Postal address city names commonly used outside of that city’s boundaries

[KCRoadFan]

I was just thinking the other day about how in the 631xx zip code range within the St. Louis metro area - corresponding to the city itself as well as most of the inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis County, mostly those inside of I-270 - and the fact that, in terms of mail sent to that area as well as other official presentations of addresses there, such as in advertisements and on business cards, a common practice is to use "St. Louis"  as the city name not only for addresses within St. Louis city limits but also for those in the suburbs, in lieu of the actual municipality name - aside from, perhaps, some of the larger ones like Clayton, Kirkwood, and Webster Groves. (Of course, I would assume all of those other suburban city names are also valid for addresses within their respective boundaries, just not as commonly used.)

That made me wonder: where else throughout the country is this phenomenon, of substituting the name of the major city for those of nearby suburbs in postal addresses, also widespread? I believe it's a somewhat common practice to use "Minneapolis"  for addresses in the 554xx zip code range in inner-ring suburbs in Hennepin County, but I would need a local to verify that. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing about that and more examples of what I find to be an interesting postal phenomenon!

[hotdogPi]

I believe this happens almost everywhere. Atlanta is another example, to the point where one of my relatives believes she lives in Atlanta despite being outside the city boundaries.

[SectorZ]

I can confirm it happens for a relative just outside a Virginia city. I didn't even know she lived outside the city itself until visiting.

Granted the city name is cooler than the county, the one that sounds like Dracula's dog.

[1995hoo]

That is very common. Here in Northern Virginia, two-thirds of the addresses the Postal Service calls "Alexandria" are not in Alexandria at all but are rather in Fairfax County (multiple ZIP Codes), to the point where government officials and media sometimes refer to "the Alexandria portion of Fairfax County." It sometimes causes people to get confused when they hear "Alexandria" and assume you live in the independent city of that name. (When my wife and I got married, she did live in the City of Alexandria and then moved to my house in Fairfax County. Despite my telling her not to pay her car tax to the City that year, she did so anyway–she said "but our address is Alexandria"–and we had to jump through hoops to get a refund. I was rather annoyed because I told her not to pay it and she ignored me.)

The same thing happens, on a far smaller scale, with the City of Falls Church. I know a fellow who lives on Virginia Avenue in Fairfax County. Not too far away, there is both a South Virginia Avenue and a North Virginia Avenue in the City of Falls Church. He says it causes endless problems with things like pizza delivery and the like when the deliverymen go to the wrong Virginia Avenue (I guess they can't be bothered to note that the streets in the City of Falls Church have three-digit house numbers and the one in Fairfax County has four-digit house numbers). Doesn't happen with the mail because they have different ZIP Codes. I have a feeling if I lived there and I were ordering pizza, I'd try to use the "notes" field to say "This is the Virginia Avenue near Shrevewood Elementary, not the one near the bowling alley."

[SEWIGuy]

This is so common, including multiple instances in my lifetime, that it's not really worth a topic.

[hotdogPi]

Boston has an inverse situation. Some of the neighborhoods in Boston (usually the ones that were previously independent and then merged) use the neighborhood name rather than Boston.

[1995hoo]

Boston has an inverse situation. Some of the neighborhoods in Boston (usually the ones that were previously independent and then merged) use the neighborhood name rather than Boston.

New York City uses a combination of the five boroughs' names, some neighborhood names, and the city's name. Addresses in Manhattan are "New York, New York," for example; addresses in Brooklyn are "Brooklyn." Addresses in Queens may vary. One of my late grandmothers lived in Far Rockaway and her address was "Far Rockaway, New York," and my aunt who currently lives in Breezy Point has an address of "Breezy Point, New York," whereas her sister who lives nearby in Roxbury has an address of "Queens, New York," despite Roxbury being part of the Breezy Point Cooperative.

[TheStranger]

The Bay Area is one place where this DOESN'T happen much:

- San Francisco zip codes (941xx) entirely always apply to things that are part of San Francisco city limits, plus the airport (94128). 

- There are so many individual suburban cities that basically have a zip code or two either only to itself or, in some rare cases (i.e. Belvedere/Tiburon) shared between two small communities.

For comparison, Sacramento is an example of this exact concept, where the postal concept of "Sacramento" is much larger than the city.

