History
Washington's systemic streets
Visitors and residents of Washington, DC know, to one degree or another, about the city's street naming conventions. Most tourists know that we have lettered and numbered streets. And to some degree, they know there is a system, but it doesn't stop them asking us directions. But most out-of-towners and even many residents don't understand the full ingenuity of the District's naming system.
Washington is partially a planned city. The area north of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers and south of Florida Avenue (originally Boundary Street) is known as the L'Enfant City. This area of Washington was the original city of Washington, laid out by Pierre L'Enfant and Andrew Ellicott. It is comprised of a rectilinear grid with a set of transverse diagonal avenues superimposed. Avenues frequently intersect in circles or squares, and the diagonals create many triangular or bow tie-shaped parks.
Washington is the seat of government of a nation. Believing that the structure of the government should inform the structure of the city, L'Enfant centered the nascent city on the Capitol, home of the Legislative (and at the time, the Judicial) branch of the government, the one the framers held in highest esteem. From this great building radiate the axes of Washington. North and South Capitol Streets form the north-south axis; East Capitol Street and the National Mall form the east-west axis. These axes divide the quadrants.
The axes also provide the basis for the naming and numbering systems. Lettered streets increase alphabetically as they increase in distance both north and south of the Mall and East Capitol Street. Numbered streets increase in number as they increase in distance both east and west of North and South Capitol Streets.
Many street names intersect in multiple quadrants. G Street intersects Sixth Street in all four quadrants, and each of these intersections is separated by over a mile. Western, Eastern, and Southern Avenues form in many places the land boundaries of the District.
North of Georgetown and Boundary Street (Florida Avenue), the area formerly known as Washington County, DC began to develop. For the most part, developers extended the grid as the most efficient way expand the growing city. Some areas, notably Petworth, recreated the principles of the L'Enfant plan, with avenues and circles intersecting the grid. In other places, geography made a rectilinear grid impractical.
As the city expanded, so did the system of naming streets. In the L'Enfant city, the highest lettered street was W Street (running between Ninth and Fifteenth Streets NW). Unlike numbers, the alphabet is not infinitely expandable. In order to continue to have an alphabetical progression of streets, the alphabet starts over. Only "streets" are subject to the convention. Avenues, roads, drives, and other minor streets do not conform to the alphabetical progression. "Places," on the other hand, usually appear one block north of the correspondingly lettered street and often share the same first letter.
After the first alphabet runs out of letters, street names restart alphabetically with two-syllable names. "Adams Street" follows "W Street." Once the second alphabet is exhausted, the system repeats with words of three syllables. "Webster Street" is followed by the third alphabet's "Allison Street." However, the Fourth Alphabet does not use words of four syllables. Instead, the Fourth Alphabet, only present in the Northwest and largest quadrant, uses the names of plants in increasing alphabetical order. Thus "Aspen" follows "Whittier."
Map shows streets based on number of syllables (numbers excluded)
Typically, each of the other alphabets uses the same letters used by the First Alphabet (A-W, skipping J). However, there are some exceptions. The Second Alphabet has Yuma Street, there's a Jefferson Street in the Third Alphabet, and Xenia Street appears in Southeast. East-west streets in the District are often discontinuous due to obstructions. Sometimes the street continues with the same name on the other side, and sometimes it changes to a different name. Shepherd Street NW, for instance, is split by Piney Branch Park between Fourteenth and Sixteenth Streets, but keeps the same name on both sides. However, on the other side of Rock Creek Park, in Upper Northwest, the two-syllable "S" street name is Sedgwick. Still, a look at the first letter of streets in the District easily shows the strata of the alphabets.
Map shows all streets starting with letters C, D, E, F, or G (numbers excluded)
The highest numbered street in the District is 63rd Street in the Capitol Heights section of Northeast. Southeast's nearby 58th Street is that quadrant's highest numbered street. In Northwest the ridges and valleys of the Potomac Valley cause numbered streets (and the grid) to give up the ghost at 52nd Street. And tiny Southwest sees its highest number with 23rd Street south of the Lincoln Memorial.
