin or Oregon. Like no one would ever claim the Mediterranean has a “Miami feel”.

And I’m not one who necessarily would refer to say, Cleveland, having a “New England feel”… but Cleveland’s vernacular is undoubtedly far more influenced by the northern Yankee culture/style than by the Midlands culture/style of southern PA and MD, and VA

[goat314]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right. I'm not saying you can't find similarities between some cities in New England, and some cities in Ohio, but the comparison is weird. Like why doesn't Cleveland have a "Wisconsin feel"? Or an "Oregon feel"? I can find lots of similar streets. Why is it a "New England feel"?

The things that made New England geographically/culturally district are not commonly found in Cleveland. The town greens with the Episcopal churches, the textile mill towns, the saltbox architecture, etc.

Also, those New England streetscapes weren't randomly picked. Somerville, overall, looks nothing like Cleveland. Not even close.

That's because Cleveland was once part of Connecticut.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/article...by-connecticut

[goat314]

Originally Posted by benp

If one were to compare Great Lake cities to places like Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Frederick the differences are glaring. You may find places there that have some similarities to Great Lake cities, but it is much more difficult to find areas in the Great Lakes that resemble in any way cities like these.

And of course I'm focusing on the cities that developed early, and how their development was influenced by those that first arrived, the styles they brought with them, and the timeframe that these styles became the basis for that particular area's vernacular.

The heavily frame vernacular that I see in Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo is very foreign to me. Cincinnati and Chicago, to a lesser degree Detroit are the only Midwestern cities that feel familiar to me aesthetically.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by pj3000

This conversation is all why I was talking about Pittsburgh being so Great Lakes focused.

Pittsburgh really does not exist without Cleveland, Lorain, Erie, Conneaut, Ashtabula, and others. These cities were vital to and totally interconnected with Pittsburghs steel prosperity… because no iron ore, no steel. The economic and cultural connections that came with it make Pittsburgh so much more akin to Great Lakes cities than to cities much further away downriver like Louisville or Cincy.

SW PA and eastern OH might as well be the same place, as far as I’m concerned (and this comes based on 48 years of experience in the region, in one form or another).

I understand the point you're making, but economic links do not equal cultural links.

To give an example, look at NYC. The reason the city leapt past Philly and Boston to become the largest U.S. metropolis by far was the Erie Canal, which meant that the final domestic port for the whole of the U.S. Great Lakes was at the mouth of the Hudson. This did not create cultural links between the Great Lakes and NYC though. It did link the Great Lakes with New England, but NYC's cultural influence was not felt north of Albany.

A bit later on, NYC's economy was tightly linked with the U.S. South, with cotton coming up in raw form, and made into clothing for international and domestic markets. The linkage was strong enough to affect politics, making NYC have Confederate leanings during the Civil War. However, it did not make NYC culturally southern.

Pittsburgh pretty much always "looked east" towards NYC and Philadelphia. It never really associated culturally with Cleveland beyond sports rivalry and the like.

The things that make a city feel distinct are aspects like the built environment, the local accents, the cultural traditions, etc. That's why somewhere like New Orleans is considered to have such a strong "sense of place" compared to the rest of the Southeast. There's simply not a lot that Pittsburgh shares with the Great Lakes region of the U.S. by these metrics.

[BigDipper 80]

I'd agree that describing Cleveland architecture as a "New England feel" as a bit of a stretch (most of NEO's housing stock is indistinguishable from any other Industrial Revolution city not located along the Ohio/Mississippi), but the city planning itself definitely feels more New England than it does Wisconsin or Oregon. Pretty much every city in northeast Ohio is laid out around a traditional New England-style town square:


Hudson

Twinsburg

Chagrin Falls

Painesville

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Docere

Interesting to compare educational attainment in Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

College degree (city)

Pittsburgh 47.6%
Cleveland 21.7%

Allegheny County 45.2%
Cuyahoga County 35.5%

Pittsburgh MSA 38.1%
Cleveland MSA 34.1%

And Pittsburgh's MSA includes a lot of Trumpy exurban/rurals while Cleveland MSA doesn't really have significant rural counties.

