CHICAGO STREET NUMBERING LESSON - It's All "Grids" and "Hundreds"! Diagonal Streets - Just a Few!
"COMMON SENSE" CHICAGO STREET NUMBERING SYSTEM FORMALIZED IN 1908!
When you grow up in a city, when you live in a city - over the years, so much becomes so matter-of-fact, that you take it all for granted!
When we entertained out-of-town visitors a couple of weeks ago, who flew in at night. They pointed out something to us that we Native Chicagoans have known all our lives.
As they were landing, they said, "Chicago looks like a perfect series of squares, of grids, dotted by street lights, city wide!" Next time you fly in to visit us here in Chicago, especially if you arrive at night - take a look out the window, and you'll see what they mean!
Fly into New York, or Boston, or Las Vegas, or Denver - it's just not the same! In these cities, streets meander, follow up and down hills, contain traffic circles, or rounded turns.
Not here in Chicago!
For the most part, are street system consists of perfectly perpendicular lines, laid out from one end of the city to the other, at perfect, 90-degree angles. And, although there are some exceptions, streets with the same orientation and distance from downtown keep their same name, from their beginning to their end. Here's a link to a more detailed description, along with several maps and major street names and locations, via Wikipedia.com.
The current Chicago Street Numbering System was adopted by City Ordinance in June, 1908. (BTW . . . 1908 was the last year our Chicago Cubs won a World Series, so you know it's a long, long, long time ago!)
That revised Chicago Street Layout replaced a confusing system of street names and numbers, with an layout in Downtown Chicago different from that in surrounding Chicago Neighborhoods. Read more via Chicagology.com.
Chicago Streets and Avenues were then re-configured to respect two base line streets, intersecting at the heart of The Chicago Loop, in Downtown Chicago - Madison Street, which runs East and West and divides streets running perpendicular to the North and South, and State Street, the baseline North-South running arterial street. State Street divides the East-West Streets running at right angles to it.
A bit confused? Let's try to make it a bit simpler!
Across the city, major, arterial streets were placed exactly 1/2 mile apart, four full city blocks to a half-mile. Running East-West however, Chicago has half-blocks - eight to the half-mile.
Huh?
If you think about it, the system makes perfect sense!
Travel on any East-West Street within the City of Chicago, and catch a house number. If the number, for example, is "401," in most parts of town, you're exactly 1/2 mile away from State Street - either to the east, or to the west. 800 W. Ohio Street - you're exactly one mile west of State. 1600 W. Fullerton Avenue - two miles to the west of the State Street Baseline - that's true even though State Street itself doesn't extend so far, due to the curvature of the city along the Lake Michigan Shoreline.
If you find an address around 1600 N. Western Avenue, you would be exactly two miles north of the Madison Street Baseline separating North and South House Numbers in Chicago. And, you would also be at the corner of North Avenue and Western Avenue - at one time the furthest point in the city from Downtown. North Avenue, back in the day, represented the Extreme Northern Boundary of Chicago, while Western Avenue marked the Chicago City Limits to the west.
That was well over 135 years ago - the City of Chicago is more than four times the size, geographically, today!
Know further, visitors, that we Chicagoans refer to streets by their "hundreds".
Ask any true-blooded Chicago Native where Montrose Avenue is, for example, and they will tell you, instantly, without a mili-second of hesitation, "4400 North." Where's the Dean's Team Chicago World Headquarters, and Keller Williams Lincoln Square? We're at the corner of Montrose Avenue and Leavitt Street - 2200 West (well, actually, our new office is at 2156 W. Montrose Avenue!)
All North Side Chicago Streets were given alphabetic names, not numbers. Numbered streets - 21st, 35th, and the like, were reserved for South Side Streets, all running East to West.
The exception to the Chicago Street Numbering Grid System?
Those darn South Siders again - mainly Chicago White Sox Fans, I would presume. Between the Madison Street Baseline on the North, and 31st Street on the South, streets were laid out 12 full blocks to the mile down to Roosevelt Road (originally 12th Street), 10 blocks to the mile between Roosevelt and Cermak Road (formerly 22nd Street), and 9 full city blocks to the mile from Cermak to 31st Street.
There are a smattering of diagonal streets across Chicago - mainly former Indian trails, or in the case of Clark Street, which runs from the Near South Side of Chicago to the Chicago City Limits on the North, were part of the original shoreline here. Other Major Chicago Diagonals - Lincoln Avenue, Clybourn Street, Elston Avenue, Archer Avenue, and Ogden Avenue.
Which side of the street are you on? Again, it's all in the numbers!
Even house numbers always appear on the North or the West Side of any Chicago Street (except in a few of the more exclusive Chicago Neighborhoods of town, in the North and South Sides, where a few newer streets tend to meander just a bit). Odd house numbers? They're on the East and South Sides of the Street.
So, the next time you visit our town, and someone asks you to meet them at 1060 W. Addison Street, you can tell them you're 10 blocks west of where State Street would be, if it extended that far north, and Lake Michigan did not exist. And, since your Chicago Street Guide would tell you Addison is 3600 North, you'd be EXACTLY 4 1/2 miles north of Madison Street, the North-South Baseline for Chicago.
You'd also be at the Corner of Addison and Clark, about to enter Wrigley Field.
New Yorkers, Bostonians - eat your hearts out! It's never so easy Back East!
DEAN MOSS & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO
