[HeyLaughingBoy]

One of the things I find really amusing about "Minneapolis" streets is how they seem to go on forever. I now live roughly 40 miles away from Minneapolis, but I often come across nearby streets with the same name as the corresponding Minneapolis street if you extended it 40 miles south. And the numbers are suitably extended.

So Chowen Avenue might end at the 6200 address in Mpls, but you'll find a Chowen Avenue in Burnsville, about 25 miles south, in roughly the same place laterally as it would be if it were extended south from Mpls and the street numbers will begin with something like 130000.

Don't know if this happens in other places, but it never fails to make me smile when I see it.

[blahedo]

Chicago has that, but only in some directions. The south and southwest suburbs continue the city numbering out for a long way; the northwest suburbs all have their own numbering. I think most of the north suburbs are also on their own (but possibly the innermost ones share the city grid). Not sure about west. :)

[nkrisc]

Western Ave. is just shy of 30 miles in length. I’m not sure if that includes when the name changes to Asbury in Evanston. Also not sure if the changes at the Southern extents. Like a typical Northsider I rarely went South of Roosevelt.

[Kon-Peki]

North Ave. and Roosevelt Rd. go from the lake to about 2/3 of the way to Iowa. The names end at the DuPage/Kane county line, though. After that, they are just IL64 and IL38.

The numbering system for just about all Chicago roads ends at the Chicago city limits, except for some of the streets on the south side, which continue all the way down into Will County.

Even stranger is that there is a pocket of streets in Dyer Indiana that are numbered according to the Chicago system, as if they had expected the street grid to expand that far south and east. Expand to Hammond, Schererville, St John and you'll see east/west streets that are numbered in the 40s (the Gary Indiana scheme), then in the high 90s (Lake County Indiana scheme?), then the 210s (Chicago scheme), then the 70s (back to the Gary scheme).

EDIT - Chicago did a mass street renumbering (with a few street name changes too) in the early 20th century. It would be interesting to know if some of the suburban street numbering schemes for the roads that cross municipal boundaries are still using the old system and that is why the street numbers seem to reset once you exit the city.

[nkrisc]

> It would be interesting to know if some of the suburban street numbering schemes for the roads that cross municipal boundaries are still using the old system and that is why the street numbers seem to reset once you exit the city.

I was wondering about that, particularly for the named roads. I believe Pulaski/Crawford was always Crawford first until Chicago renamed their portion to Pulaski and Skokie kept the Crawford name. I recall my dad telling me that when he was a kid in the 50s Pulaski was Crawford all the way down. I think that might have been the case with Western/Asbury as well, but I’m not too sure on that one. I’m sure there are many other examples.

And here’s an unrelated yet interesting Chicago street fact for anyone still reading: Elston starts and ends at Milwaukee Ave., so there are two Elston/Milwaukee intersections.

[retzkek]

> Not sure about west. :)

Unincorporated addresses in Kane and DuPage Counties do use a reference system based off State & Madison as baseline (although it's been codified based off county and township lines). Eg. 40W100 Keslinger Rd is a bit over 40 miles west of State St.

[Kon-Peki]

Those are also called fire addresses, because they were assigned by the fire department rather than the postal service. 6 or 8 decades ago, the post office decided to accept them as official rather than force people to change.

They have their own section in the postal addressing standards, under the "Unusual Addressing Situations":

https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/pub28apd_004.htm

[susiecambria]

Thanks for this. . . I've been writing lots of GOTV letters across the country and paying attention to the addresses, rather than simply writing them on the envelopes, help make the process interesting.

I spent 20+ years in Washington, DC so am used to NW, NE, SW, and SE with avenues, numbered streets, flower streets of two syllables, blah blah blah. But I now live in rural Virginia and state routes are the norm.

Your explanation got me to focus more on what and why. And, I learned something, so thank you.

[brk]

Metro Detroit, particularly the northern side, is like this as well. Grid streets extend for dozens on miles with the same names and numbering schemes.

[gullywhumper]

My mom grew up in what was then mostly farms northwest of Detroit. When Eminem's Eight Mile came out, I immediately connected it with the street we turned off to get to my grandparents' place but never thought it could actually be the same road Eminem was referencing. Very different worlds.

[hypercube33]

Compare it to something like Eau Claire where you try to go easy on any given road ...you won't and it'll curve south or north almost guaranteed. I think Madison is a heavily planned city (Though I could be confused for Milwaukee as it's been a while since I read about either) where it's laid out as close to a north south grid as possible.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Probably Milwaukee.

Downtown Madison is sandwiched between 2 lakes, and most of the city orients North East for the roads that run between them.

[bilbo0s]

This is the correct answer.

I mean, yes, Madison is heavily planned. But so is any city you build on an isthmus. You have to heavily plan the layout or it won't work. At the same time they made a north-east flowing layout. Now it may be a "grid" if you rotate a grid 45%, but when someone generally thinks of "grid", they think of a grid oriented in cardinal directions. Obviously, this is not possible in Madison because of two giant lakes.

Minneapolis has more of a "grid" layout that most people would consider a true "grid" layout.

Milwaukee and Chicago obviously have grid layouts on steroids because of their history and the nature of the original people inhabiting those places. They are places built for moving men and material to the front so to speak. And they don't too much care what they have to do to make that possible. Giant hill of rock in the way? They'll happily blow right through it. City keeps flooding because it's basically a swamp/marsh? No problem, they casually lift the entire city into the air and continue right on building. Just a whole lot of things most other places probably wouldn't do.

[lapcat]

> You have to heavily plan the layout or it won't work.

This is presuming that Madison roads "work", but they don't! They're a mess.

Note also that the state capitol was originally built at the present site in 1837, before the rise of the automobile. And North Hall, the first building on the University of Wisconsin campus, was built in 1851. I'm not aware of any grand road plan.

[hypercube33]

Insightful information, and yeah, I incorrectly remembered :)

Another interesting thing not talked a lot about online is that these midwest cities typically have a ton of documented (or not?) underground tunnels. There used to be a cool website for the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) that showed them off. My parents recall walking from the University of MN to further parts downtown where you can transition to skyways and basically never go outside. I guess -40' weather really pushes people to become moles in a sense. I think a lot of big cities also have huge tunnel systems for heating fuel (coal delivery and the like) and other utilities

[lapcat]

> I think Madison is a heavily planned city

LOLNO Madison is complete mess because it's on an isthmus. Also the state capitol is right in the middle of the isthmus, so all of the streets there have to go around the capitol grounds. And then there's Schenk's Corners for example, just a total nightmare. The entire city is going in every direction at once.

The only way you can figure out how to get around Madison is to live here for decades (which I've done), via rote route memorization.

Before Madison I actually lived in downtown Minneapolis, and I always appreciated the orderliness of its streets.

[hecanjog]

Milwaukee has grid areas downtown, but the street layout between there and south to bay view gets a bit weird and jagged in between. The story I heard was it's leftover from two competing shipping(?) businesses who wanted to make some passages difficult as some kind of competitive advantage, but the details are pretty fuzzy. :) Milwaukee gets pretty windy and non-grid-like though.

[genocidicbunny]

Portland has that to a degree. A lot of streets will end due to terrain, only to start up again half a mile further where the terrain levels out a bit.

There's a related item that's amused me a lot. 110th at one point shifts like 50 feet to one side and becomes 111th.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Before everyone had a navigation computer in their pocket, I'd often get confused calls from pizza delivery people saying "I'm on your street, but that address doesn't exist" for a similar reason: farms instead of terrain.