Block Numbers: There's Something About NE Fremont and Sandy

3737

Let's go back into street blade and Address Nerd territory with gun and camera.

Well, with camera anyway.

Allow me to introduce you to the intersection of NE Fremont St, NE Sandy Blvd, and NE 72nd Avenue,  in the Roseway neighborhood. This is pretty much downtown Roseway, really: there's Fairley's Pharmacy, the Safeway store, a handful of small shops, a liquor store, a theater, a handful of Vietamese-owned businesses. The late Yen Ha restaurant and lounge is here.

Now, keep your eyes on the road, and don't tell the officer you didn't see the sign.

NE Sandy/72nd/Fremont, looking east on Fremont
from the west side of the intersection

In NE Portland, at the point where diagonal Sandy Boulevard crosses straight east-west NE Fremont St, NE 72nd Avenue also happens to cross. In the big photo above, you can see it entering the plenum from the right, which is south, just behind the mansard roof of Annie's Donuts and just before the US Bank. Off to the left, well out of shot, the street continues northward from this intersection as a sort of parkway  with a very wide boulevard median, similar to the segment of SE 72nd running from Holgate Boulevard to Foster Road. This parkway goes from approximately Fremont/Sandy to NE Prescott Street, about half a mile.

Now, I've prattled at length somehwere at least once or twice in the past three-thousand, seven-hundred plus visits to this blog about how to read a Portland street blade. And when you put a block number on a street blade as an aide in motorist navigation, there are essentially two ways to do it:

1. The block number on the blade indicates the block of the street named on that blade, based on where the intersecting street cuts across. In other words, if I'm in Salem, and I'm on 12th St SE, and I look at a sign saying 12th ST SE and the block number says 3000, then what that street sign is telling me that it's directly labeling that block of the street that I'm on. This seems to be the most common way of going about it. Or:
   
2. The block number on the blade indicates the block of the street you're on as defined by the intersecting street, which in Portland will be whatever block you're either entering or leaving as you go. Say I'm on SE 52nd Avenue and I come to a stop at SE Woodstock Blvd. The block number on the Woodstock blade will read 6000. This does not mean that's the 6000 block of Woodstock; it means Woodstock defines the beginning of the 6000 block of whatever street's crossing it. I'm either entering the 6000 block if I'm heading south  or leaving it for the 5900 block if I'm heading north.

Number 2 is Portland's way of going about it. From what I've been able to see, though Portland is hardly the only city that does it this way (Salt Lake City has perhaps the most extreme idea of this sort of thing). It also lets you know how many streets away from, and quickly estimate your distance from said baseline (Woodstock at 6000 is the sixtieth block south of Burnside, and is therefore three miles from it). 

It also influences geographic parlance: in Portland it's common to hear it put as "Woodstock is the 6000 block" or "Hawthorne is the 1500 block". It's particularly useful in a town like Portland where the grid is so strong through most of town. It's also why you don't see block numbers on the numbered avenue signs; since the hundred block of numbered avenues in town is keyed to the avenue number, it follows directly from the street name (NE 15th Avenue is the 1500 block of named streets that cross it).

There's more I could say but all that I've laid down so far should have set the table for what I'm about to lay on you. Pay attention:

At this intersection, you have two major traffic streets, NE Sandy Boulevard and NE Fremont Street, and a local side street, NE 72nd Avenue. Sandy runs at a diagonal, so it has no standard block number; it depends on the rise/run at the point of intersection. Now that does happen to be Fremont. What's Fremont's block? It's the 35th block north of Burnside; Fremont Street is the 3500 block, at least of NE 72nd Avenue (Sandy Blvd is numbered as an east-west street, so it's building numbers at that point would be the same as Fremont's which would be 7100 7200.

Okay, knowing all this, what would you assume would be the block numbers on the named blades for NE Sandy Blvd and NE Fremont St? Since Fremont is the 3500 block north, and Sandy cuts 72nd at the 3500 block, you may have guessed that the block number on those street blades would read 3500.

That's an entirely reasonable assumption. It's also incorrect: Here is what they do say:

That's right. Not 3500, but 7200. That's the block that 72nd intersects both those streets at.

It's like that on all points of the intersection. I've walked the entire thing more than once and I did on that day. The following picture is the extreme northeastern corner of the intersection, where the northbound side of NE 72nd north of Sandy leaves Sandy Blvd:

The block number on the Sandy Blvd blade?:

Yep. 7200. As is the one on the blade of Fremont Street pointing east from NE 72nd Avenue.

I've done a lot of reasoning about this because it is rather bewlidering. The Portland system of street sign information is actually fairly simple but just like every system it will run into cases where the demands of reality test it to a limit and this would appear to be one of those situations. It fails in a way at delivering the information one expects. But my going over my multi-decade store of impressions and expectations as to the information this system can deliver, I can at least, I think, provide an insight, that will cause it to at least make sense.

Bear in mind that I can't read PDOT's collective mind and that I do not function as any sort of consultant on these matters to them (I mean, I should, that would be just and righteous, but I don't. C'est la guerre, mon frere).

In referring to Portland street blades over my adult life one decoding principle I've used in interpreting this information is that the intersecting street blade tells you all you need to know about where you are on the street you're travelling on. You, presumably, don't need to be reminded of the name of the that street you're travelling on; you intentionally put yourself there. Here am I, say, going northbound on NE 60th Avenue crossing Glisan. I look at the sign and I see NE GLISAN ST 500, and I say to myself Well, I know I'm going into the 500 block on NE 60th and I just crossed Glisan St. 

That street blade told me information relating to the street I was most likely to be on. Since 60th and Glisan only is composed of two intersecting streets, that further possibility is like an algebra term that multiplies by zero and falls out. I'm only going to be on one street or the other.

But what if the intersection I was at had three streets intersecting and only two of them were major through traffic routes? With the limited amount of room on the sign, what would I do?

What if, proceeding from the example of 60th and Glisan, I prioritized the needs of travellers coming into or through the area rather than those who wanted a reassurance that Fremont is the 3500 block north of a relatively-much-lesser travelled intra-neighborhood street? If that were true, then maybe I'd want to put 7200 on all those named street blades:

• If you're on Sandy Blvd, the intersection of NE Fremont Street defines the 7200 block of NE Sandy.
• If you're on NE Fremont Street, the intersection of NE Sandy Blvd defines the 7200 block of Fremont
• NE 72nd Avenue, being a comparatively little-used street, and less likely to be travelled on by people who are through-bound on Sandy and Fremont, can be left off the signs and cause minimal confusion and inconvenience because most locals already know that the 3500 block starts there and those through-bound people are more likely to be concerned with what block of Sandy or Fremont they're at.

