COMMENT OF THE DAY: THE ONGOING REWRITE OF HOUSTON’S EAST SIDE STORY 
“East River? Ugh, another name copied from New York City. We’ve got the East Village being developed (or is it ‘east village’, in all lowercase?), we’ve got Downtown, Midtown, and Uptown (none of which make any directional sense like they do in N.Y.C.), and now we have this. Is the area around it going to start to be called the Upper East Side?” [GL, commenting on Midway’s Latest Plans for the KBR Site; Big Turnout for the Public Housing Vouchers Waiting List; previously on Swamplot] Photo of former KBR site at 4100 Clinton Dr.: LoopNet
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Downtown, Midtown and Uptown make perfect sense if you’re considering it from the perspective of Allen’s Landing. Houston’s functional geography is quite a bit skewed from the way we see it on a map, with north facing up.
Don’t forget Washington Heights.
But NYC’s new Discovery Garden in Brooklyn was done to answer Houston’s Discovery Green…and 432 Park Avenue in NYC took inspiration from J.P. Morgan Chase Tower in Houston. So, go figure.
East River…that does sound like a lame sort of urban infant suckling at mama NYC’s teat but really a simple two-word name with each word having a strong, apropos and simple meaning is positive. It is the East part of Houston and it is a River called a bayou. But not just the bayou but the womb of the city. In the 1840s-60s, the west of Allen’s Landing section was nothing but a well-wooded open sewer and hideout/hangout for the various characters and scoundrels of Vinegar Hill. East of downtown it was a river with masted ships and energetic influx. We should be familiar with every bend of it but it’s mostly unknown. East River can serve as an introductory directional appetizer for those unknowers who are already here and those yet to appear.