digits, for example 1358 Smith Street.Some other principle ;-))
Is there a 3 Smith Street? Is Smith Street really that long that it has over 1,358 houses in it, or is your numbering system based on some other principle!
the numbers all begin at Main Street. So even if you have a very short street, you can still have high house numbers....
In downtown Lexington we do have numbers below a hundred; they start at a cross-roads of Main St (beyond town limits known as US 11) and Nelson St (beyond town limits it's US 60). So, you can have 10 South Main and 10 North Main and woe betide people like me who have a problem with North/South, East/West :) And I think (though am not certain) that the numbers on Main are, indeed, consecutive, irrespective of how many side streets are being crossed.
But where I live (suburbs, though still within the officcial city limits) things are different. Our street -- Paxton -- is 3 blocks long (it starts at Sunset, has Bowyer Lane T-cross it on my side of it, has McMath cross it -- in both directions -- 2 houses later, then ends at Stonewall). There are two houses between Sunset and Bowyer. Neither of them fronts onto Paxton, so their addresses are, respectively, Sunset and Bowyer. But, they *could have* fronted onto Paxton -- the lots are wide enough... So their "imaginary numbers" -- 2 and 4 -- are reserved for them :) The next house, past Bowyer, also fronts onto Bowyer, so its address is Bowyer. Next house is ours and we front onto Paxton, so our address is Paxton. But. Between us (our neighbour and us) the frontage on Paxton is 3 lots wide, not 2. So, our street *number* is 106... :)
The rationale is this: or neighbour could tear his house down and rebuild is with front to Paxton -- therefore his 102 is reserved for him. Both of us could tear our houses down and rebuild them with a third in between us -- that would be 104. So we're 106... The next neighbour is 108 and then comes Mc Math, and we start counting again but, this time, beginning with *2*: 202, 204 etc. With every cross-street, you start counting again but your initial number is one higher than before. There are 9 houses along my side of Paxton. For some of them, the address isn't even Paxton. All the same, the last house on that street is 208 Paxton...
It threw my Mother for a loop, when she first came to visit; from the number, she expected the street to be miles long... :) She arrived here late at night and disoriented after the lon flight and then the drive from the airport, but the next morning, she went out, looked to the right, looked to the left... "What a pretty village this is" she said "but where's the rest of the street?"
I must say though that, when I go back ot Warsaw now, I have the same problem in reverse -- the numbers going consecutively, on and on, irrespective of crossed streets leave me confused...
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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