As a European, I'm Baffled by How Different American Streets Are!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ย. 2024
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My name is André, and as a European (Portuguese), I always strive to bring a unique perspective to the topics I tackle. All my reaction videos are crafted with a playful and entertaining twist!At least I try... 🌍
✔️ As a European, I'm Baffled by How Different American Streets Are! - European Reacts - Reaction For the First Time
As a European, American Streets Left Me Speechless. I Can't Get Over How Different American Streets Are! As a European,
Back in 2003, I met up my sister and her friend in NYC. I had been to NYC several times, but they had never been. As soon as we walked out of Penn Station, they immediately wanted to go to the museums across from Central Park. I asked if they wanted to drop off their suitcases first (we had a big room at the Penn Hotel. My sisters friend said no, they'd just take their bags with them!!! So I said we need to get a cab... they said no... they just wanted to WALK!!! 😮
I said it's a very long walk (51 city blocks!!!) it's best to get a cab. They didn't want to use their money on a cab!!!! Me and my sister had good walking shoes on but her friend had cheap flip-flops!!! But they started fast walking. About 15 minutes into the trek, the friend started complaining about having a couple of blisters on her feet. So my sister gave her a spare pair of walking shoes. By the time we got to the museum (which I'd seen several times before), I was hurting, so I told them I would hang out at a coffee shop while they go. We'll, they got done and came out. I told them that I was taking the su way back down to the hotel. They FINALLY agreed, and at that time, we bought 7 days fare for $7!!!
Sometimes, people don't realize how large NYC is and think they can just walk from the south end to the north end like a leisurely stroll!!!
"Nightmare on Elm Street" was so named because just about every town or city had an Elm Street so it made the movie seem more personal to the viewers.
Or any Tree. Cherry street is very common and as they showed Oak.
This video talks about streets and not highways, especially interstate highways. Interstate highways are much longer and go through multiple states. As an example I can get on I-90 (interstate 90) in Seattle, Washington and stay on that same highway all the way until Boston, Massachusetts (3,021 miles/4,862 km. To give you an idea how long that is, imagine driving from Lisbon, Portugal to Moscow, Russia (2,844 miles/4,577 km) and you would still not be as long as I-90.
At the western end of US Route 6 in Bishop, California; there is a sign giving the mileage to the other end at Provincetown, Massachusetts at the tip of Cape Cod : 3205 miles [5158 km]. At one time, US 6 was the longest road in the US. It originally ran from the Atlantic Ocean at Provincetown to the Pacific Ocean at Long Beach, CA. : 3500 miles [5630 km]. When California renumbered its highway system in 1964, the start/end point of US 6 was set at Bishop, 300 miles from Long Beach. At this time, the longest road in the US is US Route 20 which runs East to West, Atlantic Ocean to Pacific Ocean : 3365 miles [5415 km] from Boston, Massachusetts to Newport, Oregon.
How about county roads I was in Toledo and the county roads would go to several States
And how you define a street is a continuous road with the same name
And I agree in the Northeast we have a lot of older towns that had horse roads
In Boston that have long winding roads does not a real block system in Providence similar situation and I lived in Fall River Massachusetts and they have some very crazy road patterns
Yes, a "block" in this context is from one cross-street to the next.
With a handful of special exceptions (e.g., buildings constructed directly on a public square in the center of town), you can't really have a one- or two-digit house number in America, because there has to be a hundreds digit to indicate which block you're on. Every community has two streets (one that runs north/south and one that runs east/west) that form the axes of its grid system, and every additional block away from those axes adds 100 to the house numbers. So for example my employer is at 123 N Market Street, which immediately tells you that it's on Market Street, which runs north-to-south, and the address is located on the north side of town, within one block of the main east-west street (which in Galion's case is called Harding Way, though you can't deduce that fact from the address). If you went one block south from there, you'd cross the main drag and be in the 100s block of S Market Street. From there, if you keep going south and cross four more east-west streets, you'll be in the 500s block. And so on. The number of miles is irrelevant. It's the number of blocks that matters. If you see a house number like 4367 E Jefferson Street, it's 43 blocks east of the main north-south street that goes through the center of downtown. It's possible that in some communities that 43 blocks might also be about four miles, but if so it's because the blocks average about a tenth of a mile long, which is a bit longer than average but possible in some cases.
You need to get out more because there are millions of buildings with single digit addresses.
Changing house numbers from block to block is NOT a standard practice throughout the US. It may be common in the Midwest and West, but it's not common in older cites along the East Coast. Street numbers are consecutive. Even when the street crosses a city line, the sequence continues. One street in my area is a good example. The building and house numbers are consecutive. At one point the street crosses a river from city A in one county to city B in different county, BUT the building numbers stay in sequence.
Hi neighbor,
Columbus resident here, and I’m also a land surveyor. The description of the block system you gave is spot on for most of the USA west of the original 13 colonies but deeper into the nuts and bolts of it is 18th century land surveying technology.