So, there it is. I'm not saying I approve or disapprove, what I am saying here is that this is what I think the method behind this madness is. And there are other places in Portland where block number blade mistakes exist, and even some intersection signs which appear to contradict this logic within blocks of this very sign too ... Sometimes I don't know where PBOTs mind is on some of this.

And ... I still like the Portland system better than any others. But it does have its weaknesses where confusion can occur. This'd be one. But then, why even be in a city if you aren't going to take your time when you can, and look carefully around at your world.

[Address_Nerd] In Passing: Two Interesting Salem Street Names

3175.

While I've not called Salem home for many a year (and at this point feel myself more of a Portlander than I've ever been of anywhere else), I'd be lying to myself if I said I didn't still feel somewhat at home there.

You can take the boy out of Marion County (or he can), but you really can't take Marion County out of the boy. The strawberry patch has set its stamp upon me, aye.

Since I don't get back to Salem as often as I ought, Google Street View is my friend betimes. And since the street level photography has gotten so damn good over the last few years, I indulge my urge to see what the street names and blades look like and how they have changed over time. There are two interesting bits of nomenclature that have stuck with me. I delved and found, and I'd like to share them now.

1. The Cutoff at the end of 12th Street.

12th Street, SE, is a major access backbone to the area of southeast Salem east of Commerical Street but west of the Salem Airport. For over 2 and a half miles south of State Street it distributes traffic and commerce to those inner south-east side neighborhood areas, climbing the hill south of Vista Avenue, and then swerving southwestward to merge with Commercial Street at about the 3800 block, just north of where Sunnyside Road SE peels off.

What is easily missed, though, is that the road stops being 12th Street SE at that point. There is a 12th Street SE south of this point … but it lines up with the main stem of 12th and goes from Duffield Heights St SE south to Hilfiker Lane SE, in the small neighborhood just east of Commerical, south of the 12th St light. That diagonal section connecting 12th at Oakhill Avenue SE to the big traffic signal plenum at Commerical Street is actually known as …

12th STREET CUT-OFF SE. A real mouthful of a name. But it lends itself to, perhaps, the most intriguing looking street blades Salem can boast. The above blade blends the signage for Ibsen St SE and 12th Street Cut-off due to the interesting angle of the intersection, and the extension across the main road that allows southbound 12th Street traffic to access Commercial Street northbound … a dendritic ramp affair that also connects to Promotory Place SE.

Another interesting thing is that the signage is not consistent. There are two other cross streets to 12th Street Cut-off, Doris Ave SE and Oakhill Ave SE, and both the signs shift the "ST" generic to above the block index, leaving the "CUT OFF" kind of dangling there.

The street name is most prosaic, as the cut-off does provide a shortcut to Commercial Street. Giving it a variant name also prevents a duplicated street name, as the southern third of 12th Street Cut-Off is somewhat parallel to the southernmost extensions of 12th Street SE, just a few blocks to the east.

2. The One And Only Link You Need.

The other interesting blade happens in West Salem. I lived near this place for a very short time. There is a street that links Kingwood Dr NW and the place where Hillcrest Dr NW and Riverview Dr NW come together. This is a very short street, on the order of only about 180 feet in length, and in honor of its functional position of being very near three streets but not actually being part of any of them, it's simply (and also prosaically) called …

THE LINK ST NW. 

The "ST" generic seems to be a later addition; when I lived in that neighborhood, maps and the street sign simply called it The Link, NW. Latterly, I've noticed, post offices and city planners abhor a vacuum in the generic spot (Witness here in Portland where SE Reedway (a per se street name sans generic) is increasingly posted as SE Reedway St, a misnomer. So, the awkwardish The Link Street NW it is for them. I'll always see it a little different.

At least the word THE has been retained, giving a memorable presentation. 

[pdx] PDX Street Sign Shop, Ca. 1916

2240.Fellow street sign blogger Eric Fischer, whose San Francisco work I've praised, has done me a definite solid and dropped a very beautiful thing my way.

As I may have alluded to in another post somewhere, Portland's street  blades have looked different. From, I'd estmate, around 1900 through the middle third of the 20th Century, PDX Street blades where these indesctructable iron things, with white and enamel paint, which looked like this:

As you can see, it's very utilitarian. Blocky, almost-military letterforms – not graceful, but very very readable.

In a recent comment to the Cyclotram's P13 Stark Street Milestone, fellow street sign blogger from San Francisco (whose work I enjoy) Eric Fischer pointed me to a most amazing publication, in the public domain and available in its entirety on Google Books. It was in this book, Municpal Engineering Practice, by A. Prescott Folwell and published in 1916 by Wiley and Sons (a book generally about designing and laying out cities), that I found the following view – the inside of Portland's sign shop, ca. 1915 or so:

You have to embiggen this to see it in its full glory, to do this, go to Posterous here and click on the photo (which you can also download) or click on the photo above.

Lined up along the bottom there are signs for E. 70th ST. N (today's NE 70th Avenue), E. 72nd ST. N., 50th AVE. SE (today's SE Raymond Street), and 41st AVE SE (today's SE Gladstone Street). I also see a rather big blade, reading (on two lines) PATTON ROAD/COUNTY ROAD, and there are signs for CRYSTAL SPRINGS BLVD, WISTARIA AVE, and possibly a deprecated style for WASHINGTON ST.

To go over it real quick again, before the Great Renaming of 1933, numbered streets east of the Willamette and north of Burnside not only carried the East prefix because of that but also the North suffix to extend west-side naming practice east in a uniform way; therefore 11th Street east of the Willamette and north of Burnside would be EAST 11TH STREET NORTH. The avenues suffixed SE were in the area south of Powell and east of E. 39th Avenue which, for reasons even not yet clear, had number congruent to today's street blocks going out in both directions, though avenues ran east-west and streets north-south: therefore, 1916's 50th Avenue SE would be today's SE Raymond Street, which is the 5000 block (50th standard street name south of East Burnside) and 41st Avenue SE would be SE Gladstone Street – today's 4100 block (41st standard street name south of East Burnside).

