Directions in street and highway signage (was: Street Sign formats)
Mark Brader
> In the Borough of Manhattan, New York City, the numbered streets are
> marked, with all the letters and numbers essentially the same size:
>
> W 91 ST
> E 42 ST
Which leads to another point. I'm adding misc.transport.road to get
some knowledgeable people on that side; followups are directed to both
groups for now.
I am aware of only two countries where numbers of buildings on a street
often advance in both directions away from a central origin: the US and
Canada. In both countries, it's fairly common.
In Manhattan, for example, numbered streets run east-west, and building
numbers advance from 5th Avenue in both directions. So they have
addresses like "110 West 91st Street". "West 91st Street", alone, then
means the part of 91st Street with "west" building numbers, i.e. the
part that's west of 5th Avenue.
Here in Toronto, there are likewise many streets with this sort of building
numbers; here they run east and west from Yonge Street. A building at
"110 Eglinton Avenue West" is west of Yonge Street, for instance.
What's curious here is that, although both countries do this, there is
one point of variation between them: the usual rule is that in the US,
the direction is *prefixed* to the street name when it's being used this
way, while in Canada it is *suffixed*. Note where the "West" appears in
the two examples above.
The same method is used for signing directions of travel along a highway,
too. Signs in Ontario point to highway 401 WEST, meaning westbound rather
than the western half of the road; but in the US, that would be WEST I-94,
with the same meaning.
Indeed, if one sees a street with a direction-word in the other position
-- such as Central Park West in Manhattan, or West Toronto Street in
Toronto -- then one can assume it is *not* being used in this specific
sense of designating the western part of the street, but in some other
sense, directional or not. (Central Park West is the western one of two
parallel streets along the sides of Central Park; West Toronto Street is
named after the once separate city of West Toronto.)
The ultimate example of this comes in Utah, where several cities have
addresses that are practically just coordinates. In Salt Lake City,
"110 West 4th North Street" would be an address on the western part
of the northern one of two parallel streets, while "110 North 4th West
Street" would be on the northern part of the western one of two parallel
streets. (Outside Utah, cities with two-dimensional systematic numbering,
such as Calgary and Washington, don't follow the convention this strictly;
they put both directions in the conventional position for the one that
says which half of the street you're on. In Calgary, "Avenue" implies
an east-west alignment and "Street" is north-south, so the equivalents
of the above Salt Lake addresses would be "110 4th Avenue NW" and "110
4th Street NW" respectively. In Washington, letters and numbers are
used for the two orientations, so that would be "110 NW D Street" and
"110 NW 4th Street" respectively. But this is just by the way.)
Questions:
- Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
in the US and Canada?
- Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
- Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
or another of these ways? What do they do there?
--
Mark Brader | There are people on that train!
m...@sq.com | Sure, they're Canadians, but they're still people!
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto | -- Paul Gross, "Due South"
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Exile on Market Street
> I am aware of only two countries where numbers of buildings on a street
> often advance in both directions away from a central origin: the US and
> Canada. In both countries, it's fairly common.
>
> In Manhattan, for example, numbered streets run east-west, and building
> numbers advance from 5th Avenue in both directions. So they have
> addresses like "110 West 91st Street". "West 91st Street", alone, then
> means the part of 91st Street with "west" building numbers, i.e. the
> part that's west of 5th Avenue.
>
> Here in Toronto, there are likewise many streets with this sort of building
> numbers; here they run east and west from Yonge Street. A building at
> "110 Eglinton Avenue West" is west of Yonge Street, for instance.
[...]
> Questions:
> - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
> in the US and Canada?
> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
> - Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
> or another of these ways? What do they do there?
Can't answer 1) or 3), but I can point to a couple of exceptions for 2).
One of them is Washington, DC, which you mentioned in your original
essay. The quadrant designators -- NW, NE, SW, SE -- *follow* the street
names: "2020 M Street, NW," for instance.
The streets that separate the quadrants follow the major compass points
away from the Capitol and include the compass point in their names: North
Capitol Street, East Capitol Street, South Capitol Street. (The Mall
occupies the space that would otherwise have been West Capitol Street.)
Thus you have the reverse of the New York example of Central Park West, as
in the mailing address of C-Span: "400 North Capitol Street, NW." (Odd
numbers on North Capitol Street would have "NE" appended.)
The other is Iowa's state capitol, Des Moines, which is also divided into
quadrants with the Iowa Capitol as the reference point. The odd part
about Des Moines is that its four quadrants are not uniformly identified:
I forget which are which, but two are identified by the major compass
point and the other two by relative reference to the point of origin as in
DC. I think it's something like (clockwise from the top) "E", "S", "SW"
and "NW". The compass points follow the street names.
__________________________________________________________________________
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Univ of Pennsylvania, News & Public Affairs 215.898.1423/fax 215.898.1203
I speak for myself here, not for Penn http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
"Don't look back, they might be gaining on you."
-----------------------------------------------------------Satchel Paige--
Max Crittenden
> The same method is used for signing directions of travel along a highway,
> too. Signs in Ontario point to highway 401 WEST, meaning westbound rather
> than the western half of the road; but in the US, that would be WEST I-94,
> with the same meaning.
I must dispute this small part of Mark's post. In my part of the
United States at least, signs direct one to I-80 EAST or US 101 NORTH,
just as he says they do in Canada.
Max Crittenden "It's a good thing that icebergs don't
STRIKE SLIP, Merit 25 come out at night, because you sure
Menlo Park, California can't see them." -- Chris Dickson
Mark S. Roberts
| In article <1996Apr18.2...@sq.com>, m...@sq.com (Mark Brader) wrote:
|
| > Questions:
| > - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
| > in the US and Canada?
| > - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
| > - Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
| > or another of these ways? What do they do there?
| Can't answer 1) or 3), but I can point to a couple of exceptions for 2).
| One of them is Washington, DC, which you mentioned in your original
| essay. The quadrant designators -- NW, NE, SW, SE -- *follow* the street
| names: "2020 M Street, NW," for instance.
This is also true in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which adopted the
quadrant system sometime between 1945 and 1950.
The dividing lines are the Santa Fe railroad lines (north-south) and
Central Avenue (the former US 66, east-west).
| The other is Iowa's state capitol, Des Moines, which is also divided into
| quadrants with the Iowa Capitol as the reference point. The odd part
| about Des Moines is that its four quadrants are not uniformly identified:
| I forget which are which, but two are identified by the major compass
| point and the other two by relative reference to the point of origin as in
| DC. I think it's something like (clockwise from the top) "E", "S", "SW"
| and "NW". The compass points follow the street names.
The northwest quadrant has no designation, the northeast quadrant is
designated "E", the southwest quadrant is designated "SW", and the southeast
quadrant is designated "SE".
Cedar Rapids, Iowa also uses quadrant designations. No complications here
though: NW, NE, SW, SE.
I don't know of any such usages in Kansas or Missouri.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"...the whole point...is to allow people to create better alternatives, but
screwing up is an option we wish to preserve"--from Apache 1.0.3 source code
John R. Grout
> Cedar Rapids, Iowa also uses quadrant designations. No complications here
> though: NW, NE, SW, SE.
That's the system Rochester, Minnesota (which is not too far north of
Cedar Rapids) uses... I found it intensely confusing at first.
One good thing about the quadrant system... it allows one to number all the
roads (if I remember correctly, Rochester has numbered east-west streets and
numbered north-south avenues) _and_ allow the origin for their numbering
scheme to be in the center of town... something difficult for similar but
non-quadrant based schemes (unless you want to have a "minus 5th avenue" :-).
For example, one of the origins for Edmonton, Alberta's numbering system is
_way_ out of town... so some of the downtown streets are numbered in the
200's.
--
John R. Grout Center for Supercomputing R & D j-g...@uiuc.edu
Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Mark S. Roberts
| In my part of the
| United States at least, signs direct one to I-80 EAST or US 101 NORTH,
| just as he says they do in Canada.
The question about the placement of "North" or "East" or other directions
brings to mind a (possibly) related topic.
Here in Kansas City, we have a situation where "North Kansas City" and
"Kansas City North" have entirely different meanings.
"North Kansas City" refers to a municipality incorporated separately
from Kansas City, Missouri. "Kansas City North" is the part of
Kansas City, Missouri that is north of the Missouri River.
"Kansas City North" is not an official name -- and, in fact, the _Star_
(the local Disney-owned daily) punctuates it": "Kansas City, North".
(Of course, to make things more entertaining, North Kansas City is also
north of the Missouri River.)
Because much of Kansas City's post-World War II growth has taken place
north of the Missouri River, we are left with an additional anomaly.
The section of the city known as "Northeast" is nowadays in the center part
of the city. It *was* the northeast part of the city when it was entirely
south of the river. The name "Northeast" for the area along Independence
Avenue has stuck long after the annexations up north.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"The three toughest weeks in show business are Christmas week, Easter week,
and a week in St. Louis" -- Quote in _Broadcasting_, March 14, 1949
Benjamin D Lukoff
>I am aware of only two countries where numbers of buildings on a street
>often advance in both directions away from a central origin: the US and
>Canada. In both countries, it's fairly common.
>What's curious here is that, although both countries do this, there is
>one point of variation between them: the usual rule is that in the US,
>the direction is *prefixed* to the street name when it's being used this
>way, while in Canada it is *suffixed*.
>Indeed, if one sees a street with a direction-word in the other position
>-- such as Central Park West in Manhattan, or West Toronto Street in
>Toronto -- then one can assume it is *not* being used in this specific
>sense of designating the western part of the street, but in some other
>sense, directional or not. (Central Park West is the western one of two
>parallel streets along the sides of Central Park; West Toronto Street is
>named after the once separate city of West Toronto.)
> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
Seattle's street system is quite odd. Not in terms of its layout --
straightforward grids for the most part, except for in Downtown where the
streets run parallel and perpendicular to the shoreline of Elliott Bay --
but in terms of its origin streets and the way it assigns directional
designations.
I should mention that, as a rule, streets run east-west and avenues
north-south in the city, and streets' names are *always* preceded by
their directional designator (if any), and avenues' names are always
*followed*. This seems to not be following the usual national convention
of which you speak -- 1st Avenue becomes 1st Avenue South, not South 1st
Avenue, crossing Yesler Way (from which street numbers advance in both
directions.) (Street numbers advance north from Denny Way.)
Seattle's system is much easier to show graphically than verbally.
The arrows indicate in which direction street numbers advance.
1st Ave NW 1st Ave NE
| |
<- | -> | ->
NW STS | N STS | NE STS
AVES NW | AVES N | AVES NE
(1) | (2) | (3)
-------------------- ship canal -----------------------
| |
W STS Queen Anne Lake Union
AVES W Ave N (5) & Eastlake (6)
(4) | STS Ave E E STS
--------- <- | -> AVES N | AVES E
| | ->
-------Denny Way---------------------------
| |
(Elliott Bay) | -> STS | E STS
| AVES | AVES
| ---
| (7) | (8)
| Broadway
| |
--------Yesler Way-------------------------
|
|
|
----
|
--------- | (10) S STS
| AVES S
SW STS 1st
AVES SW Ave
SW
<- | ->
(9) |
Another curiosity: as a rule, Streets are *named* in sections 4, 5, 6, 7,
8, 9 and 10. They are numbered elsewhere. Avenues are *named* in 2, and
parts of 5, 6, 7 and 8, and numbered elsewhere.
