Do street name suffixes have any sort of standards?

[Quillz]

Dumb question, but it's something I've always wondered... Is there actual criteria that exists for a street to be suffixed, say, an avenue or a boulevard as opposed to just a road or a street? Sometimes you have Drives, or Parkways, or Courts... Are street name suffixes simply chosen for what sounds nice, or is there an actual reason?

[NE2]

No. Some places may have standards, but in general no.

[Quillz]

That's what I figured. The only thing I've noticed is that major thruways tend to be boulevards.

[hobsini2]

I think it just veries from location to location.  In my town of Bolingbrook, IL, Blvds and Pkwys have to be a minimum of a 4 lanes or a divided road.  Any other suffix can be on any type of road.  For example, Route 53 is also called Bolingbrook Dr even though it could fall under Blvd or Pkwy.  In Chicago, Blvds are a specific designated arterial street.  Often you will have a suffix change because of the beginning or ending of such a designation.  For example, Fullerton Ave when it crosses into Lincoln Park becomes Fullerton Blvd officially but us locals just call it Fullerton Ave.

[Brandon]

Yes and no.  In the Chicago street system, numbered streets run east-west, and avenues run north-south with courts being the 1/2 blocks between streets and places being the 1/2 blocks between avenues.  Example: 96th Ave crosses 159th St, and 96th Pl is just west of there, and 159th Ct is just south of there.

[WillWeaverRVA]

In most places, the suffix "Court" (Ct.) implies a cul-de-sac or dead end at the end of the street. This isn't a standard, though, and there are cases where a Court is actually a through street, or at least one without a cul-de-sac/dead end. "Terrace" and "Place" seem to be the same way much of the time (but certainly not ALL the time).

Some jurisdictions define standards for Parkways (ranging from freeway-type routes to major surface thoroughfares to "greenway"-type routes), but oftentimes Parkways are actually neighborhood streets, or streets that serve private institutions such as business parks.

Boulevards are usually defined as wide city streets with medians, but of course that's not always the case (example: Oaklawn Boulevard in Hopewell, Virginia does not have a median for part of the time it's actually called that). A lot of places seem to use it interchangeably with Street or Avenue. I don't think it's actually very common for a city's main street to be anything other than a Street or Avenue, but I could be wrong.

[deathtopumpkins]

The main artery across the Peninsula (Hampton and southern Newport News) is Mercury Blvd - not a street or avenue). Then again I've not noticed any standards for street suffixes around here at all.

[usends]

Denver (and surrounding area) has a systematic approach, which has been followed for the most part, but of course many deviations exist.  E-W roads on the grid are "Avenues", with inter-grid roads being "Places".  E-W diagonals that connect to 2 or more E-W roads are "Drives".  N-S grid roads are "Streets", with inter-grid roads being "Courts".  N-S diagonals connecting two or more N-S roads are "Ways".  Major arterials are often "Roads" or "Boulevards".

I think it's more common to see this kind of organization in midwestern cities.  In general, these places have relatively flat terrain, and the section-range-township method of surveying was already in place before many people had settled there.  So you had these uniformly-gridded areas, and development conformed itself to the template that already existed on the land.  This kind of organization lent itself to a more organized way of naming roads.

[tdindy88]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Manhattan yet, with Avenues going north-south and Streets going east-west, at least down to 14th Street where it becomes less of an actual grid with streets going everywhere.

[hobsini2]

I actually found while doing other research the official Chicago designations according to Chicago History Museum website. Here it is.

Avenue - Title applied mostly to streets running North and South. There are exceptions.
Blvd - Title given to streets where trucks over 5 tons are not permitted.
Court - Title given to short roadway.
Parkway - Title given to street that ends at a park.
Place - Title given to street running the 1/2 block between streets.
Street - Title applied mostly to streets running East and West. There are exceptions.

The website is http://www.chsmedia.org/househistory/nameChanges/start.pdf

[hm insulators]

Boulevards are usually defined as wide city streets with medians, but of course that's not always the case (example: Oaklawn Boulevard in Hopewell, Virginia does not have a median for part of the time it's actually called that). A lot of places seem to use it interchangeably with Street or Avenue. I don't think it's actually very common for a city's main street to be anything other than a Street or Avenue, but I could be wrong.

La Canada Flintridge, a suburb of Los Angeles and the town where I was raised, has three boulevards that are quite different from each other. The main drag is Foothill Boulevard, which is a four-lane thoroughfare lined with businesses between Hampton Road and Alta Canyada Road, west of which Foothill runs through a residential area for a couple of miles, still as a four-lane artery. Verdugo Boulevard splits off Foothill and is similar to the western segment of Foothill by running through a residential area. Finally, La Canada Boulevard is a case of a boulevard that is not a wide city street at all--it's a little, narrow, tree-lined residential street that runs north for about two miles from Foothill until it dead-ends at the foot of the mountains.

[apeman33]

In Oakley, KS, all streets are E-W and all avenues are N-S.

In Garden City, they just do whatever the heck they want. Belmont "Place" is one of the longest streets in town. Anything called "Plaza" is a frontage street (Kansas Plaza, Taylor Plaza, Fulton Plaza). Fulton Terrace is a parking lot for a business mall, but other terraces are regular streets. Campus Drive is one of the busiest four-lane streets. Pat's Drive is a run-of-the-mill city street. Araphaoe Drive is two blocks long with cul-de-sacs at each end.

[formulanone]

In Gainesville, Florida, the Avenues, Places, Roads, and Lanes were mostly east-west. Streets, Terraces, and Drives were generally north-south. So the nmeonic device we used was "April STD" at the shop I delivered pizzas.