History of 'street numbers'

[relaxok]

Recently, I was talking to my mom who mentioned that when they moved to (a then-rural part of) Connecticut in the late 1970s after I was born, the town was finally moving to add street numbers to business and home addresses.  Note that this is a town that I-84 went through, not the true boonies.  She quoted an elderly man neighbor of ours as saying "If I wanted a house number, I'd have moved to Bridgeport" (the nearest major city).

First, I never knew that roads ever DIDN'T have street numbers, and I certainly didn't think that it was that way anywhere practically up to the 1980s.  I had assumed that the post office would have required them in order to improve its service in mail delivery, but apparently the mail carriers just learned what families lived where and that was that.  It was apparently emergency services that pushed for the changes because ambulances were having trouble finding people on 911 calls.

Finding out this kind of thing is one of the only things that makes me feel young these days.

Was this a New England phenomenon, where people just hate any kind of change?  What about suburbia elsewhere in the country?

Edit: I guess i mean 'house numbers', not 'street numbers', if that was confusing.

[1995hoo]

I don't think that was unique to New England. I remember an article in the Washington Post in the late 1980s or early 1990s discussing the Postal Service and the emergency response services forcing the use of house numbers and street names on people in rural parts of some Virginia counties that were then starting to undergo suburbanization. The article mentioned how people didn't like the street names that were being assigned, but the authorities noted (with some justification) that it doesn't work for an ambulance driver to have to deal with directions like "turn right at the big oak tree and then it's the house after the big rock."

[bassoon1986]

I recall many addresses in my parent's address book growing up showing entries like: Route 2, Box 4 with a city and zipcode. That's mail route, not highway route number. But those were mainly rural areas of Louisiana and Texas

[relaxok]

I recall many addresses in my parent's address book growing up showing entries like: Route 2, Box 4 with a city and zipcode. That's mail route, not highway route number. But those were mainly rural areas of Louisiana and Texas

Right, that makes sense organizationally at least.

I just can't believe people sent letters like: Mrs. Roberta Williams / Painter Hill Rd. / Anytown, USA and that was it.

[1995hoo]

I recall many addresses in my parent's address book growing up showing entries like: Route 2, Box 4 with a city and zipcode. That's mail route, not highway route number. But those were mainly rural areas of Louisiana and Texas

I assume that probably has something to do with rural free delivery? I've seen addresses like that periodically, but not in quite some time.

I've occasionally been tempted to use the old postal zone numbers when mailing something to see what would happen. For example, before they moved my relatives lived in what used to be Brooklyn 9, New York. It's now 11209 (notice how the old postal zone is the final ZIP code digit). I was curious whether an envelope reading "Brooklyn 9, NY" would be delivered properly. But I never bothered.

I did address a postcard in French when I mailed it from Mont-Tremblant to someone in Virginia ("boul. Cameron-Station" instead of "Cameron Station Blvd") and it was delivered.

[sbeaver44]

I have friends whose mailing address is still RR XX Box YYY, City Name, State, ZIP.  They live in a somewhat suburban subdivision with named streets, although in a largely rural greater area.

[PHLBOS]

I recall many addresses in my parent's address book growing up showing entries like: Route 2, Box 4 with a city and zipcode. That's mail route, not highway route number. But those were mainly rural areas of Louisiana and Texas

What you're describing is known as a Rural Route and would typically be abbreviated as RR #2, Box 4 (using your example).

IIRC, those have since gone by the wayside, at least in PA.  A friend of mine out in the Saylorsburg area that had a RR mailing address for many years but was recently dropped in favor of a conventional street address about a year or two ago.  I know this because I mailed my friend a birthday card with the old RR address and it came back with a no such address comment or something similar.

[kkt]

I recall many addresses in my parent's address book growing up showing entries like: Route 2, Box 4 with a city and zipcode. That's mail route, not highway route number. But those were mainly rural areas of Louisiana and Texas

I assume that probably has something to do with rural free delivery? I've seen addresses like that periodically, but not in quite some time.

I've occasionally been tempted to use the old postal zone numbers when mailing something to see what would happen. For example, before they moved my relatives lived in what used to be Brooklyn 9, New York. It's now 11209 (notice how the old postal zone is the final ZIP code digit). I was curious whether an envelope reading "Brooklyn 9, NY" would be delivered properly. But I never bothered.