There are a few exceptions, but not many. Are there any other places with
such rules?
BDL
Brad Garbers
[snip snip]
: I am aware of only two countries where numbers of buildings on a street
: often advance in both directions away from a central origin: the US and
: Canada. In both countries, it's fairly common.
: In Manhattan, for example, numbered streets run east-west, and building
: numbers advance from 5th Avenue in both directions. So they have
: addresses like "110 West 91st Street". "West 91st Street", alone, then
: means the part of 91st Street with "west" building numbers, i.e. the
: part that's west of 5th Avenue.
:
: Here in Toronto, there are likewise many streets with this sort of building
: numbers; here they run east and west from Yonge Street. A building at
: "110 Eglinton Avenue West" is west of Yonge Street, for instance.
:
: Questions:
: - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
: in the US and Canada?
My hometown of Columbus, Nebraska, follows both in different places.
In the city itself, the 14th avenue east of 1st Avenue is "14th Avenue
East".
However, a different signmaker put up signs outside the city,
following the city's grid, and used the American convention.
Therefore, the county road two miles east of "14th Avenue East" is
"East 44th Avenue".
People are going to be *really* confused when Columbus actually grows
that far east...
Just my two cents,
********************************************************************
Brad Garbers *Don't think these are UN-L's opin- *
0014...@bigred.unl.edu *ions; they won't touch my opinions *
University of Nebraska-Lincoln*with a ten-foot pole. *
Eric Scouten
> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
The city of Minneapolis uses the supposedly Canadian convention of "4th St
SE" on its street markers. Few people except the city itself actually
refer to the street names that way, however.
-es
__________________________________________________________________________
Eric Scouten Constructor Constructor Metrowerks Corp.
MW: mailto:sco...@metrowerks.com http://www.metrowerks.com
Me: mailto:sco...@gofast.net http://www.delivery.com/~scouten/
** Note new personal e-mail address and web page **
In the early 1950s, many people were pessimistic about the future of
computers, believing that the market and opportunities for these "highly
specialized machines" were quite limited.
- J. Hennessy & D. Patterson
Benjamin D Lukoff
>The question about the placement of "North" or "East" or other directions
>brings to mind a (possibly) related topic.
[snip]
>Because much of Kansas City's post-World War II growth has taken place
>north of the Missouri River, we are left with an additional anomaly.
>The section of the city known as "Northeast" is nowadays in the center part
>of the city. It *was* the northeast part of the city when it was entirely
>south of the river. The name "Northeast" for the area along Independence
>Avenue has stuck long after the annexations up north.
West Seattle is that part of Seattle which is west of the Duwamish River.
However, the directional designation for West Seattle is Southwest, not
West -- S.W. Spokane St., not W. Spokane St.
The neighborhoods of Seattle in which the directional designation is West
are Interbay, Queen Anne and Magnolia. These neighborhoods are due north
of West Seattle, across Elliott Bay - this means they are northwest of
Downtown.
I have run into many people who call Magnolia "West Seattle" - even people
who've lived here for over 30 years, such as my father.
BDL
Michel Gagnon
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on Market Street) wrote:
>In article <1996Apr18.2...@sq.com>, m...@sq.com (Mark Brader) wrote:
>
>> I am aware of only two countries where numbers of buildings on a street
>> often advance in both directions away from a central origin: the US and
>> Canada. In both countries, it's fairly common.
>> >>
>> Here in Toronto, there are likewise many streets with this sort of building
>> numbers; here they run east and west from Yonge Street. A building at
>> "110 Eglinton Avenue West" is west of Yonge Street, for instance.
>
>[...]
>
>> Questions:
>> - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
>> in the US and Canada?
>> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
>> - Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
>> or another of these ways? What do they do there?
>
I think one of the reasons for this usage might be that addresses schemes
were in U.S. and Canada were often developped while cities were planned,
built or developped.
One system I have seen in most rural municipalities of Alberta and in some
places in Saskatchewan and British Columbia is using naming the central
street and avenue as "50th Street" and "50th Avenue" and using addresses
like 5000 for the central block.
In places like Edmonton, it looks OK, but in places like Red Deer that
have only 49th, 50th and 51st Ave, it looks strange!
Michel Gagnon -- Montréal (Québec, Canada)
mga...@accent.net
David J. Greenberger
>Questions:
> - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
> in the US and Canada?
> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
> - Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
> or another of these ways? What do they do there?
Ithaca, NY uses the standard U.S. convention of direction first (e.g., West
State Street). However, some of the older street signs give the direction last
(e.g., North Geneva Street). I guess that means that Ithaca switched over at
some point.
Are any other cities like that?
--
David J. Greenberger Young Israel of Cornell
Cornell University (607) 256-2171 / (607) 272-5810 fax
College of Arts and Sciences
Computer Science/Linguistics major http://crux5.cit.cornell.edu/~djg2/
Eric Scouten
> The same method is used for signing directions of travel along a highway,
> too. Signs in Ontario point to highway 401 WEST, meaning westbound rather
> than the western half of the road; but in the US, that would be WEST I-94,
> with the same meaning.
Not entirely true. In Minnesota, the sequence depends on the layout of the
sign or sign assembly. A horizontal layout would typically have the
direction to the right of the route marker, thus:
*** * * WEST
* * * *
**** *****
* *
*** *
whereas a vertical layout would put the direction before the route marker, thus:
WEST
*** * *
* * * *
**** *****
* *
*** *
-es
__________________________________________________________________________
Eric Scouten Constructor Constructor Metrowerks Corp.
MW: mailto:sco...@metrowerks.com http://www.metrowerks.com
Me: mailto:sco...@gofast.net http://www.delivery.com/~scouten/
** Note new personal e-mail address and web page **
Albert Einstein nailed space-time, but the wild thing had him stumped.
-Thomas Dolby
Michael King
>One of them is Washington, DC, which you mentioned in your original
>essay. The quadrant designators -- NW, NE, SW, SE -- *follow* the street
>names: "2020 M Street, NW," for instance.
>
Here in the Atlanta area, both the city of Atlanta and Cobb County use the
same sort of quadrant designation, so that addresses all have SW, SE, NW, & NE
following them, but in many cases, the quad is not used -- every once in a
while it is necessary, but most of the time it is ignored.
When I first moved to Washington to go to school, the quads took a little bit
of getting used to, but finally, visitors would look at me strangely when they
would ask me for an address, and the first thing out of my mouth was "Which
quad?"
Back in NW Indiana and Illinois where I grew up, the interesting thing was the
numbering system following that established in downtown Chicago at State &
Madison on the Illinois side (not to mention E. Chicago, Whiting, Hammond,
Munster & Highland, IN), and the numbering system established in Downtown Gary
at US Steel's door at #1 North Broadway for the remainder of Lake County,
IN. The naming & numbering scheme still ran conventionally (i.e., 2500 W. 19th
Avenue or 700 S. Halsted Street) in both towns, though.
Former GM/PD & Talk Host - WIGO/AM, Atlanta
WebSlinger & Marketing Director - ILC, Atlanta
"Could've been an actor, but I wound up here...."
http://www.ilcnet.com/dujour/
David Stanek
[snip]
>Questions:
> - Can anyone cite a reference telling why the convention is different
> in the US and Canada?
> - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
> - Are there places outside the US and Canada that use directions in one
> or another of these ways? What do they do there?
I'd like to point out an unusual convention that's used in some cities
in California. (BTW, I haven't seen the SE, NE, NW, etc. convention
used anywhere in California.)
In Sonoma, a small town north of the San Francisco Bay, the N-S
streets are numbered going away from the main N-S street, Broadway
(State Route 12), in both directions. So, there's a First Street West
and an First Street East that are parallel to one another and
separated by two blocks. (Originally, I had assumed First Street was
split into East and West sections, which made trying to locate
something very difficult!).
Similarly in Sacramento, one section of town has North A St., North B
St., etc. that do not connect to A St., B St., etc. The two street
naming sections are separted by railroad tracks.
Rainer Thonnes
In article <J-GROUT.96...@glibm6.cen.uiuc.edu>,
j-g...@glibm6.cen.uiuc.edu (John R. Grout) writes:
>
> For example, one of the origins for Edmonton, Alberta's numbering system is
> _way_ out of town... so some of the downtown streets are numbered in the
> 200's.
The origin for Edmonton's system is in the _middle_ of town.
Clearly the planners did not envisage the city growing to beyond 100
roads in each compass direction, nor did they relish the thought of
using negative numbers or compass prefixes, so they set the "origin"
at (100,100). Nor did they envisage more than 100 house numbers per
block.
Edmonton's addresses, then, are typically of the form 12345 67th Ave,
which a is house on 67th Avenue, being number 45 on the block between
123rd and 124th Streets. Unlike our familiar geometry x/y planes, if
I remember correctly, Edmonton's street numbers increase towards the
West, while avenue numbers increase to the North.
Colin R. Leech
Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) writes:
> One of them is Washington, DC, which you mentioned in your original
> essay. The quadrant designators -- NW, NE, SW, SE -- *follow* the street
> names: "2020 M Street, NW," for instance.
Same as Calgary and Edmonton. In these cities, a municipal address can
also locate a building quite accurrately for you. "1201 10th St. NW" would
be located between 11th and 12th Avenues (in the NW quadrant of the city,
of course).
Cities like Calgary and Edmonton were built in the middle of the Prairies
without too many geographic barriers, and could build out in all directions.
Thus it makes sense to use all four compass points, allowing the
conventions to be retained no matter what the size of the city.
OTOH, Toronto is constrained on the south by Lake Ontario. In this case,
the E-W numbering split at Yonge St. makes sense for the same reason, but
all numbering along N-S streets can start at Lake Ontario and increase
northward. There is no need to designate streets as "North" and "South".
There are a couple of exceptions to this, though. Most of Toronto south of
Front St. is on landfill in Lake Ontario (some of it is 150 year old
landfill, but landfill nevertheless), so for example the Toronto Star
building is 1 Yonge St. despite not being right on the water. Many of
these streets change name to avoid running into negative numbers. Also,
the TTC designates some N-S bus routes south of the Bloor subway using the
"south" (for example, the Islington South and the Islington routes), but
these are not dependent on the street numbering.
Returning to streets for a moment, Waterloo Ontario has an interesting
sign mounted on the Highway 86 overpass at the north end of the city. It
reads "King St. North" but is facing southbound traffic. The reason is
that the proper street name is "King St. North", and should properly read
"King St. North - Southbound" or more simply "King St. southbound".
The sign at the bottom of the highway ramp is more accurate, and looks
something like:
King St. North
<- south north->
The twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo are interesting because King St.
(and some other parallel arterials) exist as King St. N & S in Waterloo,
but E & W in Kitchener, yet are the same road. The reaosn is that King St.
in Kitchener really rus NW to SE, and so could have been called either N-S
or E-W. Unfortunately for all concerned, they chose E-W as the directional
designations, leaving the mess that endures to today. King St. South (and
other similar "South" streets) in Waterloo is quite short before you run
into the Kitchener city limit. Street addresses increase outward from both
downtown Kitchener and downtown Waterloo.
