No it isn’t.
Most UK streets have even numbers on one side, odds on the other. It only differs where there are no numbered properties on the other side of the street.
Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Boards, sweeperpan, we’re glad you found us. For future ref: when you start a thread, it’s helpful to others if you provide a link to the column in question. Saves searching time, and helps keep us on the same page. In this case, the even/odd numbering was a parenthetical remark in this column: Isn’t 10 Downing Street, the home of the British PM, kind of a dump? - The Straight Dope
No biggie, you’ll know for next time, and, as I say, welcome.
My understanding is that the French developed the even/odd system in the 1600s or so, and that system has become very popular but is not universal by any means. Britian didn’t adopt that system until late 1700s; Even so, many streets in the UK are numbered sequentially (1, 2, 3,… along one side to the end of the street, then going around down the other side, with the highest number being opposite 1, if you follow me.) Certainly in Tokyo, house numbers are based on the order they were constructed, which is totally confusing to anyone visiting.
Wasn’t there a thread about this a while ago?
This is true. I have worked as a postman in England and most streets are odds on one side and evens on the other.
Unlike many American streets, most British streets also start numbering at 1, and just carry on until every house is numbered.
Generally in Japan, house numbers are not counted along streets, partly because most streets are not named. Cities are divided into sections, and buildings are numbered within each section. Wikipedia: Japanese addressing system.
What do they do if a large house is demolished and two smaller ones replace it?
I’d guess split the number into <n>A and <n>B.
British streets don’t all number the same way. Some are evens on one side, odds on the other. Some are like that, but odss go the other way, so 1 and 2 are at other ends of the street. Some are numbered sequentially. My street is numbered sequentially, with my side starting at number 2 and the other side also starting at number 2 and increasing in the other direction.
i know two instances, at least, of houses in well established old neighborhoods being out of order, such as 240-250-246-260…my son had one such on a paper route, and we got well lost trying to find a Christmas party one time, finally had to grab someone just parking her car and ask where the party was.
Also, if you happen to have two or more different municipalities on opposite sides of the street, the numbers on one side might not relate, at all to the other. Transit Road in Buffalo area. As you go north and south, different towns appear, and even though it appears to be one continous business area, one building after another, at several points the numbers suddenly are no longer in sequence, jumping, perhaps, from 3300 to 2100 and resuming the rise. The address on a letter must contain the name of the town, or it can be delivered, easily, to the wrong address.
Add to that, three different French roads cross Transit, so that saying a business (or emergency) is near the intersection of French and Transit will often be a screw up trip.
With all that, I think the odds and evens are always on opposite sides, depending on the E and W, or N and S of a street.
Gainesville,FL has a major street that has a major intersection where the main road has a traffic signal, allowing traffic from 43rd st. on one side and 44th st. straight across on the other side, to proceed when green. It also has a diagonal street called 16th NW, that suddenly becomes 23rd NW as you go west.
In the US (or at least my neck of the woods), we go with “1/2” addresses.
This holds with the specific example given, and also duplex conversions (same building as before, divide the structure internally, designate one external door the “front door” of one subdivision and another door the “front door” of the other subdivision.
So it’d be “9876 Foo Lane” and “9876 1/2 Foo Lane”.
In cases when the internal subdivision creates apartments (only one common door with the entire building’s street address), you get stuff like “1234 Foo Blvd, Apt 567”.
This reset should only happen at the border between Niagara and Erie counties. In New York State, street numbering systems should be continuous within a county regardless of municipality. So, for instance, even though Transit forms the border between Amherst and Clarence in Erie County, the numbering is consistent on both sides of the street. Once you cross Tonawanda Creek and enter Niagara County, though, the numbering system could reset.
Interestingly, if you start in Rochester at the Genesee River and travel west along Route 104, the street numbers start at one and ascend to the Monroe-Orleans county line. At the line, the numbers jump considerably higher, and then start descending from there. That’s because Monroe County numbers West Ridge starting at the River and ascending west, and East Ridge starting at the River and ascending east. Orleans County has no such natural reference point and so simply continues the Niagara County numbering, which starts in Lewiston at 1 and ascends to the east, crossing the Niagara-Orleans county line seamlessly.
Powers &8^]
Yup. My house is odd-numbered, with the consecutive odd numbers to either side. My father’s house (several counties away) is numbered 17, with 16 and 18 to either side. His is odder still because he lives in a Y-shaped “close” with one branch of the Y named differently to the rest, but the whole Y comprises 51 houses numbered 1 to 50 (plus a 3A between 3 and 4. It has been that way since the 1960s and 3A existed while some of the plots were still being built on, so don’t ask me why it was numbered that way). 1 to 18, and about 45 to 50, are on “Fazakerly Close” (not its real name) while 19 thru 44 are on “Rumpole Close”.
Same in Australia.
40 years ago in Melbourne, the numbers reset at every municiple boundry, but sometimes the street name did too. This mostly affected long North-South roads like St Kilda Road, because short streets mostly didn’t cross rivers, main roads, or other natural boundries that formed the original city boundries, and because there weren’t as many long East-West roads (the original cities were mostly lined up on the eastern shore of the bay, and upstream along the river).
So you could be driving along Fred Road (Blackburn), past 157, and suddenly find yourself at 23 Fred Road (Glenaire). Or 23 Barnstable Road.
This was fixed up mostly in the 70’s. One of the justifications for fixing it up was that it was difficult for emergency vehicles to find locations.
As an interesting historical note, Melbourne had a very good city map in the 70’s (Melways). One of the reasons always quoted why there was such a good map for sale in this one city was that it was very difficult to find places like “23 Barnstable Road” without it.
So if a letter is addressed to number 2, how does the postman know which house to deliver it to?
Also, what other direction is there to increase in?
you are probably right. only at county lines. just having different numbering systems on either side of the street is enough. I’d also like to point out the fun you have in the Boston area, for example, where several different roads leading into a particular town are all named, for example “Newton Street”. In many cases, too, the name of the street you are on is placed on signs that you can’t see if you are on that road, only if you are intersecting it. One thing about the Boston area, there is always a shortcut you can find if you look hard enough, with the newer streets superimposed on the older grid, etc.
Where I live, the only way you could knock down one house and replace it with two would be if the original building was on a double lot. And it’s really the lots that have numbers- the first two buildings on my block are on double lots. The addresses go 91-02, 91-08,91-10, 91-12 etc. If 91-02 is knocked down , the two new buildings will be 91-02 and 91-04. If 91-08 is knocked down, it will be replaced by 91-06 and 91-08.
Since when in the U.S. do they tear down a large house to build a small one?
Of course, they sometimes do tear down a small house and somehow manage to squeeze two or more McMansions on that same lot.
In New Jersey, it is awful. On one street by us, house number #86 comes between house 110 and 116. On the same street, house #24 and #26 come between houses #101 and #113, and go in the opposite order.
Our house has the same street number as a house five houses down from us on the previous block. That house is officially in a different town, but there’s no sign pointing out the municipal boundary. We constantly get their stuff delivered to us and they get our stuff.
One time, we were getting a new roof, and the people installing the gutter had gone to the wrong house and started tearing down the gutters. The owner had called the police, and when I drove by, I noticed the commotion. I immediately realized that somehow a house mixup was involved, and stopped by to clarify the situation.
The Post Office normally has a hissy fit about such ambiguities. Are you in different ZIP codes as well as municipalities?
Powers &8^]