Baseline streets

[Bickendan]

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.

Baseline and Burnside represent the same division point throughout the metro area. The difference is Baseline in Hillsboro directly matches up with Stark St in Portland, so Burnside's a quartermile off from the Township and Range lines.

Within the Portland Metro Area, there are several street grids, all overlapping onto Portland's.
Portland's are, of course, Baseline through Hillsboro and Burnside St through Portland, with the division line consistent through Beaverton and onto Burnside's beginning on SW Barnes Rd, and east of 187th Ave in Rockwood, Gresham to the Multnomah/Hood River County line, though Corbett will generally use the "E" prefix over "NE" or "SE".
The Willamette River acts as the following:
NW and N (Kelly Point Park to Steel Bridge)
NW and NE (Steel Bridge to Burnside Bridge)
SW and SE (Burnside Bridge to Clackamas River)
SW and S (Clackamas River toward Wilsonville)

Williams Ave splits N and NE from the Steel Bridge to the Columbia River

The Clackamas River splits SE and S. 'South Portland' isn't in Portland, but functions as the metro's 6th 'quadrant', encompassing areas outside of Oregon City, which uses its own grid.

As mentioned, Hillsboro overlaps. So does Gresham. Vancouver's avenues semi-function as an extension of Portland's (Portland's 162nd Ave roughly correspond's to Vancouver's 164th Ave), and Vancouver follows a similar baseline system. All three use a NW-NE-SE-SW grid.

[ekt8750]

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.

Also in the NW part of the city is a completely separate grid with Germantown Av as the centerline of the E/W streets up there. There is no N/S divider but Windrim Av. is the southern end of that grid. I'm pretty sure the Northwest has a different grid as a holdover from when it was a pair of townships outside the city proper and there was no real way to integrate it into the main grid when the county merged with the city.

[roadman65]

I wanted to start a similar thread about base line and non baseline streets but have the N-S-E-W direction headers in the name.   However this comes close and most is said of what I anticipated of discussion of if I did it. 

Glad to be hearing someone and others discuss this as I find numbering much easier to find doing it this way.  Heck look at Chicago.

[TEG24601]

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.

Baseline and Burnside represent the same division point throughout the metro area. The difference is Baseline in Hillsboro directly matches up with Stark St in Portland, so Burnside's a quartermile off from the Township and Range lines.

Within the Portland Metro Area, there are several street grids, all overlapping onto Portland's.
Portland's are, of course, Baseline through Hillsboro and Burnside St through Portland, with the division line consistent through Beaverton and onto Burnside's beginning on SW Barnes Rd, and east of 187th Ave in Rockwood, Gresham to the Multnomah/Hood River County line, though Corbett will generally use the "E" prefix over "NE" or "SE".
The Willamette River acts as the following:
NW and N (Kelly Point Park to Steel Bridge)
NW and NE (Steel Bridge to Burnside Bridge)
SW and SE (Burnside Bridge to Clackamas River)
SW and S (Clackamas River toward Wilsonville)

Williams Ave splits N and NE from the Steel Bridge to the Columbia River

The Clackamas River splits SE and S. 'South Portland' isn't in Portland, but functions as the metro's 6th 'quadrant', encompassing areas outside of Oregon City, which uses its own grid.

As mentioned, Hillsboro overlaps. So does Gresham. Vancouver's avenues semi-function as an extension of Portland's (Portland's 162nd Ave roughly correspond's to Vancouver's 164th Ave), and Vancouver follows a similar baseline system. All three use a NW-NE-SE-SW grid.

Don't forget that there are segments of SW Portland, that actually encroach past the defacto division between E and W, and they continue to be SW, but have zeros prepended to their addresses.

[thenetwork]

AKRON, OH: 

Market Street (SR-18) is the N/S divider, although that road runs primarily NW to SE.  Main Street/State Road (in Cuyahoga Falls) splits Akron East & West.

CLEVELAND, OH:

Cleveland is trickier as it uses an imaginary line dividing most of East vs. West Cleveland and the numbered North-South running streets.  The exceptions being Ontario Street in part of the downtown area and Broadview Road (SR-176), a few blocks south of Ridgewood Drive.  By and large, most Clevelanders just refer to the winding Cuyahoga River as the "official" East/West division.  For the most part, the Lake Erie Shoreline is where the N/S streets start at zero and get larger inland.

