111-574: The Okmulgee Downtown Historic District is the original downtown area of Okmulgee, Oklahoma , roughly bounded by 4th Street, 8th Street, Okmulgee Avenue, and the Frisco tracks. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 17, 1992. The district comprises 41 blocks, 9 of which were identified in a Phase I survey, and 32 in a Phase 2 survey, both conducted in 1990. The district includes 151 contributing structures, while many of
222-698: A cot–caught merger , which is rapidly spreading throughout the whole country. However, the South, Inland North, and a Northeastern coastal corridor passing through Rhode Island, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore typically preserve an older cot–caught distinction. For that Northeastern corridor, the realization of the THOUGHT vowel is particularly marked , as depicted in humorous spellings, like in tawk and cawfee ( talk and coffee ), which intend to represent it being tense and diphthongal : [oə] . A split of TRAP into two separate phonemes , using different
333-520: A pronunciations for example in gap [æ] versus gas [eə] , further defines New York City as well as Philadelphia–Baltimore accents. Most Americans preserve all historical /r/ sounds, using what is known as a rhotic accent . The only traditional r -dropping (or non-rhoticity) in regional U.S. accents variably appears today in eastern New England , New York City , and some of the former plantation South primarily among older speakers (and, relatedly, some African-American Vernacular English across
444-616: A complex phenomenon of "both convergence and divergence": some accents are homogenizing and leveling , while others are diversifying and deviating further away from one another. Having been settled longer than the American West Coast, the East Coast has had more time to develop unique accents, and it currently comprises three or four linguistically significant regions, each of which possesses English varieties both different from each other as well as quite internally diverse: New England ,
555-447: A consonant, such as in pearl , car and fort . Non-rhotic American accents, those that do not pronounce ⟨r⟩ except before a vowel, such as some accents of Eastern New England , New York City , and African-Americans , and a specific few (often older ones) spoken by Southerners , are often quickly noticed by General American listeners and perceived as sounding especially ethnic, regional, or antiquated. Rhoticity
666-424: A great deal of money, while others would stand to gain. One way in which downtown changed from the late 19th century to the early part of the 20th century was that industrial concerns began to leave downtown and move to the periphery of the city, which meant that downtown's businesses were chiefly part of the burgeoning service sector . Brand new firms followed the older ones, and never came to downtown, settling at
777-586: A merger with the THOUGHT ( caught ) set. Having taken place prior to the unrounding of the cot vowel, it results in lengthening and perhaps raising, merging the more recently separated vowel into the THOUGHT vowel in the following environments: before many instances of /f/ , /θ/ , and particularly /s/ (as in Austria, cloth, cost, loss, off, often, etc.), a few instances before /ŋ/ (as in strong, long, wrong ), and variably by region or speaker in gone , on , and certain other words. Unlike American accents,
888-618: A model law, the Standard State Zoning Enabling Act of 1922 was drawn up for the guidance of cities wishing to enact zoning regulations, which are now part of virtually every American city. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the downtown area was the business district of the American city, but beginning around the 1920s and 1930s, as cities continued to grow in size and population, rival business districts began to appear outside of downtown in outlying districts. This
999-636: A nice day , for sure); many are now distinctly old-fashioned (swell, groovy). Some English words now in general use, such as hijacking, disc jockey , boost, bulldoze and jazz , originated as American slang. American English has always shown a marked tendency to use words in different parts of speech and nouns are often used as verbs . Examples of nouns that are now also verbs are interview, advocate, vacuum, lobby, pressure, rear-end, transition, feature, profile, hashtag, head, divorce, loan, estimate, X-ray, spearhead, skyrocket, showcase, bad-mouth, vacation , major, and many others. Compounds coined in
1110-475: A process of extensive dialect mixture and leveling in which English varieties across the colonies became more homogeneous compared with the varieties in Britain. English thus predominated in the colonies even by the end of the 17th century's first immigration of non-English speakers from Western Europe and Africa. Additionally, firsthand descriptions of a fairly uniform American English (particularly in contrast to
1221-572: A relief map, the Loop would be equivalent to the peaks of the Himalayas compared to the rest of the city. In 1926, Chicago's central business district, which took up less than 1% of the city, had 20% of the city's land value. The same relationship was true in St. Louis in the mid-20s (20%) and Los Angeles in the early 1930s (17%). So when a downtown area started to shift its location, some property owners were bound to lose
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#17328516559681332-657: A series of other vowel shifts in the same region, known by linguists as the " Inland North ". The Inland North shares with the Eastern New England dialect (including Boston accents ) a backer tongue positioning of the GOOSE /u/ vowel (to [u] ) and the MOUTH /aʊ/ vowel (to [ɑʊ~äʊ] ) in comparison to the rest of the country. Ranging from northern New England across the Great Lakes to Minnesota, another Northern regional marker
1443-514: A survey, completed in 2003, polling English speakers across the United States about their specific everyday word choices, hoping to identify regionalisms. The study found that most Americans prefer the term sub for a long sandwich, soda (but pop in the Great Lakes region and generic coke in the South) for a sweet and bubbly soft drink , you or you guys for the plural of you (but y'all in
1554-676: A unique name, unlike the former boroughs surrounding it; the center of the city is also where Philadelphia City Hall is located within the city's original plat . New Orleans uses the term Central Business District (or CBD) for its downtown due to the French Quarter and other historic neighborhoods downriver from the CBD being referred to as "downtown" . United States (50 most populous American cities) Canada American English American English , sometimes called United States English or U.S. English ,
