On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:51:59 GMT, (Doug Miller)
wrote:

In article , "Percival P. Cassidy" wrote:
Around here (W. Michigan) houses seem to be numbered as though the
street started at some specific baseline -- even if it didn't. E.g., one
could live on a street less than half a mile long, but the lowest house
number could be 3240.

Actually, that probably means that the street *does* have a specific baseline,
e.g. 3.240 miles north of the center of town.

Absolutely.

In Indianapolis, 1000 in street numbers, 10 blocks, equals one mile.
In Chicago, 800 and 8 blocks is a mile.

In NYC, I mentioned that 5th Avenue divided east and west most place.
(If you pay attention on Law & Order, you'll see that many of the
addresses given are in the middle of the Hudson or East Rivers.)

Going north and south, it's 20 blocks to a mile, like from 23 to 43rd
St. Each avenue starts its numbering where the avenue starts. If you
don't know the map by heart, there are wallet-size cards occasionally
given out by community organizations or advertisers. For example,
Take a street number on 5th Avenue. Say, the Guggenheim Museum whose
address is 1071. Divide the street number 1071 by 20 = 53 and add 6
because 5th Avenue starts at 6th St. and the sum is 59 and that will
be the cross street near the Guggenheim. Well it should have been.
The museum is actually near 90th St. I Must have done something
wrong.

2nd and 1st Avenues start at Houston St. which is one block south of
First St. Broadway starts at the tip of Manhattan which is 40 or 50
blocks south of Houston.

Brooklyn began as several separate towns and that is I think why there
are series of numbered streets, like 43rd st. etc. E 25th St. etc. W.
30th St. etc. These don't relate to where in Brooklyn the streets
are, and I think the prefixes were added later, when the towns merged
and they didn't want duplicate street names.

There is a newsgroup for the NYC subway where this kind of stuff is
discussed.