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  #41  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 6:08 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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Old money neighborhood to me is short hand for neighborhoods that have long been wealthy and have an establishmentarian character. I doubt there's any "heir-dominated" neighborhoods which I guess would be the literal definition of old money.
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  #42  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 6:17 PM
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Originally Posted by JManc View Post
I lived in the Heights as a kid in the 80's and it was mostly elderly and immigrants and sketchy in a lot of areas. Took a complete 180 in the late 90's. We had a family friend next door who kept on getting offers to buy her house (a bungalow) for $100k as late as the early 2000's. That house is probably worth at least $500k and hasn't been updated. That whole area is mostly new money now.

My lawn guy's house is worth 2x as ours so he did something right. Likely bought in years ago when the market was right.
Our first home purchase in Houston was a bungalow a couple of blocks east of Heights Blvd that we paid $69.9k for in 1985 (5% down, 12% interest). Sold it (reluctantly) for somewhere around $90k three years later after I completed a lot of restoration and remodeling, doing nearly all the work by myself (I got to declare a net capital loss on my taxes that year). We had multiple offers, some higher, but banks at the time weren't willing to finance old houses in Houston so those offers fell through. Today, HCAD shows it has a market value of over $1M, $600k being land value.

For years, until we left Houston, we wished we had been able to stay in that house and upgrade it to the level the current owner has. But, at the time, it wasn't feasible for us to stay in the Heights.
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  #43  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 6:18 PM
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Originally Posted by eschaton View Post
Of course Fox Chapel, Sewickley, and Mt. Lebanon are not actually in the city. Plus the actual wealth in "Sewickley" isn't in the borough proper, it's in other municipalities in the school system, like Edgeworth, Sewickley Hills, and Sewickley Heights. Sewickley proper is more modest in terms of wealth (median household income of $78,000 according to Justice Map). The Sewickley area was 100% an old money enclave though - built up as a railroad suburb by North Side wealth once they decamped from Allegheny West and Manchester.

I'd also argue Mt. Lebanon was was never an "old money" area though, it was just an upper-middle class area. Looking at real estate listings you can still get houses there for under $300,000, the average listing seems to be around $500,000, and only a handful of homes are $1 million+. It was built out in the interwar period as a suburb for doctors, lawyers, and mid-level managers.

Within the city, I think it's unquestionable that Shadyside and Squirrel Hill (North of Forbes) have been the wealthy areas, with some spillover, like parts of Point Breeze and the Schenley Farms area of Oakland. It's hard to detect the considerable wealth in Shadyside these days looking at median household income however, because the main corridors surrounding the wealthiest portion of Shadyside were converted during the mid-20th century into apartments, and ultimately became student slums. The juxtaposition of the old 19th century homes and the mid-century infill as the estates were broken up is quite weird though - showcasing the area did go "downhill" for a bit in the mid 20th century.

I'd say Highland Park isn't in the same boat though. It resisted white flight, but clearly went downhill more sharply from the 1950s through the 1980s in the areas bordering East Liberty. The area up on the hill west of N Highland maintained itself as kinda a mini-Squirrel Hill though.
Yeah, I was speaking in location generalities and using the "old money" term rather loosely.

Fox Chapel and Sewickley... yes, east ender and north sider estate-type wealth that goes back centuries in some cases.

Mt. Lebanon, like Squirrel Hill, is a big "neighborhood". Both probably have what 30k residents or so?... with a pretty diverse mix of housing types and income levels. True, Mt. Lebanon isn't "old money"... but rather an upper class suburb that has remained so throughout its existence. For Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, I was speaking generally to encompass Point Breeze as well... obviously quite a mix of incomes these days, but still have maintained as long-standing pockets of wealth within the city limits.

I hear what you're saying about Highland Park, given that a significant chunk of it that fell far out of desirability. However, it was one of Pittsburgh's original "mansion neighborhoods". Some of the original gilded age mansions from the late 1800s/early 1900s remain, but most of them that lined N Highland were torn down by the 1930s... most only existing for a few decades. You can still see some of the stone walls where they stood, now occupied by 1930s Tudors and 1950s ranch style homes. It certainly doesn't have the breadth and consistency of wealth like one finds in Squirrel Hill, but Highland Park was established as a wealthy area, and remained intact as just that... even though parts of it declined substantially.
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  #44  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 6:50 PM
Obadno Obadno is offline
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
Pretty much every North American metro (except maybe Phoenix or Orlando or Las Vegas) has a 1920s era wealthy SFH area I think.
Phoenix has this