1665-453: A variation of American English in these islands. In 2021, about 245 million Americans, aged 5 or above, spoke English at home: a majority of the United States total population of roughly 330 million people. The United States has never had an official language at the federal level, but English is commonly used at the federal level and in states without an official language. 32 of the 50 states, in some cases as part of what has been called
1776-509: Is uptown . In the common New York City phrase "We're going to take the subway downtown", downtown refers to traveling in the geographic direction of south. A person standing on 121st Street and walking ten blocks south could also be said to have walked ten blocks downtown. The term uptown is used to refer to the cardinal direction north. Such concepts derive from Manhattan's elongated shape, running roughly north–south and nowhere more than 2 mi (3.2 km) wide. As such, transportation on
1887-642: Is also associated with the United States, perhaps mostly in the Midwest and the South. American accents that have not undergone the cot–caught merger (the lexical sets LOT and THOUGHT ) have instead retained a LOT – CLOTH split : a 17th-century distinction in which certain words (labeled as the CLOTH lexical set ) separated away from the LOT set. The split, which has now reversed in most British English, simultaneously shifts this relatively recent CLOTH set into
1998-637: Is also home to a creole language known commonly as Hawaiian Pidgin , and some Hawaii residents speak English with a Pidgin-influenced accent. American English also gave rise to some dialects outside the country, for example, Philippine English , beginning during the American occupation of the Philippines and subsequently the Insular Government of the Philippine Islands ; Thomasites first established
2109-526: Is common in most American accents despite being now rare in England because, during the 17th-century British colonization, nearly all dialects of English were rhotic, and most North American English simply remained that way. The preservation of rhoticity in North America was also supported by continuing waves of rhotic-accented Scotch-Irish immigrants, most intensely during the 18th century (and moderately during
2220-407: Is located. Most major North American cities are located on major bodies of water, like oceans, lakes, and rivers. As cities expanded, people built further away from the water and their historical cores, often uphill. Thus the central business district of a North American city, or the historical core of the city, is often located "down", in altitude, relative to the remainder of the city. Many cities use
2331-468: Is often distinguished as a hub of public transit and culture. The Oxford English Dictionary ' s first citation for "down town" or "downtown" dates to 1770, in reference to the center of Boston . Some have posited that the term "downtown" was coined in New York City , where it was in use by the 1830s to refer to the original settlement, or town , at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan . As
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#17328516559682442-420: Is often identified by Americans as a "country" accent, and is defined by the /aɪ/ vowel losing its gliding quality : [aː] , the initiation event for a complicated Southern vowel shift, including a " Southern drawl " that makes short front vowels into distinct-sounding gliding vowels . The fronting of the vowels of GOOSE , GOAT , MOUTH , and STRUT tends to also define Southern accents as well as
2553-635: Is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the most widely spoken language in the United States ; the de facto common language used in government, education, and commerce; and an official language in 32 of the 50 U.S. states . Since the late 20th century, American English has become the most influential form of English worldwide. Varieties of American English include many patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar and particularly spelling that are unified nationwide but distinct from other English dialects around
2664-463: Is the variable fronting of /ɑ/ before /r/ , for example, appearing four times in the stereotypical Boston shibboleth Park the car in Harvard Yard . Several other phenomena serve to distinguish regional U.S. accents. Boston , Pittsburgh , Upper Midwestern , and Western U.S. accents have fully completed a merger of the LOT vowel with the THOUGHT vowel ( /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ , respectively):
2775-593: The Detroit Public Library and the Detroit Institute of Art , and most of the cultural institutions in Pittsburgh . Public reaction to these moves was mixed, with some bemoaning the loss of a counterbalance to the overall materialism of downtown, while others, particularly those involved in real estate, looked positively on the availability of the land which the cultural institutions left behind. The loss of
2886-476: The English-only movement , have adopted legislation granting official or co-official status to English. Typically only "English" is specified, not a particular variety like American English. (From 1923 to 1969, the state of Illinois recognized its official language as "American", meaning American English.) Puerto Rico is the largest example of a United States territory in which another language – Spanish –
2997-758: The Great Depression had a major effect on the country's downtown area. Downtown was just coming off a major building boom, in which significant amounts of new commercial and office space, hotels, and department stores had been built. By 1931 there were 89 buildings of 30 stories or more in Manhattan, and between 1925 and 1931, office space nearly doubled; in Chicago, it increased by almost 75%, in Philadelphia by almost two-thirds, and by more than 50% in New Orleans and Denver. In
3108-484: The Interstate Highway System , and white flight from urban cores to rapidly expanding suburbs . Due to well-intended but ineptly executed urban revitalization projects, downtowns eventually came to be dominated by high-rise office buildings in which commuters from the suburbs filled white-collar jobs, while the remaining residential populations sank further into unemployment, poverty, and homelessness. By
3219-1055: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , the New-York Historical Society , the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the City of New York , all in Manhattan, moved out of downtown, as did the Museum of Fine Arts , the Boston Public Library , the Boston Symphony Orchestra , and the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, the Cleveland Museum of Art , the Baltimore Museum of Art ,
