Cities With the Number Street System Not Starting in Center of Town

[Mrt90]

Kenosha, WI.

All of the addresses in Kenosha County, WI are based on the south county line (Illinois-Wisconsin state line) and the county's easternmost land point on the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Mike

1st Street in Kenosha County is the Kenosha/Racine County line (County Trunk KR).  The numbers go south from there.

And avenues start a 1st Avenue at Lake Michigan and go up as you go west.

I liken it to an Excel spreadsheet except the numbering starts in the upper right hand corner instead of the upper left hand corner; rows are Streets (or Places), columns are Avenues (or Courts). 

This is my hometown so I find this system to be incredibly easy to find anything, but it seems to confuse the heck out of out of towners.

[TheStranger]

So what cities out there have their CBD or center of town with street numbers not at the start of the number system?

Sacramento numbers from the rivers. The corner of 'Front and "A"' (where one would theoretically find single- and double-digit addresses on both streets) may not even exist because of curves in the rivers.

Would Old Town Sacramento be considered the historic center of town?  I do feel like 3rd/5th being well within downtown makes it an example of a street grid that is in the heart of the city.

Sacramento also has a numbered avenue system that begins right after Broadway (former Y Street) and continues south to 68th Avenue in Meadowview, essentially an extender to the A to Y lettered street grid.  A Street itself only goes as far west (discontinuously) to a few feet from 12th Street (former US 40/99 and former Route 160) in the Alkali Flat neigbhorhood.

A itself actually is not at the American River, but several blocks south (with the railroad being the dividing line parallel to A).  There is a letter-street grid north of that through Alkali Flat from North A Street to North D Street.

San Francisco numbers most streets from the Bay, which is normally nowhere near downtown.

Is South of Market considered a downtown neighborhood or otherwise?  I've always thought of traditional downtown within the core around Embarcadero/Van Ness/Market but the Financial District has extended south from the 80s onward, especially with Salesforce Tower being built there in the last few years. 

1st itself doesn't even begin at the bay, but rather 6 blocks southwest!  Though this could be the result of years of landfill, as Columbus and Battery have in the past been the waterfront streets, but are well inland now.

The numbered avenues in SF themselves are nowhere near downtown, instead going from east to west in the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods.

[Rothman]

Makes me wonder what the number logic is in the Avenues of Salt Lake City, despite its major grid centering around Temple Square.

[US 89]

Makes me wonder what the number logic is in the Avenues of Salt Lake City, despite its major grid centering around Temple Square.

Each block in the Avenues is 50 address units. So 1st Ave is 50 North, 2nd Ave is 100 North (lining up with North Temple), 3rd Ave is 150 North, and so on. The lettered streets start at A Street = 200 East and count up by 50.

Of course, the problem is that an Avenues block is not half as long as a city block, so they don't line up. This isn't a problem for the numbered avenues, since they line up well enough for 1st and 2nd Ave and don't intersect any other streets north of there. But for the lettered streets, there's a discontinuity at South Temple. For example, 1100 East lines up directly with Q Street, but that's signed as 1000 East.

[paulthemapguy]

A lot of Chicago suburbs in Cook, Kane, DuPage, and Will Counties use the Chicago street grid instead of their own.  Unincorporated areas in those counties are still on the Chicago street grid, whose origin is at State and Madison.  But some municipalities in those counties never bothered to institute their own grid apart from the default unincorporated one.  Plainfield and Mokena are two examples--and since they're so far from the city, all of the addresses are 5 digits long.  Even stranger is Downers Grove, who uses the north-south component of the grid along north-south streets, but created their own system for east-west streets, starting at 200 in the east and heading west toward I-355 (address value is about 3000).  I don't think there's an east-west street in Downers Grove with an address number less than 200.

[michravera]

So what cities out there have their CBD or center of town with street numbers not at the start of the number system?

Sacramento numbers from the rivers. The corner of 'Front and "A"' (where one would theoretically find single- and double-digit addresses on both streets) may not even exist because of curves in the rivers.

Would Old Town Sacramento be considered the historic center of town?  I do feel like 3rd/5th being well within downtown makes it an example of a street grid that is in the heart of the city.

Sacramento also has a numbered avenue system that begins right after Broadway (former Y Street) and continues south to 68th Avenue in Meadowview, essentially an extender to the A to Y lettered street grid.  A Street itself only goes as far west (discontinuously) to a few feet from 12th Street (former US 40/99 and former Route 160) in the Alkali Flat neigbhorhood.