Built 1914

There aren't a ton of them because 1900-1920 Phoenix was quite small and really more of a collection of farm towns across an agricultural area. So a lot of these were large farming estates where all that is now left is a big old house and maybe 2 acres of yard maybe a horse corall

What we lack really is homes from before 1900 again, there just wasn't a lot to begin with so only a handful have survived as cute restaurants and shops or offices. Some are still houses even. But its maybe a couple dozen at most.





https://goo.gl/maps/k9oknogMhGpEGveS6

https://goo.gl/maps/fPr3cL91HQGGaEcN8

https://goo.gl/maps/3sVZ6kkSA1icHym16

https://goo.gl/maps/PeZxgBtJEKHUFNkJ7

https://goo.gl/maps/thWfAUyU9mGvhVW66
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  #45  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 8:25 PM
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Philadelphia City Limits Old Money Neighborhoods
Rittenhouse Square
Society Hill
Fitler Square
West Mount Airy
Chestnut Hill

Philadelphia Old Money Suburban Towns
Bala Cynwyd
Merion Station
Wynnewood
Narberth
Penn Valley
Ardmore
Haverford
Bryn Mawr
Gladwyne
Villanova
Radnor
Wayne
Devon
Berwyn
Paoli
Malvern
Blue Bell
Fort Washington
Ambler/Spring House
Doylestown
New Hope
Newtown
Haddonfield and Moorestown in New Jersey
Avalon and Stone Harbor at the Jersey Shore
Northern Delaware between Wilmington, the PA border, Route 202 and Route 41
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  #46  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 8:32 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
New Orleans is interesting in that it's a very troubled city, very large black population, highest murder rate in U.S. many years, yet the wealth centers haven't really shifted in the last century. Wealth is south/west of CBD, near St. Charles Ave. Despite all its issues, I bet it has one of the highest shares of in-town wealth in the U.S. There aren't really any wealthy suburbs.
White New Orleanians must not be afraid of Black people like 80% of White America seems to be
New Orleans has been seen as one of the most interesting, cultured cities in America since the late 19th century, despite all of its shortcomings.


Ani DiFranco wrote this song in 2001, I believe.
Video Link

Quote:
White people are so scared of black people
They bulldoze out to the country
And put up houses on little loop-dee-loop streets
And while america gets its heart cut right out of its chest
The berlin wall still runs down main street
Separating east side from west
And nothing is stirring, not even a mouse
In the boarded-up stores and the broken-down houses
So they hang colorful banners off all the street lamps
Just to prove they got no manners
No mercy and no sense
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  #47  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 9:05 PM
Buckeye Native 001 Buckeye Native 001 is offline
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  #48  
Old Posted May 4, 2023, 11:20 PM
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Originally Posted by sopas ej View Post
To add to that, there's that private gated community within Hancock Park called Fremont Place, LA's very first gated community, established in 1911.

There's also an adjacent neighborhood called Windsor Square, but many people think it's part of Hancock Park. It was very exclusive, and was the first neighborhood in LA to have all of its electrical utilities underground; they didn't want any visible poles and wires. Even the flatlands of Beverly Hills have poles and wires, but they're in the alleys behind the homes.
I have always considered Windsor Square as well as Larchmont Village to be part of Hancock Park. The area that I think most people don't associate with Hancock Park (Google doesn't, but real estate agents do) is south of Wilshire between Wilton, Rimpau, and Pico. That's a great area to invest in right now. Also beautiful are Victoria Park and Lafayette Square.

