Vol. 47 No. 4 (1999)
Research Article

Unreal Estate: Words, Names and Allusions in Suburban Home Advertising

PDF
  • Darrell A. Norris
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1179/nam.1999.47.4.365

Published 1999-12-01

Copyright (c) 1999 Maney

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

Abstract

Suburban subdivision naming practices are a revealing branch of toponymic study. However, cultural geographers have neither fully tapped these names in the landscape nor explored the parallel vocabulary of expression and emphasis in real estate advertising. Here I consider the allusions conveyed by the names of residential developments advertised in metropolitan Rochester, New York. A taxonomy of allusions shows how nomenclature had come to transcend the pastoral gentry theme typical of previous and mostly impressionistic writing on expressions of the suburban ideal. Selling this ideal goes beyond the charm of subdivision names. Classified advertising of resale homes fixes them in social and lifestyle space. The undercurrents of meaning of advertised features of lots and yards are also investigated. Subdivision names may and often do fade from general usage. In their absence, real estate advertising furnishes a kind of place identity and context for suburban settings.

PDF

References

  1. Clay, Grady. 1994. Real Places: An Unconventional Guide to America's Generic Landscape. Chicago: U of Chicago P.
  2. Detro, Randall A. 1982. “Language and Place Names.” This Remarkable Continent. Ed. John F. Rooney, Wilbur Zelinsky and Dean Louder. College Station: Texas A&M U P,121–48.
  3. Entrikin, J. Nicholas. 1991. The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P.
  4. Jackson, J.B. 1961. “The Many Guises of Suburbia.” Landscape 11:1.
  5. Jackson, Kenneth T. 1985. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford U P.
  6. Kunstler, James H. 1993. The Geography of Nowhere. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  7. Marx, Leo. 1964. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. New York: Oxford U P.
  8. Minton, Arthur. 1959. “Names of Real Estate Developments.” Names 7:129–53, 223–55.
  9. Minton, Arthur. 1961. “Names of Real Estate Developments.” Names 9:8–36.
  10. Muller, Peter O. 1976. The Outer City: Geographical Consequences of the Urbanization of the Suburbs. Commission on College Geography, Resource Paper No. 75–2. Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers.
  11. Relph, Edward. 1976. Place and Placelessness. London: Pion Ltd.
  12. Tuan, Yi-Fu. 1974. Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudesiand Values. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
  13. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1955. “Some Problems in the Distribution of Generic Terms in the Place-Names of the Northeastern United States.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 45:319–49.
  14. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1967. “Classical Town Names in the United States: The Historical Geography of an American Idea.” Geographical Review 57:463–95.
  15. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1990. “A Toponymie Approach to the Geography of American Cemeteries.” Names 38:209–29.
  16. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1992. The Cultural Geography of the United States. Revised Edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. First published 1973.
  17. Zelinsky, Wilbur. 1993. “Parsing Greater Washington’s Namescape.” Names 41: 344–60.