The viewer can no doubt find some things that I've missed, and it's all interesting and good.

Thanks Eric … you definitely da man!

To view the page directly and download your own PDF of this book, surf to the following:

http://books.google.com/books?id=7AJLAAAAMAAJ&dq=%22street%20name%20signs%22&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=%22street%20name%20signs%22&f=false

Technorati Tags: sign design, street sign design, vintage PDX, PDX Geography, PDX Street Blades, Portland Oregon, Portland history

[address_nerd] Zero Hundreds Go Viral A Little Bit

2229.Long-time blog readers (I think I might have a few of you) may recall that I expounded at-length about the curiosity of addresses in Portland with leading zeroes in the house number – what I called the zero-hundreds, in that area of Southwest that's not east of the river (so it can't be Southeast) but it's east of the zero baseline (so you've got to be able to tell that somehow).

The abstract: as you clear the Naito Parkway line going east but approach the river, the addresses increase block-by-block, but have a zero prepended to the house number; where an address three blocks west of Naito on, for instance, SW Porter Street might read 200 SW Porter Street the same street three blocks east of Naito would read 0200 SW Porter Street.

The entire system is described in this entry I made on 20 July 2005: http://zehnkatzen.blogspot.com/2005/07/geography-address-nerd-on-zero-hundred.html. Go there for a more complete description. Break out any map of Portland for a good look at the layout of the area (you can use Google Maps, but they leave off the leading zero (just remember it's there, okay?).

I figured out eariler today that, via my SiteMeter report (I'm poor, so I just look back at the last hundred) the posessor of the LiveJournal here (at least, this is the earliest one I can find within that hundred-post limit) posted a very succinct yet very cool link to that original Address Nerdery.

One thing I love about blogging is that, in my obsessions I sometimes answer a question for myself that becomes an answer for a question someone will have sometime down the road, at any time that may or may not happen. I love the ordering of a well-formed address grid, but without randomness, order is meaningless, so viva la Chaos!

And you know what else? It's spread out just a little bit on other LJs and on this LJ-esque service called Dreamwidth, which is an artistic sort of LJ, which is even more thrilling.

It makes me feel all unicorny and antic inside. And I'm flattered, too.

Technorati Tags: Address Nerd, PDX Geography, PDX Streets, PDX History

This Comment Made My Day, As It Should Have

1946.My Address Nerdery has garnered some really cool responses. Here's the latest and the neatest.

Referring to my definitive post on the 1928 address layout of Portland (and the Hibernia Map), today, I recieved the following comment, which was too good not to share. Credit one Valerie Jasperson for the following:

Well, not sure where any of us came from, actually, but I got to your wonderful mapnerd blog after a long search for early Portland addresses. I just finished reading "On the Trail of the Lonesome Pine", and my 101 year old book has a name written in the front with the address "684 E. 11 North, Tr 0090 Portland, Oregon." Your site did it for me! Not only am I gratified to understand the address, your blog is a great read. Rarely do I get to see the word "embiggened" in print. Love it. Also love maps. My Dad was a surveyor and later draughtsman for PGE in the 50's, and he used to bring home waste blueprints and I'd color in the lots and make mazes of them. I hated the way the paper made your hands feel dry and the ink smelled so sharp and dull at the same time, but I was captivated by the map bug, just the same. Thank you for the great old PDX info,SJK. May you always fold it right on the first try!

Publicly, you're welcome, Valerie. As I said in the response to this, one of the most thrilling things is when my obsession answers a question that someone else didn't even know they had until they found me.

The only part that mystifies me is the "Tr 0090" part. Looks like a postal code somehow, Hey! Another investigation!

Anyway, is this not cool? I can attest to the smell and feel of those prints–I have some experience making diazo prints, and actually grew to like the ammonia smell that you got assaulted with when making one, but they are hard on the fingers.

Also, On The Trail of The Lonesome Pine is a book so old not even Amazon knows about it. Must be some book!

One of the best things in a life where you are but really a cypher moving amongst a throng of cyphers is when someone else reaches out and says "thanks" for something like this. So I may be making a party out of a comment ...

... but why not?

Thanks again, Valerie.

Technorati Tags: address nerd, portland addresses, portland history, portland geography

In King County, The Streets Go Even Higher - How About 762nd Avenue?

1827.

The photos in the last discourse give you the highest-numbered avenue we can find in the greater Portland area.

As absurd as a street named SE 502nd Avenue might sound (and as awesome a picture it might make) you will find others more highly-numbered elsewhere. Like, in King County, Washington, for instance.

The address system that encompasses King Country is fun to play with for Address Nerds. Thanks to the build-out in the orginial town of Seattle, the address system became at once amazingly complex and amazingly logical. Even though it's kind of odd, it's consistent and makes sense, so it's actually a lot more intutitive than you'd think at first. And it not only covers the land areas of King but also the islands (Vashon and Quartermaster) that belong in the county. And by looking at the address you can more or less instantly infer how far away from downtown Seattle you are. Nifty!

While I'm wont to go make a diagram of it and write a long discourse on how it all works, there's just no time. In the meantime, a creditable description (though it needs a diagram) is at Wikipedia here.

But what I was getting to (my point) is that the King County address grid is so thorough and consistent it really does have the whole big county ... including areas with no direct connection to Seattle. Skykomish is an area in northeastern King County, along the Stevens Pass Highway, US Hwy 2. To get to it, you acually hove to go north into Snohomish County – the next county north and take US 2 out of Everett, which tends southeastward until about thirty miles east of Everett when the highway takes you back into King County, and back into the King County address grid, which is consistently maintained.

If you follow this link, you'll find the following picture at Google Maps:

(zoom out to get a good look at the area) To get there, take the Stevens Pass Hwy and turn of at NE 122nd Street. It will take you to 762nd Ave, NE. I'd love to get picture of that blade, I don't think I need to say.

We see evidence of a 763rd Ave, NE right next to it off the end of NE 123rd St, but since Google Maps has mislabeled it to the nonsensical "766rd Ave NE", we'll take a pass on it at this time. But given the utter consistency and relentlessness of King County street naming and addressing, we will say it's a likely thing.

If those tender hearted souls we read about in Snyder who quailed at the thought of in-city addresses as high at 7700 were transported to the present and escorted out to Skykomish, WA, we suspect their dear heads would asplode.

