A numbered street is a street whose name is an Ordinal number, as in Second Street or Tenth Avenue. Such forms are among the most common street names in North America, but also exist in other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East. Numbered streets were first used in Philadelphia and now exist in many major cities and small towns. Grid-based naming systems usually start at 1 (but sometimes at a higher number), and then proceed in numerical order. In the United States, seven out of the top ten most common street names are numbers, with the top three names being "2nd," "3rd," and "1st" respectively.
Some cities also have lettered street names. For example, Washington, D.C., in addition to having numbered streets, also has streets identified as a letter followed by "Street," going as high as the letter W. New York City (mostly in Brooklyn) has avenues titled "Avenue" followed by the respective letter of the alphabet, such as Avenue D. The idea for such a system was developed by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who devised the system for Washington.
The numbered street system is criticized for taking away the individuality from a community that a named street would provide.
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Famous quotes containing the word street:
“Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that’s what people observe. You see someone on the street and essentially what you notice about them is the flaw. It’s just extraordinary that we should have been given these peculiarities.... Something is ironic in the world and it has to do with the fact that what you intend never comes out like you intend it.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)