Baseline streets

[Scott5114]

What the names of the streets that form the baselines in your city? These are the axes that serve as the zero points for addressing and probably also serve to divide the city into quadrants. Where these two streets intersect, the buildings on the corners could all theoretically have the address 1.

I'd like to limit this to larger cities so we can learn something that might come in handy about the US's major cities, so if you live in a town of less than about 100,000 please pick the nearest large city. Knowing this fact about Wichita, KS might be useful some day, but learning Wellington, KS's street grid probably won't be.

In Oklahoma City, these streets are Reno Avenue (east-west) and Santa Fe Avenue (north-south).

[txstateends]

Amarillo:  Polk Street (n-s) is the east-west divider between the SW/NW and SE/NE streets, while the BNSF rail yard alignment along the north side of the downtown core is where the NW/NE streets and SW/SE streets divide up.  West of where the BNSF turns northwestward, it's just an imaginary line.  For example, along McMasters St., going north after passing SW 1st the next street would be NW 1st ( https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2145918,-101.8608757,17z?hl=en-US&nogmmr=1 ); but according to Street View, the address numbers change in that area at SW 1st.

(When I lived up there, the common vernacular, as well as most street sign blades, referred to SW streets as 'West' and the SE ones as 'East'; now, apparently, the city is trying to emphasize the SW/SE version more)

[jwolfer]

Jacksonville is interesting.. NS baseline is Main St from downtown north.. South of downtown it is  the St Johns River.. The East West  baseline in variable.. Near downtown it is is the St Johns River.. West of downtown its Beaver St.. East of downtown its Atlantic Blvd..

Unlike Miami-Dade or Gainesville/Alachua its not a numbered grid.

[hotdogPi]

Four closest 100000+ cities (ordered by distance away from me): Lowell MA, Manchester NH, Cambridge MA, Boston MA. The first three are all barely above 100000 people, and there are no quadrants or obvious baseline streets in any of those four cities. Of the four, only Manchester NH has an obvious grid.

[jwolfer]

Gainesville/Alachua County Florida the baselines are: NS Main St. EW University Ave. There are also diagonal Streets named after the towns they head to ( Archer Rd, Waldo Rd, Newberry Rd. Hawthorne Rd )

It's interesting how the grid spread from Miami to Gainesville.. Bradford County( Starke) and Columbia County (Lake City) adopted the grid but other places did not.. When my mom was a kid Gainesville had named streets, the sign blades in Gainesville have the historic names

[Brandon]

Joliet has Chicago Street (IL-53) for the east-west divider, and Washington Street (east of Raynor)/Jefferson Street (west of Raynor) as the north-south divider.

Chicago has State Street as the east-west divider, and Madison Street as the north-south divider.

[CtrlAltDel]

In Santa Barbara, the baseline streets are State Street and Cabrillo Boulevard. Although, the grid is offset from true north by about 48 degrees at the beach, getting worse as you head inland, to the point where things marked "West" are actually due south.

Also (you didn't ask for this, but I found it interesting), the side of the street with even numbers is the right side of the street as the numbers increase. So, east of State Street, the even numbers are on the south side of the street, but west of State Street, they are on the north side of the street. This is opposed to Chicago, say, where the even numbers are always on the north or west side of the street.

Finally, in the part of the Santa Barbara that's a grid, there are 10 blocks to the mile. At least in the ideal. Some of the streets are skewed because of faulty surveying equipment. (The intersection of Mission and De La Vina streets being particularly off.)

[GaryV]

Grand Rapids:  Division Ave. (get it?) and Fulton St.

In Detroit, John R divides east from west, even though it runs at a NW angle from downtown out to 6 Mile (McNichols) Rd.  I don't even know what divides north from south.

[Brandon]

Grand Rapids:  Division Ave. (get it?) and Fulton St.

In Detroit, John R divides east from west, even though it runs at a NW angle from downtown out to 6 Mile (McNichols) Rd.  I don't even know what divides north from south.

