Avenue (landscape) - Street Name

Street Name

In urban or suburban settings, "avenue" is one of the usual suite of words used in street names, along with "boulevard", "circle", "court", "drive", "lane", "place", "road", "street", "terrace", "way" and so on, each of which may carry connotations as to the street's size, importance, or function.

In cities which have a grid plan, such as the borough of Manhattan in New York City, there may be a convention that avenues run in one direction – roughly north-south in the case of Manhattan – while street run in the perpendicular direction – roughly east-west in Manhattan. In Washington, DC the avenues run diagonally across the grid of streets. In Phoenix, Arizona, "the avenues" can colloquially mean "the west side of town", due to the numbered north-south running roads being called "Avenues" in the western part of the city, separated from the eastern "Streets" by a "Central Avenue". Similarly, "the avenues" in San Francisco, California refers to the Richmond District and the Sunset District, the two neighborhoods on the Pacific coast, north and south of Golden Gate Park, respectively.