Map showing numbered streets in the District
Of course, without its state-named avenues, Washington would have a far less complex street system. But the avenues don't only add complexity, they also close the streetscape, provide vistas to monumental buildings, and create squares, plazas, and parks throughout the city. These famous streets are important streets in the city, but they don't conform to the system, and as a result are more difficult to find.
Except for California Street and Ohio Drive, all the states have avenues named after them. The shortest of the avenues is Indiana Avenue, found near Judiciary Square and the Archives. It stretches less than half a mile, exclusively in Northwest. While no state-named avenue passes through all four quadrants, the longest, Massachusetts Avenue, passes through three. It stretches from border to border across the District, although it lacks a bridge over the Anacostia, and continues northward into Montgomery County, Maryland.
Map shows each of the state-named roadways in Washington
Crossposted at Track Twenty-Nine.
 | Matt Johnson has lived in the Washington region since mid-2007. He has a Master's degree in Community Planning from the University of Maryland and a BS in Public Policy from Georgia Tech. He has worked in the planning field since 2006 and lives in Greenbelt, where he serves on the city's Advisory Planning Board.    |
Comments
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I'd add that some areas, like Le Droit Park, specifically used a different grid or pattern, as a way of distancing them from the city. The Permanent Highway Plan of 1897? that gave us Petworth and Northwest did away with a lot of those shenanigans, but approved the shape of Palisades, for example.
by цarьchitect on Aug 7, 2009 12:03 pm • link • report
I myself wonder why Klingle Street becomes Klingle Road for the (controversial) segment in Woodley Park.
by ah on Aug 7, 2009 12:25 pm • link • report
Nice job.
by William on Aug 7, 2009 12:33 pm • link • report
Well done, Matt. Great to see it all in map/viz form.
by Steve Davis on Aug 7, 2009 12:49 pm • link • report
by Paz on Aug 7, 2009 12:55 pm • link • report
by sarahlucy on Aug 7, 2009 12:57 pm • link • report
by Woodsider on Aug 7, 2009 1:01 pm • link • report
East-West streets are numbers, with Arlington Blvd. (Rte 50), serving as the midpoint. So 1st Street North is one block north of 50 and 1st St. S. is one block south, etc.
Sometimes the numbers are repeated thus: 9th St. 9th Place, 9th Road. Also, sometimes several streets in a row start with the same letter--Madison, Montana, Manchester--before moving on to the next letter, in this case, Nottingham.
Much of Arlington is not a perpendicular grid, and so some streets change names as they wind around and many are also discontinuous.
There are also significant exceptions all over the place, but they are generally not called "Streets:" Washington and Wilson and Clarendon Boulevards, Columbia Pike, Lee Highway, George Mason Drive and Glebe Road being prime examples.
I find this makes it both hard and easy to find things. It's often easy to get relatively close to where you are going, but sometimes it's hard to get there exactly.
by Steve O on Aug 7, 2009 1:22 pm • link • report
by IMGoph on Aug 7, 2009 1:22 pm • link • report
What I have heard (and it's supported by Wikipedia) is that the diamond was situated to include Alexandria within its original borders.
by Steve O on Aug 7, 2009 1:30 pm • link • report
These guys confuse the hell out of me, cuz you can't trust passing a block without checking its name. You can't go, I need to go from P to T, so that should be 4 blocks, ignoring the silly diagonals.
by Jasper on Aug 7, 2009 1:30 pm • link • report
by David C on Aug 7, 2009 1:36 pm • link • report
by Joey on Aug 7, 2009 1:47 pm • link • report
by Tsar Bomba on Aug 7, 2009 1:49 pm • link • report
I don't think Columbia Road is named after the District of Columbia. Most of the "roads" in DC pre-date the urbanization of the District.
However, I've found no conclusive evidence to say that it is or isn't named for the District.
It is *not* shown on my state-named roadways map.
by Matt Johnson on Aug 7, 2009 1:51 pm • link • report
@David C: Good question about Columbia Rd.