I did address a postcard in French when I mailed it from Mont-Tremblant to someone in Virginia ("boul. Cameron-Station" instead of "Cameron Station Blvd") and it was delivered.

The post office is pretty forgiving.  The automatic sorters would kick it out and in a couple of days someone would get around to looking up the zip code, probably without using the postal zone number at all.

When 9-digit zip codes were introduced, a friend had a PO box that was uniquely identified by the 9-digit zip code.  We tried addressing mail to him with just the zip code, no name or box number, and it got there just fine.

[jakeroot]

Where I'm from (suburban Tacoma), house numbers have always been fairly complex (no one here ever lived on 57 Mount Pleasant Street), but for a long time, streets only had names, no numbers.

I remember watching an episode of Top Gear (UK) where they went to New York and had to put a street number into their nav systems. They had no idea how to enter "W 59 Street". Basically, I think us and Canada are the only countries that use a grid system for numbering (especially given the fact that most countries don't have grids). Plenty of well-developed countries have major cities with grids downtown (like Australia and New Zealand) but the numbering remains the same (no numbered streets, house numbers grow from small numbers to large numbers as the street goes on).

[empirestate]

My grandparents' house (West Stockbridge, MA) didn't have a number until the late 90s or so; I remember when it was assigned. Their mail was delivered to a PO box in town, but had someone known only their name and town, not their box number, the postmaster would easily have known where to deliver it. My parents still live in such a town elsewhere in New England, and I've been to many a post office where the staff knew everyone in the town. That's still not terribly rare.

[GaryV]

My in-laws didn't have street numbers until sometime around 1980.  As I recall, it wasn't for the post office (although they used them and we had to learn their new address).  It was for the Fire Department.

[NE2]

I remember watching an episode of Top Gear (UK) where they went to New York and had to put a street number into their nav systems. They had no idea how to enter "W 59 Street". Basically, I think us and Canada are the only countries that use a grid system for numbering (especially given the fact that most countries don't have grids). Plenty of well-developed countries have major cities with grids downtown (like Australia and New Zealand) but the numbering remains the same (no numbered streets, house numbers grow from small numbers to large numbers as the street goes on).

Milton Keynes (a post-WWII "new town") has Second to Tenth Streets. At least some signs write them as ordinal numbers. Here's a business that uses "Upper 4th Street" in their address: http://thaimodern.co.uk/location.html

[DrSmith]

I used to live on a rural delivery route in South Jersey, and it was probably somewhere around 1992 that we we actually assigned standard street addresses. It was required as a part of the 911 system, they needed actual addresses not box numbers.  The box numbers increased along the delivery route, but that meant it also snaked along main roads, side roads, etc in the delivery route pattern.  And we were only about 20 min outside of Philadelphia.

[Pete from Boston]

There are two different things being talked about here: street addresses, and mailing addresses.  The post office gets mail to folks at a lot of non-physical-descriptor addresses, and given that and their creativity described above, street addresses weren't universal or necessarily required.

E911 has changed this.  Not only is every occupied building supposed to have an address, it's supposed to be tied to a specific street that might not have had a name before.  I don't know how this deals with non-places like "One Checkerboard Square" and the like, but I recall that when I was in college, either the post office or the emergency service people required every building on campus–many on no actual "street"–to be assigned a street address.  Most were attached to the nearest street, which was not always that near.  In any case, this is all so the database can find you when you're on fire.

I know that either in Massachusetts statewide or maybe the City of Boston in particular, there's a further effort underway to identify the main entrance door location of every building, which is not even necessarily indicated by a street address.

[relaxok]

While looking for still-in-existence examples, I found this tidbit:

"Carmel-by-the-Sea, California lacks any house numbering whatsoever. Houses are referred to, instead, as (for example) "Junipero 3 SW of 10th", meaning "The third house on the west side of Junipero, south of 10th."

[NE2]

While looking for still-in-existence examples, I found this tidbit:

"Carmel-by-the-Sea, California lacks any house numbering whatsoever. Houses are referred to, instead, as (for example) "Junipero 3 SW of 10th", meaning "The third house on the west side of Junipero, south of 10th."