In Columbus a block is 330 feet by 660 feet, 1/2 of a furlong by a whole furlong, or 1/16 of a mile by 1/8 of a mile, or 5 chains by 10 chains, they’re all the same measurement just used for different reasons.
A furlong was a medieval measurement describing the length an ox could plow in one go without taking a rest, and worked out to 660 feet, and that became the base measurement for the statute mile(8/5280=660).
@@JIMBEARRI The older cities on the east coast are different from the rest of the country in so many ways. I mean, they have *row houses* for crying out loud. Fundamentally, they were built by Europeans, before the colonies developed their own distinctive culture.
@@CollinAlbert-zt6cc If we're going into that level of detail, it is likely also worth mentioning the way the Northwest Ordinance carved up the land into one-mile squares, which then frequently got subdivided into quarters (a half mile on a side), creating the "country block" that we have in rural areas to this day.
Communities, areas often have themed street names. One area may be all tree names, another may be all historical figures, all presidents, famous race horse names, all flowers etc. Then we can tell approximately where an address is by street name.
Austin has Slaughter Lane, Harper's Ferry (Civil War site) and Convict Hill all in close proximity. My kids always thought it was weird and creepy when they were younger 😂
We were more or less able to plan a city's layout from the beginning on more or less raw, uninhabited land. European cities and streets/roads are based on cow paths, river systems, old trails and jiggety-jaggetty property lines, plus old habitation and tradition. We have some roads and streets in the U.S. that are based on old, colonial or even Indian trails, or geographical features, (Lake Street, River Road, etc.) but not as many. Naming streets by number helps to find a place by address. Remember , our cities are usually built on some kind of a grid system.
Another common organizational labeling system used for streets in the US is to use letters for one direction and numbers for the other, which makes navigation very easy. For example, in the town where I live in California, the streets running north to south count up using letters in order, and streets running east to west count up using numbers.
Don’t go to Boston and expect one of those nice grid systems. It’s complicated as hell if you’re not accustomed to it.
Same with Pittsburgh.
He discussed the tip of the iceberg regarding street names. Where I live the streets and rarely named streets. For example, Tuscany Way, Spouse Drive, Sunflower Lane, Glassford Hill Road, Granville Fairway. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, there are boulevards(Blvd), Avenues(Ave), Place(Pl), and perhaps Circle.
Meanwhile in Detroit (modified French for strait) has a combination of French, English, Native Tribes, & Immigrant (German, Polish, Irish, & Italian) street names. The French include Beaubien, Cadieux, Charlevoix, Marquette, & Livernois. Among the Polish names are Chopin, Florian, Kopernick, Krakow, & Pulaski.
The big thing he missed was talking about blocks. On the news you'll here things like a mugging happened on the 1300 block of Oak st. Each block is 100, so the 1300 block is the 13th block. Those addresses will be13XX. Not all the numbers are used. I have no idea the addresses of my neighbors because skip numbers. But it makes it very easy to know exactly where you need to go if you know your destination is between 13th and 14th st.
Address numbers can also change a lot on the same street if it runs thru more than one city/town/county.
An address can be several digits in one town, then the address several feet away in the bordering town can be just a few digits or a totally different sequence. .
The name of a road can change when it crosses over to another municipality.
Where I'm from, there is one city that fits into another like it's on the inside of a "C". Roads that run through on both sides go from numbered to named back to the original number.
That’s not true in my county. Years ago, the county created a street grid for all cities and townships to follow. It starts with 100 in one spot and moves outward from there, with all odd numbers on the north and east sides and even numbers on the other side. You can judge by the number where the building will be within the entire county
@@recoil53 Not in the Midwest. In the Midwest, five-digit house numbers are VERY common. In Metropolitan Detroit my street address is 21541 Jean Ave, 8.5 miles (13.6 km) from the city center and our furthest suburbs (30 miles out or 48 km) has numbers like 65075 Van Dyke Ave for Westview Cider Mill.
The primary reason that "First Street" is third on the list is because in lots of cities, the street ORIGINALLY named "First Street" ends up being renamed. It's usually a major street in the area, and so it's often renamed to either a historical figure (like, say, George Washington or Mark Twain), a political figure (like Martin Luther King), a local hero (a big local celebrity, military general, or something similar, such as Neil Armstrong, or Dale Earnhardt), or even to the name given to a major road it connects to, such as Highway 86 or Delta Highway. This later renaming rarely happens to Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, etc. streets, but often happens to First Street.
Recall, Interstates have sections which can double as an emergency landing strip for a plane is distress.
I live out in the country in Texas, mostly hay fields, cattle pastures and tree farms. The main highways are called FM standing for "farm to market" , followed by a four digit number. The shorter more residential roads are CR, for County Road and are normally 3 digits, occasionally 4 digits. The only named roads are in city limits, and either residential , commercial, or mixed. In my experience, nearly every city in America has Martin Luther King Boulevard.
