Rate of house number progression

[hotdogPi]

Note 1: I'm trying to avoid the words "rate of change", as "rate of change" has a different meaning from "rate" or "change" by itself.

Note 2: I know my first example and the southern half of my second example well. The rest is from Apple Maps.

Note 3: Where I live, house numbers generally begin at 1 or 2, and they reset at town lines. This may not be the case across the whole United States.



The street I live on is about 0.45 miles and goes from house numbers 2 to 84, for about 28 feet per number.

A relatively slow-changing road is NH 121 in Atkinson, NH, from house numbers approximately 1 to 200 in 5 miles, for about, for about 132 feet per number.

Compare this to MA 114 in North Andover, which goes from about 1 to 2400 in the same distance (5 miles), for about 11 feet per number.

Willow St. in Manchester, NH (southern section of NH 28 in Manchester) seems to be normal up to 1500, but then, in 1.5 miles, it goes from 1500 to 13000, for about 8 inches per number.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

I find the American house numbering system weird (as almost everything in the US), since here in Spain we just count the plots, and the next one takes the next avalaible number regardless of distance. For example, number 41 may be adjacent to numer 39 or be a mile away because something big takes up the space. Usually odd numbers are left in the increasing direction, and even numbers are right.

[kalvado]

I find the American house numbering system weird (as almost everything in the US), since here in Spain we just count the plots, and the next one takes the next avalaible number regardless of distance. For example, number 41 may be adjacent to numer 39 or be a mile away because something big takes up the space. Usually odd numbers are left in the increasing direction, and even numbers are right.

I would say that
(a) there is no universal system throughout US, I can think of multiple systems, some are really weird
(b) upon closer look, each system may have advantages and disadvantages.

Apparent disadvantage of sequential system - things are messed up if a different building pattern emerges. One big building instead of several small ones is relatively easy, the other way around is messy. Block number + number within the block (1234 - block 12, building 34) makes some sense and reduces renumber issues.

One interesting pattern I still cannot digest is numbering throughout the municipality. Solon OH is an interesting one, for example less than a mile long Timberlane drive goes from 35640 to 36695 (talking about highest numbers per foot)

Another pattern I find interesting is continued numbers along the street (El Camino Real, CA -  I am talking about you!)

Then there are apartment buildings with apartment numbers being "house numbers" for addressing purposes. So you have, for example, buildings 100, 200 and 300 with apartment addresses 101 - 104, 201-204 and so on.

I am sure there are other interesting patterns around, those just came to mind..

[cappicard]

My apartment building has numbers that increment across the entire length (on the same floor, no matter which wing they're in).

Each wing is separate with their own hallway.


iPhone

[jeffandnicole]

My street, all lots being the same size lots (small...1/6 of an acre), skip numbers either by 4 or 6.

Growing up, my house was on a street where each house was 163-A, 163-B, 163-C.  And they weren't apartment buildings, they were your standard 1 or 2 story houses.  Today, that street had traditional house numbers that skip anywhere from 6 - 10 numbers between houses.

Apparent disadvantage of sequential system - things are messed up if a different building pattern emerges. One big building instead of several small ones is relatively easy, the other way around is messy. Block number + number within the block (1234 - block 12, building 34) makes some sense and reduces renumber issues.

A friend of mine lives on a street with what appears to be ordinary lots.  Yet, his house is 2942 1/2.  I guess it sits on what was a large lot that was subdivided at some points.

[7/8]

My street, all lots being the same size lots (small...1/6 of an acre), skip numbers either by 4 or 6.

Growing up, my house was on a street where each house was 163-A, 163-B, 163-C.  And they weren't apartment buildings, they were your standard 1 or 2 story houses.  Today, that street had traditional house numbers that skip anywhere from 6 - 10 numbers between houses.

On my old street in Brampton, house numbers went up by 2 on each side of the street. But my current street in Kitchener goes up by 4 on each side, because there is Tremaine Crescent and Tremaine Drive, so to reduce confusion, they don't share any of the same numbers.

There's another interesting situation in my neighbourhood. They built a small dead-end street off of Edgewater Crescent, but instead of simply giving this street it's own name, they decided to name the dozen detached houses on it 258-1, 258-2, 258-3, etc. I personally think this is a lot more confusing.

I've also noticed in some of the new subdivisions around here, small residential streets will have high numbers. For example, all the houses will be in the 600's or 800's. I don't understand why they wouldn't just start at 1.

[kalvado]

I've also noticed in some of the new subdivisions around here, small residential streets will have high numbers. For example, all the houses will be in the 600's or 800's. I don't understand why they wouldn't just start at 1.

Can be numbers throughout development, where house number is actually unique within certain larger area, not within just street. 

[Brandon]

Chicago has a very logical numbering grid with the exception of numbers between Madison Street and 31st Street.  The numbers are 800 to the mile, with 1200 between Madison and Roosevelt (12th), 1000 between Roosevelt and 22nd, and 900 between 22nd and 31st.

800 to the mile is pretty regular system throughout Chicagoland.  Even my own city, Joliet, has 800 to the mile.

