Cities where Avenues run one way and streets run another

[Elm]

In Loveland, Colorado, avenues run north-south, and streets run east-west, with some other guidelines based on length and curves:

For purposes of naming streets, the following definitions shall be used:

• Through streets less than four hundred feet in length shall be designated as "Places."  Cul-de-sac streets shall be designated as "Courts."
• Streets four hundred feet in length or longer, running north and south, shall be designated as "Avenues."  Streets four hundred feet in length or longer, running east and west, shall be designated as "Streets."
• Curving streets shall be designated as "Drives"  and may be of any length.
• A looped street may have only one name if it intersects the same street to form two tee-intersections. Looped streets shall be designated as "Circles."  (Ord. 4059 § 2, 1995; prior code § 20.26(e))

(from 12.08.040 in the city code's Title 12; later sections also go into naming themes by area)

[stevashe]

In Seattle, avenues are north-south and streets are east-west. Usually  the exceptions are given a separate suffix, like Way (for grid breakers), or Boulevard.

This actually extends to all of the King County grid as well, which (mostly) lines up with Seattle's grid. Most of the cities that have their own grid also use Avenues N/S and Streets E/W, exceptions being Kirkland which has them swapped, and Auburn, which uses lettered streets for N/S roads instead. Also, all east-west roads have their directionals before the name (i.e. NE 85th St) and all north-south roads have the directional placed after the name (i.e. 148th Ave NE) so you still can determine whether a road runs N/S or E/W even if it isn't a Street or Avenue designation.

The pattern also extends to Snohomish County (where the grid is based on Everett's), but the directional is always a suffix. Pierce County generally follows the same rule, but Tacoma's grid has lettered streets that run north-south.

Actually Clark County (Vancouver, WA area) has this as well, but they do the opposite of Snohomish County and always put the directional as a prefix.

[rlb2024]

In Memphis streets run N-S and avenues run E-W.  And street addresses have nothing to do with blocks – they are distance from the dividing lines between north and south or east and west.  The house numbers on the block I grew up started at 570 and ended at 652, and the difference between house numbers was either 4, 6, or 8 depending on the width of the lot the house sat on.

[Revive 755]

Coralville, IA:  Streets run E-W, Avenues run N-S
Cedar Rapids, IA:  Streets run N-S, Avenues run either E-W or SW-NE depending upon the part of town

[DJ Particle]

Minneapolis follows this for the most part.  S and SE have mostly Streets E-W and Avenues N-S.  NE is the reverse.  And in N Minneapolis, just about *everything* is an Avenue.

[marleythedog]

The core grid of Sidney, Ohio has avenues N-S (including Main Ave instead of Main St) and streets E-W. It doesn't extend to the 20th century suburban-style development, however.

[KeithE4Phx]

Gary, Indiana and most of Lake County follow a reverse pattern to Chicago. Avenues run east-west and streets run north-south.

The north/south streets in Gary and Merrillville (same street grid) are not numbered, though.  The east/west avenues are.

And that only applies to Gary and Merrillville.  Hammond's and Whiting's (also same grid) numbered streets are the same as in Chicago, but addresses lop off the leading "1."  For example, 7500 Calumet Ave. is at the corner of 175th St. and Calumet.  There are no "West" streets; the "0 point" is the state line, and address numbers increase to the east.

[jakeroot]

Tacoma is a bit weird. Everything is a street, except important roads (6th Ave, Pacific Ave, Sprague Ave, Puyallup Ave, Tacoma Ave, Fawcett Ave, Yakima Ave, etc).

In the north end, the grid literally gets squished to the point where 6th Ave, which is parallel/in-between S 7th St and N 7th St, becomes the dividing line between the north and south edges of the city. The only sections of the city with house numbers between 1 and 599 are in a triangle between Division Ave and 6th Ave (with Division coming straight out of 6th Ave, about 20 blocks from the edge of the city. It's really quite weird, and it needs to be seen on a map to make any sense.

I think this style would work poorly if more numbered streets were used. But, north-south streets are all named or have letters, so it's fine in practice.