A lot cities call it MLK Way, maybe making it not crack the top 10, there’s also a LOT of small towns in the north that were completely unaffected by the first and second Great Migration with 1st through 7th streets and no MLK Boulevard - that’s typically reserved for large cities that had large black populations by the 1970s
@@sportspokerguy3506 Right on, MLK version of some type is pretty common. I grew up in Cleveland OH , and don't recall if it was officially spelled out or abbreviated. I've driven through a lot of Midwest cities and saw it in a lot of places. Our small town in Texas has it.
@@minkademko2335 doesn’t make sense a small town in Texas would have an MLK boulevard but I guess I’ll believe it. (By small town I mean small like 10,000 people or less)
@@sportspokerguy3506 yeah, population about 7k. Carthage is the county seat, and the best small town in Texas. (Refer to the movie "Bernie" based on a true murder here).
The main 2 intersections I live by are Washington & Jefferson and Michigan & New York.... We have a lot of state & presidents names in my area... But around the city you'll see small neighborhoods where all the streets have some theme to them. For example, all the streets will be named after flowers, birds, weather, space.. they get pretty creative.
I haven't lived in BIG cities, but in smaller cities and towns the numbering tends to be different. The first block on a road might have 2 digit numbers, but then they go by block. 101, 201, 301, 401, etc. So, if you're trying to find 810 and you're looking at 312, you know that you have 5 blocks to go.
The popularity of tree names, or groups of common things, is also due to our cities being built in subdivisions. A developer will name all the streets in a development similarly, so you find Spanish names in the Southwest, more traditional English names in the north, etc.
High Street sounds like a good place to buy marijuana.
The Portland Oregon area has streets named after Portland founders. The names would be familiar to people who watch the Simpsons with names like Terwilliger,Flanders and Lovejoy.
It's because most American streets were built up after the automobile.
That does not explain the naming conventions or the presence of the grid. The grid system in Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC are all designed long before the automobile.
Actually, the American system of layout and numberings came from Thomas Jefferson. He pretty much founded the American system of surveying and our infrastructure grid system. This was wwll before the automobile. In fact, deeds in most states use Jefferson's metes and bounds description methodology for unsubsidized parcels of land.
Where I live, Union County, New Jersey many continous streets will go thru multiple towns and cities. The numbers will restart in each separate town, also many streets the numbers will start at a "center street" or "main street" and be separated usually into east and west. For some reason there are few streets sepated into north and south in the name. (I'm a retired postal worker so I seen a lot of street names.) Also many continous streets the name will change when one go to a different town. Example, in Plainfield, NJ one has Fifth Street separated in West and East 5th Street as one travels east on the east side it changes to South Avenue. This street continues in a straight line running parallel to the local railroad tracks. South Avenue continues thru Fanwood, Scotch Plains, Westfield, Garwood, and Cranford, when it gets to Roselle the name changes to West First Avenue, changing to East First Avenue when it crosses the "main street", Chestnut Street, changing into East Grand Street in Elizabeth, NJ and finally West Grand Street.
The street I live on is actually a highway, or rather a Farm to Market(FM) road. But what is confusing to a a lot of people is, it's also called Main street. The stare highway dept., TXDOT maintains the road, but the city is responsible for the right of way. Our mailboxes are at the curb. If you buy a new mailbox, you are suppose to call txdot and they will come out and install it for you. We also have streets named after flowers.
There are plenty of places in America where trails became roads and footpaths got paved and they go around property lines and all kinds of weirdness.. Cities however, most reach a certain size and it becomes an engineering project if anything to alleviate traffic, other cities were planned from the very beginning to be cities and were drafted and engineered like you would a building. Washington D.C and Indianapolis Indiana were designed by the same guy.. and both were being considered to be the national capital
Where I grew up the address was 10656 s. Warner Ave. Now I live at 635 S. Oak Ave. Great reaction Andre!
You can pretty much be assured that what Lawrence talks about is dang interesting. Thanks for reacting to this video. You're a Star 🌟
There is no set standard for the size of a US city block. Each city has it's own size. That can be confusing to visitors, but they soon realize that if a certain building is "x" number of blocks, all you have to do is count the cross streets as you travel and you will be there
Growing up on Elm Street, was interesting. After the movie came out sleeping was much harder. However when I was in the Air Force and went through Survival School, part of it was POW training. While I was being interrogated by the 'nice' interrogator, I started talking about Nightmare On Elm Street and that dominated the conversation so he got little real time to interrogate me. The front door on our house had the same little window on it as the Nightmare house so....
Here is a fun fact about Denver, Colorado. Streets that go east to west are numbered streets. Streets that go north to south are named streets. The named streets are alphabetical from A-Z and then the alphabet begins again.
The roads around me are named "21 Mile Highway", "22 Mile Highway", for north/south roads, and "A Drive", "B Drive", etc for east/west roads, but then there are randomly roads that aren't named on that pattern and instead named after the families that originally settled in the area. The addresses on the numbered roads start with the number of that road in thousands, so homes on 21 Mile have an address greater than 21000. On the lettered roads, the houses have addresses that start with the numbered road to the west, so homes on A Drive to the east of 21 Mile have addresses greater than 21000. If you live on a road named after a settler family, then the rules are broken and the addresses start from 100 at the northern or western-most point of the and increase going south or east.