City limit map:
https://www.cityofsacramento.org/Public-Works/Transportation/Traffic-Data-Maps/City-Map

Sacramento's main zip code range is in the 95811-95838 range, though with 95826 being shared with the unincorporated district of Rosemont:
https://www.cccarto.com/ca/sacramento/

However, in that range, there are several places that use "Sacramento" as their postal place name, but are themselves not in city limits:

95821 - other than a small sliver that is in city limits (along Business 80/old US 40), much of this is the unincorporated suburb of Arcade
95823 and 95824 - partially in the city, partially in unincorporated South Sacramento (Parkway) which is visually indistinguishable from the portion of South Sacramento in city limits
95825 - southern half is in Sacramento, but the vast majority is in the unincorporated suburb of Arden
95827 - Rosemont
95828 and 95829 and 95830 - Vineyard
95832 - a portion is the town of Freeport

95841 and 95842 - Foothill Farms
95864 - entirely in Arden

[mgk920]

S.O.P. in much of suburban Milwaukee County, WI too.

Mike

[ran4sh]

Yeah, the general public needs to get rid of the idea that the "city" on USPS addresses are actually meaningful, since they are merely designated for the convenience of USPS.

In part of the Athens GA area there's a zip code boundary that's actually perpendicular with a county line/city limit. So, for example, there are Athens addresses in Clarke County and Bogart addresses in Oconee County, but there's also Athens addresses in Oconee County and Bogart addresses in Clarke County.

[Bruce]

There are still some businesses that advertise with a Seattle postal address despite being in a different county. It's really common for cities that had large unincorporated areas around it until recently.

[cstp3103]

Rochester Institute of Technology uses Rochester, NY for addresses despite lying entirely within the suburb of Henrietta.

[epzik8]

This is just the entire Baltimore metro area.

[pianocello]

Most of the country's land area is outside any city limits. But rural addresses have to put something down for the city name...

[brad2971]

Englewood (CO) has a ZIP code of 80112. Which is in Douglas County, and is a significant distance from the 80110 and 80113 Englewood ZIP codes. No move has been made to refer to that ZIP code as being in Meridian (which is not an incorporated city BTW), Lone Tree or even Parker.

What make that even weirder is that the Highlands Ranch ZIP codes of 80126, 80129, and 80130 have only been referred to as Highlands Ranch for the last 20-25 years. Before that, those ZIP codes were Littleton ZIP codes.

[hotdogPi]

Most of the country's land area is outside any city limits. But rural addresses have to put something down for the city name...

County name? There are some "Henrico" addresses in Virginia despite there being nothing below the county level with that name.

[Flint1979]

Saginaw, Michigan's postal zip code includes Zilwaukee, Zilwaukee Township, Kochville Township, Saginaw Township, Buena Vista Township, part of Carrollton Township, part of Bridgeport Township, part of James Township, part of Swan Creek Township and part of Tittabawassee Township.

Zilwaukee (township and city), part of Carrollton Township and Kochville Township are all 48604.
Saginaw Township North and part of Tittabawassee Township are 48603.
Saginaw Township South is 48638.
Buena Vista Township and part of Bridgeport Township are 48601.
Part of James Township and part of Swan Creek Township is 48609.

Saginaw city is 48601, 48602, 48607. There is a little bit of Saginaw Township that falls in the 48602 zip code for some reason.

48623 is Freeland, MI and that zip code is pretty big in area. It includes several other townships and spans into Bay and Midland County. The part of Tittabawassee Township that isn't 48603 is 48623.

Bridgeport Township is 48722.
Carrollton Township is 48724.

Carrollton is a strange township, it almost operates like a small city. They have their own police and fire department, they have a post office, a township hall and their own school district. For a township it's very small in area at only 3.34 square miles it's the 4th smallest township in Michigan in area.

[roadfro]

Nevada's prominent example is Las Vegas.

Zip codes in Clark County and the Las Vegas area are generally in the 890xx and 891xx ranges (here's a map of Zip Codes in the Las Vegas Valley).

The cities of Henderson, North Las Vegas, and Boulder City use zip codes in 890xx ranges. The City of Las Vegas has zip codes in the 891xx range. However, much of what you see on that map with 891xx ranges is not within Las Vegas city limits and instead falls into one of several Las Vegas area unicorporated townships, but all use "Las Vegas" for postal address purposes. (Most of the people living in these areas are unfamiliar with the township they live in, as aside from non-elected town advisory boards, the only local governance of these townships is the Clark County Commission.)

Most of the prominent landmarks that are in "Las Vegas" but not the city proper are actually in Paradise Township–this includes, but is not limited to: UNLV, Harry Reid Int'l Airport, T-Mobile Arena, Allegiant Stadium, the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign, and most of the Las Vegas Strip. Even the main Las Vegas USPS processing center (James C. Brown facility) itself is not in Las Vegas but in Paradise Township. Winchester Township has the northernmost mile or so of The Strip and the majority of the Las Vegas Convention Center (the south halls are in Paradise).