I just wish the streets in Hancock Park would be narrower, the parkways wider (like you see in Evanston), and that all properties would have hedges, brick walls, wrought iron fences, or some combination of those. That's actually the trick (real and psychological) to making an area with SFHs feel more walkable because those features are a visual indication that the property begins at the sidewalk and sort of reduces the setback.
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  #49  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 11:45 AM
TempleGuy1000 TempleGuy1000 is offline
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Originally Posted by summersm343 View Post
Rittenhouse Square
Society Hill
Fitler Square
West Mount Airy
Chestnut Hill
I agree with the other ones, but not Society Hill. SH was a model example of urban renewal and while a number of historic colonial and industrial age structures exist, the neighborhood saw substantial change over the years including 'gentrifying' in the 1950s and 60s.
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  #50  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 2:16 PM
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Originally Posted by Wigs View Post
White New Orleanians must not be afraid of Black people like 80% of White America seems to be
New Orleans has been seen as one of the most interesting, cultured cities in America since the late 19th century, despite all of its shortcomings.
Aside from a long legacy of nearly overt political corruption and its susceptibility to catastrophic flooding (and I realize those are major "asides"), I don't think of New Orleans as having all that many shortcomings... at least not in comparison to any other city.
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  #51  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 2:29 PM
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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Aside from a long legacy of nearly overt political corruption and its susceptibility to catastrophic flooding (and I realize those are major "asides"), I don't think of New Orleans as having all that many shortcomings... at least not in comparison to any other city.
I disagree, New Orleans and it's people are treated like a zoo by tourists and the state of Louisiana. Probably one of the most depressing cities in America in my opinion, abject poverty, apparent racial caste system, dangerously neglected infrastructure, extremely filthy city. The culture and historic charm is fascinating, but probably the closest thing American mainland has to an exploited Caribbean island.
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  #52  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:09 PM
Docere Docere is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Cleveland might have no such neighborhoods within city limits, however. But Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights are more or less the same thing.
It seems like that the city of Cleveland has pretty much been a working class city for a long time.

Perhaps a reflection of this, by the early 1960s, Jews (who had become a middle and upper middle class group) had completely abandoned the city of Cleveland.

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The Jewish community is merely the most classic example of an almost universal tendency. Since the turn of the century, five neighborhoods have been centers of Jewish settlement each progressively further east from the center of the city. (The western half of the city has never had more than 500 Jewish families.) When these neighborhoods have been left, they have been totally abandoned, to the point where today, perhaps uniquely among American cities, Cleveland proper is almost literally a city without Jews. (At a recent Jewish affair a candidate for state office remarked not-so-facetiously to the mayor of Cleveland, “What in hell are you doing here?”} Over 90 per cent of the Jews of Cuyahoga County, in which Cleveland is located, live in the suburbs and only two of the twenty-five synagogues are still in the city itself. Of the estimated 1000 Jewish graduates of public high schools of the county in June, 1961, a maximum of half a dozen received diplomas from Cleveland’s schools and the number will soon disappear almost entirely. Only some 250 of the 140,000 children attending Cleveland’s public schools are Jewish. All but three of the Jewish service agencies are located in the suburbs.
https://teachingcleveland.org/clevel...-vincent-1962/

Even Detroit proper (much larger) had a Jewish section until the late 1960s I think.
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  #53  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:10 PM
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Abject poverty, apparent racial caste system, dangerously neglected infrastructure, extremely filthy…. hmmm, yeah, this is all specific to New Orleans. I’ve never seen this mix in other American cities.
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  #54  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:16 PM
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summersm343 summersm343 is offline
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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Abject poverty, apparent racial caste system, dangerously neglected infrastructure, extremely filthy…. hmmm, yeah, this is all specific to New Orleans. I’ve never seen this mix in other American cities.
Hahaha. I was gonna say… sounds like most American cities.

Meanwhile, Europeans and Canadians take pride in their cities, invest in their cities, etc.
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  #55  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:20 PM
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Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000 View Post
I agree with the other ones, but not Society Hill. SH was a model example of urban renewal and while a number of historic colonial and industrial age structures exist, the neighborhood saw substantial change over the years including 'gentrifying' in the 1950s and 60s.
Yes and no. You’re absolutely right that Society Hill declined and was redeveloped and gentrified in the 50s/60s, however, it was established as a wealthy elite neighborhood. Many wealthy, gentry, nobles, politicians and founding fathers lived here or had second homes here in what was the second most important city in the British empire after London at the time. Today, it is also a neighborhood for the wealthy elite, and is even wealthier on average than Rittenhouse Square. Therefore, I would say it qualifies.
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  #56  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:21 PM
3rd&Brown 3rd&Brown is offline
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Originally Posted by summersm343 View Post
Philadelphia City Limits Old Money NeighborhoodsBlue Bell
Fort Washington
Ambler/Spring House
Doylestown
New Hope
Newtown
Haddonfield and Moorestown in New Jersey
Avalon and Stone Harbor at the Jersey Shore
Northern Delaware between Wilmington, the PA border, Route 202 and Route 41
TBH I never really understood the wealth around Fort Washington and Blue Bell. Is it really that old or is it comprised mostly of upper middle class Jewish folks who fled North Philadelphia up 611 and 309? Is it there because of J&J and Merck? If so, how long have those companies been there? Otherwise, it doesn't really have a similar history to the Main Line and the original railroad suburbs.

