[PW] House numbering in the US

[Edith Bailes]

Around here (New England) at least, the house numbers are set by the Postal
Service. They seem to start with #1 on the right-hand side of the road and
alternate sides as they move out from the post office, so odd numbers are on
the right and even ones on the left.

My house number has changed at least three times in forty years, at the
behest of the post office, even though I have been in the same house all
that time. On many local roads, too, there are huge gaps in the number
sequence. For example, the house next door is no. 273, but mine is 299. This
is to allow for future development (god forbid).

Before we had house numbers we had rural route and box numbers (RR #1, Box
235, for example). Before that, our mail reached us with only our name, the
name of the road and of the town. That was when everybody in town knew
everybody else.

There was also a time before Zip codes.

I'm not sure the current system is any better, but some of the changes are
because of the new 911 emergency service. Emergency vehicles have to be able
to find your house,  but in lots of cases they still seem to have trouble
doing so.

Edie in Maine



-----Original Message-----
From: project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org
[mailto:project-wombat-bounces at lists.project-wombat.org]On Behalf Of T.
F. Mills
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 3:04 PM
To: list at project-wombat.org
Subject: Re: [PW] House numbering in the US


Peter,

People with no comparative knowledge of the British metes and bounds system
of surveying
and the uniquely American Township plat system may have trouble fully
understanding your
question.

In the British system, one- and two-digit street addresses are the norm, and
occasionally
three-digits on major arteries that extend for more than what Americans
would call a "block".
In the United States, three- and four-digit numbers are the norm, and six
digits are not rare in
sprawling suburbs and some far-flung rural areas.

The American system has its orgins in the immediate post-revolutionary era
as a means for
selling land sight-unseen on the western frontier, which at the time was
everything beyond
the Appalachian mountains. The original 13 US colonies (and some of their
westward
"possessions", like Kentucky and Tennessee) were laid out in the British
metes and bounds
system which take topographic landmarks as their point of reference.  The
Land Ordinance
of 1785 and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 passed by the US government in its
confederate
form and re-affirmed by the federal government under the US Constitution of
1789 created a
new grid "Township" system (36 square miles) that carved up the land in
perfect square
miles along straight N-S and E-W axes, paying no attention to geographic
obstacles
(somewhat like Roman roads).  Texas and Hawaii are the other principal
exceptions since
they had pre-existing systems before their entry into the United States, and
these still prevail.

Streets normally run along the grid lines, with the mile-square sections
forming the main
arteries.  The Township is bisected into four quadrants with an east-west
baseline and a
north-south meridian.  House numbering typically takes the intersection of
the baseline and
meridian in a township as its point of reference, the numbers growing as
they extend outward
from that point.  Most urban Americans probably don't realize that they live
in "townships" that
have been cobbled together into larger incorporated cities, but they do know
where their
baseline and meridian intersection is, and use it to understand the
approximate location of
street addresses in the N-S-E-W system.  In greater metropolitan areas that
fuse outlying
towns with a central city, the outlying areas often tag onto the central
city's meridian and
baseline point of reference, resulting in very high house numbers.  There
can be 1000
numbers along a street in a mile-long section (usually subdivided into ten
"blocks"), but the
house numbers are assigned according to relative spacing and how densely
built-up is the
block.  Thus, a dense urban setting can have consecutive even and odd
numbers (alternating
on opposite sides of the street, as others have explained), but a typical
suburban setting will
space the houses at approximately ten-digit intervals.  As an example, a
house number of
40xx West is about four miles from the meridian, and a house number of 65xx
South is about
six and a half miles from the baseline.  The baseline-meridian intersection
may be nowhere
near the modern geographic centre of a city, since cities typically do not
grow equally on all
sides.

In any city, if a natural obstacle, like a mountain or a lake, interrupts a
street, the same street
name will continue at the same latitude or longitude on the other side of
the obstacle, and
theoretical house numbers will be lost "in" the obstacle.  It is not beyond
the realm of
possbility that the mountain could be leveled or the lake filled, and houses
placed there.  A
generation after such an event, nobody would know from the house numbers
that there had
been a mountain or lake there.

Rather than give a more long-winded reply, see the Wikipedia (standard
disclaimers about
accuracy apply) entries for Land Ordinance of 1785, Northwest Ordinance, and
Public Land
Survey System.

p.s. A tip for using Wikipedia.  Most articles are peer-reviewed and rated
on a scale ranging
from "stub" through "start", "B", "GA" (good article), and "A" to "FA"
(featured article).
"Featured articles" are quite reliably accurate and complete, and easily
recognized by a little
bronze star in the upper right corner.  Anything less, including a "start"
article, may be
excellent, but only an expert can tell for sure, and should be taken with a
pinch of salt (or
often a fistful).  FA articles constitute only .08% of the wiki world.
Click on the "discussion"
tab at the top of any article to find out if and how the article has been
rated.

p.p.s.  I'm back from a long absence that began with a computer problem.  My
apologies to
all and any who wrote to me at regiments.org.  That mail has disappeared
before I ever saw it
(and still is disappearing), and some mail to my earthlink address is also
disappearing.


T.F. Mills                            (Colorado, USA)
temporary email:         phasco at earthlink.net
(pending resurrection of regiments.org mail)

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