I always loved the "birdtown" section of lakewood. Lark, Thrush, Quail.. I have always thought it was quaint and very unique.

Does anyone know the Story as to why Cleveland went with the numbered street system? If so do you also know why the numbered street system is set up so in some cases there are more than one of a specific numbered street i.e. East 113th and Superior does not connect to East 113th and Union?

America Street

 

....in Dayton's "Old" North Dayton, the old 'european ethnic' neighborhood.  Probably the location of the street makes the name more poignant.

 

 

A few favorite Louisville street names since they are sort of evocative of that city for me:

 

Dumesnil  (you have to be 'from there' to know how to pronounce it right)

 

Magazine

 

Storey Avenue (reminds me of 'Storeyville', but no connection with that city downriver)

 

Ormsby

 

Gaulbert

 

Garvin Place  (just sounds like your in the city for some reason...it is in the heart of town)

 

Barrett

 

Grinstead

 

Shelby and Preston (just sounds "Kentucky" to me)

 

Saint Catherine

 

Poplar Level (used to confuse me...finally found out what this means....a level is like a flatland)

 

...and the ever popular alleys:  Baseball Alley,  Billy Goat Strut Alley, etc.

 

....and the 'street roads'.  7th Street Road and Third Street Road. 

 

"Old Shep"...Old Sheperdsville Road, but locally shortned to Old Shep.

 

In the suburbs there are two that I thought funny.  Eve and Adam.  Only two streets in a subdivision called 'The Garden Of Eden". 

 

 

^^^http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~officer/Clev1906Streets.html.  Beyond this, I don't think the numbered streets are meant to be consistent so that there would be only one E. 113th, etc.  They more represent a position on the grid.

^^^http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~officer/Clev1906Streets.html.  Beyond this, I don't think the numbered streets are meant to be consistent so that there would be only one E. 113th, etc.  They more represent a position on the grid.

 

Thanks! So it looks like when the streets were first numbered they had NE, NW, SE & SW prefixes which makes having more than one street with the same number seem more logical.

I always loved the "birdtown" section of lakewood. Lark, Thrush, Quail.. I have always thought it was quaint and very unique.

 

Yay, a Birdtown shout out!  The neighborhood is actually quite quaint!  But then again, I'm biased because I live there!

 

Dislike:

 

-Any street named after a person that uses the person's entire name....i.e. Theodore M. Berry Way

 

 

You'd hate Adams and Brown Counties, then. They started naming their roads that were say, "Twp. Rd. 497" after people's full names a few years back.

I've always loved the Great Lakes names for the major streets in Toledo:

 

Huron (best urbanity in the city IMO)

Superior

Michigan

Erie

Ontario

 

I'm also a fan of the fancy college names in Harvard Terrace. It's just funny to see that in Toledo:

 

Harvard Boulevard

Princeton Drive

Vassar Drive

Yale Drive

Cornell Drive

Darmouth Drive

Amherst Drive

 

Other than that, I'm a fan of Fassett, Yondola, Galena, Lagrange, Tecumseh, Isherwood, Islington, Rockingham, Batavia, Maumee Avenue, Toronto Avenue, and Detroit Avenue. Anthony Wayne Trail is also an excellent local name for US 25. Usually local highway names are lame, but that one is great.

 

I also think it's cool and confusing that Toledo has two major "Broadway" streets.

 

For the suburbs, I think Perrysburg's Louisiana Avenue is great.

I like the "city" avenues of the Rye Beach neighborhood in the city of Huron:

*Cincinnati, Dayton, Marion, Pittsburgh, Sandusky, Columbus, Mansfield, Canton, Findlay, Fremont, Lima, Bucyrus, Toledo, Cleveland

 

Also, the "Alaska" avenues of west Akron:

* Nome, Seward, Valdez, Juneau, and Yukon

I'm trying to think of my favorite Chicago street names.  OK, here's one:

 

Canalport Avenue.

 

This is maybe not so much the street itself (wich is rather short and I was on only in the past few years), but what it means to me, the visuals...

