[PW] House numbering in the US

[David Anderson]

Peter,

The original practice was a checkerboard plat, with streets in one 
direction, avenues in the other. Numbers ran from one side of the town to 
the other, parallel to each other.

Nowadays, many Western US communities have numbering consistent through the 
geographic area, from say, 00100 to 99900, and no matter what the street 
name, the numbers reflect where the house is in the community. So that 
firetrucks will know approximately where to find someone at 21200 Wisteria 
Lane, even if Wisteria Lane is two blocks long.

The new subdivisions in my community, Lincoln, California, do not let street 
names run for any distance. Only major streets run more than, perhaps a 
quarter mile. It's interesting going up a feeder street (a street that feeds 
its traffic into a major street) to find one set of street names on the left 
side of, say Sun City Drive, and a different set on the right side.

David

David C Anderson
340 Killdeer Court
Lincoln, CA 95648-2474 USA
916/408-0110
rockydell at digitalpath.net
http://rockydellresources.homestead.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Peter Underwood" <Peter.Underwood at uct.ac.za>
To: <list at project-wombat.org>
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 6:28 AM
Subject: [PW] House numbering in the US


> As a fervent follower of the unfolding confusion of Desperate Housewives I 
> have a query about the environs of Wisteria Lane and the town of Fairview. 
> Each house in the Lane has a house number consisting of four numerals. 
> Does this mean that every house in a typical small American town has a 
> unique number, independent of its street, or is Wisteria Lane supposedly 
> of considerable length?  The parallel in my mind is the British practice 
> of numbering houses in a road by even numbers on one side and odd on the 
> other, starting at 1.
>
>
> N.B. New e-mail address -- please update your address books! 
> Peter.Underwood at uct.ac.za
> *************************************************
> Peter G. Underwood
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> University of Cape Town
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> 7700                       e-mail: Peter.Underwood at uct.ac.za
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