[Bickendan]

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.

Baseline and Burnside represent the same division point throughout the metro area. The difference is Baseline in Hillsboro directly matches up with Stark St in Portland, so Burnside's a quartermile off from the Township and Range lines.

Within the Portland Metro Area, there are several street grids, all overlapping onto Portland's.
Portland's are, of course, Baseline through Hillsboro and Burnside St through Portland, with the division line consistent through Beaverton and onto Burnside's beginning on SW Barnes Rd, and east of 187th Ave in Rockwood, Gresham to the Multnomah/Hood River County line, though Corbett will generally use the "E" prefix over "NE" or "SE".
The Willamette River acts as the following:
NW and N (Kelly Point Park to Steel Bridge)
NW and NE (Steel Bridge to Burnside Bridge)
SW and SE (Burnside Bridge to Clackamas River)
SW and S (Clackamas River toward Wilsonville)

Williams Ave splits N and NE from the Steel Bridge to the Columbia River

The Clackamas River splits SE and S. 'South Portland' isn't in Portland, but functions as the metro's 6th 'quadrant', encompassing areas outside of Oregon City, which uses its own grid.

As mentioned, Hillsboro overlaps. So does Gresham. Vancouver's avenues semi-function as an extension of Portland's (Portland's 162nd Ave roughly correspond's to Vancouver's 164th Ave), and Vancouver follows a similar baseline system. All three use a NW-NE-SE-SW grid.

Don't forget that there are segments of SW Portland, that actually encroach past the defacto division between E and W, and they continue to be SW, but have zeros prepended to their addresses.

For those, SW Water Ave is the baseline.

[DandyDan]

Omaha is interesting for a couple reasons.  The N-S divider is Dodge Street up to 84th Street.  People think since W. Dodge Road is just the continuation of Dodge Street that the number system should do likewise, but its not so.  There are street addresses south of W. Dodge Road with a North address.  As for E-W, many assume its the Missouri River, which is silly, since its not straight.  There's a 1st Street, but its a minor street.  As far as I can tell, the numbered N-S streets with East at the end in the general vicinity of Eppley Airfield are based off of Carter Lake, Iowa's grid.

Lincoln's N-S divider is O Street, which Alan Ginsberg mistakenly called Zero Street.  Lincoln has a 1st Street as its E-W divider, but everything west of there is either NW or SW.

Oddly enough, both the Omaha and Lincoln street grids exist in Cass County, Nebraska.  East of Highway 50 is Omaha's grid, while Lincoln's is to the west.

[pianocello]

Davenport, IA: The origin is the corner of River and Brady, right downtown, and the axes are imaginary lines headed in all four cardinal directions. It's pretty simple, until you take into consideration that both origin streets curve. Further west, the N-S divider is 1st Street (imagine that), and Fair Avenue is the E-W divider when Brady curves out of the way.

Cedar Rapids, IA: This is a fun one. There are four quadrants, separated by 1st Avenue and the Cedar River. Avenues run parallel to 1st Avenue and streets run perpendicular, for the most part. There are a few instances where the suffix "Drive" is attached to the end of a street name (29th St Dr SE, Wilson Ave Dr SW, etc.). This is to prevent duplicate addresses, either due to a street name popping up in two different grids (one parallel to 1st, one aligned with the compass), or to account for extra distance because of the curvature of the Cedar River.

Peoria, IL: Downtown streets run along the Illinois River at a 45-degree angle (give or take), and the NE-SW divider is Main St. (only NE-SW streets have suffixes; address for cross streets simply increase from the river). In the rest of the city, streets follow the compass. The N-S divider is Aiken Ave, and the E-W divider is Knoxville Ave.

[TEG24601]

Flint, Michigan is a bit strange in this regard.


The N/S division is nominally the Flint River, E/W is Saginaw St/MLK JR. Blvd.


However, roads that do not cross one of the division lines, have no direction information.  Additionally, numerical roadways north of the Flint River are all avenues, and south are all streets.