Canalport Avenue is an exit on the Dan Ryan, the exit after that expressway leaps up out of that long cutting that traverses the South Side, the one that used to be lined with housing projects.  As freeway leaps over the Chicago River you can see the grand panorama of the Loop skyline to the right and the inner city urban skyline of church steeples, loft factories, "A Frame' houses, and water towers, not to mention the black heavy metal of the lift bridges over the river. Canalport Avenue; the inner heart of Chicago.  And, for me, I usually saw this in that golden hour late afternoon/early evening light, the city postively glowing yet shadowy in the setting sun, as we drove into the city after the long drive across Indiana.

 

So Canalport Avenue. A personal verbal shorthand for complex of images and emotions that "the city" holds for me...the thrill, atmosphere,  and energy of urban American, the old parts of the cities of the Midwest.  Deepest and most intense Chicago.

 

The LA area has a lot of great road names,

 

Hollywod, Ventura, Wilshire, Victory, Olympic, and of course Sunset

 

Grand Army of the Republic is Cleveland's best.

The LA area has a lot of great road names,

 

Hollywod, Ventura, Wilshire, Victory, Olympic, and of course Sunset

 

Grand Army of the Republic is Cleveland's best.

 

You can't list those without mentioning Mulholland Drive or Rodeo Drive

I like named streets where there's a known system to the names, like the alpha-ordered streets in DC and Boston.  Subtle navigational hints are always welcome.

Name a short street in LA that is famous.  Fact is most of those are incredibly long streets.  Sunset is about 20 miles long.  So there is tons and tons of stuff on them.  For example 42nd St. in New York is only two miles long.

 

The only long street in the Cincinnati area is Reading, which is about 15 miles long, and somehow has absolutely nothing of note on it. 

 

^

For LA maybe Olvera Street?

 

@@@

 

Letter and Number streets always seem sort of faceless.  But they all take on a certain local signifigance, known only to the locals.  4th Street in Louisville means something quite a bit different than 4th Street in Dayton.

 

 

@@@

 

For Chicago I also like the Loop street names....LaSalle, Wabash, Wells, etc.  I think they were named for politicians of the era, except for Wabash and LaSalle.  They were always a presence in my life as L stops, both the signboards and the conductor calling out the names.

 

Wabash sounds like an odd name for a Chicago street since the city is a fer piece from the Wabash River.  Turns out it has a relation to the early history of the city.  There used to be cattle drives or wagon trains from the Wabash Valley to pioneer Chicago in the early days, so the platters named a street "Wabash" as sort of a tribute or recognition of this.  This is also why there's a Vincennes Avenue or Vincennes Road out on the south side....part of that old trading trail south to the Wabash valley.

 

Other fun Chicago street names are the "western" ones....Western, California, and Sacamento Avenues.  They are all on the west side of the city, too!  Probably the "urban frontier" in the 1840s and 50s (gold rush era). 

 

And the "Island" streets...Blue Island Avenue (in Pilsen, doesnt actually go to Blue Island) and Stoney Island Avenue out on the South Side.

 

Chicago streets with certain ethnic characterizations are Noble Street, which is like Mott Street or Mulberry Street in NYC....inner city ethnic areas for the 2nd Immigration people...in NYC case Jews and Italians, in Chicago the Poles.  I think Nelson Algren name-checks Noble Street in one of his short stories.  Blackhawk Street was like that too..a Bucktown street meaning "rough neighborhood' back in my day.  Chicago's Taylor Street used to be the "Little Italy"...T"aylor Street" meant little Itay.

 

Maxwell Street would be the historic "urban shtetl" street for the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and famous (in Chicago) open air market (for clothes and stuff, not food)...which also had a connection the the cities African American blues scene since the beginnings of the West Side (black) ghetto was in the same area. 

 

So a street name that carries a lot of cultural baggage for native Chicagoans and those in the know about the city.

 

@@@

 

Dayton Streets.  To be charitable there are some neat names here.

 

Dutoit.  I used to pronounce it like Detroit.  But I was corrected by the locals, who prononunce it the proper french way...Do TWAH Street.

 

Keowee.  Just sounds need. 

 

Xenia Avneue.  Such an unusual name.

 

Watervliet.  Locals prononce this Water-a-vleet.

 

..the old Sanborns had some interesting old street names that are now lost.

