Main Street

Main Street is a generic phrase 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 and socializing.

The term is commonly used in Ireland, Scotland, the United States, Canada, and less often in Australia and New Zealand. In most of the United Kingdom the common description is High Street. However, the term "Main Street" is sometimes used in the UK. In Jamaica the term is Front Street. In some parts of the south west of England the equivalent used is "Fore Street", or in the north east "Front Street".

In many places, the street name for such a street is actually "Main Street", though even where it isn't the term "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.

In the general sense, the term "Main Street" refers to a place of traditional values. 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.

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