I'd add to this list Chadds Ford and Unionville. Unionville is like quiet old old money. Dick Haynes and Dodo Hamilton money. (Although the former isn't old). It's just never thought of as rich because it's like 20 people who own massive farms aggregated in the same area 35 miles from Philadephia.
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  #57  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:27 PM
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Originally Posted by pj3000 View Post
Aside from a long legacy of nearly overt political corruption and its susceptibility to catastrophic flooding (and I realize those are major "asides"), I don't think of New Orleans as having all that many shortcomings... at least not in comparison to any other city.
Highest murder rate in the U.S. last year? Among the highest poverty rates and lowest education rates? Water system regularly needs boiling, flooding is constant, infrastructure is crap? The mayor is shacking up with her security guard all day, in a city-funded French Quarter love nest? State ranks 49th or 50th on most metrics?

I'd say New Orleans, despite its obvious charms, character and tourist appeal, has no shortage of issues, even relative to other U.S. cities. It's one of my favorite cities, but let's be real. When your crime makes Detroit look safe, your city has issues.
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  #58  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:35 PM
Crawford Crawford is offline
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Originally Posted by Docere View Post
It seems like that the city of Cleveland has pretty much been a working class city for a long time.

Perhaps a reflection of this, by the early 1960s, Jews (who had become a middle and upper middle class group) had completely abandoned the city of Cleveland.



https://teachingcleveland.org/clevel...-vincent-1962/

Even Detroit proper (much larger) had a Jewish section until the late 1960s I think.
Yeah, I think Jews vacated Cleveland's city proper earlier than any other major U.S. city. By 1960 they were gone. Detroit had a sizable Jewish community in city proper until about 1970, and the largest synagogue in Metro Detroit remained until about 1980 (though by that point, the membership was overwhelmingly suburban).

Much of this is just a function of differing city sizes, however. Cleveland has smaller limits, and, if anything, Cleveland Jews stayed closer to the core (Cleveland Heights). The post-1960 Detroit Jewish population was in an area (Livernois-7 Mile) generally more suburban than Cleveland Heights. The last truly urban Detroit Jewish neighborhood was Dexter Davison, which except for some grannies was vacated by around 1960.
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  #59  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:41 PM
3rd&Brown 3rd&Brown is offline
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Highest murder rate in the U.S. last year? Among the highest poverty rates and lowest education rates? Water system regularly needs boiling, flooding is constant, infrastructure is crap? The mayor is shacking up with her security guard all day, in a city-funded French Quarter love nest? State ranks 49th or 50th on most metrics?

I'd say New Orleans, despite its obvious charms, character and tourist appeal, has no shortage of issues, even relative to other U.S. cities. It's one of my favorite cities, but let's be real. When your crime makes Detroit look safe, your city has issues.
Yeah. I love NOLA as much as the next person but it's basically 2nd world and nobody seems to care. I guess that's part of the charm.

Aside from Oil, there is essentially no industry to speak of in the whole of Louisiana...and even that is mostly extraction. The HQs of most of the companies which take resources from Louisiana are in Texas.

I can't think of a place in this country TBH that has stagnated as much as Louisiana in the last generation. I used to think of it being a bit more progressive and forward thinking than the rest of the deep south, but in some ways it's been lapped, at least by Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama. Alabama has Huntsville and Birmingham, the latter of which seems to be positioning itself to inherit some headwinds from Atlanta.
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  #60  
Old Posted May 5, 2023, 3:47 PM
iheartthed iheartthed is offline
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Originally Posted by 3rd&Brown View Post
Yeah. I love NOLA as much as the next person but it's basically 2nd world and nobody seems to care. I guess that's part of the charm.

Aside from Oil, there is essentially no industry to speak of in the whole of Louisiana...and even that is mostly extraction. The HQs of most of the companies which take resources from Louisiana are in Texas.

I can't think of a place in this country TBH that has stagnated as much as Louisiana in the last generation. I used to think of it being a bit more progressive and forward thinking than the rest of the deep south, but in some ways it's been lapped, at least by Tennessee, Arkansas, and Alabama. Alabama has Huntsville and Birmingham, the latter of which seems to be positioning itself to inherit some headwinds from Atlanta.
Mississippi. Louisiana is generally more progressive than the others, but it is definitely stagnant. There is a southern Rust Belt that covers New Orleans, Memphis, Jackson, MS, Birmingham, AL.
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