Michigan Avenue divides north from south until it dives south, and then it's Ford Road.  I always assumed Woodward, not John R was the east-west dividing line.

[Eth]

For Atlanta:

From downtown northward, Peachtree Street is the baseline dividing west from east (except where West Peachtree Street exists; there, West Peachtree serves this role. I mean, except for that northernmost segment of West Peachtree that's actually east of Peachtree.), though once it gets up into Buckhead the addresses sometimes start doing their own thing. Then the downtown grid sort of tilts a little bit, and the dividing line sort of muddles its way south through there before eventually emerging onto Capitol Avenue. Once that ends at University Avenue, it just keeps going more or less due south, whether there's a street along for the ride or not.

Heading east from downtown, Edgewood Avenue is the baseline dividing north from south until you reach roughly Krog Street; there, Edgewood turns slightly north and the dividing line sets out on its own more or less due east before eventually resting on Hosea L. Williams Drive, which it follows east to the city limits. Heading west, it doesn't really start out following a street, but eventually picks up on MLK. It may continue going west when MLK deviates to the south, but it's hard to tell; there seems to be a fair amount of inconsistency in that direction.

Pretty much it's more based on straight north/south/east/west lines than it is on any actual streets (apart from staying on Peachtree north of 19th Street).

[kkt]

Seattle can't do anything the easy way, so we have several baselines streets.

In north Seattle, avenues NW start at 1st Ave. NW, a block west of Palatine Ave. N.  Avenues NE start at 1st Ave. NE, a block east of Sunnyside Ave. NE.

In Queen Anne, Queen Anne Ave. N is the baseline.  1st Ave. N runs parallel a block east, and 1st Ave. W runs parallel a block west.

Downtown, Belltown, and Capital Hill feature avenues with no directional indication, starting a block east of Western Ave. near Elliot Bay.

Broadway on Capital Hill is the division between streets with no designation on the west and streets with an E designation on the east.


There's more to it and I'm leaving out the south end of the city altogether but that's a start.  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_layout_of_Seattle

[Ace10]

Not sure if Hillsboro, Oregon is above the 100,000 people mark (I should know this because they post population numbers on signs when entering the city) but there is an actual Baseline Rd that separates north and south - at least west of Cornelius Pass Rd. East of there, Baseline curves a little further south and then continues heading east, and there are SW streets on both sides, even though Baseline itself is always W Baseline, never SW Baseline - at least if you trust Bing Maps. Out in the field I haven't paid much attention.

Burnside St in Portland, Oregon separates north and south, and that's pretty much maintained until you hit Barnes Rd and Skyline Blvd to the west, and at the point where it starts curving southeast at E 181st Ave, if you draw a line heading due east from that point, that line continues separating north from south all the way east to about SE 242nd Dr, but by then you're in a different city.

West and east are divided by the Willamette River, though that's not really a road you can drive down. Things get hairy in North Portland when the river starts curving northwest, and leads to a "fifth quadrant" where the streets are east of the river, but west of the (defined?) line of longitude that separates things further south. Instead of NW or NE, the streets are simply prefixed "N". Looking at a map, it appears the dividing street is N Williams Ave.

[noelbotevera]

For Baltimore:

E-W is US 40, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin, and I-170. Until you hit downtown at the east end of Seton Hill, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin (I-170) merge into Orleans St. past MD 2. However, Orleans St. gives way to Pulaski Highway, so the grid changes a little bit, as Pulaski curves northeast towards I-895.

Between Cooks Lane (MD 122's extension) and Poplar Grove Street, the main E-W changes to Edmondson Avenue. So, west of the city, the grid is a little messy due to US 40 having to curve down from Edmondson onto the couplets of W. Franklin and W. Mulberry.