[Ned Weasel]

It's kind of fun trying to explain the Kansas City metro area's street grid and naming/numbering conventions:

In the center city--Kansas City, MO--numbered streets run east-west.  Named roads with varying suffixes run north-south.  The numbers start on the north side of downtown, and going south, they increment every 1/16 mile until somewhere in the 20s, at which point they increment every 1/8 mile.  Going north, they seem to increment at 1/8-mile intervals, but I don't even know where the numbered streets start on the northern side, because the grid is interrupted by North Kansas City, which is a separate city and has numbered avenues that run east-west.  The Kansas City, MO grid system using numbered streets at 1/8-mile increments extends over Jackson, Platte, Clay, and Cass Counties in Missouri, and into Johnson and Miami Counties in Kansas.  I'm not sure if it extends beyond any of those counties.  And a numbered road that is aligned between two numbered streets is called a Terrace.  Then there's Kansas City, Kansas, where numbered streets run north-south, starting on the east side of downtown KCK, and they also increment at 1/8-mile intervals.  However, there are numbered avenues in the southeastern portion of KCK, in order to extend KCMO's street numbers into KCK.  This gets confusing at the Wyandotte-Johnson county line, where Wyandotte County names it County Line Road, but Johnson County names it 47th Street.  Frankly, I think it would be better for Johnson County to just adopt the avenue suffix for that street if it wants to use the number.  And I say this because the convergence of the two grid systems results in an intersection of two different 47th Streets (Kansas City, Kansas's 47th Street turns into Antioch Road south of the county line).  The Kansas City, KS grid system extends across Wyandotte and Leavenworth Counties in Kansas.

Simple, right?  Now let me explain Wichita's grid system (and maybe some of the people here who are more familiar with Wichita could explain the historical reasoning behind this)!  At first glance, in the more central parts of the city, it seems very similar to the grid system Kansas City, MO uses south of downtown.  Numbered streets run east-west, and they increment at 1/8 mile intervals, going both north and south of Douglas Avenue.  Named roads of varying suffixes run north-south.  Going north, Douglas Avenue is the 0 point of the street numbering (although Central Avenue appears to be the 5 point, and is there even a 4th Street?), but going south, Douglas Avenue appears to be the 3 point (and I had to look closely at a map to notice this), but the east-west numbered streets don't start in the southern direction until well south of Douglas Avenue, anyway; named streets are used instead.  And similar to Kansas City, MO, Wichita has named roads with varying suffixes running north-south, until you get somewhere east of Greenwich Road and about a mile west of Maize Road!  On the outer edges of the city, you have numbered streets running in both directions.  They are differentiated with a directional suffix indicating their geographical relationship to the center of the city.  For example, on the eastern side of Wichita, there is an intersection between 13th Street North and 127th Street East, and on the western side, there is an intersection between 13th Street North and 119th Street West.  However, the north-south numbered streets increment in 1/16-mile intervals instead of 1/8.  In fact, this is identical to the way grid-based address numbers increment in Johnson County, with the exception of part of Olathe.

And then there's Topeka, where numbered streets run east-west, except for major east-west roadways, which are called avenues.  And, again, north-south roads are named with varying suffixes.

So, as much as some of us would probably like a nice, clean grid system where streets run in one direction, and avenues run in the other, metro Kansas City, Wichita, and Topeka all decided against that at some point in history.

[Terry]

Many urban places in Alberta use the street/avenue grid system (with streets running either N/S or E/W and avenues the opposite). The exceptions are roads that don't fully follow a grid or are curvy. Then they're referred to other road terms, like Road, Trail, Drive, etc. Most of roads are numbered according to where the quadrant center is. In Edmonton, numbering started at 101 St. and 101 Ave. downtown, with numbers increasing to the north and west, putting the quadrant center well to the southeast. In Calgary, the quadrant center is at Centre St. and Center Ave., just about on the south bank of the Bow River, in the downtown area.

The increments between each street and avenue is dependant on how each subdivision was done within a quarter-section (Alberta Township System) or a settlement plan (mostly surveyed using the river lot subdivision idea).

[Big John]

Bump for the City of Bismarck had an official April Fool's day notice it was switching the street and avenue designations.
https://www.bismarcknd.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=8290

[SEWIGuy]

Moline and Rock Island Illinois both have numbered streets going north/south, and numbered avenues going east/west.

Furthermore, the cities lie next to one another east/west and oftentimes the numbered avenues don't match. For instance, 18th Avenue in Rock Island becomes 19th Avenue in Moline. Not even a jog in the street - all you do is cross a city line.

[elsmere241]

In Salt Lake City, named Streets run N/S and Avenues run E/W, and streets that don't follow a cardinal direction are something else, usually Drives. The pattern breaks down in the suburbs but holds for all of Salt Lake proper.

And some E/W streets are "Place", and N/S streets "Court".  Places and Courts aren't very common.

One exception is Market Street, which runs east-west.  It was part of Post Office Place - that post office is now a courthouse.