A itself actually is not at the American River, but several blocks south (with the railroad being the dividing line parallel to A).  There is a letter-street grid north of that through Alkali Flat from North A Street to North D Street.

San Francisco numbers most streets from the Bay, which is normally nowhere near downtown.

Is South of Market considered a downtown neighborhood or otherwise?  I've always thought of traditional downtown within the core around Embarcadero/Van Ness/Market but the Financial District has extended south from the 80s onward, especially with Salesforce Tower being built there in the last few years. 

1st itself doesn't even begin at the bay, but rather 6 blocks southwest!  Though this could be the result of years of landfill, as Columbus and Battery have in the past been the waterfront streets, but are well inland now.

The numbered avenues in SF themselves are nowhere near downtown, instead going from east to west in the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods.

Sacramento has two or three pieces of history.
1) The headquarters for mining in what is now "Old Sac"
2) The State Capitol
3) The terminus of the TransContinental Railroad

The State Capitol Park is centered on Capitol Mall and Capitol Ave which basically supplant "M"  Street. As a result of being the State Capitol, lots of offices end up along L and N streets. If I had to pick where "Downtown Sacramento" would be, I would say '9th and "J"'.
Old Sac is where the town began, but has only been revived as "A row of bars" and a couple of museums designed to capitalize on the fact that it's old.

It may be that no one ever lived north of the tracks along "A" until comparatively recent times. I suspect that the area was frequently flooded or subject to flooding.

[TheStranger]

The State Capitol Park is centered on Capitol Mall and Capitol Ave which basically supplant "M"  Street. As a result of being the State Capitol, lots of offices end up along L and N streets. If I had to pick where "Downtown Sacramento" would be, I would say '9th and "J"'.
Old Sac is where the town began, but has only been revived as "A row of bars" and a couple of museums designed to capitalize on the fact that it's old.

It may be that no one ever lived north of the tracks along "A" until comparatively recent times. I suspect that the area was frequently flooded or subject to flooding.

9th and J definitely is a major part of downtown Sac, though the Downtown Plaza mall and the Kings' arena (Golden 1 Center) being a bit west also extends the commercial sphere of the district considerably.  Generically I think of downtown as the area bounded by the Sacramento River or I-5 (depending on if Old Town counts), Broadway, 15th/16th Streets, and the railroad tracks to the north, with the area northwest of that being the newer Railyards development and the northeast part of that being Alkali Flat; midtown relative to that description is the grid area bounded by 16th, Broadway, Alhambra, and the railroad tracks.

[zzcarp]

Denver and its surrounding communities have its major street grid 0-point at Broadway and Ellsworth Ave. with numbered east-west avenues beginning north of there. The state capitol and city hall are between 14th and Colfax (15th Avenue). The CBD itself is rotated about 45 degrees northeast-southwest, and that grid is also rotated with the 16th Street mall as the main street of that grid (1st street doesn't exist anymore as far as I can tell, and would be 15 blocks southwest of the CBD if extant).

[michravera]

The State Capitol Park is centered on Capitol Mall and Capitol Ave which basically supplant "M"  Street. As a result of being the State Capitol, lots of offices end up along L and N streets. If I had to pick where "Downtown Sacramento" would be, I would say '9th and "J"'.
Old Sac is where the town began, but has only been revived as "A row of bars" and a couple of museums designed to capitalize on the fact that it's old.

It may be that no one ever lived north of the tracks along "A" until comparatively recent times. I suspect that the area was frequently flooded or subject to flooding.

9th and J definitely is a major part of downtown Sac, though the Downtown Plaza mall and the Kings' arena (Golden 1 Center) being a bit west also extends the commercial sphere of the district considerably.  Generically I think of downtown as the area bounded by the Sacramento River or I-5 (depending on if Old Town counts), Broadway, 15th/16th Streets, and the railroad tracks to the north, with the area northwest of that being the newer Railyards development and the northeast part of that being Alkali Flat; midtown relative to that description is the grid area bounded by 16th, Broadway, Alhambra, and the railroad tracks.

Once one gets completely south of the shadow of the capitol, I don't think of it as "Downtown" anymore. That's bad because Capitol Ave and Capitol Mall being "M" street would logically be the center of the alphabet streets. It is tempting to think of the "Downtown" as the 800 block area bounded by I-5, the rivers, US-50 and CASR-51 (which is nearly a perfect grid except for a few parks and other solid objects).

But, I can tell you that, as the OP had in mind, Sacramento's equivalent of "1st and Main" = Front and "A" is not (and probably never has been ) the "Downtown" or Central Business District" because I don't think that it has ever existed.

