Warren wrote:
Jean wrote:
I've lived in Northeastern Ohio my whole life. We call it the
tree lawn. It doesn't matter if there is no tree, it's still the
tree lawn. I never heard it called anything else. Maybe my world
is too small.

Growing up in Southeastern Wisconsin, everyone I knew called it
"the space between the sidewalk and the street". Of course it
wasn't a big topic of conversation, and people weren't obsessed
with giving things nicknames back then. Eventually I did start to
hear it called the "parkway" or "parkway strip".

Part of the reason for such non-concern about it was that in the
City of Milwaukee, the trees in the strip were planted by, and
owned by the City. The adjoining property owners were not allowed
to landscape the strip in any way. They were expected to keep the
grass tended: weeds picked, mowed properly, and watered. Some folks
re-sodded or re-seeded the grass, but anything more than that could
lead to a ticket and removal. In commercial areas, a request for
pavement could be made. Carriage walks could be installed in
residential areas, but they had to be maintained to the same
standards as the sidewalk.

What is a carriage walk?


So the ordinary person only had to worry about watering and mowing
the grass, and keeping the dandelions down. There wasn't much of a
reason to come up with a special name for "the strip between the
sidewalk and the street", or "between the sidewalk and the street"
for short.
The first time I heard it given any kind of derogatory name was a
few years after moving to Portland, Oregon where I heard it called
the "hell strip". By that time I had noticed that it wasn't a
standardized, sanitized zone like in Milwaukee, and that people
landscaped them very differently, and very seldom does that mean a
single tree surrounded by sod. I don't think I've ever seen anyone
watering their "hell strip", either. But my subdivision doesn't
have sidewalks, so it's not something I see everyday.

I understood that putting in streets, curbs, sidewalks, street lights,
sewer lines and what not as well as houses was what constituted a
subdivision.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8
Sunset Zone 5