[Rick Powell]

That's actually a continuation of the Chicago pattern of the following:
Avenues run north-south on the blocks (every eighth of a mile), i..e. 96th Avenue
Courts run north-south on the half blocks, i.e. 96th Court
Streets run east-west on the blocks, i.e. 75th Street
Places run east-west on the half blocks, i.e. 75th Place

That pattern actually continues (in rural areas, at least) to the south edge of Will County.

There are a few exceptions in Chicago. Halsted Street is north-south, but is the primary exception. Several avenues including North, Chicago, Fullerton, Foster, Lawrence, Touhy and Belmont Avenues are east-west (and notably all are north of Madison Street, the "0th Street" of the otherwise numbered streets of the south side). Actually, 8th Street is the first street south of Madison that is commonly referred to by a number.

Yes, it's weird being out in southern Will County and driving around the cornfields of 30000 South Ridgeland Avenue like it was a Chicago street.

[Hunty2022]

Part of the Virginia Beach Oceanfront does this. They do Avenues going North-South, and Streets are East-West.

The avenues start on the east with Atlantic Ave, then Pacific, Baltic, and Mediterranean.
Streets start south with 1st, and go north past 40th.

[jlam]

Most of the cities around here follow this pattern. Some (like Greeley) are numbered for both avenues and streets, but others (like Eaton) are only numbered for one and named for the other.

[Streetman]

NYC under the Commissioners Plan of 1812 set up the current situation where in Manhattan, all avenues run N-S and all streets run E-W.
...

In the outer boroughs: The Bronx generally continues the Manhattan system, although "north", as in Manhattan, is closer to north-northeast.
Queens street grids go at all kinds of directions. Avenues always run closer to east-west. Where needed there are Roads and Drives between consecutive numbered Avenues. North-south run Streets, with Places and Lanes where needed.
Brooklyn also has grids at different angles, but within each neighborhood, Streets and Avenues are perpendicular to each other.
Staten Island doesn't seem to have a system, with many neighborhoods having Avenues crossing each other.

[jakeroot]

Bump for the City of Bismarck had an official April Fool's day notice it was switching the street and avenue designations.
https://www.bismarcknd.gov/CivicAlerts.aspx?AID=8290

This is great, I love that it's just a picture of someone laughing at us. Like it wasn't some huge, long essay about studies, or anything believable. Just a picture of someone laughing at us, under the title.

[KCRoadFan]

Miami's numbered street grid comes to mind: "Streets" run east-west, with Flagler Street being the north-south baseline, while "Avenues" run north-south, with Miami Avenue being the east-west baseline.

[LilianaUwU]

The Limoilou and Charlesbourg neighborhoods of Québec City have such a grid. Avenues go north-south, streets go east-west.

[JCinSummerfield]

Not a city, but in Lenawee County, Michigan, everything running N-S is a Highway; and everything running E-W is a Road.

[Dirt Roads]

Nitro, West Virginia is long and thin (similar to Huntington, but much smaller) and the avenues run the long arc parallel to the Kanawha River, and the streets run perpendicular to the avenues.  There's only three main avenues [north] of the railroad tracks, aptly named First, Second and Third.  But there is a hodge-podge of avenues between the railroad tracks and the river, some of which are very short. 

Not everything follows those "rules", as there is "River Lane" that makes a bend from parallel to streets then parallel to avenues.  Worse, "Lock Avenue" starts out parallel to streets (headed to the old Lock #7 location) and then finally turns northward parallel to the other avenues. 

Down in the East Nitro section near the St. Albans bridge, there are a handful of doodads running parallel to the streets: Erwin Drive, Martins Court, Reeves Drive, Gravely Drive, Helens Court and further down, Jordan Place.  They have a Locust Street on the river side, which lines up with Locust Avenue on the hill side (crossing First Avenue), but that turns south and becomes Okey Avenue parallel to First Avenue.  Main Avenue also turns and becomes Blackwood Avenue, running parallel to the streets.  But the dealbreaker in the East Nitro section is River Avenue that runs entirely parallel to the streets.

[Road Hog]

Atkins, AR decided long ago to create quadrants and designate avenues as N-S and streets as E-W. The local newspaper is located at 204 Ave. 1 NE, which used to be Dover Street before the big redesignation.

[Quillz]

The SF Valley as a whole is like this. Avenues are north-south, streets are east-west. 

[Ketchup99]

Pittsburgh mostly isn't like this - generally, avenues are major roads connecting multiple neighborhoods, while streets are less important and usually stay in one neighborhood. However, there are a few places where this trend doesn't hold. Downtown, for instance, has north-south streets and east-west avenues, but downtown is a mix of two grids (one parallel to the Allegheny, and one parallel to the Monongahela). In the Strip District, though, avenues exclusively run NE-SW, while streets run SE-NW.