[TheStranger]

Once one gets completely south of the shadow of the capitol, I don't think of it as "Downtown" anymore. That's bad because Capitol Ave and Capitol Mall being "M" street would logically be the center of the alphabet streets. It is tempting to think of the "Downtown" as the 800 block area bounded by I-5, the rivers, US-50 and CASR-51 (which is nearly a perfect grid except for a few parks and other solid objects).

I do think at least since the early 2000s Midtown and Downtown are considered pretty distinct, with Midtown being the east half of the grid between 16th and Alhambra.

[ErmineNotyours]

Renton, Washington set it's origin point at the junction of the Cedar River and the Black River, about a mile north and a mile west of the central business district.  Not long after, the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks lowered the level of Lake Washington and gave an outlet to the lake other than the Black River, so that river dried up.  When the Renton Airport was built, the Cedar River was straightened, and moved away from the origin point.  Now the origin point is Rainier Avenue and Airport Way, and the east/west line runs east along Airport Way until it almost meets the Cedar River on a T intersection, and follows the river from there.  This gives Renton several blocks of two-digit house numbers, which are rare in the United States.  This address used to house a Hollywood Video back when it might have rented out Nintendo 64s, appropriately enough.

[roadman65]

Growing up in Clark, NJ we had no consistent number grid in my subdivision where I lived.  My house was 110, the highest number on the street as my street was built in two segments.  The part my house was on was the extension of Hall Drive as Hall Drive started in the Southwest part of the original subdivision and dead ended so the numbers when up to the end until it was extended where the numbers continued up to 110 where my house was the last even numbered house before it intersected at a T with the street that actually runs parallel to it, though with its numbers going the opposite way.

I can't really say if there was pattern or not as I never paid attention to the streets outside my subdivision.   However, Arthur L. Johnson High School was given no number at all and the address was Arthur L. Johnson RHS Westfield Avenue Clark, NJ 07066 as the post man knew that where the school was so it never was an issue.

I believe that neighboring Rahway did have a grid running from the Pennsylvania Railroad (now Amtrak's NE Corridor) as the railroad was the baseline from E to W.  Rahway had no N-S change at any baseline, but the Center of Rahway was built along the old Pennsy tracks, though not entirely but its iffy there at best.

[michravera]

Once one gets completely south of the shadow of the capitol, I don't think of it as "Downtown" anymore. That's bad because Capitol Ave and Capitol Mall being "M" street would logically be the center of the alphabet streets. It is tempting to think of the "Downtown" as the 800 block area bounded by I-5, the rivers, US-50 and CASR-51 (which is nearly a perfect grid except for a few parks and other solid objects).

I do think at least since the early 2000s Midtown and Downtown are considered pretty distinct, with Midtown being the east half of the grid between 16th and Alhambra.

They were even more distinct in the 1980s.

[Elm]

Denver and its surrounding communities have its major street grid 0-point at Broadway and Ellsworth Ave. with numbered east-west avenues beginning north of there. The state capitol and city hall are between 14th and Colfax (15th Avenue). The CBD itself is rotated about 45 degrees northeast-southwest, and that grid is also rotated with the 16th Street mall as the main street of that grid (1st street doesn't exist anymore as far as I can tell, and would be 15 blocks southwest of the CBD if extant).

1st Street in Denver is sort of interesting, I think–

While there isn't exactly a road called 1st St (there's a segment of one that could get the label), there are properties with 1st St addresses in Denver around the northwest corner of I-25 and Colfax. I expect the most notable one will end up being Meow Wolf's Denver location, which is "1338 1st St"  (the parcel includes the triangle where they're building as well as the parking lot to the north. There's a blog post about that development and the streets here that includes some maps; the last one is the most relevant.

–

Another city with a non-centered street grid is Golden, Colorado, where the core of downtown is Washington Avenue (800 block) between 11th and 14th Streets. The hypothetical zero point in the grid would be on North Table Mountain, either in a non-gridded neighborhood or open space.

Some time ago, downtown Golden was at least a bit closer to the center of the grid. The numbered streets used to start south of Clear Creek, so today's 11th St was 1st St. (The numbers were shifted and a good portion of other streets were renamed sometime between 1900 and 1906, going by insurance maps–links below). I'm not sure what the zero block of the cross streets in that setup would've been, though.