Why no avenues for Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, US Virgin Islands?
Isn't there something about the 13 colonies' streets that makes them more central to the plan? Mass Ave, Conn Ave, NY Ave, and Rhode Island Ave seem to be major axes in the Northern quadrants. Not sure how Wisconsin (in NW) and Minnesota (in SE) got so prominent. Places like New Mexico Ave. and Hawaii Ave were tacked on later just as the states themselves were.
I wonder how much of the plan is still present in Arlington's street names? I used to live on Kenmore, between Jackson and Lincoln. All the streets were alphabetical. They have numbered streets, but not really a grid.
by Ward 1 Guy on Aug 7, 2009 1:53 pm • link • report
by JB on Aug 7, 2009 1:59 pm • link • report
Now, how Delaware got such slim pickings I don't know.
As for Columbia Road, presumably it derives from the same name-Columbus-as the District itself.
by ah on Aug 7, 2009 2:08 pm • link • report
It also shows that what's now Ohio Drive used to be called Riverside Drive. According to Wikipedia, an Ohio Avenue used to exist where Federal Triangle currently is. Makes me wonder if something similar happened to a California Avenue.
And of course, what had been Naylor Street in SE is now known as MLK, thereby somewhat violating the street-naming convention.
by Fritz on Aug 7, 2009 2:19 pm • link • report
by цarьchitect on Aug 7, 2009 2:24 pm • link • report
For example, the only two other states that have streets in the L'Enfant City are Kentucky, Tennessee, and Vermont. Vermont was admitted in 1791 as the 14th state, Kentucky was admitted in 1792 as the 15th state and Tennessee in 1796 as the 16th. It would make sense that L'Enfant or Ellicott could update L'Enfant's plan by the time the city was founded in 1800 to reflect the new states.
Since the original 13 were the widest avenues in the original city, it makes sense that a lot of development was along extensions of them north of Boundary Street (Florida Avenue).
It's pretty much a fluke of history that Delaware was chopped up by building Union Station and by the 1950's/60's "urban renewal" of Southwest. Maryland was brutalized in Southwest by both the railroad and then later the "urban renewal." You can see it was extended out to the marshes of the Anacostia on the northeastern end. Virginia in Southeast is now the Southest Freeway.
It should also be noted that at different times in the last 200 years, the different sections of the city have had different relationships to each other in terms of social status, vibrance, and commerce than they do today. Our experience with the last 10 years has shown how dramatically the atmosphere of a neighborhood and an entire city can change. While nothing as dramatic as the Metro happened before (although maybe the urban renewal and L'Enfant Plaza could be argued to be on the same scale) it stands to reason that a lot of change happened that is lost to history or doesn't make sense to us because we are without context today. I doubt that someone 100 years from now will fully understand the dramatic social and economic changes that the District and region underwent since 2000 or so.
by Cavan on Aug 7, 2009 2:25 pm • link • report
MacArthur used to be Conduit Road (I think b/c of the water pipelines to the reservoir).
Naylor Street is now MLK.
by Fritz on Aug 7, 2009 2:26 pm • link • report
Much of what used to be Delaware Avenue is now railroad tracks traveling northeast from Union Station. Before the construction of Union Station, the mail train station was on the mall.
The L'Enfant plan does not include what is now the Federal Triangle, the construction of which obliterated some state avenues such as Ohio Avenue.
Washington Avenue, SW did not exist until the late 1980s. Before that it called Canal Street.
by Vadranor on Aug 7, 2009 2:27 pm • link • report
Anacostia is now overwhelmingly black, whereas Georgetown is now overwhelmingly white. Turn back the clock some 80 years, and those roles are reversed. The old Chinese, Italian, Irish, Greek and German parts of DC have long since faded into history (other than what's left of Chinatown and the Italian Church next to 395). What we call gentrification has been occurring since the city's founding. It's a normal part of any city's life.
by Fritz on Aug 7, 2009 2:30 pm • link • report
by JB on Aug 7, 2009 2:47 pm • link • report
i'll take my e-bragadoccio in monthly installments, thank you.
by IMGoph on Aug 7, 2009 2:49 pm • link • report
by IMGoph on Aug 7, 2009 2:52 pm • link • report
I know MLK was named Nichols Road before they renamed it. Don't know about the other two JB.
by alex on Aug 7, 2009 2:54 pm • link • report
I think Arizona Avenue, or part of it, used to be a section of Chain Bridge Road.