Some of those roads are pretty long, and if it is long enough that there are more than 999 houses on the road, they break it into a North/South East/West designator. So you could live on G Drive South or G Drive North. The dividing point for that, if they do it (they don't do it for all the roads) is a road that stretches north and south or east and west across the entire state. It's pretty wild to me how they come up with all this stuff, and the fact that there isn't one universal system despite how organized and planned it all was. You can head a few counties over and they have random road names, no real system to them at all.
Here in Las Vegas, the longest uninterupted street is Charleston Boulevard. It stretches from the base of Sunrise Mountain, 7070 E. Charleston Blvd., to 11000 W. Charleston Blvd., before it transforms into Red Rock Canyon Dr. 20.3 miles (32.67 km). It runs directly through the center of the LV Valley, running East to West. but, we also have streets that change names 2 - 3X, al the while being a E-W, or N-S run; Twain (named after Mark Twain, who spent some time here in Nevada) runs about 13-14 miles E/W, but due to breakages in the flow (houses getting in the way, as well as natural features such as gullys and washes), Twain becomes Viking, Karen, Spring Valley, and Twain like 3 times.
Something he didn't state is that odd numbered roadways are usually oriented north and south while even numbered ones are generally east and west. By knowing the number of the road and looking at addresses, you can almost always be alerted to your direction of travel. Sadly, when you get into cities they'll rename roadways. For example, in my city of Milton (Florida), US Highway 90 becomes Caroline Street once you enter the city limits. At one section it becomes Rev Murray Hamilton Drive. Then it changes names again back to Caroline Street. I have traveled roads and the name change seven or more times with me never getting off the road and onto a new one.
I am at 8922 Hickory Drive. A 4 digit number on a street named for a type of tree. Oak Drive and Maple Drive are nearby.
US streets tend to have numbered blocks. So the first digits are the block, and not all numbers are used. My childhood house was numbered 1394.
Glad to know that I'm in good company! Andre, I also live on a street that is named for a tree! I have seen this video of Laurence's before (I'm a big fan) but I was pleased to have the opportunity to watch it again. I think it is so interesting that here in America we name so many streets after trees! I never really noticed it until he pointed it out and he's absolutely correct. I live in a town that has tons of streets like that! My neighborhood is absolutely littered with them (not to mention all the trees around, I'm already started to see tons of leaves coming down for the season because I'm in New England and it's the autumn)
This "block mentality” is used everywhere in the US to measure close distances, but in LA and other urban areas where one drives nearly everywhere and traffic is always a concern, distance is measured in minutes: “Take the Riverside freeway to the 605 North to the 105 and exit at Sepulvida. It’s only about 45 min. to the airport this time of day."
Most of Manhattan is a grid, but the oldest part (downtown) is a bit of a mess! A tip for anyone visiting-5th ave divides the island into east/west. The further you walk towards the water, the higher the house numbers will be
Oklahoma City is a perfect example of the grid system. Most streets are completely straight and they're spaced evenly. The principal streets are exactly 1 mile apart, making the greater part of OKC a grid of 1 mile blocks. The streets going east-west are numbered starting at Reno Ave downtown then 2nd, 3rd, 4th north etc and 2nd, 3rd, 4th south etc continuing up into the 150-170 range each direction. All the north-south streets are named. It makes it extremely easy to get around and find where you're going.
Some American cities do the house numbers by blocks rather than miles. There's a center point, and the first block is either 2-digit numbers or 100s. The second block away is the 200s, even if the first block didn't go all the way up to 199. The third is 300s, and so on. If the numbers are going in both directions away from the center, the street name will have East and West, or North and South, to tell you which side you're on.
It's really interesting that the first use of a grid street system happened in Edinburgh, Scotland in the "New Town".
Yeah, the house numbering system in the US makes a lot of sense and it also makes it easier to find places when you're looking for them. For example, my house number is 2408. Which like Lawrence said is 2 miles out from the city center, 4 blocks further out than that 2 mile point, and then 08 is due to that we're the 4th lot up from this particular block's starting point. There's a house right at the intersection which i think is 2402, then a vacant lot, a house house next to us, which is 06, and then us at 08. The next house next to me on the other side might even be the start of the 2500 block, but I'm not sure as we live in basically a 4 square block neighborhood, but it doesn't have the intersecting crossroads thru the middle. So each side of the outer streets are essentially 2 blocks (numbering wise) long. Just measuring it now on Google Maps, it's ⅔ mile around the entire 4 block run. A complete loop.
Hello, Andre! Thanks for another great reaction! I'd love to see you react to another one of Laurence's videos, titled "How America Makes Britain Look Like A Tiny Village". It's an excellent video from about 2 years ago, that explains more realistically how truly massive the US is, compared to the UK. I thought by knowing that, it should give you an idea of how much bigger the US is than European countries, like yours, for instance. It might even help you to plan out your trip to the states next year, a bit better!