 

Convenient Alley

 

Zig-Zag (a street named after rolling papers?)

 

Elbow Lane

 

Baal Lane.

 

And the Macs...McDaniel, McReynolds, McClain. 

 

 

 

I just mailed something out to Penile Hill Road in Decherd, Tennessee.

Tchoupitoulas Street - NOLA

Poplar Level Road - Louisville

Intersection of Beaver Road and Big Bone Road - Boone County, KY

Baseline Road (8 Mile west of Detroit)

Telegraph Ave. (Oakland, Calif.) and Telegraph Road (Metro Detroit)

 

I'm cool with numbered streets, but dislike numerical ones, like DC's.

 

 

 

Or the lettered streets in DC. I especially hate K Street -- where many lobbying firms are located. An evil place....

 

Gore Orphanage Road, which you pass out in Lorain County from Cleveland to Oberlin, is easily the most disturbing yet entertaining road name I've seen.

 

 

Gore Orphanage Road, which you pass out in Lorain County from Cleveland to Oberlin, is easily the most disturbing yet entertaining road name I've seen.

Go out there at night sometime, it's a blast!

 

Personally I like most street names in the older neighborhoods. Around me in the OB there is Behrwald, Wichita, Gifford, Ardmore, Bucyrus, and Woburn. Now those are manly, confident names. Those are names that go on battleships!

 

On the other hand, new sprawlburb neighborhoods have THE worst street names. Who really wants to live on Misty Lake Rd? Willow Wood Dr? Pepperwood Ct? Those are flavors of Yankee Candles.

Gore Orphanage Road, which you pass out in Lorain County from Cleveland to Oberlin, is easily the most disturbing yet entertaining road name I've seen.

Go out there at night sometime, it's a blast!

 

Personally I like most street names in the older neighborhoods. Around me in the OB there is Behrwald, Wichita, Gifford, Ardmore, Bucyrus, and Woburn. Now those are manly, confident names. Those are names that go on battleships!

 

On the other hand, new sprawlburb neighborhoods have THE worst street names. Who really wants to live on Misty Lake Rd? Willow Wood Dr? Pepperwood Ct? Those are flavors of Yankee Candles.

 

+1 originaljbw. haha !

James Howard Kunstler once remarked that the names for sprawling suburban streets are usually from what they displaced.

 

Somewhere between Cleveland and Kalamazoo (I think on the Ohio Turnpike) there's a bridge above the freeway named Fangboner road. 

 

 

yeah haha someone mentioned fangboner! I remember passing that years ago and laughing about it, now it is like jogging my memory!

 

Also, I wanted to say that I think "wheeler st." is a great street in Cincinnati because its such a big party street. The name just SOUNDS fun!

A few favorite Louisville street names since they are sort of evocative of that city for me:

 

Dumesnil  (you have to be 'from there' to know how to pronounce it right)

 

Magazine

 

Storey Avenue (reminds me of 'Storeyville', but no connection with that city downriver)

 

Ormsby

 

Gaulbert

 

Garvin Place  (just sounds like your in the city for some reason...it is in the heart of town)

 

Barrett

 

Grinstead

 

Shelby and Preston (just sounds "Kentucky" to me)

 

Saint Catherine

 

Poplar Level (used to confuse me...finally found out what this means....a level is like a flatland)

 

...and the ever popular alleys:  Baseball Alley,  Billy Goat Strut Alley, etc.

 

....and the 'street roads'.  7th Street Road and Third Street Road. 

 

"Old Shep"...Old Sheperdsville Road, but locally shortned to Old Shep.

 

In the suburbs there are two that I thought funny.  Eve and Adam.  Only two streets in a subdivision called 'The Garden Of Eden". 

 

 

 

Jeff,

 

I didn't see you had Poplar Level in yours too.  My understanding was that the Level became Poplar when they lined the road bed with nearby poplar trees.  I think a similar thing was done in the Wet Woods on Preston too, right?

 

The maligned Highland Park area has a special place in my heart for its mostly defunct street names. It was an Indian tribe theme:

 

Huron

Wampum

Wawa

Hiawatha

Mohawk

Saginaw

Nevada

Wabasso

Ottawa

Seneca

Chicopee

Sioux

Dakota