[freebrickproductions]

In Huntsville, AL, the postal addresses are divided E/W with a line that runs along Meridian St.-Whitesburg Dr.-Memorial Parkway and N/S with a line that runs along I-565-Governors Dr.-Clinton Ave. as far as I'm aware.
For what most people use to divide the city when referring to places, E/W is divided by Memorial Parkway and N/S is divided by I-565.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

Duluth's zero-point technically is Lake Avenue (NW-SE) and Michigan Street (SW-NE), but those two no longer intersect because of I-35. Lake now crosses Michigan on an overpass because of its interchange with I-35 immediately adjacent to Michigan.

St. Paul: Has a bizarre street grid conforming to the river. Zero point appears to be Kellogg Blvd (E-W) and Wabasha St (N-S).

[dfwmapper]

Phoenix, AZ, most of its suburbs, and most unincorporated parts of Maricopa County use Central Avenue as the east/west divider and Washington Street to divide north/south. The suburb of Tempe (home of ASU) uses its own grid, with Mill Avenue (partially former US 60) dividing east/west, and Rio Salado Parkway dividing north/south. The suburb of Mesa uses its own grid, with Main Street (former US 60) dividing north/south and Center Street dividing east/west. Main Street continues east as Apache Trail into Apache Junction where it serves as part of that city's north/south dividing line. Interestingly, all 4 cities have a Baseline Road which does not serve as a divider, but instead received the name because it runs along the primary baseline for the PLSS in Arizona.

[briantroutman]

In addition to Philadelphia as was mentioned, Market Street is a popular zero point across several Pennsylvania cities: Wilkes-Barre, Harrisburg, York, Williamsport, and many smaller cities and boroughs.

[Doctor Whom]

Alexandria, Va., has multiple systems within city limits. In Old Town, numbers go north and south from King Street and west (only) from the waterfront. In Del Ray, numbers go east and west from Commonwealth Avenue (which, conveniently, does not run straight) and north (only) from King Street. In the West End, numbers go north and south from Duke Street; numbers on east-west streets continue Old Town's system. Areas outside of city limits, but still within the Alexandria postal area, use Fairfax County's system.

[Rothman]

Off the cuff, I'd say Salt Lake City's address grid (the ubiquitous "Mormon Grid" in the Intermountain West) is centered around Main and South Temple, but you have the issue with the Avenues and areas up the hills which have their own addresses.  Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

I usually say that if you give me an address in Salt Lake or any other Utah or Idaho town, I can get to it practically without a map.  I may not take the fastest way, but because of how they addresses are essentially coordinates, I'll get there across the grid somehow.

[bandit957]

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!

I wonder where 123 Sesame Street would be.

[theline]

In South Bend, Washington Street divides north from south. The east-west divider is Michigan Street. That's odd, considering that Main Street parallels Michigan, just a block to the west. I've got no idea why it's done that way.

[bzakharin]

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.

This is enhanced by the fact that the river is also the north/south zero point in Camden on the other side (with Federal Street the east/west zero point)

[Duke87]

I wonder where 123 Sesame Street would be.

If I knew, I'd tell you how to get there.

[swbrotha100]

Tucson, Arizona has Congress St as the north/south divider and Stone Ave as the east/west divider. However, Broadway Blvd is the north/south divider east of downtown, and 6th Ave is the east/west divider south of downtown.

[tdindy88]

In South Bend, Washington Street divides north from south. The east-west divider is Michigan Street. That's odd, considering that Main Street parallels Michigan, just a block to the west. I've got no idea why it's done that way.

I would guess this has to do with Michigan Street being the major north-south road through the center of South Bend, at one time being US 31. Michigan Street is the main street through several communities along that corridor through that part of the state.

As for another example, Indianapolis has the two main baselines of Meridian Street (to separate east and west) and Washington (to separate north and south.) Washington ceases being the baseline on the westside at the spot where Rockville Road turns off and heads off west to become the baseline heading west to Hendricks County. I imagine some people would erroneously presume that Monument Circle (the de facto center of town) is the point where the two baselines meet but that intersection is one block to the south.