N-S doesn't really start on a street, but north of Baltimore, it would be St. Paul Street and North Calvert Street. At North Avenue (US 1), MD 2 appears out of nowhere and uses St. Paul and North Calvert until East Saratoga Street (just south of US 40). Due to St. Paul ending a block later at East Lexington Street, MD 2 SB curves into Light Street, and MD 2 NB becomes South Calvert Street. However, due to Baltimore Harbor in the way, at East Pratt Street MD 2 NB becomes Light Street. However, at Key Highway, Light Street loses MD 2 (MD 2 SB has to dance around East Montgomery Street, MD 2 NB via South Hanover Street, West York Street, South Sharp Street, and then back to South Hanover Street via West Hill Street). I am now unsure here, but Light Street becomes a dead end within I-95, due to railroad tracks, so N-S may switch to South Hanover Street/MD 2.

[Kacie Jane]

Seattle can't do anything the easy way, so we have several baselines streets....

Couple of minor nitpicks...  First, Capitol Hill.

Downtown, the baseline is west of Western Avenue at Elliot Bay.  Western to 1st isn't a full block; everything west of 1st constitutes the "00" block for downtown addresses.

The division between no-prefix streets downtown and East streets is crooked.  On First Hill (south of Union), the dividing line is Broadway.  On Capitol Hill, it shifts to Minor/Melrose Avenues.  Lord knows why.

This isn't a correction, since the thread is asking for baselines and not necessarily "zero" points.  But the only ones of these that are true zero points are Queen Anne Avenue, and Elliot Bay.  North Seattle has no zero points; NW, N, and NE addresses all start at 100.  That squiggly line west of Capitol Hill and First Hill is really weird.  My favorite hair salon is at 1213 Pine Street just west of Melrose.  Cross Melrose, and you're at 300 East Pine Street.  (My guess is this got tweaked when I-5 was built, and the missing two "East" blocks are buried under the freeway.)

Now to add on, you left off north/south baselines (that is, streets that run east/west, which are baselines for addresses on avenues which run north/south).  Basically there are two.  The one north of downtown is Denny Way, which applies to everything north of downtown/Capitol Hill on either side of the ship canal.  (West of Queen Anne/Palatine, avenues are labeled W south of the ship canal and NW north of it, and likewise east of Eastlake Ave/Lake Union/Sunnyside Ave, but addresses don't reset at the ship canal.  Avenues in the center are labeled N on both sides of the canal.)

Yesler Way is the baseline south of downtown.  Addresses on unsuffixed avenues count north from there, addresses on South avenues count south from there.

And again, neither of those are true zero points.  The first block north of Denny is 100N, the first block south of Yesler is 100S.  And the first block north of Yesler is 100... except downtown because the streets don't meet at right angles, so you're missing the first few blocks.

So yeah, it's complicated.... and we still haven't really touched South Seattle.

ETA: My I-5 hypothesis is wrong.  A 1957 map shows the baseline in the same place pre-construction, and other than Minor and Yale not actually crossing over the freeway, there aren't really any "missing blocks" there post-construction.

[catch22]

Grand Rapids:  Division Ave. (get it?) and Fulton St.

In Detroit, John R divides east from west, even though it runs at a NW angle from downtown out to 6 Mile (McNichols) Rd.  I don't even know what divides north from south.

Michigan Avenue divides north from south until it dives south, and then it's Ford Road.  I always assumed Woodward, not John R was the east-west dividing line.

In western Wayne county, Cherry Hill Road is the base line for addressing, not Ford Road.

[odditude]

Philadelphia: Market St divides the northern and southern halves.
For all intents and purposes, there is no SE quadrant; the centerline is effectively the Delaware River below roughly the 500 block of N Front St, then N Front St until the 1000 block, Frankford Ave up to roughly the 1800 block, and then N Front St again the rest of the way.