Also, my understanding is that none of the street names were planned by L'Enfant. I believe the naming system came after he was transitioned out of the role of city planner.
Re: Arlington, I attended a meeting a few months ago in which the naming system was discussed. When Arlington sought to have the name "Arlington" apply throughout the county as a post office name (replacing or layering over the older village/town names, such as "Balls Town" and Rosslyn), they needed a convention to avoid duplicative names from town to town. A bunch of proposals were discussed, one of which would have attempted to extend the Washington naming system over into Arlington, as a SW quadrant. Correspondence from antiquity was read, in which the Arlington road planner at the time was discussing with his DC counterpart the value of using such a system. The DC planner discouraged it, because he thought (a) it would be very difficult to apply a grid naming/numbering system to curvilinear streets (though they ultimately found a hybrid way of doing it), and (b) the streets would start in the 20s and 30s, wasting the lower numbers.
@Matt, I think your first map improperly expands the DC boundaries near Alexandria. Part of the modern (and possibly historical) grid of Alexandria was actually outside of the District, I believe.
by Joey on Aug 7, 2009 2:56 pm • link • report
by ah on Aug 7, 2009 2:57 pm • link • report
by ah on Aug 7, 2009 2:59 pm • link • report
The map is actually showing the District of Columbia, Arlington County, and all of Alexandria City. I just strategically covered most of Alexandria City with the legend.
Part of Alexandria's street grid was indeed outside of the District of Columbia.
by Matt Johnson on Aug 7, 2009 3:02 pm • link • report
For example, Delaware is now considered a very minor street. But that's becuase it was broken up by Union Station and the late 1950's urban renewal project. However, I'm sure in the early years of the city, it was very important since it went from the waterfront (which was where all goods came into town, shipping was the primary and most cost-effective way to move goods) to the Capitol. Maryland would have been more prominent at the time for similar reasons.
What we think of as important streets in our time has more to do with whether or not they were extended to the Beltway and/or what sections of the city they connect. Our idea of an important street has more to do with the distribution of centers of place and amenities througout the city in our present day than anything that Mr. L'Enfant planned.
by Cavan on Aug 7, 2009 3:03 pm • link • report
by Matvey on Aug 7, 2009 3:05 pm • link • report
by dan reed on Aug 7, 2009 3:50 pm • link • report
by Gavin Baker on Aug 7, 2009 3:56 pm • link • report
I believe Columbia Road was named for GWU's predecessor - Columbia College - which was located near Meridian Hill Park.
by Fritz on Aug 7, 2009 4:01 pm • link • report
by Michael Perkins on Aug 7, 2009 5:17 pm • link • report
There *is* a rough system for the State Avenues for the original 13 states, except for Georgia, which I gather was moved. Take a look - South Carolina is the southernmost, New Hampshire the northernmost. In between, they are in order if you consider the parallel avenues. Of course this only works so well, since the avenues have different headings. But the pattern is clear.
Since the White House and the Capitol were certainly part of the original plan, there clearly were more prominent avenues from the beginning. So I would imagine that Pennsylvania and New York Avenues (among others) have been thought of as prominent for 200 years. Whether that is a simple result of the north-south pattern I mention above, or the fact that PA and NY were two of the more powerful states at the time, I don't know. Maybe the happy coincidence shows the political wisdom of Ellicott?