3330-608: The Mid-Atlantic states (including a New York accent as well as a unique Philadelphia–Baltimore accent ), and the South . As of the 20th century, the middle and eastern Great Lakes area , Chicago being the largest city with these speakers, also ushered in certain unique features, including the fronting of the LOT /ɑ/ vowel in the mouth toward [a] and tensing of the TRAP /æ/ vowel wholesale to [eə] . These sound changes have triggered
3441-544: The Native American languages . Examples of such names are opossum , raccoon , squash , moose (from Algonquian ), wigwam , and moccasin . American English speakers have integrated traditionally non-English terms and expressions into the mainstream cultural lexicon; for instance, en masse , from French ; cookie , from Dutch ; kindergarten from German , and rodeo from Spanish . Landscape features are often loanwords from French or Spanish, and
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3552-714: The francophile tastes of the 19th century Victorian era Britain (for example they preferred programme for program , manoeuvre for maneuver , cheque for check , etc.). AmE almost always uses -ize in words like realize . BrE prefers -ise , but also uses -ize on occasion (see: Oxford spelling ). There are a few differences in punctuation rules. British English is more tolerant of run-on sentences , called " comma splices " in American English, and American English prefers that periods and commas be placed inside closing quotation marks even in cases in which British rules would place them outside. American English also favors
3663-402: The "Sun" that the outlying business districts revolved around. Others doubted whether decentralization had as strong an impact as it was credited with. Positions were taken that downtown was a natural part of the evolution of a city, or the unnatural result of a de facto conspiracy by merchants and property owners, so the question of what decentralization would do to downtown became bound up with
3774-405: The 1880s, and from there spread to most other American cities in the 1890s and 1900s. The apparent lack of a height limitation of this type of building set off a fervent debate over whether their height should be restricted by law, with proponents and opponents of height limits bringing out numerous arguments in favor of their position. The question of height limits also had a profound implication for
3885-759: The 18th century; apartment , shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium , townhouse , mobile home in the 20th century; and parts thereof ( driveway , breezeway, backyard ) . Industry and material innovations from the 19th century onwards provide distinctive new words, phrases, and idioms through railroading (see further at rail terminology ) and transportation terminology, ranging from types of roads ( dirt roads , freeways ) to infrastructure ( parking lot , overpass , rest area ), to automotive terminology often now standard in English internationally. Already existing English words—such as store , shop , lumber —underwent shifts in meaning; others remained in
3996-539: The 1920s, 500,000 additional hotel rooms were built in New York, and from 1927 to 1931 there were 84 large hotels built there, an increase of hotel space by two-thirds. When the boom was over, and the Depression had begun to have its effect, much of this new space became unneeded excess. Owners of smaller buildings who could not keep a sufficient number of tenants to pay their overhead, tore down their buildings, but whereas in
4107-589: The 1990s, many office-oriented businesses began to abandon the tired old downtowns for the suburbs, resulting in what are now known as " edge cities ". One textbook, in explaining why edge cities are so popular, stated: The big central city comes with dirt, crime, subways, stress, congestion, high taxes, and poor public schools. Edge cities are not immune to all of these problems (especially congestion) but for now they largely avoid most of them. Since then, between 2000 and 2010, downtown areas grew rapidly in population. In U.S. metro areas with at least five million people,
4218-534: The 20th century. The use of English in the United States is a result of British colonization of the Americas . The first wave of English-speaking settlers arrived in North America during the early 17th century, followed by further migrations in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 17th and 18th centuries, dialects from many different regions of England and the British Isles existed in every American colony, allowing
4329-622: The British form is a back-formation , such as AmE burglarize and BrE burgle (from burglar ). However, while individuals usually use one or the other, both forms will be widely understood and mostly used alongside each other within the two systems. While written American English is largely standardized across the country and spoken American English dialects are highly mutually intelligible, there are still several recognizable regional and ethnic accents and lexical distinctions. The regional sounds of present-day American English are reportedly engaged in
4440-647: The Chicago Loop – although values in other parts of the city, including the outlying business districts, fared even worse. Department stores were hit hard; most managed to keep their doors open, but few made money. Hotels which needed to have large staffs, and required high occupancy rates to make a profit were also deeply affected; in Manhattan the hotel occupancy rate fell from 1929's 70% to around 50% in 1933. Room rates were slashed, revenue dropped, and many hotels closed or defaulted. By 1934, 80% of hotels in Manhattan were owned by their creditors. The slow recovery from
4551-413: The East Coast (perhaps in imitation of 19th-century London speech), even the East Coast has gradually begun to restore rhoticity, due to it becoming nationally prestigious in the 20th century. The pronunciation of ⟨r⟩ is a postalveolar approximant [ ɹ̠ ] or retroflex approximant [ ɻ ] , but a unique "bunched tongue" variant of the approximant r sound
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4662-565: The Inland North. Rather than one particular accent, General American is best defined as an umbrella covering an American accent that does not incorporate features associated with some particular region, ethnicity, or socioeconomic group. Typical General American features include rhoticity , the father–bother merger , Mary–marry–merry merger , pre-nasal "short a " tensing , and other particular vowel sounds . General American features are embraced most by Americans who are highly educated or in
