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John Cletheroe's
USA and Canada Holiday Hints |
When streets in towns are given numbers such as 34th Street or 24th Avenue, which isn't always the case, navigation is extremely simple, with the additional advantage that it also becomes very easy to find house or building numbers, because at the start of each block the numbers start at a multiple of 100 based on the number of the intersecting street. For example, the houses with numbers between 3400 and 3499 lie between the 34th Street and 35th Street intersections. There may of course only be a few buildings on any one block.
When streets have names then you'll probably need a map, but the block system still helps.
There is however a trap for the unwary with the block system: beware of compass direction suffixes. For example 34th Street NW is a long way from 34th Street SE.
John Witherspoon of Cleveland, Ohio kindly sent me this further comment about the block system:
In some cities (I use Washington, DC as an example - which was laid out by a Frenchman, of all people), in addition to the numeric sequence of streets, there's also an alphabetic sequence of streets that operates similarly. What some may not realise, however, is that even streets named with words are in a sequence. For example, in the northwest quadrant of Washington, DC, many streets are named in sequence with names of increasing numbers of syllables, with those streets closest to downtown having one syllable and those farther out having more. Streets in the three syllable group (coming after the one and two syllable groups) are Albermarle, Brandywine, Chesapeake, Davenport, etc.Rhonda Hyslop sent these additional comments, which in general terms apply to both Canada and the USA:
Many cities organise their named streets by theme, and often sort them within that theme in some manner (alphabetical order is common). For example, in Vancouver, British Columbia there is an area where all the named streets are province names, in order from east to west; there's another area where all the named streets are trees; another where they're voyageurs (traders for the Hudson's Bay Company or the North West Company who also did a lot of exploring). Sometimes main streets don't fit the area's theme, but all the side streets do. Of course, some themes aren't exactly obvious, for example local historical figures.Finally, H And R Block is a major national accountancy firm in the USA which specialises in taxation matters, especially personal income tax. Their signs and advertisements are often seen throughout the USA and a visitor could perhaps be confused, thinking that the block on which the sign or advert appeared was called "H And R".
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Most recently modified 11-Mar-03