If I ask someone for an address and they tell me it’s “123 Washington” but I need to make sure that I have an absolutely accurate address I might ask, “Is that Washington Street? Washington Lane? Washington Boulevard? Washinton ????”
What if, instead of listing the various possibilities, I wanted to say “What is the ‘_______’?”
Is there an appropriate word to fill in that blank?
The town I live in uses Spanish styled street names which will sometimes confuse people who are not used to it. I’ll give an address and say “It’s 123 Calle Agua” and I’ll be met with the question “Calle Agua Street? Calle Agua Lane?” and I’ll have to explain that “Calle” is the “Street” part of the street name and that “Calle Agua Street” would be like saying “Washington Boulevard Boulevard”.
Funny enough, the road that my elementary school was on was named after a guy who’s last name was Street so the road was called Street Road.
So you ask John on the street what the suffix in “Springfield Esplanade” is ?
Answer: nade … It sets the tense of the word. You can see that the base word is now in english the word explain, but it meant “made level” in latin… thats what it means now, a levelled area/roadway such as at the beach or beside a river or on the side of a hill.
Really its far better to say “type”, because we know that suburbs generally have conventions on the naming based on the nature of that roadway.
eg NYC … Avenues are long and Streets go across…
Well there’s always exceptions … eg “The Esplanade”, its hard to fit anything into the “suffix or type” , because your going to have to put “The Esplanade” in as a two word name part… I guess in a computer, “type” will be “none” or “N/A” …or some other meaning to say that the name IS IT.
Well, here in St. Louis we have the seemingly redundant Kingshighway Blvd. and Olive Street Road (not to be confused with Olive Street) and of course, Old Florissant, Florissant, New Florissant (which changes from North to South and back three times) Roads and West Florissant Ave. (which at one point is North Florissant Ave.) so it never hurts to ask about those things.
And I currently live on “North Lane Drive”. No name at all, in there.
There’s also a street not too far from here called “West Boulevard” (and similarly, an “East Boulevard” on the other side of town). You can always tell if someone’s not from around here if they refer to the street as just “West”. To locals, it’s always “West Boulevard”, in full.
That’s a US habit I’ve never quite understood, but thought it must be because it’s less likely (unlike here in London certainly) that there’ll be so many variations on the basic name (such as Street, Square, Lane, Mews, Avenue - and probably all in the same area). And sometimes it can cause major confusions, such as people coming to London and asking the way to Liverpool (meaning Liverpool Street) and being told to go to Euston station to get the train, which will take a couple of hours…
It can be an issue, in some cases. Not far from me, there’s an intersection between Clifton Boulevard and Clifton Road, and the next street east (yes, east) of that intersection is called West Clifton (I thought for sure there was also a North Clifton somewhere in that vicinity, but I can’t find it on a map). And in Atlanta, there are something like 26 different streets named Peachtree. But we get around that by just specifying whenever it’s ambiguous. By contrast, there’s only one street named Detroit (though it changes from Detroit Avenue to Detroit Road somewhere in the suburbs), so if we’re talking about that street, further clarification isn’t necessary.
There can sometimes be discontinuous streets, where it stops at one point and then starts up again further along with the same name (including suffix), but the numerical part of the address will establish which part you need: In most American cities, address numbers go up by 100 every block, and if the streets are numbered, the address numbers will usually correspond to the street numbers (so, for instance, in Cleveland, an address of 6515 Detroit will be a little bit west of W. 65th Street).
When I first moved into the Phoenix area, it took me a while to understand that certain addresses had an implied suffix. Phoenix has streets east of Central, and avenues west of Central. The majority of the shopping / attractions are on the Street side, so when someone says “24th and Camelback” it’s a pretty good bet then mean 24th street.
Cleveland also has numbered streets on both sides of and parallel to the center of town, but resolves the issue by changing the names of the avenues crossing them. Hence, for instance, 50th and Detroit would be on the west side, but 50th and Superior would be on the east side (Detroit turns into Superior when it crosses the river). It can still be confusing if you don’t recognize the avenue name, though, and hence don’t know which side of town that avenue is on.
Similarly in Hawaii, many streets have the word Ala in their name, as in Ala Moana. These streets don’t have, or need, any further “street type” designation.
Further clarification might be necessary. When a street changes its name like that, it commonly happens at some jurisdiction boundary (e.g., city on one side, county on the other side). In any case, it’s also common that the street address numbering changes to another scheme at that boundary.
So if you’re looking for an address like 2468 Detroit [Avenue or Road], it might be relevant to specify whether this is on Detroit Avenue or Detroit Road. It’s even possible for the same address to exist on both parts of that thoroughfare.
Also, one street might pass through many cities, retaining its name throughout. But the street numbering changes to the local scheme at each city boundary. Such an example is El Camino Real, a major thoroughfare that runs from Santa Clara, Ca. (near San Jose) all the way almost to San Francisco. It passes through numerous cities along the way, with the street addressing changing in each city. So if you’re looking for an address like 2468 El Camino Real, you must know what city you’re looking in.
An interesting anomaly occurs along part of the boundary of Oakland and Berkeley. There is a street called Alcatraz (I don’t know what it’s “suffix” is), and the municipal boundary runs along the middle of the street. If you live on one side, you’re in Oakland and if you live on the other side, you’re in Berkeley. And each city has its own numbering scheme. Thus, the house numbers are in entirely different ranges on one side of the street and on the other side.
That kind of situation can be found in the US too, although not as extreme as you describe. There’s a local street here named Broad Oak Blvd running east-west. Branching off to the north, but then curving to the east is Broad Oak Drive, Then there’s a cul-de-sac off that called Broad Oak Court.
Around here, at least, most of the suburbs use an addressing scheme based on Cleveland’s, at least for through streets (developments that don’t connect to anything usually have their own numbering). A few of the suburbs even use the Cleveland system for numbered streets (I have a friend who used to live on East 365th Street, which was nominally 365 blocks from downtown). Of course, eventually you get far enough out that the address system has to change, but I don’t think there are any roads that keep their same name that far.
Actually, I take that back: Ridge Road keeps the same name as far south as Hinkley, which has its own numbering. But that’s a very rare case.
My father-in-law’s address in North Royalton is 7861. The house directly across the street from my FIL is 7760. The house next door on one side is 7723; the house directly across from it is 7730. The house on the other side of my FIL is 7885, while the house directly across from it is 7786. The street numbers on the north side of the street go directly from 7786 to 7974 with nothing at all in the 7800 block. Naturally, all the lots are roughly the same size.
They don’t necessarily have to be nearby, either. I used to live in a house on Park Place. Every so often, I’d get confused delivery people looking for either Park Lane or Park Street. All three exist and they’re all in different parts of town.