4773-485: The Manhattan model and continue to use downtown , midtown , and uptown both as informal relative geographical terms and as formal names for distinct districts. However, the city of Philadelphia uses the designation Center City , not downtown, due to the business district's central location, as well as Philadelphia's age and circumstances; "Center City" corresponds to the City of Philadelphia prior to its amalgamation with Philadelphia County in 1854 , leaving it without
4884-560: The South), sneakers for athletic shoes (but often tennis shoes outside the Northeast), and shopping cart for a cart used for carrying supermarket goods. American English and British English (BrE) often differ at the levels of phonology, phonetics, vocabulary, and, to a much lesser extent, grammar and orthography. The first large American dictionary, An American Dictionary of the English Language , known as Webster's Dictionary ,
4995-528: The U.S. Several verbs ending in -ize are of U.S. origin; for example, fetishize, prioritize, burglarize, accessorize, weatherize , etc.; and so are some back-formations (locate, fine-tune, curate, donate, emote, upholster and enthuse). Among syntactic constructions that arose are outside of, headed for, meet up with, back of, etc. Americanisms formed by alteration of some existing words include notably pesky, phony, rambunctious, buddy, sundae , skeeter, sashay and kitty-corner. Adjectives that arose in
5106-563: The U.S. are for instance foothill , landslide (in all senses), backdrop , teenager , brainstorm , bandwagon , hitchhike , smalltime, and a huge number of others. Other compound words have been founded based on industrialization and the wave of the automobile: five-passenger car, four-door sedan, two-door sedan, and station-wagon (called an estate car in British English). Some are euphemistic ( human resources , affirmative action , correctional facility ). Many compound nouns have
5217-662: The U.S. are, for example, lengthy, bossy, cute and cutesy, punk (in all senses), sticky (of the weather), through (as in "finished"), and many colloquial forms such as peppy or wacky . A number of words and meanings that originated in Middle English or Early Modern English and that have been in everyday use in the United States have since disappeared in most varieties of British English; some of these have cognates in Lowland Scots . Terms such as fall ("autumn"), faucet ("tap"), diaper ("nappy"; itself unused in
5328-530: The U.S. while changing in Britain. Science, urbanization, and democracy have been important factors in bringing about changes in the written and spoken language of the United States. From the world of business and finance came new terms ( merger , downsize , bottom line ), from sports and gambling terminology came, specific jargon aside, common everyday American idioms, including many idioms related to baseball . The names of some American inventions remained largely confined to North America ( elevator [except in
5439-427: The U.S.), candy ("sweets"), skillet , eyeglasses , and obligate are often regarded as Americanisms. Fall for example came to denote the season in 16th century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year." Gotten ( past participle of get ) is often considered to be largely an Americanism. Other words and meanings were brought back to Britain from
5550-541: The U.S., especially in the second half of the 20th century; these include hire ("to employ"), I guess (famously criticized by H. W. Fowler ), baggage , hit (a place), and the adverbs overly and presently ("currently"). Some of these, for example, monkey wrench and wastebasket , originated in 19th century Britain. The adjectives mad meaning "angry", smart meaning "intelligent", and sick meaning "ill" are also more frequent in American (and Irish) English than British English. Linguist Bert Vaux created
5661-531: The United States and the United Kingdom suggest that, while spoken American English deviated away from period British English in many ways, it is conservative in a few other ways, preserving certain features 21st-century British English has since lost. Full rhoticity (or "R-fulness") is typical of American accents, pronouncing the phoneme /r/ (corresponding to the letter ⟨r⟩ ) in all environments, including in syllable-final position or before
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#17328516559685772-596: The West and Midwest, and New York Latino English , spoken in the New York metropolitan area . Additionally, ethnic varieties such as Yeshiva English and " Yinglish " are spoken by some American Orthodox Jews , Cajun Vernacular English by some Cajuns in southern Louisiana , and Pennsylvania Dutch English by some Pennsylvania Dutch people. American Indian Englishes have been documented among diverse Indian tribes. The island state of Hawaii , though primarily English-speaking,
5883-547: The accents spoken in the " Midland ": a vast band of the country that constitutes an intermediate dialect region between the traditional North and South. Western U.S. accents mostly fall under the General American spectrum. Below, ten major American English accents are defined by their particular combinations of certain vowel sounds: In 2010, William Labov noted that Great Lakes, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and West Coast accents have undergone "vigorous new sound changes" since
5994-505: The aeronautical sense ], gasoline ) as did certain automotive terms ( truck , trunk ). New foreign loanwords came with 19th and early 20th century European immigration to the U.S.; notably, from Yiddish ( chutzpah , schmooze, bupkis, glitch ) and German ( hamburger , wiener ). A large number of English colloquialisms from various periods are American in origin; some have lost their American flavor (from OK and cool to nerd and 24/7 ), while others have not ( have
6105-455: The building profitable. What shattered that restriction was the invention of first the iron- and then the steel frame building, in which the building's load was carried by an internal metal frame skeleton, from which the masonry – and later glass – simply hung, without carrying any weight. Although first used in Chicago, the steel-framed skyscraper caught on most quickly in New York City in
6216-528: The business district lower Manhattan and the newer one in midtown began to grow towards each other, or in Chicago, where downtown expanded from the Loop across the Chicago River to Michigan Avenue . In fact, the instability of downtown was a cause for concern for business and real estate interests, as the business district refused to stay where it had been, and shifted its location in response to numerous factors, although it generally stayed fairly compact – in
