What/who determines a place’s address?
Also, can a person change their existing address without moving?
For example, my house number is 547. The next ascending house number is 550. There is no 548 or 549. Why not? There are no empty lots between the houses here. What would I have to do to change my number to 548 or 549 “officially” speaking, if I were so inclined?
Your city figured out your address. Someone laid out the lots and the city went through and gave them numbers according to whatever system they had.
If you want to change your address, go ask city hall. They’ll do it if you persist and if it’s possible.
If you do get it changed, tell the Post Office while you’re at it. They like to know this sort of stuff.
In cities, address usually start at a -00 number (or -01) at an intersection and move up through that hundred on that block. Since there’s not usually enought room to fit 50 houses per block, the numbers usually jump by 4 or more on a side. Additionally, they don’t usually run up to the -90’s.
Where I grew up, the address were based on roads that paralleled the Colorado/Utah border. Each “hundred” of addresses spanned 1 whole mile, so there was plenty of room for every address. You could get technical with your address if you lived on an E/W street: my street number was 3034, which meant I lived 30.34 miles from the border.
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded. You’ll find it an effective combination.
There was a time in this country when local authorities were more permissive of property owners’ occassional desire to subdivide their property to raise cash or avoid nasty fights over the will. Those in charge of assigning house numbers found it convenient to give some room for new residences to pop up between the older ones and hence avoid the 1814 1/2’s you see in some neighborhoods.
Interestingly, various cities have developed some rather complex numbering systems, expecially in Europe.
Brussels, for instance, has two names for every street (In French and Flemish) and sometimes the addresses don’t match up. Prague gives every building a street address and a building number on separate signs. The building numbers are assigned by each section of town. Venice, not having a rich tradition of street life, often numbers buildings by their nearest campo. (square)
Jeremy…
Nobody ever calls me after they’ve done something smart.
fwiw I think here in Los Angeles addresses were standardized sometime in the 1920’s.
The historic Avila house was condemned at that time and the condemnation papers gave its address as 24 - 26 Olvera Street.
The condemnation notice caught the attention of one Christine Sterling, who turned Olvera Street into the tourist trap we have today, though that’s still better than the parking lot the neighborhood would have otherwise become. Because, as a tourist trap, Olvera Street is more or less removed from mundane hurly-burly of ordinary streets, it retains a nonstandard set of addresses, but they would otherwise be in the 200’s or 300’s North.
We went through a re-addressing NIGHTMARE in my county. Finally, we got 911 service. Not full E-911, but it beats nothing. In doing this, the 911 people wanted to have NO duplications of names or numbers. Brutal to do, very messy. People got a notification more than once of an address change. To this day, it’s misery. I frequently will do an ambulance call to an address, only to find two sets of numbers on all of the mailboxes, and I have to find out which is the right sequence.
Anyway, the point is that it’s become VERY hard to just ask for a re-address, because of 911 systems in this country. Once that address and number is locked, you will have a very hard time changing it.
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.