Once again, very good post, Matt. I hate to be picky, but I think a better title would be "Washington's Systematic Streets."
by DavidDuck on Aug 7, 2009 10:40 pm • link • report
by Tyler on Aug 7, 2009 10:53 pm • link • report
by kenf on Aug 7, 2009 11:33 pm • link • report
John Jay was a political enemy of L'Enfant. Thus no J street.
by MPC on Aug 8, 2009 12:40 am • link • report
by AJ Pasl on Aug 8, 2009 1:45 am • link • report
by GWalum on Aug 8, 2009 2:22 am • link • report
by IMGoph on Aug 8, 2009 10:04 am • link • report
by Paul on Aug 8, 2009 10:16 am • link • report
by Paul on Aug 8, 2009 10:26 am • link • report
by Anderkoo on Aug 8, 2009 1:24 pm • link • report
by Paul on Aug 8, 2009 1:32 pm • link • report
I don't know when or why, but at some point Georgia Avenue was moved to its current location from it's original location, Potomac Avenue. I have seen (but of course can't find right now) very old maps of DC that show what is now Potomac Av listed as Georgia Av, which makes sense, it was paced near the avenues for the other southern colonies at the time the district was created.
by Dave Murphy on Aug 8, 2009 4:23 pm • link • report
Klingle Road is "Road" all the way from Woodley Park to its terminus at the Park Road/Walbridge Place intersection. I know of no "Klingle Street".
Re the streets in this area named after universities: don't overlook Brown.
by Jack McKay on Aug 8, 2009 7:05 pm • link • report
by ah on Aug 8, 2009 11:24 pm • link • report
Also, this talk about the street alphabets reminds me of a poem about Ingleside Terrace that was reprinted in Mara Cherkasky's entertaining book about the history of Mount Pleasant. You can find the whole thing in Google Books by searching on its first line, "Ingleside Terrace is shaped like a bow."
by tdcjames on Aug 9, 2009 9:40 am • link • report
by thm on Aug 9, 2009 10:28 am • link • report
You are referring to the "Alphabet Sets" map. On that map, I made it by doing the following:
1. Excluding Avenues, Places, Roads, Circles, etc.
2. Excluding numbered streets.
3. Of the remaining streets, classifying all plant-named streets as Fourth Alphabet.
4. Of the remaining streets, dividing them into First-Third based on their syllables.
This means that a three syllable street name, no matter where in the city it's located, is colored as if it's in the third alphabet.
Take, for instance, Warder Street. With two syllables, it fits in the second alphabet, which is also where you'd find it. But it doesn't run east-west. It runs north-south from Harvard Street to Rock Creek Church Road, where it becomes 7th Street.
There are a few streets that do not meet the naming convention. The map was made to show how many do meet the convention. However the "Sets" map doesn't show the progression alphabetically. For that reason I created the "Strata" map. You can see that sometimes streets are out of alphabetical order, as well.
by Matt Johnson on Aug 9, 2009 10:55 am • link • report
Someone earlier said that they thought that Arizona Avenue followed the old Chain Bridge Road. That's incorrect to my knowledge. Where today's Loughboro Road (or if you're really old school, Loughborough Road), splits off Nebraska Avenue, the old Chain Bridge Road remains, past the ruins of Peggy Cooper Cafritz's house, past Battery Kemble and the old slave cemetery. Chain Bridge Road follows the original course of the old "Ridge Road" (following the ridge line down from Tenleytown (or Tenallytown). Generally, it's really narrow, especially between MacArthur Boulevard and the former right-of-way for the No. 20/Glen Echo trolley tracks. After that it disappears in the trees above Canal Road, where it once connected to.
by mgrass on Aug 9, 2009 10:56 am • link • report
This is a spectacularly helpful amount of information.
by Wondermachine on Aug 9, 2009 11:24 am • link • report
Most of LeDroit Park's streets were named after the trees that were planted along them, e.g. Maple (now T), Spruce (now U), Elm (still there), Oak (now Oakdale), Larch (now 5th)
If anyone looking for old maps (and old street names), I would recommend the Library of Congress's digitized map collection, especially, the detailed Boschke map of the entire District charted in the 1850.
by Monumentality on Aug 9, 2009 1:20 pm • link • report
Nice attempt at trolling ;)
by Phil on Aug 10, 2009 1:39 pm • link • report
Why is there a 9 1/2 street, where do the half streets come into the picture at
Why do the numbered streets start at the capitol and go out rather than start at the borders of the original city and go in
What was the purpose of the quadrants instead of just have a complete numbered grid from the Anacostia River to the Potomac River
Since street names have been changed many times since 1790 why haven't the changed many of the streets to make them logical.