Tags: Address_Nerd, Address Nerd, 763rd Ave NE, King County Address System, Washington Roads, Washington Cascades

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SE 502nd Avenue And Mount Hood From Gresham

1826.

I have written before about my favorite street in the Greater Portland Area ... the highest numbered street I know of in these parts. SE 502nd Avenue. Here's where the map says it is. This route in Google Maps says it's about 8.9 miles away from downtown Sandy via Highway 26, and SE Baty Rd (with a jog at SE Cherryville Rd).

It's beautiful country, truly. We didnt get good pixs of that country, about which more in a moment.

One of the things I'd always wanted to get was a street blade for SE 502nd Ave. The last time we tried, though, we discovered to our sorrow that it was gone. On a whim (and buoyed by those lovely lower gas prices) I decided we'd have a short car trip today, and take a chance that the sign was back.

Because, having at least one picture of a sign that says "SE 502ND AVE" is awesome.

And having two, even more so.

And having three ... well, that's bliss.

We didn't get a good picture of the area because it was just too sunsetty. Here's what we did get:

This is a very tranquil place. Very quiet. A passing cyclist on Baty Road gave us a nod, so it's friendly, too, in the shadow of Mount Hood.

Speaking of which, got some good snaps of old Wy'East on the way out. Tarried a bit in the Gresham Town Center area. But if you want a good view on a good day, look east on Burnside Road just east of NW Civic Drive. Stands out like a beautiful monument.

While I was angling for these shots, a young dude - about 10 years old or so - came by on his scooter.

"Do you live here in Oregon?", he asked me.

"Yes, I do", I said.

"Why are you taking pictures?", he asked.

"Because," I said with a smile "this place is beautiful, and I love that mountain".

That seemed to hold him. I don't need a reason, of course. I'm a native-born Oregonian, and smug about it. But with what we got here, do ya blame me?

Tags: Mount Hood, Portland Pictures, PDX Pictures, SE 502nd Avenue, Address_Nerd, Wy'East, Gresham PIctures, Street Blade Pictures

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Portland's Address System in 1928 (Updated)

1791.

NB, Tuesday 20 Jan 2008: I noticed a lot of referrals here. If you have a few minutes, could you leave a comment saying where you came from and what got you here ... or at least where you came from? If this information helped you, then that's made my day Thanks!)

Today, we return to the 1928 Portland Hibernia Map to get another closer look. This time, we go back to Address Nerd territory.

One of the things that originally fired my interest in Portland geography was the complex (from my Silvertonian point of view) address grid. It was pleasing to the eye and easy on the ear: for some reason, saying Southeast Stark Street is intriguing to me in the way that simply saying Stark Street isn't. I like the way the letters S and W look when sitting next to each other on a street sign. Order in a directional quadranted grid is aesthetically pleasing to me.

But the idea of NE/SW/SE/NW/N had the air of an after-the-fact overlay, an artefact. So I started down the road of asking why. Eventually, I happened upon Snyder, and my questions were answered in the main, but knowing the basics I wanted to know more.

Eventually, after enough chipping away, old maps came my way in the cosmic way such things do. I learned about Portland geography before and after the Great Renaming.

As covered here before, Portland before 1933 was ordered in a different way, a thing that evolved from the merger of Portland, East Portland, and Albina in 1890 to form the modern City government and the need to bring a real wild-West style of naming (where developers got to name the streets in their new subdivisions whatever they wanted regardless of what names already existed elsewhere) under control. Names were duplicated willy-nilly across the entire city.

The plan that evolved formed the skeleton of the one we recognize today, but the nomenclature was different:

1. All streets south of today's Burnside and west of the river were simply streets, with no directionals.


2. All named streets north of today's Burnside and west of the river had no directionals; numbered streets were suffixed "North"


3. The exception to 1 and 2 above was Broadway, which began life as Seventh Street and adopted the Broadway name after the Broadway Bridge was constructed and the street was extended over. North Broadway was Broadway north of Burnside; Broadway south of Burnside was South Broadway.


4. Named streets on the east side were prefixed "East", but only if they had a counterpart on the west side. Downtown's "Stark Street" was called "East Stark Street". Named east side streets that had no west side counterpart had no directional (e.g. Thompson Street instead of NE Thompson St. Broadway was simply Broadway because the east side had it first; see number 3 above).


5. Numbered streets on the east side were also prefixed East. What we today call SE 12th Avenue, for example, was known as East 12th Street.


6. Numbered streets on the east side north of Burnside were, as on the west side, suffixed North, but still carried the East prefix for differention. What we today call NE 12th Avenue was known, therefore as East 12th Street North.


7. There were 20 house numbers to the block, rather than the standard 100 that we know today. Between Front Street and First Street (no directionals, therefore the west side south of Burnside) the addresses rand 1-20. You didn't get to the 100 block until Fifth Street.

Now, for a couple of pictures. The truly exciting thing about the Hibernia Map other than its sheer age is that it contains information on how the addresses ran. Here's a section of the middle:

(surf this link to see it bigly in the Photobucket album). If you look closely, you'll see faded bold number in a sort of teal. Look near Lovejoy Street at the Broadway Bridge and you'll see the number "200". Near where Westover Road intersects Burnside, you'll see the number "800". This is how the address system ran in Portland in those days. An address in the 2400 Block of NW Marshall Street today would have been in the 800-820s on an un-directionalled Marshall Street. The Oregonian, at today's address of 1320 SW Broadway, would have been at about 280 South Broadway (speaking of location, of course; the actual Oregonian Building during those days was considerably farther north, in the middle of downtown).

Examining the map in full we find the highest address ranged only easterly into the 2200s (in the Montavilla area, around E. 82nd and E. Stark), southerly to about 1700 (Sellwood) and north along Union Avenue (today's MLK) in the 1500s. We assume that the addres schema increased going up the north Portland Peninusula into Saint Johns after descending to zero somwhere between Williams Avenue and Interstate Avenue, but the map is sadly silent on this point.