Since the streets parallel and perpendicular to King St. don't always run
exactly parallel and perpendicular, there are some interesting situations
such as Lancaster St. West running alomst due north, and Victoria St.
North is also Highway 7 East to Guelph.
--
##### |\^/| Colin R. Leech ag...@freenet.carleton.ca
##### _|\| |/|_ Civil engineer by training, transport planner by choice.
##### > < Opinions are my own. Consider them shareware if you want.
##### >_./|\._< "If you can't return a favour, pass it on." - A.L. Brown
Colin R. Leech
Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
> Here in Kansas City, we have a situation where "North Kansas City" and
> "Kansas City North" have entirely different meanings.
>
> "North Kansas City" refers to a municipality incorporated separately
> from Kansas City, Missouri. "Kansas City North" is the part of
> Kansas City, Missouri that is north of the Missouri River.
You should never name part of a city in this manner, as inevitably the
city will grow beyond these limits and the name will become confusing and
incorrect. "West Toronto" and "Ottawa South" are examples of communities
(or former independent towns) with this problem: "Ottawa South" is pretty
close to being the geographic centre of the current city.
The following story is almost an urban legend in bilingual Canada, but it
actually happened to relatives of mine in New Brunswick. They live on a
farm near the village of Centreville, about half an hour drive north of
Woodstock. One day, a francophone (Quebecois) car driver stopped to ask
them directions to the middle of Woodstock. This seemed a bit strange, as
he was quite far off course. It turns out that he had reached the bottom
of the off-ramp from the Trans-Canada Highway, and seen a sign that
indicated:
Upper Woodstock ->
<- Centreville
He turned left, as "centre-ville" is the French word for "downtown". :-)
("Upper Woodstock" refers to a settlement just north of the limits of the
Town of Woodstock proper.)
Minister of Truth
Where's South York?
West Vancouer, North Vancouver, and Vancouver are ~cities;
Most Canadian cities have 'ends', not 'sides', though Vancouver has
a West Side and a West End, which are not the same place.
David 'Yes, East and West Virginia will be re-unified' Crawford
<d...@panix.com>
(c) 1996
--
Ron Newman
>In Washington, letters and numbers are
>used for the two orientations, so that would be "110 NW D Street" and
>"110 NW 4th Street" respectively. But this is just by the way.)
No, in Washington DC, the "NW", "NE", "SE", or "SW" goes *after*
the address. It's "110 4th Street NW" or "110 D Street NW".
One curiosity about DC is that the north-south axis is off-center.
The true north-south axis should be where 16th Street is, not where
North Capitol Street is. As a result, the NW quadrant is much
larger than the NE quadrant.
In addition, all of the original District south of the Potomac
River was ceded back to Virginia before the Civil War, and is
now the county of Arlington. Because of this, Washington DC
has practically no SW quadrant at all.
I believe that Portland, Oregon also uses this quadrant system,
but that the put the quadrant name *before* the street name
instead of after it.
--
Ron Newman rne...@cybercom.net
Web: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/home.html
Exile on Market Street
(Ron Newman) wrote:
> One curiosity about DC is that the north-south axis is off-center.
> The true north-south axis should be where 16th Street is, not where
> North Capitol Street is. As a result, the NW quadrant is much
> larger than the NE quadrant.
That's in part because if you follow 16th Street to the point where it
intersects the east-west axis, you are in the middle of what was in 1792
tidal marshes. That was an unsuitable place to put the national capital,
so they located it instead on the nearest high ground (Jenkins' Hill, now
Capitol Hill) along the east-west axis.
__________________________________________________________________________
Sandy Smith, Exile on Market Street, Philadelphia smi...@pobox.upenn.edu
Univ of Pennsylvania, News & Public Affairs 215.898.1423/fax 215.898.1203
I speak for myself here, not for Penn http://pobox.upenn.edu/~smiths/
"The grass is always greener over the septic tank."
------------------------------------------------Erma Bombeck (1927-1996)--
Exile on Market Street
Stanek) wrote:
> In Sonoma, a small town north of the San Francisco Bay, the N-S
> streets are numbered going away from the main N-S street, Broadway
> (State Route 12), in both directions. So, there's a First Street West
> and an First Street East that are parallel to one another and
> separated by two blocks. (Originally, I had assumed First Street was
> split into East and West sections, which made trying to locate
> something very difficult!).
I think the best-known example of this in the United States is Cleveland,
Ohio, which adopted its street-numbering system in the late 19th century.
The Cleveland scheme, which also has numbered streets that run parallel to
each other on the east or west side of a central axis, was adopted
specifically to create a system that could easily expand with a growing
metropolis (all Cleveland streets were named prior to its adoption).
But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
Street and West 25th Street never meet!
Exile on Market Street
> Back in NW Indiana and Illinois where I grew up, the interesting thing
was the
> numbering system following that established in downtown Chicago at State &
> Madison on the Illinois side (not to mention E. Chicago, Whiting, Hammond,
> Munster & Highland, IN), and the numbering system established in
Downtown Gary
> at US Steel's door at #1 North Broadway for the remainder of Lake County,
> IN. The naming & numbering scheme still ran conventionally (i.e., 2500
W. 19th
> Avenue or 700 S. Halsted Street) in both towns, though.
"Metropolitan" numbering systems of this type seem to me to be common in
most US cities outside the Northeast.
There are glitches, though. My hometown of Kansas City is one.
The city fathers in Wyandotte (now Kansas City), Kansas, adopted a
numbering system of their own, with numbered streets running north-south
heading west from the Kaw and Central Avenue (a street that follows a
zig-zag course *south* of downtown) as the dividing line. The
metropolitan grid is based on Kansas City, Missouri's numbering system,
with numbered streets running east-west heading south (and eventually
north) from the Missouri and Main Street as the dividing line.
Shortly after WW2, Kansas City, Kansas, annexed Rosedale, in southern
Wyandotte County, and separated from the rest of the city by a four-track
rail line running from NE to SW. Rosedale was the only part of Wyandotte
County that followed the metropolitan grid, so the numbered streets there
were rechristened "avenues" after annexation to avoid confusion.
In addition, there are communities such as Grandview and Independence,
which had their own street numbering systems and were once separated from
Kansas City by some distance. In time, these were engulfed by the Kansas
City suburbs and the metropolitan grid, but the old numbering systems were
retained in the older parts of these towns, which gives rise to such
phenomena as having something like 119xx E. Truman Road and 8xx W. Truman
Road in Independence separated by only a street. (Many east-west streets
in Independence change names at the point where the metro and Independence
grids meet, though, lessening the possible confusion.)
Peter Hoogenboom
: 4th Street NW" respectively. In Washington, letters and numbers are
: used for the two orientations, so that would be "110 NW D Street" and
: "110 NW 4th Street" respectively. But this is just by the way.)
That would be 110 D Street NW and 110 4th Street NW, actually.
: Questions:
[...]
: - Are there any places where the usual national convention isn't followed?
Washington, DC (see above)
Peter
--
Peter Hoogenboom phoo...@wlu.edu
Department of Music, DuPont 208 hoogen...@fs.sciences.wlu.edu
Washington and Lee University phoog...@wesleyan.edu
Lexington, VA 24450 (540) 463-8697
Lee Rudolph
>But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
>with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
>Street and West 25th Street never meet!
Not particularly apropos of this, I am moved to report on Fall River,
Massachusetts, which has North Main Street, South Main Street, and
East Main Street. (North and South meet where one turns into the
other, over the long-buried river falls; East branches off from
South at Kosciusko Square, which is triangular.)
Fall River also rejoices in Last Street (just north of the
southern border with Tiverton, R.I.).
Oh, hell, while I'm at it--if you leave Tiverton for Portsmouth,
you soon pass Cul de Sac Drive.
Lee Rudolph
Mark S. Roberts
| Not particularly apropos of this, I am moved to report on Fall River,
| Massachusetts, which has North Main Street, South Main Street, and
| East Main Street. (North and South meet where one turns into the
| other, over the long-buried river falls; East branches off from
| South at Kosciusko Square, which is triangular.)
Houston, Texas has North Main, South Main, West Main, and Old Main.
North and South Main are more-or-less contiguous, but West Main no longer
connects with South Main (where it should have connected, as far as I could
tell, has since become a church parking lot, at least the last time
I looked for it).
And then there's North Shepherd, South Shepherd, and just plain Shepherd.
All continguous and occasionally confusing to this Houstonian-in-exile.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"...Kansas City--a town so even-tempered that car horns are blown only
to warn of impending collisions" -- _Time_, April 29, 1996
Mark S. Roberts
| Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
| > Here in Kansas City, we have a situation where "North Kansas City" and
| > "Kansas City North" have entirely different meanings.
| >
| > "North Kansas City" refers to a municipality incorporated separately
| > from Kansas City, Missouri. "Kansas City North" is the part of
| > Kansas City, Missouri that is north of the Missouri River.
| You should never name part of a city in this manner, as inevitably the
| city will grow beyond these limits and the name will become confusing and
| incorrect.
The "North" concept is well understood in these parts to mean "north of the
[Missouri] river", and is further reinforced by Kansas City's naming of the
streets up there as "NW xxth Street", "NE xxth Street", and "North xxxxx"
street/road/avenue/trafficway/whatever.
Besides, when you're already living with the Kansas City, Missouri and
Kansas City, Kansas confusion, what's another log on that particular fire?
(Now who'll be the first to ask, "what's a 'trafficway'?")
Alasdair Baxter
Glasgow. With the introduction of postcodes (similar to zip codes in US)
only London retained the geographical notation.
London W1; WC1, N1, SW10 etc. Now we have eg SW1 1AA etc.
Glasgow C1 to C5; NW, W1 to W4. Now they are all G1 1AA (The main post offfice)
to G53 xXX etc.
The codes come at the end of the address.
--
Alasdair Baxter, Nottingham, UK.Tel: +44 115 970 5100; Fax: +44 115 9423263.
"It's not what you say that matters but how you say it.
It's not what you do that matters but how you do it".
Eric Scouten
In article <4lhvco$e...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) wrote:
> The twin cities of Kitchener-Waterloo are interesting because King St.
> (and some other parallel arterials) exist as King St. N & S in Waterloo,
> but E & W in Kitchener, yet are the same road.
In the Twin Cities (MSP) metro area, there are something like seven
different numbering grid, a result of once-independent communities
coalescing into a single large city. Most are variations of the standard
100-per-block metaphor. St Paul, OTOH, uses a system that appears to be
based on 480 to the mile. (I have no idea why...)
Both core cities have grids that start at about a 30 degree angle to the
compass points and later contort themselves to the standard grid lines.
(Downtown Minneapolis and St Paul are both along the Mississippi River,
and both grids follow the river throughout the downtown.)
-es
__________________________________________________________________________
Eric Scouten Constructor Constructor Metrowerks Corp.
MW: mailto:sco...@metrowerks.com http://www.metrowerks.com
Me: mailto:sco...@gofast.net http://www.delivery.com/~scouten/
** Note new personal e-mail address and web page **
Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel
across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.
-Charles Kuralt
Garrett Wollman
>Not particularly apropos of this, I am moved to report on Fall River,
>Massachusetts, which has North Main Street, South Main Street, and
>East Main Street. (North and South meet where one turns into the
>other, over the long-buried river falls; East branches off from
>South at Kosciusko Square, which is triangular.)