6327-652: The cities themselves. Cities in the US grew much more slowly than during any other period in the history of the country, and some even lost population. Metropolitan regions grew faster than the cities inside them, indicating the start of the decades of urban sprawl , but they too grew at a slower pace than usual. Downtowns also had less daytime population because people now went to the outlying business districts, which were closer to their homes by car, for their shopping and entertainment, to do business, and to work. The increased use of automobiles over mass transit also damaged downtown, since
6438-579: The companies they did business with elsewhere. As a result of this migration, manufacturing was no longer a significant part of the downtown mix of businesses. Another sector which began to move away from downtown even before the turn of the 20th century were the great cultural institutions: museums, symphony halls, main libraries and so on. Not only was the high cost of land downtown a factor, but these institutions wanted larger plots of land than were available there, so that their buildings could themselves be easily perceived as works of art. Organizations such as
6549-406: The country), though the vowel-consonant cluster found in "bird", "work", "hurt", "learn", etc. usually retains its r pronunciation, even in these non-rhotic American accents. Non-rhoticity among such speakers is presumed to have arisen from their upper classes' close historical contact with England, imitating London's r -dropping, a feature that has continued to gain prestige throughout England from
6660-418: The daytime population of the country's downtowns did not rebound. For instance, in Chicago between 1929 and 1949, the population of the city grew 7%, and that of the entire metropolitan area by about 14%, but the daytime population of The Loop only rose 1/3 of 1%. With a few exceptions, such as New York City, this pattern was typical across American cities, and was tied to the slowing down of the rate of growth of
6771-543: The decentralization of commerce which affected the importance and influence of downtown and the central business district. Theaters , vaudeville houses, dance halls and night clubs had been primarily located in downtown, with nickelodeons spread throughout the city. When film became the dominant medium, and exhibitors started to build movie theaters to show them in, they at first built those venues downtown as well, but, as in retail shopping, chain exhibitors such as Loews began to construct them in locations convenient to
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#17328516559686882-682: The directionality of both words was lost, so that a Bostonian might refer to going "downtown", even though it was north of where they were. Downtown lay to the south in Detroit, but to the north in Cleveland, to the east in St. Louis, and to the west in Pittsburgh. In Boston, a resident pointed out in 1880, downtown was in the center of the city. Uptown was north of downtown in Cincinnati, but south of downtown in New Orleans and San Francisco. Notably, "downtown"
6993-672: The district include: Downtown Downtown is a term primarily used in North America to refer to a city's sometimes commercial , cultural and often the historical, political , and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district (CBD). It may also be a center for shopping and entertainment. Downtowns typically contain a small percentage of a city's employment but are concentrated in services, including high-end services (office or white-collar jobs). Sometimes, smaller downtowns include lower population densities and nearby lower incomes than suburbs . It
7104-614: The diverse regional dialects of British English) became common after the mid-18th century, while at the same time speakers' identification with this new variety increased. Since the 18th century, American English has developed into some new varieties, including regional dialects that retain minor influences from waves of immigrant speakers of diverse languages, primarily European languages. Some racial and regional variation in American English reflects these groups' geographic settlement, their de jure or de facto segregation, and patterns in their resettlement. This can be seen, for example, in
7215-742: The double quotation mark ("like this") over the single ('as here'). Vocabulary differences vary by region. For example, autumn is used more commonly in the United Kingdom, whereas fall is more common in American English. Some other differences include: aerial (United Kingdom) vs. antenna, biscuit (United Kingdom) vs. cookie/cracker, car park (United Kingdom) vs. parking lot, caravan (United Kingdom) vs. trailer, city centre (United Kingdom) vs. downtown, flat (United Kingdom) vs. apartment, fringe (United Kingdom) vs. bangs, and holiday (United Kingdom) vs. vacation. AmE sometimes favors words that are morphologically more complex, whereas BrE uses clipped forms, such as AmE transportation and BrE transport or where
7326-410: The early 1930s even the largest took up less than 2% of the city's space, and most were significantly smaller – and remained the primary business district of the city. Real estate interests were particularly concerned about the tendency of downtown to move because the downtown area had by far the highest land values in each city. One commentator said that if Chicago's land values were shown as height on
7437-465: The early part of the 20th century, English travel writers felt it necessary to explain to their readers what "downtown" meant. Although American downtowns lacked legally-defined boundaries, and were often parts of several of the wards that most cities used as their basic functional district, locating the downtown area was not difficult, as it was the place where all the street railways and elevated railways converged, and – at least in most places – where
7548-450: The edges of the city or the urban area. Industrial districts developed in these areas, which were sometimes specifically zoned for manufacturing. There, land was considerably cheaper than downtown, property taxes were lower, transportation of supplies and finished products was much easier without the constant congestion emblematic of downtown, and with the improvement of the telephone system, the industrial firms could still keep in touch with
7659-468: The effects of the Great Depression began in the mid-1930s, decelerated at the end of the 1930s, and picked up speed with the start of World War II , so that by the early 1940s the country was for the most part out of the Depression. Excess commercial space began to be used, vacancy rates dropped, department store sales rose, hotel occupancy rates went up, and revenues increased. Despite this recovery,