Now I did say that the address scheme was uniform thoughout the city. I'm afraid I told a little lie there. A curious thing can be found if we turn our attention south of Division and east of E. 41st, in the Holgate Blvd/Powell Blvd/Woodstock Blvd area:

(you'll definitely want to look at the embiggened version by clicking here to Photobucket). Moving down from the top we see E. Harrison, E. Lincoln, E. Grant, E. Sheridan, E. Caruthers (these streets perforce extended names from the westisde core area), Division (no Division on the west side, remember, so no "E. Division", and then ... all names are replaced by numbers. And that's not all; the numbered streets run north and south whereas the numbered avenues run east-west (in 100% contrast to the modern Portland Avenue/Street pattern). And not just that, but this area shows awareness that, despite the house numbers, Holgate Avenue (for example ... today's SE Holgate Blvd) is 45 blocks south of Burnside, and therefore would be 45th Street SE (also showing awareness that the area is south and east of the address origin point.

There is very little written about this area or why just that area had the SE directional applied as a suffix. The only hint we have comes from pages 59-61 of Snyder, who relates that during the years when those who cared about such things were trying to dice out the rationalization of city addresses, particulary in the year 1910, City Engineer J.W. Morris advanced the following plan:

1. All Street names to be replaced by numbers.


2. Avenues to run east-west, Streets North-south.


3. Burnside, the principal street divider, to be called Central Avenue. We surmise that the other divisions would likely be the ones we recognize today


4. 100 numbers to the city block.

The plan was met with round disapproval by people who were conversant with, were fond of, and understood the sense of history inherent in the current street names. An editorial form the 24 April 1910 Oregonian had it thus:

Some people evidently don't know that there ever were pioneers! They would abolish the names on streets, and subsititute bare numbers. But a large number of citizens will not sanction this change.

We wonder if that outer southeast area was envisioned as a sort of a pilot program for this scheme. We do know that it was actually implemented: the curbstone at SE 53rd Avenue and Woodstock Boulevard serves as evidence for that (old street names are left in many areas of town preserved thusly. Next time youre at a streetcorner, look down. You might be surprised at what you'll find there (in the good way!).

It does speak for the merits of the plan that the basics of the thing – address quadrants, 100-numbers-to-the-block, and numbered ordered avenues radiating from the origin point – did actually form the basis of the current plan-on-the-ground that we all know and use daily. We don't know about our readers, but we rather prefer that names were kept on the streets, though, noting the latter-day compulsion of some to change names to honor notable historic figures, we wonder if going with the all-number system would have had a benefit of removing the pain we've seen in the news. After all, renaming 65th Avenue NE to Rosa Parks Way or 15th Street North to Cesar Chavez Boulevard would hadve turned out to a welcome change.

All the illustrations I've been using for this posting series can be seen in the Photobucket album, here.

Tags: Address_Nerd, SE portland, portland addresses, Portland maps, Portland history, 1928 Hibernia map

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[Address_Nerd] Eugene E. Snyder and The Bible for Portland Address Geeks

1458. In the O! section of The Sunday Big O, columnist John Terry penned a very interesting column (which can be read here for 14 days before it goes behind the wall) about downtown Portland's doglegs as the Avenues and Broadway cross Burnside and had some apt words about why that was (Executive Summary: Captain Couch preferred to lay out his streets aligning with the North Star; Lovejoy and Pettygrove's platter preferred to use Magnetic North).

Even I, as studied as I was on the subject, relearned something; the downtown trend of blocks aligned on the river actually just so happened. The river itself was too vague to align to; Magnetic North was close enough (at the time, the point-which varies from year to year-was very nearly 20 degrees off true north).

We digress. The thing that really touched us about this column was the way Terry referred to a book which is, like this blog, very important but entirely underrated.

Eugene E. Snyder's books can be found at Powells and on Amazon.com. He's a local writer of about which little is on the record, even in these days of Googlocity. His biographical information, as far as I can discern, is limited to a short paragraph on the back of many of his books:

Eugene E. Snyder is a Portlander who was originally a newspaperman, later taking graduate degrees in economics and teaching that subject in university. He has been an economist in Washington DC and in regional and local planning. He is now devoting full time to history writing.

His beaming, Tom Peterson-esque visage graces the back cover of most all of his Binford & Mort-published books. But outside of this, he remains something of an enigma. This is all I'm able to find out about the fellow.

When looking for mass-market books about Portland history, there are two names to know. One, E. Kimbark MacColl – also known as Kim, also a prominent local legal eagle and an incredibly smart person – has authored titanic works on Portland history and is deservedly a towering authority on the evolution of the city. His works, The Growth of a City, The Shaping of a City, and Merchants, Money and Power, document the power, politics, and growth of Portland from its childhood thorough its early adulthood, going though all the nooks and crannies of Portland's passage of time. MacColl's works add up to an academic force of nature.

The only flaw in MacColl's works ... if we can use the double-edged-sword-version of the work flaw ... is the size of these books. These are meaty, manly, huge books – my favorite on, The Growth of a City, weighs in at a brobdingnagian 717 pages all in all. This can make them somewhat unapproachable to the merely curious.

Snyder's books, however, have a different character. No less intelligent than the former, with more modest lengths (around 200pp each) larger type, and more chatty style, they are more accessible for the common joe than MacColl's works are. He's kind of like an E. Kimbark MacColl for the rest of us.

Now, the reason I've gone on about Snyder is really because I like talking about one of his books. It's one of my favorites (and apparently one of Mr Terry's favorites as well). Portland Names and Neighborhoods: Their Historic Origins is The Book that no local self-made historian can, I think, say their shelves are complete without a copy. It's a warm and friendly recounting of how Portland's streets got thier names and how the modern address system came to be. It was Snyder's book that introduced us modern Address Nerds to the term Great Renaming (referring to the time in ca. 1930 when the Portland street name system, until then the result of evolution out of a crazy-quilt, was finally rationalized into the form we see today) and the book that documented that the crosswork of Ladd's Addition was inspired by the layout of Washington DC.

It seems to be out of print, but it still can be found. Amazon has several copies, Powells can usually can be found to have a copy or two.

Snyder's other books are worth reading too, because just like this one, they are warm, friendly, accessable introductions to Portland history.

Then, after you've been through the Snyder books, move on to MacColl. Between the two authors everything that needs to be said about 19th-20th century Portland history gets said.

(Illustrations scanned from the book in the Address Nerd's collection)

Tags: Eugene E. Snyder, E. Kimbark MacColl, Portland history, Pioneer Oregon, Portland Addresses, Great Renaming, Address_Nerd

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[Address Nerd] How They Do It In Silverton

1205. One of the more compelling and frustrating things in being an Address Nerd is finding the source documents that control and define address numbering and street naming, because the mark of a true Address Nerd is not only being able to intuit what decisions were made, but finding out for oneself why they were made.

