Metropolitan

Metropolitan (pronounced me-truh-pol-i-tn)

(1) Of, noting, or characteristic of a metropolis or its inhabitants, especially in culture, sophistication, or in accepting and combining a wide variety of people, ideas, etc.

(2) Of or relating to a large city, its surrounding suburbs, and other neighboring communities:

(3) Pertaining to or constituting a mother country.

(4) A person who has the sophistication, fashionable taste, or other habits and manners associated with those who live in a metropolis.

(5) In the Orthodox Church, the head of an ecclesiastical province, ranking between archbishop and patriarch

(6) An archbishop in the Church of England (now of technical use only).

(7) In the Roman Catholic Church, an archbishop who has authority over one or more suffragan sees and thus the authority to supervise other bishops..

(8) In ancient Greece, a citizen of the mother city or parent state of a colony.

1300–1350: From the Middle English, from the Late Latin mētropolītānus (of or belonging to a metropolis), from the Ancient Greek μητροπολίτης (mētropolítēs), the construct being mētropolī́t(ēs) + the Latin ānus (a ring (in the geometrical sense and here trucated as an).  Root was the Late Latin mētropolis, from Ancient Greek μητρόπολις (mētrópolis) (mother city) from μήτηρ (mḗtēr) (mother) + πόλις (pólis) (city or state).  In the hierarchy of the Christian Church, the title of metropolitan was a fourteenth century clipping of metropolitan bishop, one who has oversight over bishops (Pope Francis (b 1936; pope since 2013) was Metropolitan Archbishop of Buenos Aires between 1998-2013).  In the Western Church the office now roughly corresponds to archbishop, but in the Orthodox, ranks above it.  The meaning "belonging to a chief or capital city" is from 1550s, the first reference to underground city railways is attested from 1867.  In technical use, historians, city planners and others used the constructed forms intermetropolitan, supermetropolitan & intrametropolitan (sometimes used with hyphens).  Metropolitan is a noun & adjective and metropolitanism is a noun; the moum plural is metropolitans.  

The New York Met

Final performance at the old Met Opera House, New York, 16 April 1966.

The Metropolitan Opera (the Met) was founded in 1880; the first performance in 1883.  It owes its origin to a class-struggle which was unusual because it was among rather than between the bourgeoisie and the rich.  The founders were new money, New York industrialists excluded from membership in the older Academy of Music Opera House.  The Met has long-been the largest classical music organization in North America and presents more than two-dozen different operas each year, the season running between September and May. The works are in a rotating repertory schedule with up to seven performances of four different pieces each week, performed in the evenings from Monday to Saturday with a matinée on Saturday.  Several new works are presented in new productions each season, sometimes as co-productions with other houses, the Met located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City.  Part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, it opened in 1966, the operation having outgrown the original site which is now a Times Square Starbucks.

The Nash Metropolitan

1956 Hudson Metropolitan Sedan.

In production between 1953-1961, the Nash Metropolitan is a curious footnote in the history of the Anglo-American automobile. At the time it was built, the US industry hadn't yet formalized the market segments based on size (Full-size / intermediate / compact / sub-compact / small / micro)  and it was, in the nomenclature of the day, offered variously as a “small”, “economy” or “second” car, and often made explicit in the marketing materials associated with the last category was that it was a car for women (wives & mothers).  The car was a response to a genuine market demand for smaller, more economical cars and Nash devoted much attention to minimizing production costs, such as the unusual door-panel pressings which were interchangeable for use on either the left or right side.  However, it became clear that even if sales volumes were projected with quite undue optimism, Nash could never profitably design, tool and produce such a car.  Accordingly, the decision was taken to create what came to be called a “captive import”, a car produced overseas exclusively for the US market and in a remarkably short time, Austin of England was selected as the manufacturer and the design, a co-development by Nash and the Italian house Pininfarina, would be powered by the 1.2 litre (73 cubic inch) four-cylinder engine already familiar to many Americans, Austin in the early 1950s once of the most numerous imports.

1953 Nash Statesmen Custom Sedan.  It was the larger Nash models from which the Metropolitan's styling motifs were borrowed.

Available from 1953 in closed and convertible form, the Metropolitan was notable for adopting the styling cues of the larger Nash cars, down-scaling them to fit the dimension of a small, economy vehicle, something some English manufacturers would also try before realizing the compromises created just to many distortions.  Detroit however would stick to the approach for decades and some truly ghastly things were over the years created.  With an attractive exchange-rate (Sterling in September 1949 having being devalued from US$4.03 to US$2.80), the Metropolitan was profitable for Nash although sales, initially encouraging, never grew substantially but remained sufficiently buoyant for production to continue until 1953 but it always suffered the difficulty faced by many small cars in the era: for not much more money, buyers could get considerably more.  Detroit, always good at producing big cars, ensured customers received “much metal for the money” and even the Volkswagen beetle, the other notable small car of the 1950s, was somewhat bigger yet no more expensive.  Still, for reasons such as the cost of operation and maneuverability, there were buyers who actually wanted a smaller car and the Metropolitan certainly delivered superior fuel economy although its usefulness for driving in congested urban environments was compromised by the enclosure of the front wheels, meaning the turning circle was similar to that of a medium-sized truck which made parking a chore.  It did though find a niche, sold also under the Hudson name after 1954 when Nash and Hudson American Motors Corporation (AMC) and Austin would in 1956 negotiate an arrangement whereby they could offer Metropolitans in markets where AMC didn’t operate.  Under the terms of this deal, it was sold various as a Nash, Austin or Metropolitan, all these models benefiting from the fitment of an 1.5 litre (91 cubic inch) engine.

1959 Nash Metropolitan Convertible.

Even in the mid 1950s however the Metropolitan looked outdated and in the early 1960s, when Detroit’s new generation of compacts (Ford’s Falcon, Chevrolet’s Corvair & Chevy II and Plymouth’s Valiant) debuted, the Metropolitan seemed a museum piece and sales collapsed from over 13,000 in 1959 to not even 1000 the following year.  Even AMC had moved on, the sub-compact Rambler American (1958-1969) something in engineering and styling two generations removed from the Metropolitan and although sales of the latter lingered into 1962, by then it was all but forgotten.  The little car had however, along with the Volkswagen, proved that Americans would buy smaller cars and Detroit’s compacts were a reaction to both although, had they not allowed the standard US automobile to assume the absurdly (and inefficiently) large size the cheap fuel and booming economy of the 1950s permitted, it’s at least possible such things may not for years have been needed.

Metropolitans in the metropolis: Lindsay Lohan and her sister Ali (b 1993) shopping in New York City, 2012.