• 1900, before changes
• 1919, after changes(base of current system)
• others

[Tarkus]

If you want to see a really weird case, check out Forest Grove, Oregon.  The main east-west route through town is Pacific Avenue (OR-8)--part of which is one-way headed westbound--and the main north-south route through downtown is Main Street.  The center of town, accordingly, is at the intersection of Pacific Avenue and Main Street.  It used to be that prior to the middle of the 20th century, this intersection was the origin point.  The east-west streets on each side of Pacific were numbered--one block north was North 1st Avenue, and one block south was South 1st Avenue, continuing from there, and streets on either side of main were also numbered. 

However, at some point, city planners decided to do away with directional prefixes, and redid the address system such that the Pacific and Main intersection marked the 2000 block for both the east-west and north-south directions.  Accordingly, North 1st became 21st Avenue, and South 1st became 19th Avenue (the eastbound part of the OR-8 couplet)--Pacific itself acting effectively as "20th Avenue".  As a result of this change, the lowest numbered street within the city limits is actually 9th Avenue, way to the south of downtown.  Some older maps will show a 1st Avenue in this grid, almost down to the the confluence of Gales Creek into the Tualatin River, but it's on private property, and doesn't exist anymore--there's farmland covering the whole thing up now.

The north-south streets east of Main were named after trees in alphabetical order (with some gaps--no "G" tree, for instance), and to the west, there's a short stretch of letter name streets (A Street, B Street, etc.), but those stop after E Street (also part of OR-8), and it's a mess of variously named streets west of E Street.

The plan has not caused any crises in the address system to date.  The flood plains to the south really prevent development below about the 700 block, to the west is more flood plains and Coast Range foothills (the lowest block number is 200), to the east, the city butts right up against the neighboring city of Cornelius (which also had a grid number change at one point--downtown is 10th-14th Ave on the numbered side), and almost all development in recent years has been on the north side of town, where the grid's continuation is unconstrained--and currently has numbered streets up to 37th Avenue.

Another strange nearby case is North Plains, Oregon . . . which used to have its own numbered grid, until some time in the 80s or 90s, when it decided to scrap it and go with Portland's grid.  The Portland grid doesn't exactly fit with North Plains' larger block sizes, which are also at an angle, which leads to some interesting anomalies. 

The city has "Northwest Main Street" (a renaming of 6th Ave in the old grid) as the main north-south route through downtown (every road in the city has the NW prefix now), but one old block west (former 7th Ave) is NW 318th Ave, one old block east (former 5th Ave) is NW 314th Ave, and . . . where it gets really messy . . . the former 4th Ave is now . . . NW 313th Ave.

[thspfc]

Another strange nearby case is North Plains, Oregon . . . which used to have its own numbered grid, until some time in the 80s or 90s, when it decided to scrap it and go with Portland's grid.  The Portland grid doesn't exactly fit with North Plains' larger block sizes, which are also at an angle, which leads to some interesting anomalies. 

The city has "Northwest Main Street" (a renaming of 6th Ave in the old grid) as the main north-south route through downtown (every road in the city has the NW prefix now), but one old block west (former 7th Ave) is NW 318th Ave, one old block east (former 5th Ave) is NW 314th Ave, and . . . where it gets really messy . . . the former 4th Ave is now . . . NW 313th Ave.

Why did North Plains adopt a grid that effectively ends 8 miles, and something like 115 street numbers, east of the town of North Plains? Definitely a very interesting case

[TheStranger]

I think I've mentioned in another thread before Daly City's inexplicable neighborhood of numbered streets, which goes from 88th to 91st Streets near the city hall but has no discernible rhyme or reason for why the numbers start so high!

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

Columbus's numbering for N-S throughfares starts with Front St, two streets west of High St, and then increases numbers (periodically) as one heads east till 22nd St. After that, it is all names.
E-W throughfares get the numbering treatment after one goes north of I-670 (actually, a 1/2 mile north of I-670). Numbering progresses northward till we reach 20th Ave, on the southside of Ohio State's campus.

[Duke87]

New York is a fairly obvious example. The numbered streets do not start until a bit north of downtown, and midtown is up in the 30s, 40s, and 50s.

You could also look at Brooklyn as its own example. Numerous different numbered street grids, none of them downtown.

Queens is debatable - the lowest numbered streets are in Long Island City/Astoria, which is one area that could claim to be the "center of town" - but the county/borough government functions are centered more in Kew Gardens and Jamaica, where the streets are numbered well over 100. Even if you go with Long Island City being the "center", the center itself is around 23rd Street. 1st Street isn't even in Long Island City, it exists only for a couple blocks at the end of a peninsula off in a corner of Astoria.

