Main Street is a metonym used to denote a primary retail street of a village, town or small city in many parts of the world. It is usually a focal point for shops and retailers in the central business district, and is most often used in reference to retailing, socializing, and the place to go to find "common" concerns.
The term is commonly used in Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and Canada, and less often in Australia and New Zealand. In the non-Scottish regions of the United Kingdom, the common description is High Street, though "Fore Street" or "Front Street" is commonplace in some parts. In Jamaica the term is Front Street. In the 1950s awareness about the 'main street' as a concept of its own importance emerged in the urban studies field, attaining the attention in the theoretical discussions of postmodern urban design, neo-traditional planning and meta-urbanism.
In many places, the street name for such a street is actually "Main Street", though even where it is not the actual name, "main street" is still used to describe the main thoroughfare of the central business district. The "Main Street of America" branding was used to promote U.S. Route 66 in its heyday.
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American cultural usage
In the general sense, the term "Main Street" refers to a place of small-town traditional values, usually in contrast to big-city modernity. Social realists from 1870 to 1930 used the name as a symbol of stifling conformity. Sherwood Anderson, for example, wrote Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life in 1919. The best-selling 1920 novel Main Street was a critique of small-town life by the American writer Sinclair Lewis. The locale was "Gopher Prairie," presented as an 'ideal type' of the Midwestern town, and the heroine, Carol Kennicott, was a more urbane, 'ideal-typical' Progressive.In North American media of later decades, "Main Street" represents the interests of everyday people and small business owners, in contrast with "Wall Street" (in the United States) or "Bay Street" (in Canada), symbolizing the interests of large national corporations. Thus, in the 1949 movie adaptation of On The Town, the song "When You Walk Down Main Street With Me" refers to small-town values and social life. Main Street Republicans, for example, see themselves as supporting those values as against urbane or "Wall Street" tendencies.
"Main Street" is part of the iconography of American life. For example, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service, the outfit that operates the PX and BX stores on military bases, chose the name "Main Street USA" for its food courts.
Main Street was a popular term during the economic crises in 2008 and 2009: the proposed bailout of U.S. financial system, the 2008 US presidential campaign, and debates. One widely reviewed book was Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street (2012) by Neil Barofsky.
In small towns across the United States, Main Street is not only the major road running through town but the site of all street life, a place where townspeople hang out and watch the annual parades go by. A slang term popularized in the early 20th century, "main drag", is also used to refer to a town's main street.
Walt Disney
Two Walt Disney Company theme parks, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and the Magic Kingdom in the Walt Disney World Resort near Orlando, Florida, both have "Main Street, U.S.A." sections immediately at their front. These areas, which are designed to look like the main street of a small town, house gift shops, restaurants and various services, along with park offices on the second floors. While the architecture of these "streets" appears to be turn-of-the-20th-century, in fact these are decorative false-fronts on industrial-style buildings. Main Street, U.S.A. is also present at Disneyland Paris and Hong Kong Disneyland. At Tokyo Disneyland the area is named "World Bazaar," but has the same look as Main Street, albeit housed under a decorative glass roof for protection from Japan's unpredictable weather. At Shanghai Disneyland, the area is named "Mickey Ave," but also has the same style as Main Street.
Disney's design copied visual elements of small-town America seen in films by Frank Capra and others, in a deliberate attempt to capture the iconic symbolism of small-town America. Disney wanted to embed the values and memories associated with life in small towns into an entertainment experience for tourists.
Preservation and Main Street
Main Street America is a community revitalization program begun by the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the late 1970s. The core of the Main Street Approach is the revitalization of commercial districts via economic development and historic preservation. The Main Street Approach is a holistic approach to downtown and neighborhood commercial district revitalization based on the 4-point approach of design, promotion, economic vitality, and organization. Originally targeted at small, traditional downtowns, the program has expanded to include towns of various sizes, including neighborhood districts in several large urban centers.
In many communities, a merchants' association or business improvement district serves a promotional role on behalf of the merchants of a downtown Main Street. Individual city governments also may engage in revitalization or historic preservation efforts to support a downtown core, either to make a community appear more attractive for tourism or to stem a flow of commerce out of the city into suburbs with shopping malls and cookie-cutter big box stores.
In the United States federal funds are allocated specifically for restoration of historic properties on the former U.S. Route 66, the main street of many roadside towns; this funding is administered by the US National Park Service.
International use and equivalents
Many small Canadian cities and towns have a thoroughfare named Main Street (or, in French, Rue principale); in other cases, the main street of the community has a name particular to that community. The phrase "a town where the main street is still called Main Street" is occasionally used as being synonymous with small-town values.
In Ottawa, main streets of various individual villages which had been annexed to the larger urban municipality bear names like "Manotick Main" or "Osgoode Main" to distinguish them from Smyth Road (which becomes "Main Street" in one small area southeast of downtown Ottawa) and from each other. The main street of centretown Ottawa is Bank Street.
In Toronto, Main Street is a mostly residential avenue in the East York district. At one time it was the main street of the hamlet of East Toronto, which was annexed by the city of Toronto in 1908. It has kept its historic name, and evidence of its commercial origins can be seen in the stores at the corner of Main and Gerrard Streets. Toronto's main street is considered to be Yonge Street, which divides the city's latitudinal streets into east–west.