Apparently this is how addresses work in some Latin American countries (though they describe everything from a central point, like 'start at the monument, go south two blocks, west three blocks and then four houses on the right').

Carmel details: http://www.semaphorecorp.com/misc/carmel.html

[jeffandnicole]

I had 3 addresses before I was 21, but only lived in 1 house. We were a RR#2, then we all had the same number but identified with a letter (such as what they would do with apartments), then true house numbers.

Dr. Smith: it sounds like we could've been neighbors!

As far as the post office goes today, we have a pretty good one. I have no clue how some of our mail actually finds it's way to us, especially Christmas cards from friends who seemingly use their favorite lucky lottery numbers rather than our house number.

[corco]

1980s? In 2013 we were just finishing assigning addresses to the last houses where I used to work in Montana. There's still no mandate to post your address and most of the roads don't have street signs.

When I moved to McCall, Idaho in 2003 they had just finished assigning road names and addresses in the rural county.

[SD Mapman]

I have friends whose mailing address is still RR XX Box YYY, City Name, State, ZIP.

It used to be that way in rural (this would be ultra-rural for most of you) SD up until about...

When I moved to McCall, Idaho in 2003 they had just finished assigning road names and addresses in the rural county.

Yeah, about then. Maybe just a little bit before... I'm not really sure.
Crook County, WY didn't put up county street signs (again, ultra-rural) until like 2010.

[dgolub]

My elementary school didn't have a number.  It was just addressed to the street with no number.  All the houses on the street has numbers, though.

[cjk374]

I remember when the post office would deliver mail address as Mr. or Mrs. So-n-so, Anytown, LA and it would be delivered.

It was the early 1990s when Lincoln Parish got an E-911 system installed via a new tax passed by its citizens.  All of the towns in the parish, except Ruston (the parish seat), had the rural route addresses.  All of the parish roads were numbered.  Then comes the E-911 system and all of that changed. The parish route numbers were changed to names, and most of the route signs were removed from the field (a few still exist however). The names were derived from either residents living on the road, families who used to live on the road, creeks, lakes, churches, old communities, or other "landmarks" (Centerpoint Rd., Spur Rd., and 2 family orchards).  All houses and buildings were assigned address numbers.

The state and US highways outside of towns were not named.  The sign blades read LA xxx or US xxx.  In towns, the state highways received names but not the US routes (except Dubach, LA...They gave US 167 a name).

[1995hoo]

My elementary school didn't have a number.  It was just addressed to the street with no number.  All the houses on the street has numbers, though.

The IRS centers to which you send your tax return if you don't e-file have their own unique ZIP codes and no specific addresses–you just send it to the IRS at city, state, ZIP.

The main US Justice Department building in DC used to use "10th and Pennsylvania, NW" as its mailing address. It occupies a full square block. Then the Postal Service decided they didn't like that address and now it's 950 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. I wonder if someone felt it was ambiguous because theoretically four buildings are at 10th & Pennsylvania, one on each corner.

[TEG24601]

I remember something similar in Indiana.  My Aunt and Uncle's farm had an address for emergency purposes (basically their coordinates in the county, with 4 digits for the house, and 3 for the road), but their mail carrier still had them as something like "Rural Route 3, Box 41".  It wasn't until I was staying with them for a few weeks in the early 2000s, and needed something delivered that I could just use the street address.


There were similar things on Whidbey Island, where the closest thing some people had, because they were on walkways instead of streets were coordinates in the county grid.  It wasn't until they centralized all of our emergency services that all of the walks got names, and houses got number, duplicated streets within the same zip code/CDP were removed, and directional indicators on most streets were removed (except roads/streets that crossed the 0 dividers).

[Pete from Boston]

This is analogous to unincorporated places to those of us in the fully-incorporated areas of the Northeast.  Not having a town is as foreign to me as not having a street address.

[6a]

When I lived in Virginia I didn't have a street address...nor cable tv, water, sewer, trash, 911, pizza delivery, etc. Having people come to my house for the first time involved giving directions literally. As a joke, I told my dad to turn right when he saw a dog in the driveway...there was a dog in the driveway and he found the place 

As for mail, you could send a letter to My Name, Rt 1, Appomattox VA and it would get there.  Even UPS and FedEx could find it. Once in a great while someone would balk at shipping to a RR box thinking it was a PO box.