As Winston Smith once wondered: "I know how. I do not know why". Not that it's sinister, of course, but you just never satisfied until you know why. For instance, it's obvious, looking at the map of Salem, that State Street is the main divider on the east side of the Willamette halving the city in northerly and southerly sections. But why did they settle on State Street.

We'll never know that. Salem's online city information is silent on the matter. For that matter, few jurisdictions bother to mount documents detailing the why of their street naming/house numbering. Even where it's obvious, the true Address Nerd has the burning desire to find out why, and what the point of departure was, what drove the rationale.

We have found, through a happy accident, the section of Silverton's municipal code (provided through an online link from the City of Silverton's website to CodePublishing.com, a website obviously devoted to providing online versions of city municipal codes) that describes, with a sort of absolute precision, the rationale behind how addresses are determined in Oregon's Garden City and Gateway To Silver Falls State Park. It throughly defines the how, and while it doesn't define the why (except the observation that a systematic addressing rationale is a Good Thing™) the reading of it is a full meal for the Address Nerd.

To follow along you may find a map of Silverton, Oregon helpful. You can download a 1.1 MB PDF ODOT map via this link. Silverton's address schema is defined in Title 12 of the Silverton Municipal Code, Streets, Sidewalks, and Public Places. We will treat the only the relevant sections of this document, which are only a fraction of the full title.

12.04.020 Numbering system – Placement of numbers.

A. There shall be a uniform system of numbering all houses, stores and other buildings, except sheds and outbuildings, erected or to be erected within the city, by placing on the door or doorframe of the main entrance to such building, or as near thereto as may be practical, the number assigned thereto, as hereinafter provided, such number to be painted on the building or on metal or glass, or a metallic figure used, at the option of the owner, and so placed as to be readily seen from the street.
B. The figures designating the numbers, whether printed or otherwise, shall not be less than three inches in height. (Ord. 27A67 § 2, 1918)

This section defines the requirement for having a standard addressing system and some basic requirements, which are entirely reasonable; they have to be on the outside of the structure, near the main entry, and you can paint 'em on or nail 'em on, and you have to be able to easily see them. There is a minimum size requirement (three inches, or 219 points for you typographers in the audience).

Thus established that there will be an address numbering requirement, we get down to the actual definitions. Section 12.04.030A sets up the schema for streets running more or less north-south, establishes Main Street as the north-south divider, and governs numbering behavior north and south of that baseline:

12.04.030 Numbering system – Described.

A. The houses or buildings erected on lots which abut upon streets running northerly and southerly shall be numbered as follows:
1. That part of each of such streets lying south of Main Street shall be numbered southerly from the south side of Main Street, beginning with the number 100 and allowing 100 numbers to each block, both sides of the street to be considered a block; the even numbers to be used for numbering houses and buildings on the east side of such street, and the odd numbers to be used for such numbering on the west side of such street. The first tier of blocks south of Main Street shall be numbered southerly, beginning such numbering with the figure 100 and continuing with successive numbers thereafter to and inclusive of the figure 199.

In other words, what section A1 is saying is: if it's south of Main, the house numbers go up as you go south from Main. The first block of any street running south from Main will have house numbers in the 100s, odd numbers on the west side and odd numbers on the east.

2. The second tier of blocks shall be numbered beginning with the number 200 and continuing with successive numbers thereafter to and inclusive of the number 299, and continuing in like manner, the numbering of each successive tier of blocks, giving 100 numbers to each tier of blocks and ending such numbering at the southern boundary of the city.

Section A2 takes the rationale defined in A1 and uses it as the basis to build the rest of the system, block by block, until you hit the city limits; second block south of Main is the 200 block, third the 300 block, and so on.

3. All the portion of such street north of Main Street shall be numbered in the same manner, but northerly from Main Street, beginning with the number 100 and allowing 100 numbers to each tier of blocks northerly, and numbering in the same manner as hereinbefore provided for the numbering of buildings southerly of Main Street.

Section A3, then, uses the rationale defined in A1 and A2 to similarly define how addresses run north of Main Street; 100 numbers to the block, starting with the 100 block in the first block north of Main, 200 in the second block, and so on, til you hit the northern city limits.

Naturally, not nearly every street in Silverton (as a quick peruse of the map will tell you) intersects with Main Street. In these cases, the question arises as to where to commence numbering on those streets, and what the low number should be. Thus, we have section A4:

4. In case any streets in the city, running northerly and southerly, do not intersect with Main Street, the numbering thereof shall nevertheless commence and continue in the same manner as if such streets actually intersected Main Street; that is to say, if two tiers of blocks intervene between Main Street, the first numbers on such street shall be 300, and if one tier of blocks intervenes, then 200 shall be the first number for each intervening tier of blocks, and then proceeding from such commencing point in the manner hereinbefore specified.

In other words, if a street is about the equivalent of two blocks north of Main but does not actually connect with Main, the street will be in the 200 block, and numbers will increase north. A good example is one of the coolest streets on this or any other planet, Digerness Blvd (incorrectly labelled as Digerness St on the ODOT map). This is literally a one-lane unimproved road that's a dead-end street, running south from Oak Street on the side of East Hill. If you extended a line from Oak Street (the 200 north block from Main) east, the end of Digerness Blvd would be just about even with that line, therefore, we can predict that the addresses on Digerness (if there are any) would start in the 200s. If we then Google "Digerness Blvd" to see if any information pops up, we find that there is actually a commercial address on this road: Laughing Dragon Wood Carving, address: 233 Digerness Blvd.

We can further assume that the addresses on adjacent Mill Street also start with 200 at its junction with Oak.

So, section 12.04.030A tells us that Main Street divides Silverton into north and south halves, and that there are 100 numbers to the block; that they increase north and south from Main, and that streets that do not connect with Main are numbered as though they did connect with Main.

Section 12.04.030B deals with streets that run east and west.

B. The buildings or houses erected on lots abutting on streets running easterly and westerly shall be numbered as follows:
1. That part of each of such streets east of Silver Creek shall be numbered easterly therefrom, beginning with the number 100 and allowing 100 numbers to each block, both sides of the street being considered a block, the even numbers to be used for numbering houses and buildings on the north side of such streets, and the odd numbers for such numbering on the south sides of the streets.