Saint Laurent Boulevard, which divides Montreal between east and west, is unofficially known as "the Main."
Main Street in Vancouver is a neighbourhood shopping street, near the dividing line between east and west side of town. However, the city's main city centre shopping street is Robson Street.
In Australia and New Zealand, smaller urban centres often have a main street. In some towns this street is officially designated Main Street or High Street; rarer variants include Main Road, Commercial Road, and Commerce Street. Often, though, the street is given a name peculiar to the town. For many small towns, the main street forms part of the principal road into, or through, the town. Large centres often have a central business district in which no one street is a clear focus for commercial activity, though for historical or cultural reasons there is often one street regarded as the city's "main street." Examples include Melbourne's Collins Street, Sydney's George Street, Adelaide's King William Street, Auckland's Queen Street, and Christchurch's Colombo Street.
Main Street in Ireland
Main Street is the place/road name used in many suburbs, towns, and villages in Ireland. For example, the OSI North Leinster Town Maps book lists sixteen Main Streets and only two High Streets in its thirty-town index of street names. Similarly, the OSI Dublin Street Guide, which covers all of Dublin City and County Dublin, lists twenty Main Streets and only two High Streets. Killarney and Galway are two of the few Irish towns in which the term High Street is used instead of Main Street. Recent and upcoming tranches of funding for Local Authority-led projects seek to help regenerate Main Streets, and town and city centres around Ireland under the URDF (Urban Regeneration Development Fund) and RRDF (Rural Regeneration Development Fund).
There were also earlier, 1990s to early 2000s, tax-incentive based initiatives, for private interests, for the refurbishments of buildings, and 'Living over the Shop' (LOTS) schemes, based along specified lengths of urban streets, under Village and Urban Renewal Schemes and that overall, sought the regeneration of main street Ireland. Some of these schemes may have suffered from sufficient lack of interest or impact due to for example, business owners insurance and security issues regarding separate occupiers above for LOTS projects, and general lack of finance and familiarity with residential projects and landlordism, and depressed interest of the general public in returning to town and village centre living in the modern era. These efforts specifically included the 'Town and Village Renewal Schemes' (financial grants of up to €100,000) and previous Town Renewal Scheme, 1999 and Urban Renewal Scheme.
There is also a recent pilot project(s) of funding for town centre improvements in (six) different rural Irish towns dispersed around the country, and for example, noting including various town/village rejuvenation projects in County Monaghan.
The Town Renewal scheme, for example, was a 10-year tax relief incentive scheme for renovations or new builds that was to improve the 'Townscape' and 'Streetscape' of smaller Irish towns, through the physical improvements of buildings e.g. views building façades on 'main streets'.
The efforts of local governments (county councils, city councils, and the former town councils, until 2017) to improve 'main streets' centered around their Planning Departments and County Development Plans. These included shopfront design guides such as the "Shopfront Design Guide, 2001" and "Shopfront Design Guidelines for the O'Connell Street Area, 2003" of Dublin City Council, and the "Guide to Good Shopfronts." There are also for further examples; the "Guidelines for Shopfront Design in Bray, 2007" (and its earlier, shorter iteration of c.2000) of Bray Town Council, and the 2014 "Shopfront Design Guide" of South Dublin County Council. Kerry County Council also issued the quite comprehensive "Shopfront Design Guidelines and Policy" document in 2010, and for Kilkenny City the "Shopfronts and Advertising Signs Kilkenny Planning Information Booklet."
List of streets named Main Street
Canada
Main Street (Toronto), Ontario
Main Street (Hamilton), Ontario
Main Street Unionville, Ontario
Main Street (Vancouver), British Columbia
Winnipeg Route 52, Main Street in Winnipeg, Manitoba
Niagara Regional Road 81, Main Street in Grimsby, Ontario
York Regional Road 68, Main Street in the old village of Markham, Ontario
York Regional Road 76, Main Street in Schomberg, Ontario
Peel Regional Road 136, Main street in Alton, Ontario
Ireland
Main Street, Letterkenny, Longest street in Ireland
United States
U.S. Route 40, referred to as "Main Street of America" pre-WWII and post creation of the US route system
U.S. Route 66, referred to as "Main Street of America" post-WWII and pre-Interstate network completion
Pennsylvania Avenue, specifically the portion stretching from the White House to the United States Capitol, known as "America's Main Street"
By state, then city:
Main Street (Los Angeles), California
Main Street (Santa Monica, California)
U.S. Route 20, signed as "Main Street" in Waltham and Watertown, Massachusetts
Main Street (Mackinac Island, Michigan)
Main Street (Kansas City, Missouri)
Nevada State Route 601, Main Street in Las Vegas, Nevada
Montauk Highway, Main Street in parts of Suffolk County, New York
Main Street (Queens), New York
Main Street District, Dallas, Texas
Main Street (Greater Salt Lake City), Utah
Main Street (York, Maine)
Gibraltar
Main Street, Gibraltar