West Village Renovations

[esighed]

A historical question: When did the designation "West Village" first begin? This was my mother's old neighborhood [[1920s to 1960s); she was born in a house on Seyburn. However, I don't recall anybody using that term, ever. It was always just "Islandview"....all of that area was Islandview, except for Indian Village of course.[/QUOTE]

1974 was when the West Village Association was started and began using the term after they set the “boundaries.” Prior to that, the whole area was popularly called Indian Village [[until the Historic Indian Village Association was founded in about 1967, and they set their boundaries)
I don’t think Islandview was used as a neighborhood term until later – when the Islandview Association started in 1978 – and it described a smaller area than the Islandview that Villages CDC now describes.
Unfortunately, Google and Bing maps don’t know where the boundary lines are and often designate West Village as part of Islandview.

[kathy2trips]

Now that you mention it, I don't recall anybody specifically mentioning "Islandview" in the 50s and 60s...though as a kid, I probably wasn't paying much attention, either. Was it just referred to as "the East Side"? Because that covers a lot of territory.

Among my family & neighbors, it was more often than not, "the old neighborhood", which to us in EEV, it was. My aunt remembers "Leesville", but that was more toward Gratiot and Harper and in the 1910s.

Lowell has said he has a 1940s map of the city so maybe he can shed some light on old neighborhood names, if there are any. Hornwrecker's priceless posting of the 1930 Detroit map shows virtually no neighborhood names at all, that I can find: http://picasaweb.google.com/Hornwrecker/1930sDetroitMap#5115041402873460978