Much of it is that Pittsburgh is just much heavier of a college town than Cleveland. If you add up enrollment at the six big colleges in Pittsburgh (Pitt, CMU, Duquense, Point Park University, Chatham, and Carlow) there's like 62,000 students in a city of 300,000. In contrast, if you add up Cleveland State, Case Western, and the Cleveland Institutes of Art and Music, you end up with only 25,000 students (undergrad and grad) across a city of 372,000.

It's also worth noting that while Cleveland doesn't really have big or prestigious suburban universities (no one outside of Cleveland has heard of Baldwin Wallace or John Carroll), they do exist. Pittsburgh basically lacks any suburban universities, other than Robert Morris. You have to go out to areas not even technically in the metro like Indiana, PA to find a real college town. Pittsburgh is the college town for all of Southwestern Pennsylvania.

The other aspect is just that Pittsburgh was really unique in the Rust Belt for low levels of white flight from the urban core - kinda the inverse of Detroit. Somewhere like Squirrel Hill - an upper middle class, Jewish (and increasingly Asian) residential neighborhood within city limits - is a real anomaly in the Rust Belt. In terms of built environment it's pretty similar to somewhere like Cleveland Heights, but it's inside the city.

The flipside of this is the "suburbs" in Pittsburgh are generally in worse shape than elsewhere in the Rust Belt. Not to say that there aren't wealthy suburbs, but unlike Cleveland, industry decentralized into smaller mill towns pretty early on (began before 1900) meaning there's working-class enclaves spread throughout Allegheny County - even pockets of blight.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by pj3000

So you’re saying that SSP forumers aren’t average North Americans??

Do you know the population of your city, county, metropolitan area? SSPers do

The average resident has no idea unless their city has a sign that gets updated

It's hilarious to ask people to see just how far off they are.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I understand the point you're making, but economic links do not equal cultural links.

To give an example, look at NYC. The reason the city leapt past Philly and Boston to become the largest U.S. metropolis by far was the Erie Canal, which meant that the final domestic port for the whole of the U.S. Great Lakes was at the mouth of the Hudson. This did not create cultural links between the Great Lakes and NYC though. It did link the Great Lakes with New England, but NYC's cultural influence was not felt north of Albany.

A bit later on, NYC's economy was tightly linked with the U.S. South, with cotton coming up in raw form, and made into clothing for international and domestic markets. The linkage was strong enough to affect politics, making NYC have Confederate leanings during the Civil War. However, it did not make NYC culturally southern.

Pittsburgh pretty much always "looked east" towards NYC and Philadelphia. It never really associated culturally with Cleveland beyond sports rivalry and the like.

The things that make a city feel distinct are aspects like the built environment, the local accents, the cultural traditions, etc. That's why somewhere like New Orleans is considered to have such a strong "sense of place" compared to the rest of the Southeast. There's simply not a lot that Pittsburgh shares with the Great Lakes region of the U.S. by these metrics.

Michigan has historically had pretty strong links with New York State. A lot of municipalities in Michigan, including the state capital, are named after places in NYS because so many New Yorkers settled towns in Michigan. Having said that, I think the reason why so many places in the Great Lakes share architectural overlap with the northeast is due to timing and geography. Similar climates and mostly developed in similar eras.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Much of it is that Pittsburgh is just much heavier of a college town than Cleveland. If you add up enrollment at the six big colleges in Pittsburgh (Pitt, CMU, Duquense, Point Park University, Chatham, and Carlow) there's like 62,000 students in a city of 300,000. In contrast, if you add up Cleveland State, Case Western, and the Cleveland Institutes of Art and Music, you end up with only 25,000 students (undergrad and grad) across a city of 372,000.

Incidentally, the University of Cincinnati main campus now has about 45,000 students. The university has a goal of reaching 60,000 students in the 2030s. Nearby Xavier University has about 6,000 students.

