Toronto Dopers -- what's up with street addresses

Factual Questions
1

Just returned from Toronto and set out to find an art gallery on Queen Street West. The wife and I started walking from Spadina so we figured maybe 4 or five blocks. But:
[ol] the house numbers on the even (north side) go up at a slower rate than than the odd numbers (south side)
[li]new hundred block doesn’t necessarily start on either odd or even side when Queen crosses a north/south street[/li][/ol]

Is this numbering common in Toronto?

(We never found the place – we gave up because we were unsure how much further we’d have to walk).

2

I’m not even sure what the question is. You expect even spacing of numbers? New blocks are supposed to start with a new hundreds identifier?

Why would this be typical?

3

Toronto does not follow a block numbering system. There is no such thing as “the 700 block” in Toronto. Numbers start at 1 and go up (most times, but not always) sequentially. But the important thing is that you cannot look at (say) the address “724 Queen Street West,” and know that you’re going to be seven blocks west of Yonge Street.

Some points that may help when dealing with east-west streets, such as Queen:

– Odds will be on the south side; evens on the north.

– Yonge Street is the dividing line. Queen Street West starts at Yonge, and so do its numbers. They increase the farther west you get from Yonge. The same applies to streets east of Yonge–numbers increase the farther east you get from Yonge.

– Even when an east-west street does not start at Yonge, the same rule holds. West of Yonge, lower numbers will be at the eastern end of the street; higher numbers at the western. And vice-versa when the street is east of Yonge.

When dealing with north-south streets:

– Odds will be on the east side, evens on the west.

– Lower numbers will always be at the south end, increasing as the street goes north.

But again, you cannot use a block numbering system to calculate distance and location. Most Torontonians would call where they were going and ask, “I know you’re at 724 Queen West, but where exactly is that?” or “What’s the cross street?” or similar. Though now, you’d use Google Maps.

Hope this helps,

Spoons
Former longtime Torontonian

4

I didn’t even know that was a thing.

5

Often but not always, here in the states the addresses lay out this way…

You live between 11th and 12th street on Main street, your address will be 11xx Main Street. It works well if you are on a grid or semi grid system. We often have an East/ West divide system as well and no matter number streets the house numbers will climb, in block groups, away from the divider ie. You live two blocks from the divider your address will be 2xx. YMMV, as this is by no means standard and can change, well oddly. An example of this is Dallas, if you drive north on 45/75 the addresses climb one side odd one even you cross into Richardson(suburb) the numbers start over and flip sides IIRC. Another I live between 26th and 27th on a North/South major road but my address is 66xx FWIW

Capt

6

Because it makes the street number a very useful piece of information if you want to know where an address is?

7

It is, and it is quite common in the cities of western Canada. It took me a while to get used to when I moved here, but I found that it was a very useful system.

8

Q) You never stopped to ask someone for assistance / directions???

Yikes!!!:eek:

9

Chicago is an example of a city with a strict grid system for address numbers. The “baseline” for Chicago addresses is the corner of State and Madison streets, in the Loop. The “hundreds” of the addresses are pretty strictly assigned, based on street intersections. It’s even more helpful when you’re on the south side of the city, since most of the major east-west streets are numbered…any north-south street which crosses 31st Street does so at 3100 South. Someone who’s reasonably conversant with which coordinates the major streets represent (e.g., Addison Street is 3600 North, Irving Park Road is 4000 North, etc.) can pretty easily figure out the location of nearly any address.

Some Chicago suburbs follow / continue the Chicago numbering system, while others don’t, which can lead to confusing situations. I live in Brookfield, which follows the Chicago system; I’m at 3100 south and 9000 west. However, La Grange Park, which is next door to us, uses its own system. As a result, if you drive north along Maple Avenue, which is the border between the two towns, the house addresses on your right (Brookfield) are in the 3000s, then the 2900s (getting smaller), while the house addresses on your left (La Grange Park) are in the 1100s, then the 1200s (getting larger).

10

This numbering system seems about like most European cities. Nothing to get excited about unless you expected Canada to do everything like the USA does.

11

It’s a logical numbering system if your city is roughly laid out in a grid, which tends to be more true of Canadian and American cities than older European cities.

Toronto
Vancouver
Chicago
Minneapolis

vs.

Madrid
Paris

In any case, it’s not “something the USA does”. It’s something done by certain cities in North America and elsewhere.

12

Does Toronto have a numbering grid that just doesn’t line up with streets, or would a street that only exists in the far reaches of the city still start near 0? Or perhaps does it depend on which pre-merger municipality you’re in? (For example, Columbus, Ohio and many of its suburbs use a numbering grid that originates at Broad and High downtown, but the city doesn’t have a consistent street grid, so while you can know that 8000 East Broad Street is a good ways east of downtown, you can’t say that it’s 80 blocks out.)

13

The “Philadelphia system” of having addresses correspond to cross streets is common west of the Alleghenies but unusual east of there. New England towns generally don’t use the system. Neither does Manhattan, at least on the avenues. San Francisco is an unusual western example, while Montréal is unusual as an “old-world settlement” that went back and adopted it.