The principal streets in Pittsfield, Mass., are simply North, South,
East, and West streets. They meet at a (formerly square) intersection
near downtown.
On the town (or neighborhood) name front, we can rejoice in North
Andover (which is east of Andover); Westfield, West Springfield,
Springfield, and East Springfield; Northampton, Southampton, and
Easthampton; East Boston (which is east of Boston Proper) and South
Boston (which is southeast of Boston Proper, but near the center of the
city's N-S axis) and West Roxbury (which is southwest of Roxbury);
and probably others that I've forgotten. (I know about North
Attleborough and the Brookfields, but they are all relatively
``normal''.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ...
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
Opinions not those of| It is a bond more powerful than absence. We like people
MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA| who like Shashish. - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant
Exile on Market Street
> Fall River also rejoices in Last Street (just north of the
> southern border with Tiverton, R.I.).
OK, but does it have a First Street?
> Oh, hell, while I'm at it--if you leave Tiverton for Portsmouth,
> you soon pass Cul de Sac Drive.
Truth in advertising or oxymoron? You be the judge.
Exile on Market Street
> (Now who'll be the first to ask, "what's a 'trafficway'?")
Not gonna touch that one, nope, no siree...
Iain Farquhar
wrote:
>
>Houston, Texas has North Main, South Main, West Main, and Old Main.
>North and South Main are more-or-less contiguous, but West Main no longer
>connects with South Main (where it should have connected, as far as I could
>tell, has since become a church parking lot, at least the last time
>I looked for it).
>
>And then there's North Shepherd, South Shepherd, and just plain Shepherd.
>All continguous and occasionally confusing to this Houstonian-in-exile.
>
Most towns in Utah have taken the easy way out and eliminated street
names entirely! Try 1234 S 456 E for an address. In Salt Lake they
do have a street (or is it several?) called Temple. One of the
buildings my company has there is at something like 3000 South West
Temple. Read it as 3000 South, West Temple, and you'll get it right.
Iain
Rich Veraa
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on Market Street) wrote:
>The Cleveland scheme, which also has numbered streets that run parallel to
>each other on the east or west side of a central axis, was adopted
>specifically to create a system that could easily expand with a growing
>metropolis (all Cleveland streets were named prior to its adoption).
>But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
>with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
>Street and West 25th Street never meet!
In Ho-Ho-Kus, New Jersey, where I grew up, we lived on West Saddle River
Road, which ran north and south on the west side of the Saddle River, which
ran south. East Saddle River Road ran north and south on the east side of
the river about a quarter-mile away.
As ours was the first house for some distance, people were always ringing
our doorbell for directions to houses on the East Road.
In Dade County Florida, where I live now, we've got a quartered system like
DC, except we put the NE, NW, SE, SW before the street. I live on 1050
N.E. 125th Street, about twenty-five miles from 1050 S.W. 125th Street.
(there are a few enclaves like Coral Gables with their own numbering
system that mess everybody up). Broward County, north of us, uses the same
basic plan, but the major cities like Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood have
separate numbering schemes.
Cheers,
Rich
Have you kissed your parrot today? 0
rve...@netside.net rve...@newssun.med.miami.edu ///{|}\\\
http://www.netside.net/~rveraa FIDONET (1:135/907) /|\
GE/L/FA H+>+++ g+ w+ v+@ C+++ OS/2 Y++ b+++ e+++ u** r++(---)>+++ y+>+++
Mark Brader
> > The same method is used for signing directions of travel along a highway,
> > too. Signs in Ontario point to highway 401 WEST, meaning westbound rather
> > than the western half of the road; but in the US, that would be WEST I-94,
> > with the same meaning.
> I must dispute this small part of Mark's post. In my part of the
> United States at least, signs direct one to I-80 EAST or US 101 NORTH,
> just as he says they do in Canada.
But in another branch of the thread, Eric Scouten (sco...@gofast.net) wrote:
| In Minnesota, the sequence depends on the layout of the
| sign or sign assembly. A horizontal layout would typically have the
| direction to the right of the route marker
| ...
| whereas a vertical layout would put the direction before the route marker
| ...
Now, Max, is *that* what California does also, or does it *always* put
the direction after the route?
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com "Information! ... We want information!"
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- The Prisoner
My text in this article is in the public domain.
Mark Brader
> North of Toronto there's a North York; Where's South York?
If you must know...
It's just called York -- a small city with a sort of sideways T-shape,
nestled in between Toronto, North York, and Etobicoke. When York and
North York were separated from each other in the 1920s, North York was
still rural, but York was already suburban, so it had the larger population
and kept the original name.
At that time York and North York were both townships, which in Ontario
essentially means a rural subdivision of a county -- in this case the
County of York. Until 1834 the City of Toronto was the Town of York,
and the township and county were named for it. (On the other hand,
there was then also a Toronto Township, some distance west within the
present City of Mississauga!) More recently, the old County of York has
been effectively split into the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto
("Metro") and the Regional Municipality of York ("York Region"). Since
the City of York is part of Metro, we now have the result that the City
of York, York Region, and the one-time Town of York that the other two
are named after, are three mutually disjoint places.
If you must know.
In another article, Colin R. Leech (ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) writes:
> Same as Calgary and Edmonton. In these cities, a municipal address can
> also locate a building quite accurrately for you. "1201 10th St. NW" would
> be located between 11th and 12th Avenues (in the NW quadrant of the city,
> of course).
As noted in other postings, not only Calgary but also Atlanta, Washington,
and Albuquerque write their quadrant-based addresses that way, so I was
wrong about Washington.
Colin, however, is wrong about Edmonton. As two other people noted in
their postings, Edmonton avoids directional naming by moving the numbering
origin of its streets way out of town. The city center of Edmonton would
be at 101st Street (north-south) and 101st Avenue (east-west), although
as I recall, there is actually in irregularity just there and that part
of 101st Avenue is replaced by Jasper Avenue. When I lived there, it was
customary to reduce the numbers modulo 100 in speech if the general
neighborhood was known, so one would speak of 101st as 1st Street.
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com | "I shot a query into the net.
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto | I haven't got an answer yet ..." -- Ed Nather
Atlemar
>Not particularly apropos of this, I am moved to report on Fall River,
>Massachusetts, which has North Main Street, South Main Street, and
>East Main Street. (North and South meet where one turns into the
>other, over the long-buried river falls; East branches off from
>South at Kosciusko Square, which is triangular.)
Houston has a similar Main Street. Downtown, it's Main. North of downtown,
it's North Main. It becomes South Main south of the South Loop (which is about
7 miles south of downtown). Then, there's West Main, which is a short street
unconnected to any of them.
James V. Geluso::::st...@jetson.uh.edu::::bisonrider::::not an addict::::fnord
"If you can't run rampant, why run at all?" Sam's Army Houston Brigade
Mark Brader
> In the UK only two cities had geographical postal districts, London and
> Glasgow.
This is a different thing, as they were indeed geographical *districts*.
There would never be a Victoria Street East and Victoria Street West;
rather, an address on Victoria Street might be in "London, S.W." --
later extended to "London, S.W.1" and today to "London SW1 1AA".
However, on street signage, "London" is naturally omitted, and the
signs today read "Victoria Street, SW1" (if SW1 is the right district).
Curiously, although there were 8 districts in the original scheme, they
did not use a system of 8 compass points. Instead, E.C. and W.C. were
added to the set for the most central area, and S. and N.E. were omitted.
Today, S and NE postcodes belong to the Sheffield and Newcastle areas.
--
Mark Brader, m...@sq.com "Don't be silly -- send it to Canada"
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- British postal worker
Mark Brader
> The city of Minneapolis uses the supposedly Canadian convention of
> "4th St SE" on its street markers. Few people except the city itself
> actually refer to the street names that way, however.
In email, Eric confirms that "SE 4th St." is what is spoken. Minneapolis
thus shows itself to be the complement of Vancouver, where, I am told by
Johnny Leung in email, "Broadway East" is official but "East Broadway"
is spoken.
This is more complicated than I thought!
--
Mark Brader | There are people on that train!
m...@sq.com | Sure, they're Canadians, but they're still people!
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto | -- Paul Gross, "Due South"
[or "South Due"? :-)]
Colin R. Leech
> without too many geographic barriers, and could build out in all directions.
> Thus it makes sense to use all four compass points, allowing the
> conventions to be retained no matter what the size of the city.
> OTOH, Toronto is constrained on the south by Lake Ontario. In this case,
> the E-W numbering split at Yonge St. makes sense for the same reason, but
> all numbering along N-S streets can start at Lake Ontario and increase
> northward. There is no need to designate streets as "North" and "South".
Upon further reflection, there are several cases of the type where "Dundas
St. East" in Mississauga meets "Dundas St. West" in Metro Toronto
(Etobicoke). If any further municipal amalgamation occurs (unlikely),
there could be some nasty surprises.
Mark Baker
m...@sq.com (Mark Brader) writes:
>The same method is used for signing directions of travel along a highway,
>too. Signs in Ontario point to highway 401 WEST, meaning westbound rather
>than the western half of the road; but in the US, that would be WEST I-94,
>with the same meaning.
The direction normally goes at the end in the UK as well, as in M1 North.
(When it's used at all, which isn't as often as I'd like, in many places
they just show the towns it goes to and if you haven't heard of either you
have to guess. And I wish they'd signpost the M25 as clockwise or
anti-clockwise instead of compass directions)
John R. Grout
> Upon further reflection, there are several cases of the type where "Dundas
> St. East" in Mississauga meets "Dundas St. West" in Metro Toronto
> (Etobicoke). If any further municipal amalgamation occurs (unlikely),
> there could be some nasty surprises.
The San Francisco Peninsula is full of this sort of thing... but, at
the Mountain View border with Palo Alto and Los Altos, things get even
more bizarre, because the whole orientation of the street grid
changes. So, "West XXX" street in Mountain View could suddenly become
"South XXX" street in Palo Alto (mercifully, most streets change name
at this point).
The ultimate absurdity lies along a few mile stretch of El Camino
Real, which is considered to be running north-south in Los Altos on
_one_ side of the street and considered to be running east-west in
Mountain View on the _other_ side of the street... so both sides of
the street have even street numbers!
--
John R. Grout Center for Supercomputing R & D j-g...@uiuc.edu
Coordinated Science Laboratory University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Exile on Market Street
> This is a different thing, as they were indeed geographical *districts*.
> There would never be a Victoria Street East and Victoria Street West;
> rather, an address on Victoria Street might be in "London, S.W." --
> later extended to "London, S.W.1" and today to "London SW1 1AA".
> However, on street signage, "London" is naturally omitted, and the
> signs today read "Victoria Street, SW1" (if SW1 is the right district).
I thought that London street signs did include the name of the local
municipality (City of London, City of Westminster, Borough of Camden, and
so on) above the street name.
Exile on Market Street
> In email, Eric confirms that "SE 4th St." is what is spoken. Minneapolis
> thus shows itself to be the complement of Vancouver, where, I am told by
> Johnny Leung in email, "Broadway East" is official but "East Broadway"
> is spoken.
>
> This is more complicated than I thought!
I'd be glad to add another level of complication, Mark.