Despite the high number of students, I don't believe that the area matches what exists in Pittsburgh around Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon. UC's campus was never physically confined to the extent that exists in Pittsburgh since it was established 200~ years ago in Burnett Woods, a large city park.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Michigan has historically had pretty strong links with New York State. A lot of municipalities in Michigan, including the state capital, are named after places in NYS because so many New Yorkers settled towns in Michigan. Having said that, I think the reason why so many places in the Great Lakes share architectural overlap with the northeast is due to timing and geography. Similar climates and mostly developed in similar eras.

Michigan has big connections to the State of New York, but much less so to NYC.

Upstate NY was (outside of the Hudson Valley up to Albany) pretty much entirely settled mainly by New England Yankees migrating westward. This is why Syracuse/Rochester/Buffalo feel very similar to cities in New England, but don't feel much like the Hudson Valley, which has much more of a "mid-Atlantic" feel in terms of its build.

Originally Posted by jmecklenborg

Incidentally, the University of Cincinnati main campus now has about 45,000 students. The university has a goal of reaching 60,000 students in the 2030s. Nearby Xavier University has about 6,000 students.

Despite the high number of students, I don't believe that the area matches what exists in Pittsburgh around Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon. UC's campus was never physically confined to the extent that exists in Pittsburgh since it was established 200~ years ago in Burnett Woods, a large city park.

Oakland was originally intended to be a "new Downtown" for Pittsburgh, built out around 1900-1910 during an era when the old downtown was seen as too cluttered/dirty. It's why the Carnegie museums and main Carnegie library was located there. The original plan was that all of the major civic attractions (theaters, concert halls, etc.) would locate out there, but the plan fizzled out and Downtown remained the major employment hub. It only backdoored into a college town vibe decades later, once there was a postwar boom in Pitt/CMU enrollment.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Michigan has big connections to the State of New York, but much less so to NYC.

I can't think of any city that more directly influenced Michigan more than NYC, other than Detroit itself.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by goat314

I don't believe that Pittsburgh has a natural water connection to the Great Lakes despite it being very close to Lake Erie (2 hours from Cleveland). I believe St. Louis does have a semi-natural connection to Lake Michigan (despite being 4 hours from Chicago) via the Illinois River to Des Plaines River then an extremely short canal to the Chicago River, which then spills into Lake Michigan.

chicago remains the only location today where river barges meet great lakes frieighters at the port of chicago down on the calumet river.

there were several other smaller canal systems, with shitloads of locks, back in the 19th century connecting the great lakes to the mississippi basin, but they were too small, too cumbersome, and too slow to compete with the railroads that came later. chicago's sanitary & ship canal, and adjoining cal-sag channel, remain the only fully navigable water routes between the two great watersheds of the interior, mostly because they were able to connect the two basins with a minimum number of locks thanks to the old "chicago portage".

here's a "Marine Traffic" map from several minutes ago showing all of the the active river barge traffic in the interior north right now. the only rivers in the region that see major barge traffic are the ohio, the mississippi below st. louis, and the illinois up to chicago. the mississippi above st. louis up to the twin cities and the missouri out to KC are also navigable for barge traffic, but aren't nearly as heavily used.

note: the soo locks have been closed for the winter season, which brings >90% of freighter activity on the upper lakes to halt at this time of year until they reopen in march/april. that's why the great lakes look relatively "empty" at the moment.

[edale]

In general, I find the 'Connecticut influence' of Cleveland/NE Ohio to be overstated, but there is some lasting influence, as others have already stated. Exploring the little hamlets in Cuyahoga Valley National Park will show some of this influence. The white steepled protestant churches in places like Peninsula, and another in Peninsula, the town greens in places like Medina, residential architecture in old sections of Hudson, etc. It's subtle, but the connection is there.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Somewhere like Squirrel Hill - an upper middle class, Jewish (and increasingly Asian) residential neighborhood within city limits - is a real anomaly in the Rust Belt.

true, high wealth tracts (>$112K median household income) within city limits are a pretty damn rare in the rustbelt outside of chicago, which has dozens of them.

