Where the Main Road is not the Baseline

[roadman65]

I noticed in Dothan, Alabama that US 231 Business (Oates Street) is the main thoroughfare through the city. Yet it's not the baseline for addressees or E-W change.  The street to the east Foster Street is the changeover.

Unless Foster was old US 231, though I doubt it, as Googlemaps don't show a connection at either end back to US 231 Business.


Then you have Jerome Avenue in The Bronx which is baseline to E-W running streets instead of Grand Concourse to the east which is more centralized in location than Jerome Avenue.

Back to Dothan the epicenter is at Main and Foster and not Main and Oates.  All N-S changeovers are from Main ( US 84 Business) running either way.

[kphoger]

Doesn't this happen all the time when a highway is built through town?

In Wichita, the N-S divide is at Douglas Street, not Kellogg (US-54/400).

[Flint1979]

In Saginaw, Michigan the main street is historically Genesee Avenue. East Genesee is the start for north and south addresses on the east side for a short stretch downtown then they start at Lapeer east of Weadock Avenue. The addresses for east and west start at the Saginaw River not a street, on the west side of the city the addresses for north and south start at Court Street which is a major street in Saginaw but not the main street. On the east side of the city the addresses for north and south start at Lapeer Avenue except for the part of Genesee that I mentioned earlier in this post.

In Detroit, Woodward is the line between east and west and if someone else from Michigan can help me figure out where the north and south line is at that'd be great as I don't think Detroit has a street that has N or S on it. John R which is a secondary street east of Woodward is the east-west line north of McNichols. Woodward Avenue is Detroit's main street.

In Flint, Martin Luther King is the divide between east and west north of downtown, south of downtown it's Flint's main street (Saginaw Street). For north and south the divide is the Flint River.

[JayhawkCO]

Denver has Broadway as the E/W divide, which is a very important road. Ellsworth Avenue is the N/S divide, which not only isn't all that important, it's very discontinuous across Denver. It was chosen because at the time, there were only 17 numbered avenues in the city and so they made "0th Avenue", a.k.a. Ellsworth which was just south of 1st, the baseline.

[catch22]

In Detroit, Woodward is the line between east and west and if someone else from Michigan can help me figure out where the north and south line is at that'd be great as I don't think Detroit has a street that has N or S on it. John R which is a secondary street east of Woodward is the east-west line north of McNichols. Woodward Avenue is Detroit's main street.

On an old AAA Michigan map of Detroit I have, the North-South base line is marked as the Detroit River from the eastern city limits to West Grand Boulevard.  It then follows about 1 block south of and parallel to Fort Street to the Rouge River.  It then follows the Rouge to near the intersection of Brady & Cherry Hill in west Dearborn.  From there, it follows Cherry Hill Road all the way to the Washtenaw County line.

As a result, as you noted, few streets in Detroit need N or S modifiers since the base line follows the river for the most part.  They do exist, though.  Here's a Google Map image of Fort Street South, in the portion of Detroit that extends south of the Rouge River.  Fun fact: this intersection is right around the corner from where the Detroit police recovered my stolen car in 1977.

https://goo.gl/maps/UXWbcNYQfdhsATcS8