Remember where I explained that in Washington, DC, the quadrant
designators follow the street addresses -- "1101 Connecticut Avenue NW"
and so on?
DC street signs place the quadrant designator *before* the street name --
"SW 15 ST", and so on.
The signs also indicate block numbers. Newer signs do this underneath the
sign bearing the street name, but the older ones did it between the
designator and the street name, e.g.: "NW (Unit Blk) Dupont Cir".
I would note that in written addresses, the quadrant designator is often
omitted for buildings on circles -- "11 Dupont Circle" instead of "11
Dupont Circle NW".
Mark Brader
> > rather, an address on Victoria Street might be in "London, S.W." --
> > later extended to "London, S.W.1" and today to "London SW1 1AA".
> > However, on street signage, "London" is naturally omitted, and the
> > signs today read "Victoria Street, SW1" (if SW1 is the right district).
> I thought that London street signs did include the name of the local
> municipality (City of London, City of Westminster, Borough of Camden, and
> so on) above the street name.
Yes, at least the newer ones do that. I was referring above to the primary
wording on the sign. But anyway, the city or borough isn't part of the
postal address, whereas the SW1 is. (That is, if SW1 1AA corresponds to
a location on Victoria Street in Westminster, "London SW1 1AA" and not
"Westminster SW1 1AA" is the postal address, but "City of Westminster"
is what will be in the small print on the sign.)
--
Mark Brader "A clarification is not to make oneself clear.
m...@sq.com It is to PUT oneself IN the clear."
SoftQuad Inc., Toronto -- Lynn & Jay, "Yes, Prime Minister"
Bob Cunningham
far...@primenet.com (Iain Farquhar) wrote:
[...]
>Most towns in Utah have taken the easy way out and eliminated street
>names entirely! Try 1234 S 456 E for an address. In Salt Lake they
>do have a street (or is it several?) called Temple. One of the
>buildings my company has there is at something like 3000 South West
>Temple. Read it as 3000 South, West Temple, and you'll get it right.
You can read it that way if it pleases you, but you mustn't say
it that way. Think of "South" as an adjective modifying the compound
street name "West Temple". Would you put a comma after "northern" in
"northern New England"? If you say "3000 South, West Temple" in Salt
Lake City, people will wonder why you're talking funny. Think of the
name of the street as "South West Temple" and the address on that
street as 3000, and you'll get it right.
I speak as a sometime resident of Salt Lake City who is quite
familiar with how people talk there.
(Posted and e-mailed)
Bob Cunningham
far...@primenet.com (Iain Farquhar) wrote:
[...]
>Most towns in Utah have taken the easy way out and eliminated street
>names entirely!
That's not at all true. The principal thoroughfares are
numbered, but between them are many named streets. The last time I
lived in Salt Lake City, I lived on Park Street, which is halfway
between 5th and 6th East. An aunt lived on Hollywood Way, which is
just north of 21st South. Another aunt lived on Driggs Avenue, which
is about halfway between 21st and 27th South. In later years my
father lived on Green Street, which is a short block west of 7th East.
Furthermore, after you passed 9th South, the numbered streets
were in steps of four or more: 9th, 13th, 17th, 21st, 27th, 33rd, and
39th, with no numbered streets in between, but many named streets. I
never counted, but I would expect to find that named streets far
outnumber numbered streets in Salt Lake City.
If you never left the downtown area you might get the impression
that most of the streets were numbered, but even there, there were
exceptions. Third South was called "Broadway", but I don't remember
whether that was official. The street that might have been First East
was State Street. Then there were the named streets North Temple,
South Temple, and West Temple, with what might have been called East
Temple named Main Street instead.
(Posted and e-mailed)
Colin R. Leech
Minister of Truth (d...@panix3.panix.com) writes:
> North of Toronto there's a North York;
> Where's South York?
Lake Ontario. :-)
Colin R. Leech
Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) writes:
> In article <4ljpa6$c...@panix.com>, lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) wrote:
>
>> Fall River also rejoices in Last Street (just north of the
>> southern border with Tiverton, R.I.).
>
> OK, but does it have a First Street?
>
>> Oh, hell, while I'm at it--if you leave Tiverton for Portsmouth,
>> you soon pass Cul de Sac Drive.
>
> Truth in advertising or oxymoron? You be the judge.
One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road". Somebody
just ran out of creativity, I guess. (Maybe Mark knows something about the
history of this name?)
When I visited Timmins Ont. a few years ago, one of my first tasks (as
always!) was to pick up a system map for Timmins Transit. A couple of
routes run out of the main city into adjacent towns/villages (actually
part of Timmins politically, but not geographically). One of these bus
routes was labelled "South Porcupine [name of neighbouring town] via Front
Road". I looked at the map, but the route apparently travelled on the main
highway, and I could find no evidence of the existance of this street name.
I was puzzled until I turned to another route that was labelled "South
Porcupine via back road". Then it struck me. We always talk about
travelling on the back roads in rural areas, so why not front roads? :-)
Colin R. Leech
Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) writes:
> "Metropolitan" numbering systems of this type seem to me to be common in
> most US cities outside the Northeast.
The newer suburbs north of Toronto often continue the numbering along major
arterial roads, so there are some 5 digit addresses along these streets in
places like Newmarket. In the east-west direction, a lot of older separate
towns along Lake Ontario have grown together, so you're more likely to
encounter the "Dundas St. East" in city X meeting "Dundas St. West" in
city Y at the border, with numbers starting at the centre of each
respective city.
Numbering along major roads here in the Ottawa area generally continue
into the adjacent municipalities. But we're pretty small. :-)
Exile on Market Street
In article <4lpgvl$q...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) wrote:
> One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road". Somebody
> just ran out of creativity, I guess. (Maybe Mark knows something about the
> history of this name?)
We can match that down here.
The first major E-W (actually, SE-NW) artery past the Philadelphia city
line in Bucks County is "Street Road".
I've heard a number of explanations for the origin of this name, most
having to do with some act of the colonial Pennsylvania legislature
authorizing the construction of "a Street or Road" in this general area.
Seymour Dupa
Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) wrote:
[snip]
: But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
: with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
: Street and West 25th Street never meet!
Living my whole life in Cleveland, I didn't realize this oddity until I
thought about for a minute - then it hit me. Before, I never gave it a
second thought.
John
--
***************************************************
You only get one chance on this merry-go-round, **
but if you do it right, once is enough. **
***************************************************
Seymour Dupa
Colin R. Leech (ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
[snip]
: One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road". . .
Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
street,
avenue,
road,
lane,
boulevard?
Benjamin D Lukoff
smi...@pobox.upenn.edu (Exile on Market Street) writes:
>In article <4lpgvl$q...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) wrote:
>> One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road". Somebody
>> just ran out of creativity, I guess. (Maybe Mark knows something about the
>> history of this name?)
>The first major E-W (actually, SE-NW) artery past the Philadelphia city
>line in Bucks County is "Street Road".
We had a thread about this here in alt.usage.english a few months ago --
I started it off my mentioning Street Road and Seattle's Pike Street and
Lane Street :) Of course, ours are named after people, not types of
roadway.
BDL
Benjamin D Lukoff
gru...@en.com (Seymour Dupa) writes:
>Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) wrote:
> [snip]
>: But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
>: with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
>: Street and West 25th Street never meet!
> Living my whole life in Cleveland, I didn't realize this oddity until I
>thought about for a minute - then it hit me. Before, I never gave it a
>second thought.
In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*. In the sectors of
Seattle where all streets/avenues are numbered, this gets *very* confusing
for visitors and people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
BDL
Steve Bacher
In article <4lht2a$d...@freenet-news.carleton.ca> ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) writes:
>> "North Kansas City" refers to a municipality incorporated separately
>> from Kansas City, Missouri. "Kansas City North" is the part of
>> Kansas City, Missouri that is north of the Missouri River.
>You should never name part of a city in this manner, as inevitably the
>city will grow beyond these limits and the name will become confusing and
>incorrect. "West Toronto" and "Ottawa South" are examples of communities
>(or former independent towns) with this problem: "Ottawa South" is pretty
>close to being the geographic centre of the current city.
Ever spend time in Queens? Ever wonder why East Elmhurst is north
of Elmhurst, South Ozone Park is east of Ozone Park, and a couple of
other similar examples which I forgot? Did someone turn the whole
borough on its side long ago?
- seb
Colin R. Leech
Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
> Besides, when you're already living with the Kansas City, Missouri and
> Kansas City, Kansas confusion, what's another log on that particular fire?
>
> (Now who'll be the first to ask, "what's a 'trafficway'?")
OK, I'll bite. :-)
On a similar note, I observe that here in Ottawa, a "parkway" has close to
its literal meaning of "a road through a park". In many parts of the USA
(as well as places like the Don Valley Parking Lot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
Parkway in Toronto), "parkway" is more of a synonym for "freeway".
We also have "driveways" as in "Queen Elizabeth Drive", thus negating the
old quip about "why do we drive on parkways, and park on driveways?"
Colin R. Leech
Mark Brader (m...@sq.com) writes:
> David Crawford (d...@panix3.panix.com) writes:
>> North of Toronto there's a North York; Where's South York?
>
> If you must know...
>
>[lots of snippage along the way]
>
> At that time York and North York were both townships, which in Ontario
> essentially means a rural subdivision of a county -- in this case the
> County of York. Until 1834 the City of Toronto was the Town of York,
> and the township and county were named for it. (On the other hand,
> there was then also a Toronto Township, some distance west within the
> present City of Mississauga!) More recently, the old County of York has
> been effectively split into the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto
> ("Metro") and the Regional Municipality of York ("York Region"). Since
> the City of York is part of Metro, we now have the result that the City
> of York, York Region, and the one-time Town of York that the other two
> are named after, are three mutually disjoint places.
It wasn't all that uncommon in Ontario for a township to have the same
name as the adjacent city (or town). I'm not sure why. In addition to
Toronto Township (now the City of Mississauga) being close to the City of
Toronto, other examples include:
Kingston Twp. (still exists)
Waterloo Twp. (now broken up, but the City of Waterloo is still one
of the constituent municipalities of the Regional
Municipality of Waterloo, and both City and Twp. were
in the former Waterloo County, which is now the Region)
Brantford (I think)
plus several more that I've forgotten.
> Colin, however, is wrong about Edmonton. As two other people noted in
> their postings, Edmonton avoids directional naming by moving the numbering
> origin of its streets way out of town. The city center of Edmonton would
> be at 101st Street (north-south) and 101st Avenue (east-west), although
Yup, sorry for any confusion.
David J. Greenberger
In article <4m1dld$7...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
Colin R. Leech <ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>On a similar note, I observe that here in Ottawa, a "parkway" has close to
>its literal meaning of "a road through a park". In many parts of the USA
>(as well as places like the Don Valley Parking Lot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
>Parkway in Toronto), "parkway" is more of a synonym for "freeway".
I believe the term "parkway" was coined in reference to the Bronx River
Parkway and was later applied to Robert Moses' parkways on Long Island, which
do run through parkland. Indeed, most parkways in the New York area do
actually run through parkland, although there are exceptions.
