Ordinal indicators on signage for numbered streets

[jwolfer]

I remember in Atlanta the BGS had the words spelled out "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St"  imagine a really high number like "One Hundred Sixty Seventh Street"  (Yes i know there is not a street that hight in Atlanta)

LGMS428

[J N Winkler]

Street blades in town use the ordinals, but blades out in the countryside often omit them.

Do you have an example?  The default (at least in rural Sedgwick County) appears to be to render them as very small superscripts.

[dgolub]

I live in NYC.  Here, the street numbers are written as cardinal numbers but pronounced as ordinal numbers.  There's one exception I'm aware of, Third Avenue in the Bronx, which is presumably written that way because the Bronx otherwise doesn't have numbered avenues.  Out in the suburbs, everything is written as ordinal numbers as far as I know.

[Eth]

I remember in Atlanta the BGS had the words spelled out "Tenth St" "Fourteenth St"  imagine a really high number like "One Hundred Sixty Seventh Street"  (Yes i know there is not a street that hight in Atlanta)

Newer signs have reversed course and simply use ordinals for 10th/14th/16th/17th, which mirrors usage on the City of Atlanta's signs.

There's also a small series of numbered avenues on the east side of the city, signed as 1st through 5th, that cross the border into Decatur, where they're signed as First through Fifth.

[Duke87]

I live in NYC.  Here, the street numbers are written as cardinal numbers but pronounced as ordinal numbers.  There's one exception I'm aware of, Third Avenue in the Bronx, which is presumably written that way because the Bronx otherwise doesn't have numbered avenues.

This at least is the standard convention for NYCDOT. "E 34 St", "5 Av", etc. Note that many signs on expressways and parkways are NYCDOT installs as well. NYSDOT R11 follows the same convention in order to conform to what NYCDOT does.

But, there are a bunch of street signs in Midtown where are installed by the various BIDs in the area rather than by the city DOT, and they write out the names of avenues ("Fifth Ave") while showing a raised ordinal and writing out the direction for streets ("East 34^th St").

Very often businesses like to write things out as well. "5 Av" is kind of informal so people will put "Fifth Avenue" on business cards and such because it looks more professional.

Out in the suburbs, everything is written as ordinal numbers as far as I know.

Stamford, CT writes out their numbered streets in text: "First", "Second", etc. So do Mt Vernon, NY and Pelham, NY. The main grid in Hudson County, NJ as well as the grid in Bayonne, NJ used the number/raised ordinal combo ("1^st", "2^nd", etc.)

[Rothman]

Watervliet, NY writes some of their ordinal numbered streets out:

https://goo.gl/maps/2VxN49fJfEL2

...while using numbers in other cases:

https://goo.gl/maps/BjGBayJrfb32

13th St is "THIRTEENTH ST" just a block or two north of there.

[kphoger]

Street blades in town use the ordinals, but blades out in the countryside often omit them.

Do you have an example?  The default (at least in rural Sedgwick County) appears to be to render them as very small superscripts.

You're right.  I was getting two pairs of things mixed up in my head:

(1) I was remembering they left out the "Street" part but thought it was the ordinal indicator they left out instead.

(2) I was confusing current practice with what they used to do:  white paint on an old black tire on a fence post.  The latter sometimes had nothing more than a number, sometimes included the directional, but pretty much never had an ordinal indicator.  It's hard to find any of those tires still around, and a lot of the ones that remain are illegible by now, but here's an example at "69 N" and Rock from old GSV.  And here's another one on "69" that I photographed a few years ago (still clearly legible on 2012 GSV, although I don't recall if it's actually still there since they erected green street blades in the area recently):

[J N Winkler]

I was confusing current practice with what they used to do:  white paint on an old black tire on a fence post.  The latter sometimes had nothing more than a number, sometimes included the directional, but pretty much never had an ordinal indicator.

Thanks for this explanation--I actually never knew about the tire-on-fence convention, being a city slicker through and through.

[bzakharin]

I just found this:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2367141,-117.9550673,493m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1
Do these 1 hundredth St and Ninety 5th St actually exist? Are they signed as such?