[clong]

I grew up in a rural area. When the 911 system was activated, our mailing address changed from a rural route number and box number to a system using the distance from the start of the road. This system used the number of miles (if 1 or more) and the first 3 decimal places to create a house number. Given the reason for the system, it seems it would be very helpful to the emergency workers once they were on the correct road as they would know the exact distance to the home.

[J N Winkler]

In Wichita, block numbers increment by 1600 per mile in the north-south direction, and 800 in the east-west direction.  Each block increments addresses by 100 in both directions.  In older subdivisions, the vast majority of houses have their front doors and primary street accesses on either the east or the west side of a north-south street.  The increment between adjacent lot numbers varies widely--at my house it is 4, further down the street it is 6, and a neighboring ZIP code has 10--but normally a block break occurs around 50, so that addresses ending in 51 to 99 are fairly rare.

Wichita does not have uniform lot sizes or shapes, but as a general rule of thumb the median-priced house (valued at about $140,000) sits on a 75' x 125' lot and was built between 1955 and 1980.

[pianocello]

In Davenport, it depends, and there can be anywhere between 4 and 9 blocks per half-mile (for all intents and purposes, a block is 100 numbers, even though addresses within a block aren't based on the block's distance). All addresses are grid-based rather than line-based, which means they give approximate distances (in blocks) to either Brady St/Fair Ave or River Dr/1st St.

One interesting pattern I still cannot digest is numbering throughout the municipality. Solon OH is an interesting one, for example less than a mile long Timberlane drive goes from 35640 to 36695 (talking about highest numbers per foot)

To me, this makes the most sense, because it still gives locations based on a centralized origin point. I'm not familiar with Solon, OH, but I'll offer a similar example in suburban College Park, MD. The addresses near the University of Maryland range around 4000-5000 on east-west streets, and 7000-9000 on north-south streets. Anyone familiar with the city of College Park would know that the city is definitely not 90 blocks long; rather, they follow the numbering system from nearby Washington, DC, giving locations relative to the Capitol. A lot of metro areas will take the numbering systems from their primary cities, with addresses getting into the 80000s (somewhere in metro Detroit).

[sparker]

South Central Los Angeles' grid pattern was laid out to yield 14-16 numerical blocks per mile (the variance was due to differing grant tracts) north-south, and 8 numerical blocks east-west.  Since downtown canted about 22 degrees east of true N-S, the numbering progression, north to south, started at 44th Street, with the major arterials serving as mile delineators:  Slauson Ave. (58th St.), Florence Ave. (72nd St.), Manchester Blvd. (86th St.), Century Blvd. (100th St., of course), Imperial Highway (114th St.), El Segundo Blvd. (128th St.), and Rosecrans Blvd. (143rd St.).  Of course, the street/block numbers followed the progression (the block south of Florence being 7200, etc.). South of Rosecrans, most of the independent cities kept up the basic grid pattern as far south as 190th street; after that, the grid was less regular, largely due to less flat terrain, large refinery facilities occupying large tracts, railyards, etc.  But the basic area pattern was one of the most orderly -- at least between Alameda Ave. on the east and Crenshaw on the west -- in the western U.S.

[Eth]

In my city, we go with the "every block = 100" system, with buildings numbered more or less sequentially on each block. One east-west block near the center (~650 ft long) has numbers from 200 to 250; the block after that (~275 ft) has just a single building numbered 300; then the next (~600 ft) goes from 400 to 440; and so on. Most, but not all, streets start at 100, and any street that crosses one of the axes counts starting from 100 at that point, with an appropriate directional prefix. In a few cases away from the city center, a street may not have any cross streets, in which case numbers may "overflow" into the next hundred.

Atlanta's system is distance-based. Peachtree Street, for instance, goes from 616 at North Avenue to 1382 at 17th Street, about 1.5 miles away, which looks to be roughly consistent with 500 per mile. Everything is based on the origin at Five Points, where Peachtree St, Marietta St, Decatur St, and Edgewood Ave intersect.

The street I grew up on (in a different town than either of these) was an interesting case. It was shaped sort of like a needle with an elongated hole. The numbers started at 100 at the end of the street and continued sequentially, with both odd and even numbers on the same side, down to the other end at the "top" of the needle (at around 118-ish), at which point it started to alternate, with even numbers on the outside and odd numbers in the "hole". After the "hole" closed again (around 127), no more odd numbers were used, with the rest of the street (on the side opposite from where we started) being filled out with just even numbers (128-134, IIRC).

[kkt]

King County, Washington, has a grid in which house numbers increase by 2000 per mile in both directions.  Streets and avenues are the house number divided by 100.  Houses along a block are numbered in increments of either 2 or 4 until they get to the end of the block and never (hardly ever?) use all 99 numbers before the end of the block.  Even house numbers on the east side of the avenues and odd numbers on the west side of the avenues.  There are some oddities, Seattle is the origin of King County's grid but has several different odd zones to trap the unwary.

This is a pretty typical system in the NW and upper midwest.

[7/8]

I've also noticed in some of the new subdivisions around here, small residential streets will have high numbers. For example, all the houses will be in the 600's or 800's. I don't understand why they wouldn't just start at 1.

Can be numbers throughout development, where house number is actually unique within certain larger area, not within just street.