[vtk]

Columbus (and the rest of Franklin County excluding a few of the suburbs) uses Broad St and High St as the axes of its address grid. Downtown, the grid is rotated about ten degrees or so counter-clockwise; outside of downtown, High St continues this approximate angle towards Delaware and Circleville, and Broad St roughly continues its angle towards Newark, but the rest of the streets generally don't continue the downtown orientation. Even numbers are always on the east and north sides of the streets. The numbers progress at about 700 per mile, which doesn't correlate with counting blocks at all, but culminates at approximately 9000 (varying quite a bit) at the county perimeter. I think this system extends a bit into Delaware County within the City Of Columbus, at least near the Polaris mall.

[usends]

...there is an actual Baseline Rd that separates north and south...

Interestingly, the name of that road did not get its name from the fact that it's the addressing baseline.  Rather, it (or actually, part of it) is aligned with the surveying baseline that extends east/west from the Willamette Stone.  http://tinyurl.com/WillametteStone

Back on topic: for Denver, Broadway divides east from west.  Many locals would say the focal point of the city is where Broadway intersects Colfax Av (US 40-287) at the State Capitol, but for whatever reason the city planners did not make Colfax the north/south dividing line.  Rather, that was placed 15 blocks south, at a minor street called Ellsworth.  Numbered avenues increase to the north from there, so a coincidence of using Ellsworth as the axis is that US 6 runs along 6th Ave.

[hobsini2]

In Bolingbrook IL, it is Rt 53 (Bolingbrook Dr) and Briarcliff Rd.
In Princeton WI, it is Main St and Fulton St. That corner is where Wis 23 and 73 change from an east-west alignment to a north-south alignment.
In Oshkosh WI, it is Witzel Ave and Main St.

[bandit957]

In Cincinnati, Vine Street is the E-W divider. There really isn't a N-S divider: The streets are just numbered north from the Ohio River.

[slorydn1]

Too bad the OP said my town (New Bern NC)  is too small because its an interesting one. The Zero/Zero line is the confluence of the Neuse River and Trent River.

I'm rolling with Raleigh for the purposes of this thread, and its a little different, too. The state capitol building is the 0/0 point, so depending on where one is in the city, either New Bern Ave or for a short distance to the west Hillsborough St is the N/S divider and Fayetteville St is the E/W divide south of the capitol bldg and Halifax St north of it.

[kj3400]

For Baltimore:

E-W is US 40, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin, and I-170. Until you hit downtown at the east end of Seton Hill, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin (I-170) merge into Orleans St. past MD 2. However, Orleans St. gives way to Pulaski Highway, so the grid changes a little bit, as Pulaski curves northeast towards I-895.

Between Cooks Lane (MD 122's extension) and Poplar Grove Street, the main E-W changes to Edmondson Avenue. So, west of the city, the grid is a little messy due to US 40 having to curve down from Edmondson onto the couplets of W. Franklin and W. Mulberry.



N-S doesn't really start on a street, but north of Baltimore, it would be St. Paul Street and North Calvert Street. At North Avenue (US 1), MD 2 appears out of nowhere and uses St. Paul and North Calvert until East Saratoga Street (just south of US 40). Due to St. Paul ending a block later at East Lexington Street, MD 2 SB curves into Light Street, and MD 2 NB becomes South Calvert Street. However, due to Baltimore Harbor in the way, at East Pratt Street MD 2 NB becomes Light Street. However, at Key Highway, Light Street loses MD 2 (MD 2 SB has to dance around East Montgomery Street, MD 2 NB via South Hanover Street, West York Street, South Sharp Street, and then back to South Hanover Street via West Hill Street). I am now unsure here, but Light Street becomes a dead end within I-95, due to railroad tracks, so N-S may switch to South Hanover Street/MD 2.

That's not right at all...

Baltimore has Charles St (divides east and west) and Baltimore St (north and south) within the city line. Interestingly enough, in Brookyln, south of the Patapsco River, Hanover St takes over for Charles St. to the city line, where Ritchie Hwy (MD 2) starts, which is the e-w divider for AA county until Crain Hwy starts.