Why are there broken streets that start at one point end pick up miles later such as New Hampshire Ave, Central Ave, Buchanan ST, North Capitol ST, Southern & Eastern Ave, Brentwood Rd & Chillium Place did they ever go there full distances unblocked.
Why do we have streets that are only one block why not just bulldoze them and set up a proper grid.
by kk on Aug 10, 2009 3:34 pm • link • report
I'll answer some of your questions, the others, I'll leave to anyone who knows.
1. Half Streets: I assume half streets were added to the grid later, or were placed where they because it was thought that the city should keep a fairly constant interval. It may be a combination of both.
For instance, let's assume that we already have a Ninth Street and a Tenth Street. We decide to add a parallel street in between. What do we do?
Well, we could follow one DC convention and name the street Ninth Place. Or we could do what other cities have done, (Atlanta has 17th 1/2) and use half numbers. It's perfectly clear where the street belongs.
2. Streets Centered on the Capitol: Having an origin (that is, the center of a cartesian grid) makes the city relative to one point. In this case, all addresses are based on the Legislative Branch, the part of the government that the framers believed the most important. That's why it's structure is set forth in Article I of the Constitution.
Starting at a center point also makes the city infinitely expandable. If we had started at, say, where East Capitol Street crosses the Anacostia, the numbers couldn't expand eastward with the city. Or if they did, suddenly the symbolic center of the city would be in the middle of a river. In a national capital, it is important to have a symbolic center.
Similarly, starting at the edges of the city and numbering inward, would mean that we would have numbers decreased as one approached Georgetown from the west, increased as one continued toward the Capitol, decreased again as one headed toward RFK, and then increased again as one moved toward Capitol Heights. That certainly sounds confusing.
3. Anacostia-Potomac Numbering: This is the strategy used for Avenue numbering in New York and for sreet numbering in Philadelphia. But the rivers aren't north-south, they slope away from each other. Where would the numbering start?
If First Street were located at the north-south line where the Anacostia crosses the District Line, (about 42nd Street NE today), from the perspective of East Capitol Street, the grid would start at 20th Street. On the opposite bank of the Anacostia, perhaps we would have First Street of the opposite quadrant, or perhaps we wouldn't have a system.
It bears reiterating, that the addressing system has a symbolic heart, the Capitol.
4. Broken Streets: I find this system unique and interesting. And while it's confusing, I wouldn't have it any other way.
Take numbered streets, for instance. Address numbers change whether the numbered street in question exists at that point or not. Consider Shepherd Street NW near Georgia Avenue. Because Georgia Avenue meanders a bit (it follows a pre-urban course), and because Kansas Avenue is nearby, Ninth and Tenth Streets don't cross Shepherd. As a result, address numbers jump to approximate the street grid.
Besides, when the numbered street starts again, it's on the same axis, why give it a new number? New York's numbered streets which are interrupted by Central Park don't have different numbers on either side. They pretend the street continues through.
As for other streets, it's no different. Vermont Avenue is split by McPherson Square (by today's standards). But without the channelization of the square for automobiles, the "street" (the public space) goes right through.
Similarly, Pennsylvania Avenue is split by the White House and the Capitol into three sections. But the address numbers don't change, even though the axis is realigned slightly at each point.
In the case of the axes, North Capitol Street is one of the streets that divides the quadrants. It has to continue; it's an axis. Why should avenues or even minor streets be any exception?
5. Bulldozing Streets: I assume you mean that we should remove short streets from the grid merely in an effort to create more order.
