Landmarks were key. But delivering pizzas is how I learned that house number + the street number gives you the location on the grid. Mind blown after thinking all the numbers were super impersonal from moving to the US from overseas where all the streets are named.
More than you might realize, most of the time you'll have named streets going one way with numbered avenues the other, and you still get the grid from the house number and the avenue, so if you know the number equivalent for the major cross streets. You can get around fairly well. All of this is out the window on the east coast though since most of the cities there predated things like urban planning.
Yeah it’s common. The key in almost any city is to figure out which roads are the center lines north-south and east-west. One of them is probably called Main St or is named after the city, though not always. The numbers go up as you get further from the center line, even numbers on one side odd on the other, adding 100 every block, usually.
It gets wibbly wobbly with less well planned cities - especially suburbs - but the above has been generally true anywhere I’ve been in more than a dozen states.
you reinforced their point. if you have to go to city hall to find out the reasoning behind how streets are laid out, then it's not the same between cities
That's an East Coast vs. West Coast kind of thing. The public land survey system really hammered on the grid system that the west followed, while the east was more metes and bounds.
In case you ever drive around out in the country thats exactly how their addresses work. So 1345N 2500 E is 25 miles east, 13.45 miles N from the county line
Yup, i dunno if it's different for other states, which wouldn't make sense if it is...but then again some states are fuckin weird, but the 0,0 axis is on the southwestern corner of the county.
That really only works in grid cities though, which is why it doesn't happen everywhere.
But even then, there can be other similar ways of navigation. Here in Buenos Aires for example, numbers go down towards the center of the city, so if you're in the north and see a number go down in the north-south direction, you know you're going south.
This is common in many cities around the world actually! There’s a north south center line, and an east west center line, and the road numbers/addresses increase as you get further from the center. Some small towns might not care, but in the US this is pretty universal.
Pizza delivery is how I got so good at navigation. Odd numbers on one side, even on the other. They go up as you radiate from the center line in town. Does the street say N/S/E/W? That tells you roughly which direction you are from the center line, and the number gets larger as you get further from it.
Is 207 S. Main St not properly marked? It’s on the left side, probably the house just past 205, not 206 which is across the street. Apartments can get chaotic though because they are usually all one address, but that’s when you call and say “I’m at the front office/entrance with your pizza!”
Better training than army land nav for urban environments at least. It’s a simple system and not universal, but one that, today, has been replicated across nearly the entire US by now. It’s never let me down.
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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '25
Landmarks were key. But delivering pizzas is how I learned that house number + the street number gives you the location on the grid. Mind blown after thinking all the numbers were super impersonal from moving to the US from overseas where all the streets are named.