It seems to me that most Air Force bases name their streets after dead generals.
I remember when my hometown standardized all the addresses in town to facilitate emergency services. They kept the first and last digits and adjusted the middle two. You’d go from 1415 to 1355, for example. My father didn’t like it a bit when I pointed out that the several hundreds of dollars he had just spent on new business stationery was trash because it was all printed with the old address. He learned to pay more attention to local news thereafter.
I live a block from Nokomis Avenue, near Minnehaha Parkway, off Hiawatha Avenue. Nearby are Nawadaha Blvd and Wenowah School. Lots of Longfellow names in this neighborhood.
I lived in Gander, Newfoundland, where many of the streets are named after famous pilots and other aviation greats - not surprising seeing that the airport was the main reason the town developed.
In my current city, some of the local neighbourhoods are named after WW2 battles Canadians fought in and WW2 Canadian generals, British romantic poets, and characters in Shakespeare’s plays.
Tree-named streets is a very old theme, pre-dating subdivisions. I understand it began in Philadelphia, but it’s been borrowed by many other cities and towns. A common town layout is initially a grid, with numbered streets running one way and tree-named streets (Oak, Spruce, Alder, Chestnut, etc) being the cross streets. That’s definitely the way it is here in Hillsboro OR. I live on a numbered street, the next cross street north is Oak and the next south is Walnut.
Bramalea, Ontario, is noted for its residential ‘sections’. It’s the eastern part of the city of Brampton, a suburb of Toronto really, and it was laid out and named sometime in the Sixties or Seventies, I think. The streets in each section of town all begin with the same letter. There’s the A-section, the B-section, etc. I think they went up to H at least. Someone would mention they were from Bramalea, and inevitably someone else would ask, “What section?”
- How Honolulu Gets Its Street Names and Neighborhood Themes
Streets named after flowers, birds, clouds—tell us your neighborhood theme!
September 4, 2018
Ever wonder what goes into naming a street? Since 1978, Honolulu City and County law has required all new streets be given Hawaiian names. However, it’s not uncommon to see non-Hawaiian street names—all of which were presumably named prior to 1978. With that legislation came more rules: Hawaiian names must be appropriate to scenic, cultural and topographic features; street names can’t be more than 18 characters in length; and street names must include correct diacritical markings.
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A newspaper archive search turned up dozens of articles and ads for Springwood Lake in 1972 - all enthusiastically listed the many things you will get with a membership. The large ads clearly show the street names but no mention of “It’s like a safari” or similar.
There was an injunction filed against the developer but Springwood prevailed. All the article mentioned was that Springwood did indeed plan to build all the things that were stated in the brochures.
Yeah, here we have a street named Elk Run. And yes, we where bold enough to tell the developer that he did indeed make the Elk Run (I’m in the Colorado mountains).
[Moderating]
@Didi44 , your post appeared to be a cut-and-paste of an entire article. We don’t do that here, due to copyright, so I trimmed it down to just the opening.
As for “name the streets after what isn’t there any more”, I was once very amused, on a drive through an outer suburb, to see a street sign for “Oak Cliff Drive”, that did indeed have oak trees along it, and did in fact end at a cliff.
Hollywood Fla, has many streets named after Presidents and some confederate generals too. Growing up there of course I was familiar with the presidents , Washington, Roosevelt, Adams etc, but Hood, Forrest and Sheridan streets I had no idea about their origin nor was I curious.
Apparently there is a movement afoot to change those confederate general street names. I think it’s an over reaction personally.
When they changed the name of our local park from JF Kennedy to a name honoring a local politician it kind of pissed me off.
In a kind of reverse of the OP, I grew up in a neighbourhood in Cape Town, South Africa that was locally known as “Little America” because the streets were named after prominant Americans. Mostly Presidents but also e.g. Hamilton, Lee, and curiously enough one street named for Canadian PM Laurier. The area had been built on the former grounds of a sanatorium that had been opened by American 7th-Day Adventists.
Sounds like you live in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis.
Yeah, I mean, it’s not like all of those guys turned traitor to their country and states in order to defend the proposition that people were property, or anything. They’re as worthy of having streets named after them as Lincoln was.
Yeah I mean it’s just like the meaning has been lost and yeah fuck that movement rip
Technically, Standish-Ericsson, but that’s pretty close to Longfellow.
I’m out in Bloomington, amongst the State names. I like your area of town.
I spent a year in Kenner, Louisiana, where the vast majority all the N/S streets north of Metairie Avenue, between the airport and Sibley Street, are names of states in alphabetical order. We were in a rental on Delaware Ave.
There’s an oldish subdivision in Davis California with Tolkien or Tolkienesque names.
Evenstar Lane
Elendil Lane
Bucklebury Road
Shire Lane
Rivendell Lane
Bree Lane
Creekhollow Lane
Overhill Lane
Westernesse Road
Poppy Lane
Goldberry Lane
Oakenshield Road
Bombadil Lane