Southern California beach cities again--Venice addresses

Isn’t Venice, CA really part of Los Angeles?

If so how is it that the buildings in the last block before the ocean escape the general L.A. numbering scheme, which would call for five-digit addresses? But one of the many
quaint features of Venice is two-digit addresses in the first block east of the boardwalk.

Possibly a grandfather clause issue… The buildings (or their predecessors) were at those locations before they became part of whatever the city address standard were put in place and Venice became a part of LA. Incidentally, who says all LA address have to be five digits? I know plenty of people (my parents included) who have three and four digit addresses. I always figured it had to do more with the length of the street rather than any numbering conspiracy.

Yarster, I only meant in that area, on east-west streets,
they ought to be five digits. Of course I didn’t mean
everywhere in the city. I have a five digit address now, but used to have four. Downtown we do get three digits, but nowhere other than Venice do we see two number addresses.

Sometimes an office building may have a confusing name, like
“One Wilshire”, but it still has at least three digits in the street address.

From my map, it looks addresses in West L.A. are five digits until you hit Walgrove in Venice. Then they switch over to the different system.

Most likely, Venice, when it used to be an independent city had its own street numbering system. When the City of LA annexed it in the early part of the 20th Century, it didn’t bother to change over the addresses since most of the streets don’t connect to any other major street in L.A.

Venice Blvd goes from 1600 to 13200 when it crosses Walgrove.

I think Venice is the only place in L.A. with 2 digit addresses. The L.A. Civic Center doesn’t have any buildings that go lower than 100.

San Pedro and Wilmington also have different numbering systems from the rest of L.A., but they aren’t as notable as Venice unless you are a big fan of “The Usual Suspects.”

Venice was indeed a separate city that got annexed, but you’re probably right that they didn’t renumber the streets
because it was so remote. Though Sawtelle (now the region of West L.A. south of the VA complex), was also annexed around the same time as Venice, and they must have renumbered at some point.

Actually there was more variation even in L.A. until about that time. The condemnation notice that was posted on the Avila house, on Olvera Street, in about 1927 gave the address as 24 - 26 Olvera. Today Olvera Street does use two -digit numbers, but that’s a unique situation apparently related to its role as a historical center. In 1927 it was
nothing more than a dirty alley, so it should have had the same numbering system as elsewhere in the city. Based on its distance north of First Street I think it should have been 3xx or 4xx.

If you really want to find out about this, someone can always contact the LA City Department of Engineering and find the guy in charge of street numbering. From past experience, this should only take about 10-15 phone calls.