Flushing Meadow? Meadows?

So this week while watching the US Open I kept hearing CBS refer to the location of the Tennis Center as being in Flushing MEADOWS, which is what their graphic said as well. I was always under the impression that it was Flushing MEADOW. At first I thought CBS was just being illiterate and/or ignorant (they did admit during the Capriati-Dementieva semi that they had been mispronouncing Dementieva for the last 4 years, after all ) [then at one point referred to her as "Dementia" ] so I looked it up on a New York map to verify. My map from about 2000 does indeed refer to it as MEADOWS, whereas my map from about 1994 refers to it as MEADOW. When did they change the name, and even more to the point, WHY????

You win the Question of the Day prize, JC. Having just wasted a half hour researching this I am no wiser than before.

http://www.newyorkled.com/flushingmeadows02.htm

If democracy rules, a Google search listed 162,000 hits for Meadows and only 75,500 hits for Meadow Maybe our resident geography expert, DorisPulaski, will come to our rescue.

But more to the point: SERENA WAS ROBBED!!!!!

Mathman

Mathman - I heard on a newscast that the ITA apologized to Serena but, of course, did not reverse Jennifer's win. What with gymnastics and now tennis, and we all know how the Caller will be in FS, I think sports officials should be tested on a regular basis.

Joe

It is Flushing Meadows, not Meadow. It's in Queens. I've never seen a meadow there - perhaps they paved over them to put up Shea?

RoaringMice said:

It is Flushing Meadows, not Meadow. It's in Queens. I've never seen a meadow there - perhaps they paved over them to put up Shea?

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RoaringMice - I think you are too young to know the meadows of Queens. There is also a Fresh Meadows. In Brooklyn, Coney Island is not an island but was, once. The Gowanus Canal was a canal, once. In Manhattan, Greenwich Village was once a village. Lots more about Little Old New York, if you care to look up NY History.,

Joe

I've been doing some subsequent follow-up to this by looking in some various printed sources from the last 20 years (tho none from the last 3 or 4) and it's almost always referred to as Flushing MEADOW. Joe refers to the "meadows of Queens" so therefore if there are or were meadows all over the place, then it would stand to reason that that particular area might be referred to in the singular, to distinguish it from the others. However, all the sudden it's become MEADOWS, both in print and on TV and it wasn't for as long as I can remember. My brother-in-law, a native Noo Yawker, claims that it's MEADOWS (tho he did admit it wasn't exactly his part of town ) as well. The only conclusion I can come up with is that perhaps at some point higher-ups in the New York Chamber of Commerce or some such pointed out that MEADOW was incorrect and so it's subsequently been corrected.