Numbered street

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A numbered street is a street whose name is an ordinal number, as in Second Street or Tenth Avenue. Such forms are among the most common street names in North America, but also exist in other parts of the world, especially in Colombia, which takes the system to an extreme, and the Middle East. Numbered streets were first used in Philadelphia^[1] and now exist in many major cities and small towns. Grid-based naming systems usually start at 1 (but sometimes at a higher number or even at zero), and then proceed in numerical order. In the United States, seven out of the top ten most common street names are numbers, with the top three names being "2nd," "3rd," and "1st" respectively.^[2] Streets named "0th" are quite uncommon, however, but do exist (sometimes spelled out "Zero Street") (like 0 Avenue in BC, Canada), and negative numbered streets (i.e, "−1st", "−2nd", etc.) are extraordinarily rare. Fractional numbered streets exist in some places, such as 10+1⁄2 Street in Springfield, Illinois.

Some cities also have lettered street names. For example, Washington, D.C., in addition to having numbered streets, also has streets identified as a letter followed by "Street," going as high as the letter W. New York City has avenues titled "Avenue" followed by the respective letter of the alphabet, such as Avenue D. The idea for such a system was developed by Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who devised the system for Washington.

The numbered street system is criticized for taking away the individuality from a community that a named street would provide.^[3]