here's what i could find on justice maps (2020 data)

cincinnati: 3 tracts in the hyde park/ault park area (12,715 total pop.)
pittsburgh: 3 tracts in the squirrel hill area (11,420 total pop.)
milwaukee: 2 tracts in the upper east side area (6,181 total pop.)
detroit: 1 tract in palmer woods (1,972 total pop.)
st. louis: 0
cleveland: 0
buffalo: 0
rochester: 0

[BigDipper 80]

Originally Posted by edale

In general, I find the 'Connecticut influence' of Cleveland/NE Ohio to be overstated, but there is some lasting influence, as others have already stated. Exploring the little hamlets in Cuyahoga Valley National Park will show some of this influence. The white steepled protestant churches in places like Peninsula, and another in Peninsula, the town greens in places like Medina, residential architecture in old sections of Hudson, etc. It's subtle, but the connection is there.

In addition to these, and to my other examples upthread, there is a lot of Greek revival, New England-y feeling architecture in and around Olmsted Falls, on the far southwest side of Cuyahoga County:

Example

Downtown

More downtown

Another house

Again, none of this is to argue that NEO "feels" particularly culturally New England (as a former Clevelander, I'd refute that pretty strongly), but the architectural and city planning ties are definitely there, especially in the smaller towns.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I understand the point you're making, but economic links do not equal cultural links.

To give an example, look at NYC. The reason the city leapt past Philly and Boston to become the largest U.S. metropolis by far was the Erie Canal, which meant that the final domestic port for the whole of the U.S. Great Lakes was at the mouth of the Hudson. This did not create cultural links between the Great Lakes and NYC though. It did link the Great Lakes with New England, but NYC's cultural influence was not felt north of Albany.

A bit later on, NYC's economy was tightly linked with the U.S. South, with cotton coming up in raw form, and made into clothing for international and domestic markets. The linkage was strong enough to affect politics, making NYC have Confederate leanings during the Civil War. However, it did not make NYC culturally southern.

Pittsburgh pretty much always "looked east" towards NYC and Philadelphia. It never really associated culturally with Cleveland beyond sports rivalry and the like.

The things that make a city feel distinct are aspects like the built environment, the local accents, the cultural traditions, etc. That's why somewhere like New Orleans is considered to have such a strong "sense of place" compared to the rest of the Southeast. There's simply not a lot that Pittsburgh shares with the Great Lakes region of the U.S. by these metrics.

I think we're talking about different things.

Though, first off, NYC is much further from the Great Lakes than is Pittsburgh, and much more importantly, NYC is MUCH further from the industrial hub of Great Lakes cities -- whereas Pittsburgh is actually a vital part of that hub. Additionally, with the Erie Canal, we're talking the early half of the 1800s when Great Lakes cities barely even existed... so no, we're not going to see a lot of NYC "cultural connection" with the Great Lakes cities of today.

I'm not talking about architectural styles or regional accents. But if I was, I would talk about how Pittsburgh's style and accent emanates from southeastern PA and Maryland... and not from St. Louis or Louisville. And I've never once listened to someone in St. Louis or Louisville speak and been transported by the sound of their accent to a shot & beer bar in McKees Rocks or Sharpsburg or the South Side.

If we are simply talking about urban typology, then sure, we can be very simplistic about it and say river city or lakes city and be done with it. As I've said, even though Pittsburgh is certainly not a Great Lakes city, it is more closely connected with Great Lakes cities than it is with the other River cities, regardless of whether its housing vernacular and river valley location make it look much more like Cincinnati. So if I were to put Pittsburgh in one of these two groups...

Buffalo
Cleveland
Detroit

or

Cincinnati
Louisville
St. Louis

... there is zero doubt to me that it belongs in the top list. Does anyone really think that in the national consciousness that the name and ethos of "Pittsburgh" fits more appropriately in that bottom list? Come on!