--
David J. Greenberger Young Israel of Cornell
Cornell University (607) 256-2171 / (607) 272-5810 fax
College of Arts and Sciences
Computer Science/Linguistics major http://crux5.cit.cornell.edu/~djg2/
Greg Ioannou
>In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*. In the sectors of
>Seattle where all streets/avenues are numbered, this gets *very* confusing
>for visitors and people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
There's a similar weirdness in Vancouver, B.C., where East 29th St sort of
slowly curves up to intersect with East 33rd St.
Greg
Greg Ioannou gr...@e-mend.com voice (416) 214 0183 ext. 10
fax (416) 214 0235
E-mend is an on-line editing service. Visit our site at http://www.e-mend.com.
Garrett Wollman
>On a similar note, I observe that here in Ottawa, a "parkway" has close to
>its literal meaning of "a road through a park". In many parts of the USA
>(as well as places like the Don Valley Parking Lot^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H
>Parkway in Toronto), "parkway" is more of a synonym for "freeway".
Here in Greater Boston, our usage closely follows the usage described
by Colin in Ottawa; viz., Mystic Valley Parkway, Alewife Brook
Parkway, Fresh Pond Parkway, Med-Vets Parkway, VFW Parkway, Turtle
Pond Parkway, Enneking Parkway, but not Revere Beach Parkway or
Neponset Valley Parkway. There also seems to be a convention that a
road named ``the XXXway'' is of a similar nature, hence the Fenway,
the Riverway, the Jamaicaway, the Arborway, the Fellsway, and so on.
But there are also a lot of roads which don't follow this convention,
such as Charles River Road, Greenough Boulevard, Nonantum Road,
Administration Road [in the Blue Hills Reservation], and Storrow Drive
[ick].
Oddly enough, there is no word corresponding to ``freeway'' in common
usage here. ``Highway'' is used for a lot of roads which are not
``freeways'' (McGrath/O'Brien Highway, McClellan Highway, Cummins
Highway, etc.); ``freeway'' is not used at all that I've been able to
tell; and ``expressway'', while it can be used in a generic sense, is
generally understood to refer to ``the [Southeast] Expressway''.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | Shashish is simple, it's discreet, it's brief. ...
wol...@lcs.mit.edu | Shashish is the bonding of hearts in spite of distance.
Opinions not those of| It is a bond more powerful than absence. We like people
MIT, LCS, ANA, or NSA| who like Shashish. - Claude McKenzie + Florent Vollant
D Banks
If you really want to confuse someone in Vancouver, ask them to meet you
at the corner of Granville and Connaught. There are two such corners, a couple of
miles apart, as Connaught gently curves away from Granville, runs parallel for
a couple of miles, then curves back to rejoin Granville.
Or how about asking a friend to meet you in the 200 bock of Water St.
Exile on Market Street
> Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) wrote:
["East 25th is East 25th, and West 25th is West 25th, and never the twain
shall meet"]
> Living my whole life in Cleveland, I didn't realize this oddity until I
> thought about for a minute - then it hit me. Before, I never gave it a
> second thought.
Getting back to the US-Canadian usage difference that began this thread:
I have beside me at my desk copies of the Cleveland RTA's timetables for
the Red, Green and Blue rapid-transit/light-rail lines.
The mailing address of the RTA is
"615 Superior, West
Cleveland, OH 44113-1877"
Note the placement of the compass point...
Exile on Market Street
In article <4ltoof$5...@nntp5.u.washington.edu>, blu...@u.washington.edu
(Benjamin D Lukoff) wrote:
> We had a thread about this here in alt.usage.english a few months ago --
> I started it off my mentioning Street Road and Seattle's Pike Street and
> Lane Street :) Of course, ours are named after people, not types of
> roadway.
Shall we go for the hypothetical trifecta?
There has been a recent rash of street renamings in Philadelphia to honor
recently-deceased public figures of some renown. A stretch of Columbia
Avenue was renamed to honor civil rights leader Cecil B. Moore, and the
drive along the east bank of the Schuylkill River, formerly "East River
Drive," was renamed for Gene Kelly.
It is entirely conceivable that someday, for some reason, someone might
suggest that a stretch of road in North Philadelphia be named in honor of
our current City Council President (though why that would happen is beyond
me).
If that were to pass the Council, we would then have a "Street Street."
Exile on Market Street
> Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
> street,
> avenue,
> road,
> lane,
> boulevard?
Good question.
In most places I know, the distinction between a "street" and an "avenue"
is at best arbritrary. Often, as in New York and a number of cities in
the American West, the terms are used to distinguish one set of numbered
streets from another that crosses the first set.
Boulevards, where I've seen them, are usually wider thoroughfares, often
(but not always) landscaped. In the East, they are often distinguished by
service roads separated from the through travel lanes by landscaped
medians (cf. Queens Blvd. in NYC or Roosevelt Blvd. in Philadelphia). In
my hometown of Kansas City, the term carries a legal distinction:
boulevards are part of the city park system, and truck traffic is banned.
I know of no major thoroughfares that bear the designation "lane", at
least none I've seen in the US yet -- whoops! forgot Mockingbird Lane in
Dallas.
I can tell you about a designator not included on your list that does have
some significance: "pike" or "turnpike". As with our modern
superhighways, the streets that bear these designators were once toll
roads.
Bob Goudreau
: ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) wrote:
: > One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road"...
:
: The first major E-W (actually, SE-NW) artery past the Philadelphia
: city line in Bucks County is "Street Road".
And Raleigh, NC has a road named "Plaza Place".
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation
goud...@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive
+1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA
Mark S. Roberts
On 29 Apr 1996 06:33:24 GMT Colin R. Leech (ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
| It wasn't all that uncommon in Ontario for a township to have the same
| name as the adjacent city (or town). I'm not sure why.
In New York State, at least in the mid-Hudson valley, this seems to happen
with some frequency. Examples from Dutchess and Orange counties:
* City of Poughkeepsie, next to Town of Poughkeepsie
* City of Newburgh, next to Town of Newburgh
* Village of Fishkill, within Town of Fishkill
(Cities, towns, and villages in New York are distinct entities. Essentially
a village can be a part of a town, but a city cannot. However, a city can
operate a school district, while a town or village cannot. At least that's
how I remember it from my year there in 1984.)
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"When bandwidth was scarce, people admired those who could make a point and
get on with it."--Suck, 15-Apr-1996 (http://www.suck.com/dynasuck/96/04/15/)
Mark S. Roberts
On 29 Apr 1996 03:39:25 GMT Colin R. Leech (ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
| Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
| > Besides, when you're already living with the Kansas City, Missouri and
| > Kansas City, Kansas confusion, what's another log on that particular fire?
| >
| > (Now who'll be the first to ask, "what's a 'trafficway'?")
| OK, I'll bite. :-)
Heh-heh. Essentially it seems to mean "major arterial".
However, there's a two-block two-lane street circling near Union Cemetery
named "Warwick Trafficway".
Contrast to the Southwest Trafficway, which is what happened when a
two-lane residential street was turned into a six-lane arterial with
precisely timed traffic lights and limited turns, as well as sickly trees
in the median that keep dying because of the exhaust fumes.
David A. Kaye
Rainer Thonnes wrote the quoted material below:
" Edmonton's addresses, then, are typically of the form 12345 67th Ave,
" which a is house on 67th Avenue, being number 45 on the block between
" 123rd and 124th Streets.
This is also the setup in cities like Portland, where the 0 axes are the
Willamette River and Burnside Street. Acturally, the two axes divide the
city into 5 sectors. But, as with Edmonton, 400 SE 82nd Avenue would be
8.2 miles east of the river and 4 blocks south of Burnside.
In San Francisco it's totally different. The street addresses are not
parallel from one street to the next. The numbers start at what is
considered the peculiar beginning of the street. In the downtown area,
most streets begin at Market Street, which is a thoroughfare running
northeast to southwest. So, it's possible to tell how far a street is
from Market. But Market itself and streets parallel to it (south of
Market) start numbering from the bay. Generally, the number increase to
the north and to the west, but again, it depends on what is considered
the start of the street.
In Beverly Hills and the city next to it (Century City?) the addresses on
South Robertson are in the 200 block on one side of the street, and (I
believe) the 700 block on ther other side.
San Francisco has an address in the 2200 block of Market Street which is
directly next to an address in the 4300? block of 17th Street. Also,
there is one street, Masonic, where the an even number is on the same
side of the street as the odd numbers run.
So, to give a short answer: these things seem to be arbitrary.
--
(c) 1996 In 1970 just 1 in 25 girls played sports
David Kaye in high school; today 1 in 3 do
David A. Kaye
Colin R. Leech wrote the quoted material below:
" One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road". Somebody
" just ran out of creativity, I guess.
In Walnut Creek or Concord (California) one well-known street is called
"Boulevard Way". Being into etymology and all, I understand that it was
part of the old Mount Diablo Boulevard prior to the time the freeway was
built. Since it no longer is a through street and since there was
already a Mount Diablo Way, I assume this is why they called it Boulevard
Way. It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
--
(c) 1996 "An unsupervised teenager with a modem is as
David Kaye dangerous as an unsupervised teenager with a
gun." - Gail Thackeray, Arizona State Attorney
David A. Kaye
" : with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
" : Street and West 25th Street never meet!
But, in San Francisco, at least, you can stand at the intersection of 3rd
and 4th Streets. Seattle is a bear when you try to find First. There
must be at least 6 or 8 of them and most of them don't meet.
--
(c) 1996 M.I.T. offers recognizes same-sex
David Kaye domestic partnerships.
David A. Kaye
Seymour Dupa wrote the quoted material below:
" Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
" street, avenue, road, lane, boulevard?
I believe it depends on local custom. In California (as far as I can
determine), most of those designations don't mean anything, except that
"lane", "way", and "circle" have no outlets.
"Road" is *usually* used in an undeveloped area.
In some cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, "avenue" and
"boulevard" are *usually* major streets which were designed with
automobile traffic in mind.
Typically, in a California community, there will not be the same street
name applied to more than one designator at a time. (If there is an "Oak
Avenue" typically there won't be an "Oak Street" unless it is a part of
the same street.) However, when it comes to "way", "lane", and "circle",
all bets are off.
--
(c) 1996 General Foods first rejected frozen foods saying that
David Kaye no housewife would serve something so undignified
Lee Rudolph
d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) writes:
>It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
>outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
Speaking of California signage customs (and veering back a bit
closer to the charter of alt.usage.english), I'm driven quite mad
by the abbreviation of "Canyon" by "Cyn".
I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
Lee Rudolph
Bob Cunningham
d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) wrote:
> It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
>outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
That may be true in some areas, but in the San Fernando Valley
two major boulevards are Sherman Way and Hollywood Way. Hollywood Way
is the one that runs past the Burbank airport, and it's probably still
the off ramp to take to get to the airport from the Ventura or Golden
State Freeways. (I haven't frequented the Burbank airport much in
recent decades and I think there have been some name changes. It used
to be Lockheed Air Terminal. At one time it may have been called
something like "Hollywood Burbank Glendale Pasadena Airport". My
current Pacific Bell telephone directory, under "Airports", lists
"BURBANK AIRPORT". (Their caps, not mine.))
Sherman Way starts at the west side of the Burbank airport and
goes twenty miles or so, out through North Hollywood, Panorama City,
Reseda, Canoga Park, and places beyond. (I don't get west of Topanga
Canyon Boulevard much.)