[rlb2024]

My office had a mailing address and ZIP code of "New Orleans, LA 70123" even though it was 5 miles outside the city limits of New Orleans and was in a different parish (Jefferson).  The 70123 ZIP code is shared between the incorporated city of Harahan and the unincorporated areas of River Ridge and Elmwood, all in Jefferson Parish.  There is another ZIP code (70121) for the unincorporated area of Jefferson, LA which is between New Orleans and the 70123 ZIP code.

The rest of Jefferson Parish has 700xx ZIP codes (except for Grand Isle on the Gulf of Mexico, which has a 703xx ZIP code as it is only reachable from the Houma/Thibodaux area).

[US20IL64]

Some border suburbs in Cook County had 606xx for some time,but were considered "Chicago" to insurance companies. So, they got higher rates. Thus, said towns asked for 'non-city' ZIPs. 607xx or 602xx.

Examples are Niles and Elmwood Park.

[FrCorySticha]

Most of the country's land area is outside any city limits. But rural addresses have to put something down for the city name...

County name? There are some "Henrico" addresses in Virginia despite there being nothing below the county level with that name.

In Montana at least, rural addresses are based off the post office that delivers the mail. This used to be clearer when the address was a Rural Route instead of an actual 911 street address. So, to deliver to a farm on a rural delivery route out of Cascade, MT, the address would look like:

John Smith
RR 2 Box 51
Cascade, MT 59421

It didn't matter how close or far the farm was, or even if it was in the same county, but which post office would originate the rural route. Now, with 911 addresses, it's more common to see standard street addresses with the closest post office within the county. So now that farm could be:

John Smith
1350 Sheep Creek Rd.
Cascade, MT 59421

[pderocco]

Most of the country's land area is outside any city limits. But rural addresses have to put something down for the city name...

Which is why states that have no unincorporated land, like Massachusetts, don't have that problem. They're like a jigsaw puzzle with no missing pieces. In most places, there is one post office per city or town. In big cities, there can be multiple, and sometimes the different zip codes within the city are named for a neighborhood rather than the city. But it's also rare there for town lines to go down streets; they're usually more or less perpendicular to streets, so you don't have two different mail trucks from two different post offices servicing the two sides of the same street.

[jeffandnicole]

I was just thinking the other day about how in the 631xx zip code range within the St. Louis metro area - corresponding to the city itself as well as most of the inner-ring suburbs of St. Louis County, mostly those inside of I-270 - and the fact that, in terms of mail sent to that area as well as other official presentations of addresses there, such as in advertisements and on business cards, a common practice is to use "St. Louis"  as the city name not only for addresses within St. Louis city limits but also for those in the suburbs, in lieu of the actual municipality name - aside from, perhaps, some of the larger ones like Clayton, Kirkwood, and Webster Groves. (Of course, I would assume all of those other suburban city names are also valid for addresses within their respective boundaries, just not as commonly used.)

That made me wonder: where else throughout the country is this phenomenon, of substituting the name of the major city for those of nearby suburbs in postal addresses, also widespread? I believe it's a somewhat common practice to use "Minneapolis"  for addresses in the 554xx zip code range in inner-ring suburbs in Hennepin County, but I would need a local to verify that. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing about that and more examples of what I find to be an interesting postal phenomenon!

The ZIP Code was created for the post office to handle mail more efficiently.  It wasn't meant to tie a zip code to a specific locality, although that's how it often worked out.  So in this respect, there's nothing unique about using St. Louis, Minneapolis, or any other large city in outer areas.  It's how the Post Office designated it.

Actually, you don't need to ask a local.  Go to: https://tools.usps.com/zip-code-lookup.htm , click the appropriate 'Find' button, and you'll get the proper address as the USPS wants you to use.

[mgk920]

Most of the country's land area is outside any city limits. But rural addresses have to put something down for the city name...

Yea, most of the hinterland area outside of my hometown City of Appleton is served by the USPS as 'Appleton, WI (and most of that is 54913)'.

Mike

[NWI_Irish96]

Some border suburbs in Cook County had 606xx for some time,but were considered "Chicago" to insurance companies. So, they got higher rates. Thus, said towns asked for 'non-city' ZIPs. 607xx or 602xx.

Examples are Niles and Elmwood Park.

More extreme example: Oak Park and River Forest asked for their own ZIP prefix to not only distinguish themselves from Chicago but also from the rest of the surrounding suburbs that mostly start with 601. So as a result there are only five ZIP codes starting with 603.