To your first assertion that "economic links do not equal cultural links", they might not equal each other, but tight economic connection forged via various industries (that is, what people in a region do for work for literal generations of life) for over a century most certainly do play a big role in forming a shared culture.

To claim that cultural connection doesn't arise from the below would be absurd:





The shared heavy manufacturing heritage, and all of the historical, economic, ethnic connection between Cleveland/eastern OH & Pittsburgh/western PA that comes with it, gave us football as we know it today, for chrissakes. It's no accident that western PA and eastern OH is the veritable cradle of American football... and if football is not a "cultural link" in this country, then I don't know what the heck is. But aside from football for now, you don't believe that Pittsburgh has shared "cultural traditions" with Cleveland, considering that they have basically the same European ethnic makeup from the same era?

To the second point about how "Pittsburgh pretty much always "looked east" towards NYC and Philadelphia. It never really associated culturally with Cleveland beyond sports rivalry and the like."... well, if Pittsburgh does look east, then why would Pittsburgh be culturally connected with points much further west than Cleveland -- like Cincinnati, Louisville, and St. Louis?

A longtime sports rivalry and the like (i.e., Browns and Steelers) just derives from a history of regional/cultural association and similar situation/purpose... just like a high school sports rivalry exists between adjacent towns/neighborhoods... it comes from familiarity. Not because brick rowhouses 550 miles away in St. Louis looks like the brick rowhouses in Pittsburgh.

And the rivalry predates the Steelers and Browns... and likely predates Carnegie vs. Rockefeller. The rivalry goes back to when poor miners and mill workers from eastern OH and western PA were kicking and scratching for the same thing in the same area... and intermixing heavily. That's shared culture!

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

true, high wealth tracts (>$112K median household income) within city limits are a pretty damn rare in the rustbelt outside of chicago, which has dozens of them.

here's what i could find on justice maps (2020 data)

cincinnati: 3 tracts in the hyde park/ault park area (12,715 total pop.)
pittsburgh: 3 tracts in the squirrel hill area (11,420 total pop.)
milwaukee: 2 tracts in the upper east side area (6,181 total pop.)
detroit: 1 tract in palmer woods (1,972 total pop.)
st. louis: 0
cleveland: 0
buffalo: 0
rochester: 0

I think it's also worth noting that at least in the case of Pittsburgh, the fact that students and upper-middle-class professionals live in the same areas really skews the averages.

Like Shadyside has been a gentrified neighborhood longer than I've lived here. The permanent resident population is essentially entirely upper-middle class now, aside from maybe a few aging old hipppies who bought into the neighborhood in the 70s when it was still revitalizing. Real estate is near top of the market for Pittsburgh, meaning the houses usually start at $600,000 and run into the millions.

However, it also has a huge student renter population. Rental units are actually cheaper in Shadyside these days than a lot of more recently gentrified neighborhoods, since the "densification" boom happened decades ago, meaning most of the apartment units are in mid-century buildings or chopped-up houses. As a result, there's a very large contingent of lower-income grad students, and (theoretically) no-income undergrads.

There's similar dynamics in Oakland. The super-majority of student renters means on paper it's a low-income neighborhood, even though it has some areas with multi-million dollar homes. Squirrel Hill has student renter areas too, which skews things down a bit.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by eschaton

I think it's also worth noting that at least in the case of Pittsburgh, the fact that students and upper-middle-class professionals live in the same areas really skews the averages.

The same thing happens on Milwaukee's upper east side because of UWM. It's generally affluent, but outside of those two tracts directly on the lakefront that are literally nothing but giant old mansions and houses built for the elite over a century ago, the rest of the tracts in the area get their median income highly diluted by all of the student renters.

[Docere]

Toronto's Annex is like that. The homeowners are tenured University of Toronto professors and other affluent professionals, but it's about 70% renters including a lot of students.

[jmecklenborg]

Originally Posted by edale

I find the 'Connecticut influence' of Cleveland/NE Ohio to be overstated

It's just one of those obnoxious things Cleveland people cling to. Ohio was Virginia, originally, and even part of Quebec for a few years.