Symbolism
Some street names in large cities can become metonyms, and stand for whole types of businesses or ways of life. "Fleet Street" in London still represents the British press, and "Wall Street" in New York City American finance, though neither street actually serves these industries anymore. In London, a top surgeon with a private practice is liable to be referred to as a Harley Street surgeon even if he does not actually maintain an office in Harley Street. The cachet of streets like Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue can prove effective branding, as for the Buick Park Avenue luxury car, and Saks Department Store being always known as "Saks Fifth Avenue". In the opposite way, 42nd Street still symbolizes a street of pleasure, but also sin and decadence. Like Wall Street, Toronto's Bay Street represented Canadian finance and still serves it today.
Much as streets are often named after the neighborhoods they run through, the reverse process also takes place, with a neighborhood taking its name from a street or an intersection: for example, the aforementioned Wall Street in Manhattan, Knightsbridge in London, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, or Jane and Finch in Toronto.
Read more about this topic: Street Or Road Name
Famous quotes containing the word symbolism:
“...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor—they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)