I'll have to check this next week, but you're probably right. It doesn't seem necessary, but I guess it might help some people.

[JMAN_WiS&S]

In the more gridlike older districts of my town, each block increases South to north, and East to west. So if you Go W down Chippewa St, each block is its own hundred. Number of plots doesnt matter, you have 100 block, 200 block, etc as you go west. Same goes for South to north. As for newer developments, im not sure, the numbers do increase a certain way, but there arent always certain hundred or thousandth blocks. Some cities (not mine) are kind enough to put the block number on the sign blades (200 block), and the direction (n,s,e,w)

[Duke87]

Queens does everything by cross street, so the rate of progression is constant locally (I believe it is based on 20 foot wide lots) but the numbers jump by a larger or smaller amount depending on how close together the cross streets are. The grid isn't terribly consistent either, so you might well see something like:
87-33
87-35
(intersection)
96-01

This is not an error, it just means that in this particular location 88th through 95th Streets or Avenues do not exist because the streets aren't parallel.


Stamford, CT picks an end of the street to start from and assigns addresses based on distance from the starting point assuming 25 foot wide lots.

[Scott5114]

In Norman, the north-south avenues are all numbers divisible by twelve (12th Avenue SE, 24th Avenue SE, 36th Avenue SE...) The street and address grids are aligned so that a house on an east-west street with an address of, e.g. 2400, will lie just east of 24th Avenue SE. So house numbers increase by 1200 per mile.

Something similar happens on N-S streets, although the east-west streets are named, so it's less obvious.

Interesting side question: does your city use the zero block? Oklahoma City does (you can find one- and two-digit house numbers) but in Norman, the lowest possible address is 100.

[J N Winkler]

Wichita does not have zero blocks as such, but there are subdivisions where houses have numbers below 100 that were created as exceptions to the usual block numbering rule.

[Sykotyk]

And then there's my street. A straight, dead-end street with houses almost entirely on one side of the street (one house near the end is on the other side). Numbers go 26, 90, 40, 52, 58, 64, 84-88, 96, 246, 153, and last house is 210. First few houses are closer together than the last few, but it's ridiculous.

[Ace10]

Interesting side question: does your city use the zero block?

Portland, Oregon uses zero blocks. Burnside St divides north from south in Portland, and I know that north of W Burnside St (west of the Willamette River), there is a set of one- and two-digit street addresses before hitting NW Couch St. North of NW Couch St, the street addresses are greater than or equal to 100.

Also, street addresses normally increase in the direction going away from the river. Thus, heading west along W Burnside, the addresses go up. However, I've noticed that, in the South Waterfront area, which is west of the river, east of SW Naito Pkwy, the numbers actually increase going east toward the river, and the street numbers are prepended with a zero to avoid any potential conflicts with already-established numbers on the other side of SW Natio Pkwy. For example, the address to the Old Spaghetti Factory in the South Waterfront Area is 0715 SW Bancroft St.

[Jardine]

not quite on topic, but a fun joke still:

How you know you're in Rockford Illinois:

you're at the intersection of 12th street and 12th avenue and the nearest house number is 1917.

[jp the roadgeek]

My town typically goes by how many number of feet from the beginning of the street your lot begins multiplied by 10 (in 20 ft increments), with the "beginning" of the street being the main road from which it emanates (in other words, direction doesn't matter). So a property on the odd side of the street that begins 690 feet from the beginning of the street would be house number 69, while a house on the even side of the street that begins 1240 feet from the beginning would be house 124.   

[SD Mapman]

One interesting pattern I still cannot digest is numbering throughout the municipality. Solon OH is an interesting one, for example less than a mile long Timberlane drive goes from 35640 to 36695 (talking about highest numbers per foot)

Oh you think that's hard, rural SD address are numbered throughout the whole state! (theoretically 52.8 ft/number, but that never happens (my road is 23 ft/number, for instance, but if you count the part with nothing on it it jumps to 151 ft/number)))

[apeman33]

Odd thing about Fort Scott is that the last house on each block of normal size in the original city center has an address that ends with "x23" or "x24," no matter how many buildings are on that block. The only exceptions are if there are more lots than that, which is infrequent, or if the block is extra long. In those cases, the last building will be "x53" or "x54".

Fort Scott uses the zero block. The police  call it the "10 block" on the radio. The street signs for that block say "01." I work at 22 N. Main. When I first started, the Tribune was at 6 E. Wall, then we moved next door to 12 E. Wall. Despite what I said above, there is a 26 N. Main but that building was added after the "urban renewal" project of the late 60s/early 70s as the original fort grounds were turned into a National Historic Site.

The houses on the street I grew up on in Garden City have different number patterns because each side was built at different times. The street was the last one built in the original subdivision and for years, there was nothing on the other side, not even a curb. When the city paved it, it only paved one lane. On my side of the street, the side built first*, the houses went up by 2 (2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2013). They built the other side of the street five years later but addressed that side in increments of six (2002, 2008, 2014, 2020, 2026, 2032).

(* -- a wheat field was across the street and I could see the intersection of then-U.S. 156 and Spur 83 from my front porch.)