7770-510: The following two centuries) when this ethnic group eventually made up one-seventh of the colonial population. Scotch-Irish settlers spread from Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout the larger Mid-Atlantic region, the inland regions of both the South and North, and throughout the West: American dialect areas that were all uninfluenced by upper-class non-rhoticity and that consequently have remained consistently rhotic. While non-rhoticity spread on
7881-468: The growth of the chain stores, to the detriment of the big downtown department stores. Furthermore, the "taxpayers", which many people had expected to disappear once the economy improved, remained in place, and even increased in number. In the Loop in Chicago, by the early 1940s, 18% of the land was vacant or was used for parking; in Los Angeles at the same time, the figure was 25%. Demand for commercial space
7992-939: The hospital , BrE to hospital ; contrast, however, AmE actress Elizabeth Taylor , BrE the actress Elizabeth Taylor ). Often, these differences are a matter of relative preferences rather than absolute rules; and most are not stable since the two varieties are constantly influencing each other, and American English is not a standardized set of dialects. Differences in orthography are also minor. The main differences are that American English usually uses spellings such as flavor for British flavour , fiber for fibre , defense for defence , analyze for analyse , license for licence , catalog for catalogue and traveling for travelling . Noah Webster popularized such spellings in America, but he did not invent most of them. Rather, "he chose already existing options on such grounds as simplicity, analogy or etymology." Other differences are due to
8103-656: The influence of 18th-century Protestant Ulster Scots immigrants (known in the U.S. as the Scotch-Irish ) in Appalachia developing Appalachian English and the 20th-century Great Migration bringing African-American Vernacular English to the Great Lakes urban centers. Any phonologically unmarked North American accent falls under an umbrella known as General American. This section mostly refers to such General American features. Studies on historical usage of English in both
8214-473: The island travels in the uptown/downtown directions. The other boroughs are wider, and "downtown" there refers to Lower Manhattan, Downtown Brooklyn , or some more local business district. Mercantile efforts to promote the South Bronx as "Downtown Bronx" have met with little success. In some North American cities, downtown is the formal name of the neighborhood in which the city's central business district
8325-438: The late 18th century onwards, but which has conversely lost prestige in the U.S. since at least the early 20th century. Non-rhoticity makes a word like car sound like cah or source like sauce . New York City and Southern accents are the most prominent regional accents of the country, as well as the most stigmatized and socially disfavored. Southern speech, strongest in southern Appalachia and certain areas of Texas,
8436-446: The major cultural institutions left downtown as a place primarily dedicated to business, but the loss of another sector, retail shopping, defined the type of business that was done there. The great retail outlets like the department stores had always had the tendency to move closer to the residential districts, to make it easier for their customers to get to them, but after 1920 they started to congregate in secondary business districts on
8547-515: The major cultural institutions, much of the retail shopping in the city, and its loss of status as the entertainment center, the nature of downtown had changed considerably. It was still the location of banks, stocks and commodity exchanges, law and accounting firms, the headquarters of the major industrial concerns and public utilities, insurance companies, and advertising agencies, and in its confines continued to be built new and taller skyscrapers housing offices, hotels and even department stores, but it
8658-409: The mass audience they were seeking; again, it was a matter of bringing their product to where the people were. By the late 1920s, movie houses outside of downtown far outnumbered those in the central district. Not all the movie theaters in the periphery were palaces , but some were, and the net effect was that downtown was no longer the entertainment center of the city. With the loss of manufacturing,
8769-427: The mid-nineteenth century onwards, so they "are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago", while other accents, like of New York City and Boston, have remained stable in that same time-frame. However, a General American sound system also has some debated degree of influence nationwide, for example, gradually beginning to oust the regional accent in urban areas of the South and at least some in
8880-617: The most formal contexts, and regional accents with the most General American native features include North Midland, Western New England, and Western accents. Although no longer region-specific, African-American Vernacular English , which remains the native variety of most working- and middle-class African Americans , has a close relationship to Southern dialects and has greatly influenced everyday speech of many Americans, including hip hop culture . Hispanic and Latino Americans have also developed native-speaker varieties of English. The best-studied Latino Englishes are Chicano English , spoken in
8991-437: The nature of downtown itself: would it continue to be a concentrated core, or as it grew, would height limits force it to spread out into a larger area. In the short run, the proponents of height limits were successful in their efforts. By the 1910s, most of the large and medium-sized cities had height limits in effect, although New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Minneapolis were notable exceptions. Ultimately, it
9102-482: The original town – which was also New York's only major center of business at the time – became known as "downtown" ( Lower Manhattan ). During the late 19th century, the term was gradually adopted by cities across the United States to refer to the historical core of the city, which was most often the same as the commercial heart of the city. "Uptown" also spread, but to a much lesser extent. In both cases, though,
9213-410: The outer wall, making higher-up segments of the building progressively narrower than the base) to reduce a building's bulk by allowing additional height per foot of setback – the exact amount depending on what zone the building was in. The ultimate effect of setbacks is to increase the sunlight and visible sky at street level. New York City was the first to do this, with the 1916 Zoning Resolution , which