But streets connect properties. And they're often there for historical reasons. Sometimes geography (topography) prevent feasible connections.
If you mean instead, tearing down the obstacles at the ends of the street so that it could be extended, that also requires demolishing the city.
While creating order from chaos is certainly a laudable goal, it's not always the best idea. Trinidad and Georgetown both violate the order imposed on the wilderness by L'Enfant and Ellicott. That doesn't mean we should tear them down just to create a better grid.
We've done that once already. In the 1950s, the entire Waterfront Southwest district was cleared of buildings, streets, parks, churches, trees, and everything else. The District started again, and as a result, we have a Modernist Urban Utopia right south of the Mall, but it does not have the vibrancy or historical connection that the Waterfront had.
It's true that Baron Haussmann created modern Paris (and today's Washington) by driving boulevards across the historic center, but Haussmann's plan was far different than the proposals of Robert Moses to ramrod freeways through New York or Le Corbuier's Plan Voisin for Paris.
No, I find nothing improper about our grid, even if -- indeed, perhaps because -- it is not absolute.
I'm afraid I can't answer your other questions.
by Matt Johnson on Aug 10, 2009 4:17 pm • link • report
There was briefly above Georgetown/Burleith.
>Why is there a 9 1/2 street, where do the half streets >come into the picture at
Half streets are generally alleys or minor (post-L'Enfant)named as streets-9 1/2 is an alley.
>Since street names have been changed many times since 1790 >why haven't the changed many of the streets to make them >logical.
They have been.
>Why are there broken streets that start at one point end >pick up miles later such as New Hampshire Ave, Central >Ave, Buchanan ST, North Capitol ST, Southern & Eastern >Ave, Brentwood Rd & Chillium Place did they ever go there >full distances unblocked.
No. It would have cost lots of money.
>Why do we have streets that are only one block why not >just bulldoze them and set up a proper grid.
It would cost lots of money.
by Matthew on Aug 16, 2009 8:51 pm • link • report
Is there an article on the streets of Alexandria County DC(Present day Arlington)? I know they have a naming convention as well.
by Matt Glazewski on Nov 25, 2009 9:57 am • link • report
by Charles on Dec 10, 2009 2:02 pm • link • report
by matt on Dec 11, 2009 4:46 pm • link • report
Florida and Maryland Avenues NE
Bladensburg and Benning Roads NE
H and 15th Streets NE
by Eric F. on Dec 11, 2009 4:48 pm • link • report
by Froggie on Dec 11, 2009 7:43 pm • link • report
by a on Dec 11, 2009 9:57 pm • link • report
1/2 streets - is it true that Mt. Pleasant St was once 16 1/2 St?
Reno Road - was that an old Indian trail?
What is the reason for the little streets like Powhatan & Quintana & Roxboro Pl in NW? did a developer just build small houses and decide to increase density and added streets in the preexisting grid?
And what seem like alleys but are named things like 'Browns Court' on the Hill or ' Hughes Mews' in Foggy Bottom, have they been named forever?
by LBW on Dec 11, 2009 11:39 pm • link • report
by Neil Flanagan on Dec 12, 2009 2:24 am • link • report
by Laurie Verge on Jan 11, 2010 1:10 pm • link • report
by JE on Feb 12, 2010 1:11 am • link • report
by rozvayers on Apr 16, 2010 1:19 am • link • report
Re California Ave., note this map as linked in this post, which shows a grand California Ave. that apparently never was built (except for the portion from Champlain to 16th, now called Kalorama Rd.).
by Tom on Aug 24, 2010 11:16 am • link • report
I think he should have mentioned the I and J street thing though. At the time, when writing I and J, they looked extremely similar. Therefore, they chose to omit J street so as to not confuse people.
by Steve on Dec 20, 2011 9:09 am • link • report
by Brian on May 21, 2012 6:40 pm • link • report
I have found the discontinuity of New Hampshire Ave to be inconvenient...any reason for it?
by Andy on Aug 29, 2012 6:01 pm • link • report
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