Neighborhood rebranding in New York City

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Neighborhood rebranding in New York City has been a constant phenomenon for decades as real estate promoters, community groups and residents all sometimes rename communities to increase prestige and move away from an older negative reputation.

Neighborhood rebranding began after the Civil War, when slightly tawdry neighborhoods like Harsonville, centered on Broadway about 68th Street, were reclassified as part of suburban Bloomingdale farther up the road that was renamed "The Boulevard". What is now the Upper West Side was meant to be named the "West End" to lure an Anglophile upper class—that was not so easily taken in, however, and remained on the East Side.

After World War II, the name of the small and fashionable hill that had been known as Murray Hill was applied to the perfectly featureless area to its east.

Probably the most successful and influential neighborhood rebranding was of SoHo, which stands for South of Houston Street, and is deliberately imitative of Soho in London. TriBeCa, another rebranding success, stands for Triangle Below Canal Street.

The use of acronym and medial capitals has been influential in adjacent neighborhoods trying to pick up on SoHo's cachet. The most obvious inspiration is NoHo, located North of Houston Street. More recent examples include NoLIta, North of Little Italy, and BoHo which is the area surrounding the Bowery south of Houston Street.

Other attempts met with local resistance, especially in "Clinton", which residents persist in calling "Hell's Kitchen".

The trend has also spread to the boroughs outside Manhattan with BoCoCa in Brooklyn, which is the area encompassing the neighborhoods of Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill, and Carroll Gardens, and DUMBO in Brooklyn, which stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

In the Port Morris section of the South Bronx, many residents call it SoBro (South Bronx). It was renamed in order to eliminate the negative stereotypes of the South Bronx. However, many older residents continue to call it the South Bronx.

For a good history and an analysis of the effects of rebranding and gentrification in New York City, read "If You Lived Here", a collection edited by New York born artist Martha Rosler.