9324-402: The past forms of a few verbs (for example, AmE/BrE: learned / learnt , burned / burnt , snuck/sneaked , dove/dived ) although the purportedly "British" forms can occasionally be seen in American English writing as well; different prepositions and adverbs in certain contexts (for example, AmE in school, BrE at school ); and whether or not a definite article is used, in very few cases (AmE to
9435-503: The periphery of the city. The growth of chain stores such as J. C. Penney , F. W. Woolworth , Kresge and W. T. Grant , contributed to the increased importance of the outlying shopping districts, which began outselling those retail stores which had remained in the central business district, and provoked those stores to open branches in the secondary districts in attempt to go to where there customers were instead of having them come downtown to them. Entertainment venues also contributed to
9546-399: The population within two miles of the city hall grew twice as fast as the overall population in the metro area. The terms downtown and uptown can refer to cardinal directions , for example, in Manhattan, where downtown is also a relative geographical term. Anything south of where the speaker is currently standing, in most places, is said to be downtown . Anything north of the speaker
9657-606: The predominantly African-American commercial area which built up on 5th & 6th Streets. The Okmulgee Historic Preservation Commission was established in 1988 as part of that Historic Preservation Ordinance passed by the town's City Council to provide protection to the district. The Commission oversees architectural changes within the area. At least one subsequent architectural survey has identified other districts and structures in Okmulgee which might qualify for historical listing, but no action has been taken. Selected buildings within
9768-587: The question about the area's legitimacy. Decentralization also increased the incidences of rivalry between downtown and burgeoning business districts. In Los Angeles, for instance, downtown and Wilshire Boulevard battled for dominance, and in Cincinnati the rivalry was between the old downtown centered around Fountain Square and the one on Canal Street. The diminishment of downtown by decentralization caused these battles to be between areas that were now more relatively equal. Like almost every other aspect of American life,
9879-448: The railroad terminals were. It was the location of the great department stores and hotels, as well as that of theaters, clubs, cabarets, and dance halls, and where skyscrapers were built once that technology was perfected. It was also frequently, at first, the only part of a city that was electrified. It was also the place where street congestion was the worst, a problem for which a solution was never really found. But most of all, downtown
9990-520: The recent past they would have been replaced with taller buildings, now they became one- and two-story parking garages or ground-level parking lots. These were widely known as "taxpayers", as they generated enough revenue for the owner of the lot to pay the taxes on it. Rents fell, sometimes as much as 30%, and non-payment of rent increased. Even with the "taxpayers" taking away commercial space, vacancy rates rose precipitously. Owners went into default, and downtown real estate lost considerable value: 25–30% in
10101-681: The remaining 46 structures could be contributing if intrusive sheeting elements were to be removed. The buildings range from the Creek National Capitol , built in 1878, to the five- to eight-story buildings constructed during the late 1910s and the 1920s of the oil boom. The predominant architectural style of the district is Early Commercial , but some other represented styles are Renaissance Revival , Richardsonian Romanesque , Italian Renaissance Revival , Second Renaissance Revival , Spanish Colonial Revival , Neoclassical Revival , Beaux Arts , Italianate , and Art Deco . The district includes
10212-430: The rise of the private automobile, which allowed shoppers to go to peripheral business districts more easily; a strong increase in streetcar fares; and the continuing problem of congestion in the narrow streets of the downtown area. As much as people disagreed about what caused decentralization, they were even less in agreement about how decentralization would affect the central business district, with opinions varying all
10323-422: The streetcar lines converged on downtown, while the roads went everywhere. All of these factors contributed to the lesser recovery of downtown relative to the city as a whole and the metropolitan area. Another sign that downtowns were no longer as central to city life as they once were include the decreased portion of retail trade that took place there as compared to the peripheral business areas, which profited by
10434-408: The town of New York grew into a city, the only direction it could grow on the island was toward the north , proceeding upriver from the original settlement, the "up" and "down" terminology coming from the customary map design in which up was north and down was south . Thus, anything north of the original town became known as " uptown " ( Upper Manhattan ), and was generally a residential area, while
10545-570: The traditional standard accent of (southern) England, Received Pronunciation (RP), has evolved a trap–bath split . Moreover, American accents preserve /h/ at the start of syllables, while perhaps a majority of the regional dialects of England participate in /h/ dropping , particularly in informal contexts. However, General American is also innovative in a number of its own ways: The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as English-speaking British-American colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from
10656-417: The verb-and-preposition combination: stopover, lineup, tryout, spin-off, shootout , holdup, hideout, comeback, makeover , and many more. Some prepositional and phrasal verbs are in fact of American origin ( win out, hold up, back up/off/down/out, face up to and many others). Noun endings such as -ee (retiree), -ery (bakery), -ster (gangster) and -cian (beautician) are also particularly productive in
10767-436: The way from the belief that it would diminish downtown sufficiently that it would eventually consist of only offices and the headquarters of corporate giants, to the belief that decentralization would lead to the (perhaps deserved) death of downtown entirely as unnecessary, a victim of its untameable traffic congestion. In between were those who saw a diminishment of the area's influence, but not enough to prevent it from remaining