The “Philadelphia system” was not adopted in Chicago until 1879, and the graph-paper system that Chicagoans think the city was born with didn’t come about until 1909.

14

Nope. Toronto consists of a number of municipalities that have been amalgamated in various stages, the last being in 1997. I have lived in both the former City of North York as well as the “old” city. Major streets such as Yonge St. that ran through a number of municipalities are numbered consistently but do not necessarily line up with adjacent streets such as Bathurst.

I live on a small street that starts at 1, heads north before turning west, and ends at about 50. Unless you are on a major street that extends for many kilometers you just won’t see high street numbers.

15

I think it can safely be said that every street in Toronto, no matter where it is located, starts near 0. Owing to lot and parcel severances, amalgamations, etc., some don’t necessarily start at 1, but it will always be a low number.

Streets that cross city/borough boundaries keep the numbering from where they began. For example, Lawrence Avenue East starts at Yonge Street in the old City of Toronto with 1, and its numbers grow as it passes into North York, and then into Scarborough. Numbering does not start from 1 again, just because the street crosses a municipal boundary. And as has been said, Lawrence’s numbers do not correspond with parallel streets: Eglinton, Sheppard, York Mills, etc.

To the best of my recollection, only when a street changes names does it restart numbering. A good example would be Duplex Avenue, which starts at Chaplin Crescent, just north of Davisville. Duplex runs north, as do its numbers; until it gets to Lawrence Avenue West. There, it continues north but is renamed Jedburgh Avenue, and the numbers start over at 1. Some blocks north of that, Jedburgh is renamed Ridley Boulevard, and the numbering starts over again at 1. It’s the same street throughout its distance, but when its name changes, so do its numbers.

It may be worth noting also that in Toronto, the words “street” and “avenue” (and for that matter, “road,” “drive,” “boulevard,” “crescent,” etc.) mean nothing–you cannot tell by such a word if the street runs north-south or east-west, as you can in places like Manhattan or Calgary. But what else can you expect from a city where a major thoroughfare is named “Avenue Road”? :slight_smile:

16

And if you keep following Yonge Street north, the numbers keep increasing, even as you exit one municipality and region and enter another. The movie theatres at Yonge and Green Lane, in Newmarket just south of the Georgina boundary, are, I believe, 18100 Yonge Street. A kilometre or so north of this, Highway 11 branches off from Yonge Street and starts its 1800-km journey to Rainy River, and Yonge Street continues as a minor road into Holland Landing.

Meanwhile, 1 Yonge Street is the Toronto Star building on the northeast corner of Yonge and Queen’s Quay. Thos is the beginning of Yonge Street; the only thing south of QQ at that point is the lake.

17

If memory serves, 350 Yonge is about at Dundas, 700 Yonge is about at Bloor, 1400 Yonge is around St.Clair, 2400 Yonge is just north of Eglinton, 3000 Yonge is just south of Lawrence, 4000 Yonge is somewhat south of York Mills, and so on. 4500 Sheppard East is near McCowan. 140 Wilson is just east of Avenue Road. 2000 Lawrence West is near Jane Street. And so it goes.

As a (former) Torontonian, I’d say you just learn these things.

I always got a kick out of the Second City TV sketch of the two Jewish men who ran a carpet warehouse and advertised on SCTV. Their store was at “504 Lansdowne, at Pape.” Great for giving the cross street, except that Lansdowne and Pape never meet–Lansdowne is a north-south street in the west, and Pape is a north-south street in the east. As such, they never meet!

18

You don’t know what it’s like, to be in northern Ontario and see the familiar King’s Highway route marker telling you that you are on Highway 11, and thus you are on Yonge Street. Never mind what provincial governments have done about downloading highways, and so on; Highway 11 has always been (and will be to me) Yonge Street. As such, it is a sign that tells me that if I follow it, I am on my way home.

19

I’m on the US East Coast and, to some extent, I expect major cities laid out in a grid to have this feature. If I’m walking down Washington Avenue and the building on my left is 1200 Washington Avenue and the one on my right is 1201 Washington Avenue, and beyond that, before the next cross street, are 1202 Washington Avenue and 1203 Washington Avenue, and beyond that, a cross street, I expect Washington Avenue building numbers to jump to 1300 Washington Avenue on my left and 1301 Washington on my right. Same thing going the other way - I expect that 1105 Washington Avenue, if it exists, will be behind me.

I don’t expect this system to work in surburban death mazes (residential neighborhoods where streets turn every which way, turn, and loop around on themselves.

20

Calgary has the most anal city grid I’ve ever seen, to the point of inserting streets (i.e. 1A St.) or deleting them (2nd jumps to 4th) if the actual layout deviates from the “true grid”. There’s several points where turning one way puts you on one numbered street, while turning the other way puts you on another. Or in one extreme case, the street changes names while you’re driving on it.