I say that because I've noticed that a lot of Brits and Europeans who come to the US, think that they can fit a lot more places into their itinerary, than they actually have time for. I honestly wouldn't want you to plan to visit 6 different states, when you might only be able to fit 3 states into the amount of time that you are able to spend here. I've seen other TH-camrs from the UK and Europe react to the video and they've been thoroughly blown away!
As always, I sincerely appreciate your admiration, respect and enthusiasm for the country that I love and am proud to call my home!
I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and my city does not use the grid system. I also grew up on a street that was laid with bricks, and on the hills, Belgian blocks were used. Pittsburgh has one street that is laid with wood blocks instead of brick.
My address is in the 2000s and my next door neighbor (whose house is older) has a house number in the 50s.
I live on Redwood st, my in-laws live on Hickory rd, and other residential roads in my area are Pine, Fir, Pecan, Teak, Cherry, etc. and each of those has multiple side designations like road-street-pass-course-drive-trail etc. So you'll see like 10-15 of each tree before switching to a different tree lol. Laurence is 100% correct about the tree naming thing. The ones not named after trees are usually numbered or named after some other form of nature.
Our house number 8519. Going on opposite sides of the street, meaning we're the 19th house past 85th Street. In the US streets usually run numerically or alphabetically (Arbor, Blaisdell, Carter, DuPont, Emerson, Fremont, Girard, etc.)
I live in Chicago. State St is the dividing line for east west. So, as he stated, you go a block away from State St. and it's either gonna be 100 West or 100 East.
Many of the streets around the Indiana neighborhood I grew up in were named after flowers.
In Orlando the streets are named from major founding families. The curry’s who created the fording point hence curry-ford road (fording is the act of crossing a river by a raft but specifically a covered wagon on a raft). We also have a lot of names from Shakespeare around downtown. But the Main Street in Orlando is Church street which is named from the fairly large church nearby although it was large in its day, it’s not that big as it was built in the 1800s but it was rebuilt a few times over time to its current form. Currently church street is a night party center with mostly bars and a few clubs there but it’s the most historic part of the city. It’s supposed to undergo renovation in the next year or so because the buildings are getting on in age and really it’s becoming too quiet. There just isn’t much for people to do during the day so people avoid it which is why it needs renovation in the first place. The city wants to attract families and younger people.
Cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston have very haphazard street layouts. There's really no organization or rhyme or reason to their design. Those "old cities" just congenitally grew that way because of difficult small hills and many streams, rivers, and harbors surrounding them. "Newer cities" like New York, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, had somewhat flatter terrain with more open space to build streets with right-angles and evenly spaced "blocks".
Philadelphia is on a grid system and very easy to understand.
The grid system makes basic directions easy. [Q] person: "Do you know where 'X' is?" [A] Person: "Oh, yeah, it's 3 blocks west, 2 blocks north, on the left side."
Colors of street signs can designate the city or borough you happen to be on. For instance, the city of Pittsburgh street signs are blue. Just outside the city in the South Hills is Dormont Borough where all of the street signs are green. A little further South is the borough of Mt. Lebanon where all of the street signs are brown.
In America, when they were planning out the Federal Inter-State Highway System they planned to have large straight stretches to act as emergency runways in times of crisis and war. Germany made similar decisions when building the modern Autobahn. For example, major overpasses were built extra wide and heavily reinforced to act as emergency bomb-resistant hangers in times of crisis and war.
Cities in the US can vary a bit. Some places created their streets using the old paths cows formed or other trails people used. But in general, a grid system did develop for the broad expanses. If nothing else, the land areas, especially in the plains had plots of land laid out in a grid. Farmers would own some number of acres that were on the grid of section lines. If a farmer sold some land and people developed on it, they would get smaller rectangles cut out of the grid. Roads would naturally follow the old section lines, since it was the boundary between farms. Smaller roadways would form on a grid rather naturally. The main exceptions are the main pathways between major cities that aren't directly North, South, East, or West, and thus angled roads and highways would form.
The rectangular grid did lend itself to having "blocks". The numbering system made it easier to squeeze in an extra building without messing up the numbering system from that point onward. It also made it easier to know how far you are from a city or county center. Many places also develop naming conventions, such that each named street might advance the first letter in the name by one letter of the alphabet, such as Ash, Birch, Columbus, etc. or they might just make sure they are named alphabetically, but not necessarily change the first letter with each block, such as Alligator, Amber, Antonio, etc. Then you know if you overshot a street, because you're alphabetically beyond where that name would appear in the sequence. But I live where they lack that kind of system.
My husband lived on Lincoln(President) Avenue, and I lived on College Street, because it was near a college. Our first apartment was on Maple Avenue. :)
Thats so amazing!
Western Ave. and the corresponding blvd. (boulevard) are not strictly residential. They are considered to be a business district. However Western is the only continuous street through the entirety of the city. And out into the suburbs.
My High School Senior trip back in the 80s was to Dollywood. The park was reserved for seniors (12th grade aka last grade before college/uni) from Kentucky and Tennessee and it was at night. We had a blast and didnt get home until around 4am.