Section B1 establishes Silver Creek as the eastside-westside division in the same manner that A1 establishes Main Street as the northside-southside division, by defining what east means in terms of the reference to the watercourse, and alloting 100 numbers to each block as you move east from Silver Creek. Odd numbers are on the south side of the street, Even on the north. Sections B2 and B3 clarify that behavior, in the same way this was developed in Sections A2 and A3.

2. The first tier of blocks east of Silver Creek shall be numbered easterly, beginning such numbering with the number 100 and continuing with successive numbers thereafter to and inclusive of the figure 199.
3. The second tier of blocks shall be numbered beginning with the number 200, and continuing with successive numbers thereafter to and inclusive of the number 299, and continuing in like manner the numbering of each successive tier of blocks, giving 100 numbers to each tier of blocks and ending such numbering at the eastern boundary of the city.

And section B4 uses the east side definition recursively to generate the west side definition:

4. All that part of the streets west of Silver Creek shall be numbered in the same manner, but westerly from Silver Creek, beginning with the number 100 and giving 100 numbers to each tier of blocks westerly, and numbering in the same manner as hereinbefore provided for the numbering of houses and buildings easterly from Silver Creek.

...and similar to Section A5, Section B5 defines address behavior on streets which do not cross over Silver Creek (there are actually very few streets that do, but that's for a later part):

5. In case any streets in the city, running easterly and westerly, do not intersect with Silver Creek, the numbering thereof shall, nevertheless, commence and continue in the same manner as if the streets actually intersected Silver Creek; that is to say, if two tiers of blocks intervene between Silver Creek and the nearest portion of the street to Silver Creek, the first number on the street shall be 300; and if one tier of blocks only so intervenes, then the first number shall be 200, and so on, allowing 100 numbers for each intervening tier of blocks, and then proceeding from such commencing point in the manner hereinbefore provided.

Section C provides further clarification on how to treat nonconforming streets that are short or 'irregular', and it's a simple extension of a grid; find the nearest street that seems to be running in near enough the same direction, and address it as though it were a parallel street (this would seem to be a recapitulation of Sections A5 and B5, though it's a more advanced way to do it – if the street is deemed 'irregular', there is no need to decide on how many intervening tiers of blocks obtain, just find the closest 'regular' street that seems to run the same direction and address in accordance with it:

C. All buildings and houses located upon lots abutting on short and irregular streets which are not covered by the foregoing provisions shall be numbered as nearly alike as possible to the nearest adjacent block of regular streets running in relatively the same direction.

The rest of the code is of procedural interest. Section 12.04.030D provides for a way of determining what the physical address position within a block should be by dividing the block length by 25 if within the fire district and 50 if without, the resulting number being the distance between any two numbers; Section 12.04.030E defines address block lengths of new streets by making them the same as neighboring streets that are already defined; 12.04.040 assigns the City Recorder the task of documenting extensions to the address grid; 12.04.050 gives the citizens 30 days to comply with the ordinance; 12.04.100 provides the requirement that all streets within the city should carry a name; 12.04.110 vests the power to approve street names with the City; and lastly, 12.04.120 requires that new street names should fit the existing pattern and not conflict with names already extant.

What The Code Says ... And What It Doesn't Say

The code is notable in that it defines the numbering system in relation to two bases; Silver Creek and Main Street, the two major geographical divisions of Silverton, and how many blocks away from each the given street may be.

What is even more remarkable is that this is a rather elegant example of recursion. The whole system is at first defined by the first block of a notional north-south street running south from and intersecting with Main Street; the south side address progression is built off of that; the north side progression is generated from the south side progression; the east side progression is built using the south side rationale as a template; the east side progression is built from that template; the west side is grown from the east side. Very nice, logical, and elegant. One wonders if a mathematician was involved in its creation.

The system has actually very little to say about street names except that they not be confusing – there is no requirement or rationale that a street be named anything in particular. We must infer, for instance, that First Street north of Main is called North First Street and that First south of Main is called South First Street (and as a matter of fact, this is indeed the case). West Main and East Main are inferred as being respectively the section of Main west of Silver Creek and the section east. There are very few streets which extend over Silver Creek; C Street locally is known as C Street east of the creek but we have seen documentation that calls the part of that street west of Silver Creek that eventually meets up with McClain Street at the Westfield Street intersection West C Street ... but that part of C Street is essentially a traffic throughway, having nothing addressed to it as far as we are aware.

The most notable exception to the rule is that area of northwestern Silverton that contains James Street. Silver Creek does divide James Street nominally and in terms of addresses, but since Silver Creek is now flowing nearly west to east, the two halves of James Street are North James Street and South James Street; James Street does in fact run north and south, so prefixing the halves as east and west would seem rather strange. We do not know for certain what the address pattern in that area is; we assume that it increases as one goes away from Silver Creek in each direction, and C Street is a residential no-mans land, so it does not conflict with the more regular areas from McClain Street south.

Also note that the system does not define hundred numbers to key off the numbered streets. Silverton does not exactly have a surfeit of these; the major numbered streets are First, Second, and Third which, with Water south of C Street form the geographical backbone of the Silverton street pattern; Fourth Street exists as a stub off the end of Drake Street, and Fifth Street exists on the side of East Hill and runs between Oak and Main (both those streets have no directional prefix as they do not have counterparts on the opposite side of Main). However, block numbers are defined as block tiers ranked away from Silver Creek; the space between the Creek and Water Street is the 100 block, between Water and First is the 200 Block, between First and Second is the 300 block, Second and Third the 400 block, and Third Street actually defines the 500 block.

I never knew My Little Town was such a complex place. My plan in this wise is to construct a City Map of Silverton using Adobe Illustrator, and I plan on fully annotating it with block numbers. Stay tuned for this.

Tags: Address Nerd, Silverton Oregon, Silverton Address Grid, Silverton City Code

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[info_design, street_blades] Vancouver Flirts With Helvetica

1132. We were up in VanWA today for a few minutes doing our last apres-Con bit–ferrying a dear friend home to his humble hovel out near NE Burton Rd and NE 98th Avenue, and I was, as is my wont, eyeing the street signs as we went.

Now, I've always liked the street blades in greater VanWA. Big, clear, easy to read, and affixed with the City logo on the left end (the City of Vancouver's logo is one of the best local logos we have going, too–but that's another story, which we still might touch on along the way here, but let's move on the the nub of our gist here).