With many exceptions, in the San Fernando Valley, which is a
major chunk of Los Angeles, "street"s run east and west, and "avenue"s
run north and south. I think that may also be true of the rest of Los
Angeles on the other side of the hill, but I don't get over there
much.
Amazing event: When my spelling checker got to "San Fernando
Valley", it suggested changing "Fernando" to "Germanoid". Is that
strange, or what?
(Posted; e-mailed)
---
Bob Cunningham | Starting quite soon, Sparky
Los Angeles | will fade from the scene
California, USofA | for a while.
Colin R. Leech
I've left alt.usage.english in the crosspost, as this topic would seem
to be coming back into an area of interest to them.
Seymour Dupa (gru...@en.com) writes:
> Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
> street,
> avenue,
> road,
> lane,
> boulevard?
I can't answer the "why" aspect, but some observations:
"Streets" and "avenues" are urban entities. Between villages, one usually
encounters "roads", but never "streets" nor "avenues". Of course, as urban
areas grew, often growing into each other, the formerly rural "roads" often
became urban in nature, so that today we see both in cities (there may well
have been "roads" in urban areas anyway).
It's not uncommon for, say, "Richmond Road" to be "the road that leads to
the village of Richmond".
I picture "lanes" as fairly narrow service alleys, as opposed to major
thoroughfares.
Of course, in modern usage, developers tend to pick whatever sounds the
most marketable at the time. Hence there are a lot more "lanes" and "ways"
(I used to live on Glenbrook Way) and other catchy street name types that
bear no resemblance to their historic roots.
When our local regional government started into the GIS business, one of
the tasks was standardizing the abbreviations and names for the type of
road (RD, ST, LN, PKWY, etc.) After much head scratching all around, I
think the final list had something like 35 or 40 entries (not even
counting the French translation equivalents). One used here
that I haven't seen elsewhere is "Private", for example, "Irma Private".
This is used to refer to a private roadway (no kidding!) in a condominium
townhouse development. By insisting on using "Private" instead of, say,
"Lane", the concept that this is not a municipal street is constantly
reinforced in the minds of the public. No doubt this reduces the number of
calls received by city hall concerning things like potholes and snow
plowing, as the residents have to call the condo association rather than
the city to rectify these problems.
To counteract the old cliche: "Why do we park on driveways and drive on
parkways?", I will note that we have both "Driveways" and "Parkways" here
in Ottawa, used interchangeably to refer to scenic roadways through linear
parks (most are also good commuter routes, but they are not freeways).
Both translate into "Promenade" in French.
I've seen "boulevard" used in a couple of different contexts. As well as
being a type of street name (connoting to me a road with a median, and
landscaping, although again the developers use it wherever they want to
sound fancy), it's also used to refer to the strip of grass (or
asphalt) between the curb line of the road and the sidewalk.
"You know you're in a big city when Main Street, isn't." :-) - anon
Colin R. Leech
Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
> On 29 Apr 1996 03:39:25 GMT Colin R. Leech (ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA) wrote:
>
> | Mark S. Roberts (tran...@crl.com) writes:
> | > Besides, when you're already living with the Kansas City, Missouri and
> | > Kansas City, Kansas confusion, what's another log on that particular fire?
> | >
> | > (Now who'll be the first to ask, "what's a 'trafficway'?")
>
> | OK, I'll bite. :-)
>
> Heh-heh. Essentially it seems to mean "major arterial".
>
> However, there's a two-block two-lane street circling near Union Cemetery
> named "Warwick Trafficway".
>
> Contrast to the Southwest Trafficway, which is what happened when a
> two-lane residential street was turned into a six-lane arterial with
> precisely timed traffic lights and limited turns, as well as sickly trees
> in the median that keep dying because of the exhaust fumes.
Another local term used in Calgary and Edmonton is "Trail", presumably
left over from pioneer days. :-) It refers to various types of facilities
ranging from high grade arterials to freeways. There are several in each
city, and the Edmonton Trail runs north out of Calgary while the Calgary
Trail runs south from Edmonton.
Benjamin D Lukoff
d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) writes:
>" Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) wrote:
>" : But since the designators are placed before the street name in keeping
>" : with US custom, it is confusing for a visitor to discover that East 25th
>" : Street and West 25th Street never meet!
>But, in San Francisco, at least, you can stand at the intersection of 3rd
>and 4th Streets. Seattle is a bear when you try to find First. There
>must be at least 6 or 8 of them and most of them don't meet.
1st Avenue,
1st Avenue South,
1st Avenue S.W.,
1st Avenue North,
1st Avenue N.W.,
1st Avenue N.E.
1st Avenue becomes 1st Avenue South upon crossing Yesler Way at the south
end of Downtown and 1st Avenue North upon crossing Denny Way at the north
end. None of the others connect.
Also, the first north-south street east of the waterfront in Downtown
isn't 1st Avenue -- first comes Alaskan Way, then Western, Elliot or Post
Avenues (or a combination thereof), and finally 1st Avenue.
BDL
MorlanRogers
d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) wrote:
>It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
>outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
>
When I visited L.A. for the first time, I found that Melrose Place was a
one block side street near Melrose Ave. or Blvd. etc.
John Taber
On 29 Apr 1996, D Banks wrote:
> gr...@e-mend.com (Greg Ioannou) wrote:
> >In article <4luoft$d...@nntp4.u.washington.edu>, blu...@u.washington.edu (Benjamin D Lukoff) wrote:
> >
> >>In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*. In the sectors of
> >>Seattle where all streets/avenues are numbered, this gets *very* confusing
> >>for visitors and people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
But if you know Seattle, you know that streets run east-west, avenues run
north-south, and that the quadrant direction (all nine are used) are
placed in front of street name/number, and after avenue. Phone directory
listings say "23rd E" or "E 45th".
> >
> >There's a similar weirdness in Vancouver, B.C., where East 29th St sort of
> >slowly curves up to intersect with East 33rd St.
I've seen that occur in other places as well.
>
> If you really want to confuse someone in Vancouver, ask them to meet you
> at the corner of Granville and Connaught. There are two such corners, a couple of
> miles apart, as Connaught gently curves away from Granville, runs parallel for
> a couple of miles, then curves back to rejoin Granville.
Nashville is notorious for situations like that.
Mark Baker
In article <4ltden$n...@antares.en.com>,
gru...@en.com (Seymour Dupa) writes:
> Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
>street,
>avenue,
>road,
>lane,
An avenue is two lines of trees with a road or track between them.
Or, perhaps more likely these days, any other road that the developers
thought "avenue" was a nice name for.
I'm always surprised when I find a "street" that isn't in a town
centre, although they do exist. "road" tends to be used for
residential streets just outside the town and for roads through
the countryside.
Lanes tend to be back roads through the countryside, or occasionally
service roads in cities. Often as villages grow into each other what
were lanes between them become residential streets, but keep their old
name.
Exile on Market Street
> But, in San Francisco, at least, you can stand at the intersection of 3rd
> and 4th Streets. Seattle is a bear when you try to find First. There
> must be at least 6 or 8 of them and most of them don't meet.
Well, since we're back to that, you do know that in Greenwich Village,
West 4th Street intersects West 10th, West 11th and West 12th Streets...
but not "Little West 12th Street."
D Banks
Even more confusing, in the extreme western part of Vancouver, Broadway
disappears (curves gently towards 8th avenue and terminates). A few
blocks later, there _is_ a 9th Avenue, right where it should be between
8th and 10th Avenue
Bill Ahlstrom
D Banks wrote:
>
> gr...@e-mend.com (Greg Ioannou) wrote:
> >In article <4luoft$d...@nntp4.u.washington.edu>, blu...@u.washington.edu (Benjamin D Lukoff) wrote:
> >
> >>In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*. In the sectors of
> >>Seattle where all streets/avenues are numbered, this gets *very* confusing
> >>for visitors and people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
> >
> >slowly curves up to intersect with East 33rd St.
> >
> >
> >
> >Greg Ioannou gr...@e-mend.com voice (416) 214 0183 ext. 10
> > fax (416) 214 0235
> >
> >E-mend is an on-line editing service. Visit our site at http://www.e-mend.com
>
> at the corner of Granville and Connaught. There are two such corners, a couple of
> miles apart, as Connaught gently curves away from Granville, runs parallel for
> a couple of miles, then curves back to rejoin Granville.
>
In Mt Laurel, New Jersey USA (exit 4 NJ Turnpike) you can ask
someone to meet you at the corcer of Church and Church (Church
Street intersects Church Road), and in Feasterville Pennsylvania
north of Philadelphia one of the main routes in Street Road....
Exile on Market Street
> So, to give a short answer: these things seem to be arbitrary.
But sometimes there is a certain logic to a seemingly arbitrary system.
In Philadelphia's Kensington section, east-west streets do two things east
of Kensington Avenue:
--they change from E-W to SE-NW (perpendicular to both Kensington Avenue
and the Delaware River at this point); and
--the house numbers jump to 1800 E, regardless how far east of Front
Street the Kensington Av intersection lies.
This latter is because at Frankford Creek (Kensington Av's northern end),
the street is 18 blocks east of Front Street, and the grid runs parallel
to Kensington Av east of it. Hence the jump, to maintain the uniformity
of the grid.
There are some similar lesser jumps elsewhere in the city, largely due to
surveyors laying out streets that did not follow the grid precisely; e.g.;
because streets between Spring Garden and Girard Avenue run a few degrees
north of the grid as they approach Broad Street from the east, house
numbers on Broad jump from 900 to 1200 N at Girard. As you head east on
Girard from Broad, this gap gradually disappears until, at about 5th
Street, it vanishes completely.
Ian Oliver
Lee Rudolph (lrud...@panix.com) wrote:
: d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) writes:
: >It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
: >outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
: Speaking of California signage customs (and veering back a bit
: closer to the charter of alt.usage.english), I'm driven quite mad
: by the abbreviation of "Canyon" by "Cyn".
: I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
Do you have a problem with that??
Ian
: Lee Rudolph
--
|----------------------------------------------|----------------------------|
| Replies to: I.J.O...@bton.ac.uk | Iechyd da i bawb ar y Net |
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Colin Bell
>Sandy Smith (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) replied:
>> I thought that London street signs did include the name of the local
>> municipality (City of London, City of Westminster, Borough of Camden, and
>> so on) above the street name.
>
>Yes, at least the newer ones do that. I was referring above to the primary
>wording on the sign. But anyway, the city or borough isn't part of the
>postal address, whereas the SW1 is. (That is, if SW1 1AA corresponds to
>a location on Victoria Street in Westminster, "London SW1 1AA" and not
>"Westminster SW1 1AA" is the postal address, but "City of Westminster"
>is what will be in the small print on the sign.)
As you might expect, there's little consistency in this in the UK. Many
authorities like to put their name on the roadsigns (and in many cases they're
left, even when that authority disappears: there is one sign I know labelled
'Borough of Carshalton and Wallington' which hasn't existed for about 30
years). Some areas, mainly in the big cities have the first part of the
postcode on their signs, normally in a small face in the bottom left,
eg Victoria Street SW1. Birmingham just has the number without the B.
Be warned that administrative areas and postal areas do not always coincide.