Common in NYC boroughs: 46th Ave, 46th Street, 46th Road, 46th Lane, East 46th Street, West 46th Street… and they can be very far apart.
Yes... It's a sign.. Or.. as L.B. said.. trees are everywhere..
Many European countries have roads in cities that have been around for hundreds of years. Before the automobile. Many American cities were built with the car in mind and many homes were built after World War II.
Our small, suburban, Southern California neighborhood has streets named after . . . cities & towns in Britain!?!
And not well known cities??
Tremont & Swindon are 2 examples.
Both only 1, short block long.
Oh, & Charing is 1 of the 2 streets that allows entry into our neighborhood.
Houses here were built in the early 1960's.
Weird: the 2 homes we've lived in, since 1985, in the same city, both had "wood" as the last syllable????
And we moved from a friend's condo to this city, & we able to buy our 1st home.
The condo was on Hickory St.
That small neighborhood had all tree names for the streets!
Crazy.
I was born & raised in Pasadena, California. In a poor part of town.
Anyway, no numbered streets there, to my knowledge.
Blessings, André, Mrs. André, & precious Santiago. ❤❤❤
It's common for streets in the US to be numbered in one direction, and names in the other direction. for instance, downtown Reno, NV: EW streets are numbered, and NS streets are names. However, that system is not mandatory, as seenin an different section, where it also has named streets running in EW and NS directions in another section. You can also have numbered streets in both directions, such as Salt lake City, UT, where The city center has an all numbered street system with all directions having an increasing number (the further from the center point) suffixed with North, South East or West., such as the streets of 13400 S, 2700 W being an actual place.
When I was in Middle School and High School, the neighborhood I lived in most of the streets had numbers rather than names. The major streets got names, the minor ones were hit and miss. Often for the minor ones the street's name would be a direction, a number, and street (or some synonym for street like road, drive, or avenue).
In Arizona Bell Rd is 34.6 miles in lenght
The streets were named after trees because most people back then were illiterate. They would name the street oak and then plant oak trees on that street to make navigation easier
In Texas, there are so many different nationalites. When I first moved here 30+ years ago I visited a pet shop for food for my parrot. Approaching an Asian gentleman for help in finding this food. I was shocked when he answered me...instead of an Asian accent, he had a heavy Texas drawl. This almost made me laugh because I worked in the high tech world with many different Asian cultures...and they didn't sound like him.
I've lived all over the US and the best, most logical grid system (to my mind) is in the Denver Metro area. In many other cities, each road's "hundred block" changes. In Denver, it's constant. So, Wadsworth Blvd. (which is a very long N/S street) is 7600 West from the main "zero point" downtown. If your friend lives at 8000 W. 44th Ave., you know that they are near 44th and Wadsworth (just west of Wadsworth). East/West running streets north of the downtown zero point are generally numbered, those south are named after people, states, etc. Again, learning the hundred block of the main ones helps. N/S running streets run in alphabetical runs of two, most often named after a person and a tree/plant... so going east from downtown you might have Albion, Ash and later Dexter, Dahlia. Knowing which "Street rotation" an address is comes in handy. The hundred block staying the same for each street probably makes it easier to print street signs because the tiny "7600" at the bottom stays the same. I live in Seattle now and if it weren't for GPS, the numbering and grid (or sets of grids) would confuse me. I grew up in New Hampshire and those roads were just doing their own thing!!
Helena, Montana downtown is a mess. It was originally a gold rush town. When the put streets in they laid them out on the trails miners made getting back and forth to the gold fields. It can be really confusing.
My old home here in Miami was 7901 SW 22nd Street....it was between 78th Place and 79th Court. Miami is an easy city (for the most part) as the city streets are all on a grid system, that uses Flagler Street as the "zero" street running east to west and Miami Avenue as the "zero avenue" running north to south, then you have 4 sections, Northwest (NW), SW, NE and SE. Because of when the County names the streets the smallest amount of addresses are in SE, just maybe a couple of thousand. The biggest by far in the SW but NW is also the 2nd largest. Take the Knaus Berry Farm is at 15980 SW 248th Street.....in an agricultural area of SW Miami-Dade County actually less than 2 miles from the border of Everglades National Park. (by the way Knaus Berry Farm is an awesome place, and only open after Halloween and until Easter the following year) the Knause people are members of a Mennonite Congregationw that lives the rest of the year in Indiana). They have been doing this for more than 70 years now....and their main crops here in Miami are strawberries & tomato & mangos...their store is famous for their cinnamon sticky rolls, and also home made pies, breads and jellies & jams. I love their guava jelly (which they grow the guava on their own trees. They have a U-Pick for a couple of weeks after they have had their main harvest of the strawberries in late January. They make the best jellies & james & preserves too
Address numbers sometimes is based upon block numbers and the number of the house within the block.