[GCrites]

Columbus's numbering for N-S throughfares starts with Front St, two streets west of High St, and then increases numbers (periodically) as one heads east till 22nd St. After that, it is all names.
E-W throughfares get the numbering treatment after one goes north of I-670 (actually, a 1/2 mile north of I-670). Numbering progresses northward till we reach 20th Ave, on the southside of Ohio State's campus.

I advise outsiders not to use the street numbering system to navigate Columbus at all except for a square mile or two east of campus. On foot. This is an extremely non-user-friendly city unless you grew up here and words like Morse, Goodale, Olentangy, Livingston, Riverside, James, Bethel, Hamilton, North Broadway, Cleveland etc. actually mean something to you.

[mrose]

In Nebraska, Omaha's system begins at the Missouri River, more or less, and going west, you don't get to downtown until 10th Street for sure. Lincoln's system begins slightly west of downtown and doesn't begin until you are at what is roughly 5th Street. And I don't have a good explanation for Bellevue's system, which begins at 12th Avenue, has downtown on Mission Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Avenue and has no relationship with the Omaha system, which also appears in Bellevue.

Lincoln is a bit quirky in both grids. The numbered streets start at 1st and go east; 1st street itself is kind of a minor street and sits roughly 10-12 blocks west of the main downtown area; Interstate 180 comes into town and splits into 9th and 10th which form an opposite pair of one-ways.

Everything west of 1st street has a "W" for west added to it, but everything east does not. So west of 1st street, you have West O Street, West A Street, West Pioneers Blvd, etc.... but east of 1st street, it's just O Street, A Street, Pioneers Bluv, etc. - "East" is never used; there's no such thing as "East O Street", or at least to a Lincolnite it would be redundant to say it.

North/South is even more quirkly - the center of Lincoln is laid out in lettered streets, starting from A and going north to Z. The main dividing line is "O" street. I always thought it might have made more sense to start at "A" street, especially since the population center of Lincoln has been steadily creeping southward for decades, especially with all the development south of Highway 2.

[MNHighwayMan]

Here's an odd one I found browsing randomly in Google Earth: Clarkfield, Minnesota. The origin of the city street number grid appears to be calibrated to a (seemingly) random point outside of city limits. There are no streets numbered below Fourth.

[thspfc]

Related question: Where do the rural backroad grids start/end in most counties? Most counties (or maybe it's on a statewide scale, I don't know) in plains states, namely Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Kansas use a number grid for their farmer roads.

[DandyDan]

In Nebraska, Omaha's system begins at the Missouri River, more or less, and going west, you don't get to downtown until 10th Street for sure. Lincoln's system begins slightly west of downtown and doesn't begin until you are at what is roughly 5th Street. And I don't have a good explanation for Bellevue's system, which begins at 12th Avenue, has downtown on Mission Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Avenue and has no relationship with the Omaha system, which also appears in Bellevue.

Lincoln is a bit quirky in both grids. The numbered streets start at 1st and go east; 1st street itself is kind of a minor street and sits roughly 10-12 blocks west of the main downtown area; Interstate 180 comes into town and splits into 9th and 10th which form an opposite pair of one-ways.

Everything west of 1st street has a "W" for west added to it, but everything east does not. So west of 1st street, you have West O Street, West A Street, West Pioneers Blvd, etc.... but east of 1st street, it's just O Street, A Street, Pioneers Bluv, etc. - "East" is never used; there's no such thing as "East O Street", or at least to a Lincolnite it would be redundant to say it.

North/South is even more quirkly - the center of Lincoln is laid out in lettered streets, starting from A and going north to Z. The main dividing line is "O" street. I always thought it might have made more sense to start at "A" street, especially since the population center of Lincoln has been steadily creeping southward for decades, especially with all the development south of Highway 2.

I suspect they have A Street where it is because that was the southern boundary of Lincoln when the system was instituted.

Omaha's lettered streets make no sense to me. My guess is they ran out of good ideas to name the streets.

One more note I should say about Nebraska is that the convergence of the Omaha and Lincoln numbered street systems occurs in Cass County. Everything west of NE 50 is based on Lincoln and goes from 190th to 358th.  Everything east of NE 50 to US 75 is the southern extension of Omaha's streets, which goes from 6th Street to 156th Street.

[TEG24601]

The only one I am familiar with is Flint, MI.  The numbered roads are based off of the Flint River.  Avenues are north/west of the river, streets are south/east of the river (they run parallel to the river, largely).  Modern downtown Flint, is a few blocks from the river.