10878-772: The word corn , used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the maize plant, the most important crop in the U.S. Most Mexican Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812 , with the opening of the West, like ranch (now a common house style ). Due to Mexican culinary influence, many Spanish words are incorporated in general use when talking about certain popular dishes: cilantro (instead of coriander), queso, tacos, quesadillas, enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, burritos, and guacamole. These words usually lack an English equivalent and are found in popular restaurants. New forms of dwelling created new terms ( lot , waterfront) and types of homes like log cabin , adobe in
10989-609: The world. Any American or Canadian accent perceived as lacking noticeably local, ethnic, or cultural markers is known in linguistics as General American ; it covers a fairly uniform accent continuum native to certain regions of the U.S. but especially associated with broadcast mass media and highly educated speech. However, historical and present linguistic evidence does not support the notion of there being one single mainstream American accent . The sound of American English continues to evolve, with some local accents disappearing, but several larger regional accents having emerged in
11100-451: Was already a sluggish market. To many in the real estate industry, the zoning law was an example of a "reasonable restriction." Once New York had passed its law, other cities followed, although proposed zoning measures did meet stiff resistance in some places, often because of the inclusion of overly restrictive height limits, and sometimes because the entire concept of zoning was seen as undemocratic and bordering on socialism . Eventually,
11211-417: Was assumed that people would climb, but with the elevator, that limit was shattered, and buildings began to be constructed up to about sixteen stories. What limited them then was the thickness of the masonry needed at the base to hold the weight of the building above it. As the buildings got taller, the thickness of the masonry and the space needed for elevators did not allow for sufficient rentable space to make
11322-410: Was done downtown, those who had their homes there were gradually pushed out, selling their property and moving to quieter residential areas uptown. The skyscraper would become the hallmark of the downtown area. Prior to the invention of the elevator – and later the high-speed elevator – buildings were limited in height to about six stories, which was a de facto limit set by the amount of stairs it
11433-424: Was no longer as dominant as it once was. The causes of decentralization, which decreased the importance of downtown in the life of American cities, have been ascribed to many factors, including each city's normal growth patterns; advances in technology like the telephone, which made it easier for business-to-business intercourse to take place over a distance, thus lessening the need for a centralized commercial core;
11544-464: Was not included in dictionaries as late as the 1880s. But by the early 1900s, "downtown" was clearly established as the proper term in American English for a city's central business district, although the word was virtually unknown in Britain and Western Europe, where expressions such as "city centre" (British English), "el centro" (Spanish), "das Zentrum" (German), etc are used. Even as late as
11655-405: Was not simple height limits that restricted skyscrapers, but they were limited by comprehensive zoning laws which set up separate requirements for different parts of a city. Zoning rules would regulate not only height, but also a building's volume, the percentage of the lot used, and the amount of light the building blocked. Zoning regulations sometimes encouraged setbacks (step-like recessions in
11766-474: Was prompted in large part by the construction of the Equitable Building in 1915. The Equitable Building was a 40-story building with straight sides and no setbacks, which raised fears of the downtown area becoming a maze of dark streets that never saw the sun. Worse yet, at least from a real estate perspective, this new building created 1.2 million square feet (111,000 m ) of office space, flooding into what
11877-461: Was so light that it did not make financial sense to construct expensive new buildings, and banks began to refuse to make loans for that purpose, redlining whole neighborhoods in the central business district. The typical American downtown has certain unique characteristics. During the postwar economic boom in the 1950s , the residential population of most downtowns crashed. This has been attributed to reasons such as slum clearance , construction of
11988-406: Was still steadily losing ground as decentralization took its toll. Its daytime population was not keeping pace with the population growth of the city around it, and property values, while continuing to rise, were not rising as fast as those in the secondary business districts. Downtown was still the central business district, and was still the most important area for doing business and commerce, but it
12099-420: Was the place where the city did its business. Inside its small precincts, sometimes as small as several hundred acres, the majority of the trading, selling, and purchasing – retail and wholesale – in the entire area would take place. There were hubs of business in other places around the city and its environs, but the downtown area was the chief one, truly the central business district. And as more and more business
12210-441: Was the time when the term " central business district " began to appear as more-or-less synonymous with the downtown area. The phrase acknowledged the existence of other business districts in the city, but allocated to downtown the primacy of being "central", not only geographically, in many cities, but also in importance. And in many cases, the downtown area or central business district, itself began to grow, such as in Manhattan where
12321-469: Was written by Noah Webster in 1828, codifying several of these spellings. Differences in grammar are relatively minor, and do not normally affect mutual intelligibility; these include: typically a lack of differentiation between adjectives and adverbs, employing the equivalent adjectives as adverbs he ran quick / he ran quickly ; different use of some auxiliary verbs ; formal (rather than notional) agreement with collective nouns ; different preferences for
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