There are street names that are theme based for the area. One development could use a historical character name, another can use president names, another is based on counties in the state, they, can even use the first names of the people involved in development of the complex. There are many cities in all states that have a Dr Martin Luther King Jr or any other derivative of that name. They have even dedicated already established street names to individuals due to their involvement with the city, longest living survivor of a resident, or a sport hero.
In the towns I have lived in, the numbers just go up by a ten factor. you may have a 100 block where the house numbers begin with 101, 102, etc. it might go only 120 before the NEXT block then starts again 201, 202, 203. . . and then to the next block, the 300 block, etc.
in LA.. the street numbers can get larger, larger, larger then immediately small.. so before GPS.. you'd be at the side of the road ..pouring over your Thomas Guide thinking WTF????
Good point about why US streets being more organized.
I grew up at 13208, the street started at 13200. Never understood why till today.
Where I live, we use numbers and types of trees. My house is 210 South Main street which is the corner of Main Street and Holly Street. And I live maybe 100 yards from the courthouse which my town uses as its center point.
The older sections of the country were built on a hub and spoke system. Then they overlaid a grid system built on roads built every mile. Residential streets were built on a rectangular grid. This has fallen out of fashion since the 1960’s and curved streets are popular, still bound by the bigger grid.
Not all blocks are the same length/width even within the same city. A prime example is the Gaslight district in San Diego (Please correct me as it's been awhile since I've been there.). It was deliberately planned to have many corners (aka short blocks) because corner stores were more desirable for storekeepers "back-in-the-day." First St/Main St have also been renamed for prominent/historical people. Some First St/Main St have been renamed Martian Luther King after 1968.
Some cities (especially in Utah) have addresses like 2345 South 200 East. This means that they are on the south side of the city on the 200 East. (perhaps 2 miles to the east of the center line.). IOW, the addresses also give you directions on how to get there.
The number street thing is also a pre GPS directional hint. North/South streets will get a number and East/West streets get a name or the reverse it depends on the city. The number street will again count upwards from the zero point in downtown, usually where ever the harbor is. When the city can't agree on what name to call a street they always use the name of a popular historical figure; Washington, Lincoln, MLK are the go toos. You can find them in every city.
The house I where I grew up had 4 digits, even though it was in a cul-de-sac and not a long road at all. Had a 3 digit apartment, and a 3 digit townhouse (first home purchase). Our home now has 2 digits, but that helps explain why the same named street that doesn't go through (as in, road, cul-de-sac, homes, homes, cul-de-sac, road). To get from the 2 digit (let's call it Main Street), so from 2 digit Main Street to 4 digit Main Street, you can't remain on Main Street. You have to go around somehow. Atlanta has a major issue (problem) with street names. One street near me, let's call it Claremont Road, is only that for a couple of miles, then it changes to Clairmont Road (note the spelling), then in another couple of miles, it becomes Darby Industrial Avenue, then Arabesque Avenue. If you're not paying attention, you would never know you were technically on a different road. All parts of Atlanta has this issue.
There are exceptions, of course. Older-settled parts of Virginia have roads described as "colonial cow paths" because they wind around and can't be straightened or widened without destroying properties.
When 911 came to be widespread in the US, new addresses were created to accommodate houses with no street numbers. These houses were known by their postal routes and mailbox numbers prior to this.
Some urban areas (and surrounding rural areas) also revamped their address system to cover multiple cities all in very close proximity to each other. Since one would often travel down a single heavily-trafficked road that passes through multiple cities, the cities decided to work together to make it easier to navigate. So city number one might start with 1st street and end at 115th. The next city would start with 116th and so on.
The smaller region I live in now has three separate cities. Each city has north/west numbered streets (1st, 2nd…) at their given center point but the cross streets (east/west) in two of those cities are alphabetical. My particular city doesn’t use the alphabetical system. Developers named the streets as old agricultural land was converted into housing developments. Some neighborhoods are named for historical figures; others are named after baseball legends and ball fields.
Minneapolis and St Paul are referred to as the "twin cities" but their street systems are very different. Minneapolis has a lot more numbered streets and avenues whereas St Paul has names for almost all of their streets. In most of Minneapolis, the avenues run north/south and the streets run east/west. The typical block in Minneapolis is approximately 8 blocks per mile for the avenues and 12 blocks per mile for the streets. The numbers go with the street or avenue number. For example if you live south of 44th Street on the corner of an an avenue, your house number would be 4400 and the person on the other side of the avenue would be 4401. In St Paul, the house numbers go by the mile as described in the video. Of course there are exceptions to everything.
You are correct, it is primarily because America is "newer".
Our country roads are frequently named the same way. 325 North would be 3 and 1/4 miles north of the state (or reference) road. 450 East would be 4 1/2 miles East of the state road. A state road, by the way, is frequently a highway.
Also, my hometown doesn't have a 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th Street. It starts at 5th street and goes to 35th. Also, what would be (according to the grid) 13th St. Is Main St. Because superstition. 😊
My hometown is an "older" small town and although the number streets intersect Main Street, there is still not a First Street. What would be First is Front St., and then Second, Third, etc. through 19th. Also intersecting the number streets are a mixture of tree-named streets, Presidents, Michigan figures, local figures, other state names, and I think Chicago is the only city name, but it was literally because you'd take that road to go to Chicago before the Interstate highway system.