Hamilton County to the north of Indianapolis continues the Marion County address system, which means that there is no north-south divider. With the exception of street grids in some of the communities like Carmel and Noblesville (and only in the center of those communities) there are no streets that has a "South" in the address. The US 31 (almost) freeway serves as the east-west divider up to the point where it curves north of Main Street, at which point the east-west divider is an invisible line heading north to the edge of the county. AFAIK there is no street that separates east and west north of there.

A couple of other communities with populations over 70,000 with baselines. Muncie has Walnut Street (east/west divider) and Main Street (Jackson Street/SR 32 one block to the south serves as the unofficial north/south divider.) Bloomington has Walnut Street (east/west divider) and Kirkwood Avenue (north/south divider.) As with the Muncie example, 3rd Street (two blocks south of Kirkwood) serves as the unofficial north/south divider and in both examples the county courthouse is located at the junction of the two baselines but that's probably very common anywhere.

[6a]

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.

Pickaway county continues it going south, getting up around 31000 in the SE corner. E-W it uses the Scioto as a weird, meandering baseline that doesn't exactly work.

Edit: my mother was a planning engineer for Ohio Bell/Ameritech/AT&T, she told me long ago that for any given side of a street, the address increases every 15 feet. That works out to 704 per mile, so you're bang on.

[mrsman]

For Los Angeles, First Street is the N-S divider and Main Street is the E-W divider.  This is the main zero point for all of LA county, but some cities (and even some cities that are now part of LA like Venice and San Pedro) have their own address system.

As you go north along Main Street, when you cross the LA river, Pasadena Avenue and then Figueroa Street becomes the E-W divider. 

As you go west, First Street is the N-S divider.  For part of the Westlake area the divider is Beverly Blvd.  Between La Cienega and Beverly Hills, there is no first street, it is known as Gracie Allen drive or Alden Drive.  These are relatively minor streets.  In Beverly Hills, Wilshire is the N-S divider.  West of Beverly Hills, Sunset Blvd is the N-S divider.

This leads to a lot of confusion for some streets on the east side of Beverly Hills:

Swall Drive has its northern end at Beverly Blvd in West Hollywood, which follows LA numbering.  North Swall is separated from South Swall at Alden Drive.  Then, numbers continue going south until Burton Way.  Now you cross into Beverly Hills on North Swall Drive again, until you hit Wilshire and then you're on South Swall again.  When you leave Beverly Hills at Whitworth, the numbers jump from 400 south block (Beverly Hills) to 1100 south block (the numbering if it was consistent from Alden).  Swall ends one block later at Pico.   

[mrsman]

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!

Yes, the addresses in Manhattan are complicated that way.

AAA and a number of other guide books have a system printed, get your calculators 

If you have an address on a major N-S avenue and want to know the (approximate) cross street do the following:

A) cancel the last figure of the address
B) divide by 2
C) Add KEY number

Ave A, B, C, D     (Key Number =3)
1st Ave  & 2nd Ave (3)
3rd Ave (10)
4th Ave (8)
5th Ave:
1-200 (13)
201-400 (16)
401-600 (18)
601-775 (20)
776-1286 (skip step B and use -18 as key number)

6th Ave (key number = -12)
7th Ave:
1-1800 (12)
Above 1800 (20)
8th Ave (9)
9th Ave (13)
10th Ave (13)
11th Ave (15)
Amsterdam (59)
Columbus (59)
Lexington (22)
Madison (27)
Park Ave (34) [note: not Park Ave South]
West End (59)

Broadway:
1-754 are below the numbered streets
754-858 (-29)
858-958 (-25)
Above 1000 (-31)

For CPW and Riverside the computation is different, divide the address by 10 and then add the key number:

CPW (60)
Riverside Dr:
1-567 (73)
Above 567 (78)

[SSOWorld]

Platteville's grid system centers N-S on Main Street, E-W on 4th St/Rountree Ave.  The grid's far from perfect so there lots of twisting. Streets that continue beyond the city limits into the town acquire the county grid.

Santa Clarita, CA uses Los Angeles County's numbering scheme centered on 1st & Main in Downtown LA as mrsman's post describes.  Even prior to the city's incorproration in 1987, Valencia, Saugus, Canyon Country and Newhall used the county grid.