[Big John]

Green Bay WI:

E/W is the Fox River, N/S is Shawano Ave/Walnut St, then east of the East River it is Deckner Ave.

[noelbotevera]

For Baltimore:

E-W is US 40, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin, and I-170. Until you hit downtown at the east end of Seton Hill, W. Mulberry and W. Franklin (I-170) merge into Orleans St. past MD 2. However, Orleans St. gives way to Pulaski Highway, so the grid changes a little bit, as Pulaski curves northeast towards I-895.

Between Cooks Lane (MD 122's extension) and Poplar Grove Street, the main E-W changes to Edmondson Avenue. So, west of the city, the grid is a little messy due to US 40 having to curve down from Edmondson onto the couplets of W. Franklin and W. Mulberry.



N-S doesn't really start on a street, but north of Baltimore, it would be St. Paul Street and North Calvert Street. At North Avenue (US 1), MD 2 appears out of nowhere and uses St. Paul and North Calvert until East Saratoga Street (just south of US 40). Due to St. Paul ending a block later at East Lexington Street, MD 2 SB curves into Light Street, and MD 2 NB becomes South Calvert Street. However, due to Baltimore Harbor in the way, at East Pratt Street MD 2 NB becomes Light Street. However, at Key Highway, Light Street loses MD 2 (MD 2 SB has to dance around East Montgomery Street, MD 2 NB via South Hanover Street, West York Street, South Sharp Street, and then back to South Hanover Street via West Hill Street). I am now unsure here, but Light Street becomes a dead end within I-95, due to railroad tracks, so N-S may switch to South Hanover Street/MD 2.

That's not right at all...

Baltimore has Charles St (divides east and west) and Baltimore St (north and south) within the city line. Interestingly enough, in Brookyln, south of the Patapsco River, Hanover St takes over for Charles St. to the city line, where Ritchie Hwy (MD 2) starts, which is the e-w divider for AA county until Crain Hwy starts.

Missed it by that much.

[Duke87]

Ha. All you people out there in Murica talking about baselines. Come to the northeast some time. We don't do that shit up here.

Almost all streets in the northeast curve. A lot. There are many attempts out there of imposing an address grid on things (just look at Queens) but all of them are haphazard at best.

The typical method of determining addresses in this part of the world is simply to start from the beginning of the street, and count up by some standard increment. Stamford CT, for example, assumes 25 foot wide lots, so if you take your house number and multiply by 12.5, you can will get the distance in feet from the beginning of the road to the spot on the road that lines up with your front door.
And this is pretty accurate - CT 104 runs entirely along Long Ridge Road, the first address on the part of the road that is state maintained is 60 and the last is 2916. Subtract the two, multiply by 12.5, divide by 5280, and you get 6.76 miles. The official length of CT 104? 6.82 miles. We can assume the dangling 0.06 miles are accounted for by the distances from the first and last front doors to the ends of the route.


Anyways, for a more major city... in Manhattan, 5th Ave is the divider between east and west, and on crosstown streets the addresses increase by 100 every block. Except Madison and Lexington don't count as blocks, so 100 E. XXth St is at Park Ave (which once was called 4th Ave), and 200 E. XXth St is at 3rd Ave. Also, from 59th St through 110th St, everything west of Central park is shifted down by 300, because the addresses start counting from Central Park West (which is an extension of 8th Ave) rather than 5th.

In The Bronx, Jerome Ave serves as the dividing line, since it spans the height of the borough and roughly lines up with 5th Ave. But since the streets are not straight or in a consistent grid, and addresses count by length along the street rather than coordinates... while you can generally say that numbers get bigger as you head further away from Jerome, it's VERY approximate.

Going north-south in Manhattan, addresses increase by roughly (not exactly) 100 every 5 blocks, but there is no baseline. Zero is wherever the avenue begins. 875 3rd Ave, 599 Lexington Ave, 373 Park Ave, 509 Madison Ave, and 665 5th Ave are all in line with each other along 53rd Street. Have fun!