For example, a few parts of Cambridgeshire are attached to a postal town in
Hertfordshire (I can't remember which one), and the CR and KT (Croydon and
Kingston) codes encompass not only those London boroughs but large chunks of
Surrey too. I grew up in the London Borough of Croydon, but my postal address
was Croydon, Surrey CR2 ... (the London codes extend less far south of the
river than north). I had a London telephone number though.
Colin
--
Colin Bell, cr...@cam.ac.uk. Dept of Pure Mathematics, University of Cambridge
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have to go and act as a food-taster for the Russian
Ambassador immediately.
Bill Ahlstrom
Exile on Market Street wrote:
>
> In article <4ltden$n...@antares.en.com>, gru...@en.com (Seymour Dupa) wrote:
>
> > Now that you bring *that* up, what's the difference between
> > street,
> > avenue,
> > road,
> > lane,
In Washington DC, avenues are named after the States (exception
California Street), such as New York Avenue, Pennsylvania
Avenue, etc, and street is generally reserved for the numbered
north-south streets, the lettered east-west, and the named
alphabetical streets, such as Hawthorne, Albemarle etc.
>
> Good question.
>
> In most places I know, the distinction between a "street" and an "avenue"
> is at best arbritrary. Often, as in New York and a number of cities in
> the American West, the terms are used to distinguish one set of numbered
> streets from another that crosses the first set.
>
> Boulevards, where I've seen them, are usually wider thoroughfares, often
> (but not always) landscaped. In the East, they are often distinguished by
> service roads separated from the through travel lanes by landscaped
> medians (cf. Queens Blvd. in NYC or Roosevelt Blvd. in Philadelphia). In
> my hometown of Kansas City, the term carries a legal distinction:
> boulevards are part of the city park system, and truck traffic is banned.
>
> I know of no major thoroughfares that bear the designation "lane", at
> least none I've seen in the US yet -- whoops! forgot Mockingbird Lane in
> Dallas.
>
> I can tell you about a designator not included on your list that does have
> some significance: "pike" or "turnpike". As with our modern
> superhighways, the streets that bear these designators were once toll
> roads.
>
> ________________________________________________________________
__________
MorlanRogers
>: ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Colin R. Leech) wrote:
>
>: > One of the major N-S arterial roads in Toronto is "Avenue Road"...
>:
>: The first major E-W (actually, SE-NW) artery past the Philadelphia
>: city line in Bucks County is "Street Road".
>
>And Raleigh, NC has a road named "Plaza Place".
And I used to live in Miami Shores, FL on N.W. 4th Avenue Road.
Chris Keenan
On 29 Apr 1996 21:07:12 -0400, lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) wrote:
>d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) writes:
>
>>It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
>>outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
>
>Speaking of California signage customs (and veering back a bit
>closer to the charter of alt.usage.english), I'm driven quite mad
>by the abbreviation of "Canyon" by "Cyn".
>
>I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
>
>Lee Rudolph
I quite agree, Lee! It took me a while to work out what these signs
meant when I first saw them!
Chris Keenan, Liverpool
UK Correspondent, US Metric Association
** e-mail me for details of USMA membership/mailing list **
>>>>>> USMA WWW site coming soon.......<<<<<<<
Exile on Market Street
> Contrast to the Southwest Trafficway, which is what happened when a
> two-lane residential street was turned into a six-lane arterial with
> precisely timed traffic lights and limited turns, as well as sickly trees
> in the median that keep dying because of the exhaust fumes.
Trees?
The city tried planting *trees* in the Southwest Trafficway median?
What drug was which city transportation official taking?
--Sandy, who in 18 years (1958-1976) never saw a single tree in the median
of the Southwest Trafficway
(For the record, the Southwest Trafficway, which was part of a massive
1938 public-works plan for new highways and other street and flood-control
projects in Kansas City, has a median that is about 3 feet wide separating
the three travel lanes in each direction.)
__________________________________________________________________________
Benjamin D Lukoff
John Taber <tab...@cougarnet.byu.edu> writes:
>On 29 Apr 1996, D Banks wrote:
>> gr...@e-mend.com (Greg Ioannou) wrote:
>> >In article <4luoft$d...@nntp4.u.washington.edu>, blu...@u.washington.edu (Benjamin D Lukoff) wrote:
>> >
>> >>In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*. In the sectors of
>> >>Seattle where all streets/avenues are numbered, this gets *very* confusing
>> >>for visitors and people unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
>But if you know Seattle, you know that streets run east-west, avenues run
>north-south, and that the quadrant direction (all nine are used) are
>placed in front of street name/number, and after avenue. Phone directory
>listings say "23rd E" or "E 45th".
If you know Seattle, there's no problem. (BTW, the 'SE' quadrant is not
used in Seattle, only in Mercer Island.) But if you're not from around
here, it can be difficult. I posted here earlier that people were poking
around my parents' neighborhood (34th Ave. E., Washington Park) looking
for Redhook Brewery (N. 34th St., Fremont).
BDL
Colin R. Leech
Benjamin D Lukoff (blu...@u.washington.edu) writes:
> In Seattle, NE 45th Street and 45th Avenue NE *cross*.
Um, am I missing something here? How is this different from Manhattan,
Calgary, or any other city where streets are numbered N-S and avenues are
numbered E-W, or vice versa?
Richard M. Alderson III
>Speaking of California signage customs (and veering back a bit closer to the
>charter of alt.usage.english), I'm driven quite mad by the abbreviation of
>"Canyon" by "Cyn".
>I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
Especially the one south of San Jose on the way to Monterrey, off Highway 101,
named
Bryn Mawr Cyn
according to the highway signs. Confused the hell out of me for months!
--
Rich Alderson You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
what not.
--J. R. R. Tolkien,
alde...@netcom.com _The Notion Club Papers_
Colin R. Leech
D Banks (david...@gdt.com) writes:
> If you really want to confuse someone in Vancouver, ask them to meet you
> at the corner of Granville and Connaught. There are two such corners, a couple of
> miles apart, as Connaught gently curves away from Granville, runs parallel for
> a couple of miles, then curves back to rejoin Granville.
In the Ottawa suburb of Orleans, it's Orleans Blvd. and Jeanne d'Arc Blvd.
that meet twice. Jeanne d'Arc has a big hook in it. It would be easier to
make it into a complete loop, but that will never happen now.
> Or how about asking a friend to meet you in the 200 bock of Water St.
Why? Is that in the water?
Ron Newman
In article <4m2uf7$e...@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu>,
Garrett Wollman <wol...@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <4m1dld$7...@freenet-news.carleton.ca>,
>Colin R. Leech <ag...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA> wrote:
>> On a similar note, I observe that here in Ottawa, a "parkway" has close to
>> its literal meaning of "a road through a park".
>Here in Greater Boston, our usage closely follows the usage described
>by Colin in Ottawa; viz., Mystic Valley Parkway, Alewife Brook
>Parkway, Fresh Pond Parkway, Med-Vets Parkway, VFW Parkway, Turtle
>Pond Parkway, Enneking Parkway, but not Revere Beach Parkway or
>Neponset Valley Parkway.
"Revere Beach Parkway", especially through Everett and
Chelsea, has to be one of the least park-like highways
I've ever driven on. It's about as much a "Parkway" as
Route 1 in Saugus is. How did it ever get this name?
Was it once a real parkway, only to be ruined by bad zoning?
Some parts of Alewife Brook Parkway and Fresh Pond Parkway
(both Route 16) don't really qualify for the label either.
--
Ron Newman rne...@cybercom.net
Web: http://www.cybercom.net/~rnewman/home.html
RodGP
In article <DqoGs...@bton.ac.uk>, i...@bton.ac.uk (Ian Oliver) writes:
>Lee Rudolph (lrud...@panix.com) wrote:
>: d...@crl.com (David A. Kaye) writes:
>
>: >It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
>: >outlet and cul de sacs which don't exit to a main street as "way".
>
>: Speaking of California signage customs (and veering back a bit
>: closer to the charter of alt.usage.english), I'm driven quite mad
>: by the abbreviation of "Canyon" by "Cyn".
>
>: I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
>Do you have a problem with that??
>
>Ian
>
>
>: Lee Rudolph
>--
>|----------------------------------------------|-------------------------
---|
>| Replies to: I.J.O...@bton.ac.uk | Iechyd da i bawb ar y
Net |
>| Usual dislaimers apply... | o Brifysgol Brighton
|
>|----------------------------------------------|-------------------------
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>
>
I consider myself a Welsh-American. When I fill out thoughs stinking US
Govt. discrimitive action (affirmative action in politcally correct usage)
forms, I mark 'other' and fill in the Blank as stated above. There is
obviously some cultrual bigotry being voiced in this forum. There must be
some way for me to collect big bucks and get some cool goverment handouts
with this kind of evidence of my culture being supressed, ;)
Rod G. Pugh
Oppressed Minority
D Banks
Due to the angles of the streets in Gastown, the birthplace of the City of
Vancouver, there is no 200 block of Water Street.
The blocks jump from 100 to 300.
John Taber
On 30 Apr 1996, MorlanRogers wrote:
> >It is customary (in California, at least) to label streets with no
> When I visited L.A. for the first time, I found that Melrose Place was a
> one block side street near Melrose Ave. or Blvd. etc.
>
>
>
Nashville is notorious for that situation. All streets of any
significance have another street run off of it with the same name.
Mirabelle Severn & Thames
In article <31868b36...@news.demon.co.uk>,
Chris Keenan <ch...@usma.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On 29 Apr 1996 21:07:12 -0400, lrud...@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) wrote:
>>...I'm driven quite mad
>>by the abbreviation of "Canyon" by "Cyn".
>>I don't know what would be better, but it just looks so damned *Welsh*.
>I quite agree, Lee! It took me a while to work out what these signs
>meant when I first saw them!
>Chris Keenan, Liverpool
I was born and raised in California, and I had the same
reactions as Lee and Chris did.
Couldn't figure out what "co parks" were, either. (County
parks, it turns out.)
Naomi Brokaw
from California's central coast
Mark S. Roberts
On Tue, 30 Apr 1996 13:25:55 -0500 Exile on Market Street (smi...@pobox.upenn.edu) wrote:
| Trees?
| The city tried planting *trees* in the Southwest Trafficway median?
They're going to replant the dead ones.
| What drug was which city transportation official taking?
Whatever it was they used when choosing the initial Union Station
developer (who then let the building rot for years), the one they
used when deciding where to put Kemper Arena (an absurdly stupid
location near the old stockyards isolated from all downtown
amenities), and the one they used in designing most of the freeway
interchanges on the Missouri side.
(And then take our school board. Please!)
| --Sandy, who in 18 years (1958-1976) never saw a single tree in the median
| of the Southwest Trafficway
| (For the record, the Southwest Trafficway, which was part of a massive
| 1938 public-works plan for new highways and other street and flood-control
| projects in Kansas City, has a median that is about 3 feet wide separating
| the three travel lanes in each direction.)
You probably never would have imagined that they would put a traffic light
at Mill Street and the Southwest Trafficway, but that's what's being done
this spring to accomodate a new shopping center in Westport, with the first
protected left signal ANYWHERE on the thoroughfare.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Roberts | Kansas City, Missouri (USA) | http://www.crl.com/~transvox/
"When bandwidth was scarce, people admired those who could make a point and
get on with it."--Suck, 15-Apr-1996 (http://www.suck.com/dynasuck/96/04/15/)