I now live adjacent to another "older" town, but in a conglomeration of subdivisions in the township, not within the city limits. The streets within the city are named pretty similar to my hometown, but I've noticed that the subdivisions built out in what used to be farmland often have street names that have a theme. In my neighborhood, a lot of the street names are landmarks, parts of a National Park or other places around the US. Other subdivisions have streets named for flowers, a nautical theme, streets named for cities or counties in the UK, etc.
We live in a single nation as big as the entirety of Europe. We spread out because it is as natural as it is for Euros to huddle, which is a matter of a far earlier history and experience.
😂😂😂 Georgia and the epidemic of various Peachtree roads. Peachtree Street, Peachtree View, Peachtree Way, Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, Peachtree Parkway, Peachtree Road, New Peachtree Road, Old Peachtree Road, and on and on and on.
"Its on Peachtree."
Me: WHICH ONE?!?!!
Around here we have a lot of streets with "oak" and "pine" in their names.
In Atlanta there are plenty with "peach" in the name.
In many cities, particularly those with a grid system, avenues run north-south, while streets run east-west. However, this is not a universal rule, In some cities the opposite is true.
I have a 4 digit house number and it starts with "5". Some in the LA area and San Diego have 5-digit numbers
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The house numbering system he talks about must be a Midwest thing. The street numbers where we have lived the last three homes in two different states are based on the cross streets. So if you live between 92nd and 93rd Streets, your number begins with 92. If you live between 75th and 76th streets, you number begins with 75. So if you tell a cab driver you are heading to 6712 180th Street, he knows to drive to 180th St between 67th and 68th.
My town has a couple eccentricities to its street names. Foremost is the high number of streets named after women. The oldest and most prominent street named after a woman is "Norma", after a popular and respected Madam. Subsequently many of the following streets were named after Norma's employees and other popular women of the evening. Years later developers noted the high number of streets named after ladies, and without understanding the historical context, they continued the tradition by naming streets after female employees and family members. The other popular naming convention is naming streets after Naval vessels. For example, one group of streets are named after battleships. Another group of streets are named after aircraft carriers. Our community supports a nearby military base, and much of the culture blends together. Other streets are named after prominent civilian and military leaders from the Manhattan Project era. Some are named after prominent scientist whose groundbreaking work greatly contributed to advancements in rocketry, cosmic radiation, aerospace, and much more. Our closest larger city is about 100 miles away. Its most prominent streets are alphabetical north to south and numeric east to west, with each of these streets one standard mile from each other.
My street name is Heights Ave. However, it's not a street. It's an avenue . We also have Boulevards. Among Courts and Circle.
Some cities streets are planned and organized, but some of older cities are not
We have a lot of big beautiful oak trees on corners of streets, they just named it of the prominent trees.
Since Laurence is in Chicago let’s use this area’s method of measuring distance. When you hear someone say it’s 8 blocks away, it’s the same as one mile. Every block is one eighth of a mile. However, this can change depending on the region of the country you are in. Interstates going east/west are even numbers made up of either a single or double digit (ex I4 in Florida or I80 that’s goes through the middle of the country from California to New Jersey). Interstates going north/south are odd numbers (I1 on the west coast or I95 on the east coast). And bypasses that go round a major city are three digits, for example, I295 goes around the city of Jacksonville, Florida. Yes, there is logic to the madness in how our roads are named/numbered.
I live on an island pretty much close to real wilderness. Northern Minnesota, in the part that sticks into Canada (I am required to have a passport to come and go from home in the USA since I have to pass through Canada to get to the Mainland.) Anyway, they do have an underwater phone line here, and to be connected it is required to have an address for emergency purposes (in the US 911 calls). They determined my address to be determined from the radial from geographical center of the island. Example: 218.23 which would be 218.23 degrees from the center of the island. The US post office does not recognize this or deliver mail here....
In the city I grew up in, a street passed through that was continuously lined with buildings for about 40 miles. Indeed, it passed through several "cities", as far a jurisdictions went - but if it weren't for the signs on the sidewalk you would never know you were in another city - they are all packed in right next to each other. So, yes - in the US you can have very long, straight streets continuously lined with buildings. Very rarely (if ever) would you see anything like it in Europe - although you may see streets, as Lawrence noted, that might occasionally be flanked by agriculture instead of buildings. Likewise, in the US you can find "streets" that travel very long distances that go through almost nothing *but* agriculture. This doesn't even get into the Interstate Highway system!!!
I loved in the Northwest for a while and our there many addresses are a combination of the nearest crossroad. You look at someone's address and don't need directions to their home. If 3rd Street crosses 107th street your address might be 3107. Or something similar.
Indy has a pretty skyline. I am impressed by it every time I go there and I am there at least once a month. My husband frequently works there. It is pretty but, unfortunately, has quite a crime rate.