I noticed something different about the type out near NE 95th Ave, something about the the lower curves of the numeric glyphs. the curled up tails, rather than the 'hanging' tails I expected to see.

Here, for illumination, is an angle on NE 96th Ave at Burton Road:

Like I said, clear, communicative, delivers information in adverse photographic conditions. There's something unexpectedly different about the type that the numerals are in. See it yet?

If not, here's a better angle, courtesy of The Wife™. look close.

See the difference yet? If not, heres an illustration. On the left, the number 96 in the free Blue Highway font, on the right, the font I think the above sign is actually in....

Left, above: the numbers we expect to see; right, above: the numbers we saw.

And I think that font is Helvetica. The letterforms for "Burton" seem to have a standard highway-font look, though, but the numerals–that's Helvetica, or a derivative font that's so close to Helvetica in style that it makes little difference.

Curious, no? In my career as a bladespotter I've seen many signs with many typefaces, but I've never seen one that so clearly looks like Helvetica.

Now, as far as the Vancouver logo goes, I really enjoy it. It's not always a good idea to try and "cram" more than one approach into a logo form, but the idea of using a log fort with a blockhouse turret pretty much gives itself to forming the letter V, and references Vancouver's unique history as well.

I can't really say much more about VanWA's logo except to say that it's pretty cool beans.

Technorati Tags: street blades,Street Blade Gallery,Vancouver WA,info design,information design,typoography,logo design

[info_design] The Signs of Carthage, Missouri

1112. Starting the ball rolling in our new catgory of Street Blade Gallery is long time friend of TZKT, Stan, expat Milwaukiean and still proprietor of the quirky and readable Dinglemunch.

Latterly, after wedding the lovely Nicole, he relocated to Carthage, Missouri, which is along old historic Route 66 near the intersection of Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Carthage is a town of about 13,000, and is notable because it is the county seat of Jasper County, Missouri – whose largest town is, infact, the nearby, larger, and somewhat more well-known Joplin (this is like our own Coos County, where the largest city – Coos Bay – is in fact also not the county seat, but nearby and smaller Coquille is).

Carthage has its county courhouse sited in a centrally-located Courthouse Square block, outward from which the town presumably grew. As preservation-minded towns are wont to do, a historic district has been organized around this area of the central city, with some distinctive street blades:

This is the corner of South Main Street and East 2nd Street in Carthage. Note here the addition of ornamentation which leaves us with an impression of an 'Old-fashioned' feel. Notable also is the leaving off of the street type – there is no abbreviation for "street" here. The "Civil War Museum" sign is a telling reference to the area's history, for it was here in 1861 that the first actual battle of the American Civil War occurred.

Lets get a little closer here. Here's a sign for South Main:

And here's a sign for West 3rd:

Another point worth mentioning is the logo for the Courthouse Square historic district, which is a really smart little production. Drawing on what we'd presume to be a reference to local architecture it accomplishes a feeling of history with a window frame and serifed type. It doesn't have to conquer the world, it just has to represent locally, and by that, it works well.

Notable also is the subtle-but-destinct rectangular outline that can be seen around the logo and the street name letterforms. We'd guess that these signs are made of cast metal, featuring a mold for the outer parts of the sign with the middle part made of composable sorts – not unlike the way printers composed type in the days before the Linotype. Line the sorts up in a frame, snap the frame in, assemble the mold, and pur your molten material in; remove, cool and paint as appropriate.

As charming as the signs in downtown Carthage is, is as prosaic as the signs in the rest of the town seem to be. Here, according to Stan, is a sign a the corner of Morgan Heights Road and Country Club Road in Carthage:

There is some sardonic humor, I think, in something being called "Heights" in an area that, to this West Coaster's perhaps uninformed view, is known for its flatness.

And here's one for the intersection of S. Chapel Rd and County Hwy HH, which a Google Maps investigation shows as just beyond the southwestern outskirts (and do note the rainbow):

Nothing special or fancy; it doesn't look like someone took any more than basic care with getting the letterforms more-or-less straight on the Morgan Heights sign (as well as leaving out the street-type (Road in that case). This is just your basic working-class street sign doin' its job.

Got a couple more interesting photos courtesy of Stan, but I'll post those in a future entry.

Got interesting street blades? Heck, got ordinary ones? We're building a gallery of street signs ("blades") from all over the country. I'd like to show them off! Send your pictures hence for full credit and link love.

Technorati Tags: Street signs,street blades,sign design,information design,info design,Carthage MO

[pdx, Address_Nerd] Quietly Quirky Portland Street Signs

1066 and all that. One of the things I love about Portland is the street signs (I've never made a secret of this, of course). Portland's street grid has certain quirks that have, as a map addict and all-round Address Nerd, endeared me for life.

One is a practice to name some streets without a "Street Type". Herewith, an example:

The street blade isn't incomplete or incorrect. Historically, this street was never called "Reedway Street", despite it being an east-west traffic way (by Portland definition, a named "street"). Whoever named it probably called it "Reed Way", which concatenated over time into a single word, proably echoing "Broadway" and the similarly named "Wardway" (which is the little road that snakes down to the light at NW Nicolai Street and Saint Helens Road, in case anyone's ever wondererd, and was presumably named for the old Ward warehouse which is now Montgomery Park. Reedway, we presume, was either named in honor of Simeon Reed or the unique college that bears his name, which is close to hand).

Latterly, as these signs age, they have been replaced with more conforming signs: SW and NW Broadway are not yet signed "Broadway Av", but N and NE Broadway are increasingly being badged as "Broadway St", as is SE Reedway (and presumably NW Wardway, though we haven't been over there in a while to see.

Needless to say, we like this not. We need to keep Portland quirky.

Next exhibit:

This picture shows something I love to find–this sign, which can be found at the corner of SE 97th Ave and Harold St (how about that? I man, what are the odds?) shows signs made in the Portland style but the format does not conform. The blade on 97th should read SE 97th AV, not SE 97TH AVE (the unsuperscripted ordinal just kind of jumps out at you, and the street type should be AV not AVE) and the Harold blades street type (ST) should be much, much smaller than it is.

As information design, Portland street blades are spare but very efficient and above all, uniform. Something like this is a happy find–it's a little like finding that postage stamp with the upside-down biplane that was so famous

Technorati Tags: PDX Streets,PDX Street Signs,street blades,urban sign design,information design