Street Numbers
Every now and then while walking the streets of Chicago, you'll notice a house or
apartment building with two addresses. One usually looks like it came with the building, the other looks very after-the-fact. You can tell that 410 and 1539 are original and 2145 and 4028 were added later. But why?
That's because in 1909 the City Council authorized a uniform numbering system which
covered every street within the city limits. As Chicago grew and annexed surrounding communities, numbers were assigned as needed. There was no continuity, which made things quite messy. The original plot plan of the village of Chicago was mapped with a very orderly street grid which didn't veer from its 90 degree, right-angled framework as the city expanded. It was time for the numbers to match the rigid plan. State and Madison Streets in the heart of the business district were designated as the starting point. Every address north and south of Madison would begin with the number 1, and everything east and west of State Street would do the same. Numbers would increase north, south, east and west from that intersection. So, if your house had been built before 1909, it was very likely you were going to get a new number. Oh, and those new numbers had better be at least 3 inches high, or else you'd be fined.
Of course this also meant that you now had to include the designation North, South, East
and West on all your correspondence, or at least an N., S., E., or W. Streets would also change from 100 to 200, 300, 400 and so on, each 1/8th of a mile - so that by the time you reached 800, you'd know how far you had traveled. For instance, Chicago Avenue sits at 800 north and North Avenue at 1600 north, one mile apart. And since the numeral designation runs the entire length and breadth of the street, finding an address became, and remains, relatively easy. 820 North is found on any street, just north of Chicago Avenue, from the shores of Lake Michigan to the city's border with suburban Oak Park. The formula works anywhere in the entire city. There are a few diagonal streets that slice through the grid which screws things up a bit, but overall it's pretty easy to get around, even for visitors.
You can get an idea of this orderly system by checking out this relatively simplified version
of a grid-numbered-and-named map here.
Posted by designslinger at 2/18/2010 1:45 AM 
Categories: Cities, Urban Planning
Tags: Chicago street grid numbering systems
Categories: Cities, Urban Planning
Tags: Chicago street grid numbering systems
Wow! Excellent history lesson. It's so weird that they didn't implement this organized strategy following the fire of 1871 when city planners laid out the city on a Jeffersonian grid. It took them 38 years following the Great Fire to get the numbering system organized efficiently. Crazy!
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It is weird isn't it. How, or why, they let this one slip by is kinda crazy.
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