Minneapolis' Numbered Aves.

[bschultzy]

I moved to Minneapolis late last fall after 13 years in St. Paul, and am enjoying still getting to know the city. What's stumping me, and research is proving difficult to find, is how the streets in South Minneapolis were originally laid out. Obviously, the downtown grid was the original, laid out to follow the river, and then other sections of the city were added later. However, two big questions come to mind as I look at how the avenues in South Minneapolis:

1. How were the numbered avenues chosen? First, it's a given that N-S avenues are basically half-blocks, vs. the full blocks between the numbered streets. So, as one heads west from Nicollet (the E-W baseline in S. Minneapolis), the following streets are encountered:

1st, Stevens, 2nd, 3rd, Clinton, 4th, 5th, Portland, Oakland, Park, Columbus, Chicago, Elliot, 10th. The half blocks are numbered through 15th, then Bloomington and 16th, 17th, and 18th. Then Cedar hits, then Longfellow, and then 19th hits. East from there, the numbering remains consistent until the River. However, there's Standish, which starts and 37th and runs south between 22nd and 23rd.

This inconsistent spacing is quite perplexing, but then again, we also have the numbered streets laid out with short stretches of 21st and 23rd as half-blocks so that Franklin is 20th and Lake is 30th. I've read that this setup was intentional to have Lake be 30th, but there's nothing that obvious with how the N-S avenues are numbered or not. I'm sure aligning the traditional grid with the angled grid of downtown posed some challenges, but the lack of consistency is strange to me.

2. Because of this, what is the address layout? Unlike St. Paul, Minneapolis doesn't list the block #s on signposts, and the irregular numbered avenues for a portion of the grid make it perplexing. I grew up in Chicago, so I used to thinking of streets as their block numbers, e.g. North Ave is 1600 N. I can't find anywhere that lists how Minneapolis is laid out, and it's annoying to click block by block in Google Maps to get close to it.

[froggie]

Portland, Park, Chicago, and Elliot were renamed from 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th respectively, which should help answer your 2nd question.

Many of the other streets, like Stevens, Clinton, Oakland, and Columbus were added because of how the streets fan out in width once they switch from the downtown grid (aligned with the river) to the southern grid (aligned with the cardinal directions).  It's possible that Bloomington is the result of the same widening out between 15th and 16th going south.  Standish is probably a result of 22nd and 23rd changing in width at 37th St.  I unfortunately do not have an explanation for Cedar and Longfellow.

[bschultzy]

Thanks, Froggie. Those renumberings make sense, and I was guessing that the change in grid orientation was a big factor. Do you know if there's a listing somewhere of overall Minneapolis address numbering? I'm curious how many #s to a block exist in various parts of town.