American House Numbers

[Wickstead]

I’m wearing Firefly Lane on Netflix and have just seen that Tully’s house when she was growing up is number 25014.

It suddenly struck me that a lot of American (on TV anyway) houses have high (4 figure or more) house numbers.

Is it really that some streets/roads in America have thousands of houses on them?

Or is it that TV houses have fake numbers (like phone numbers in American TV very often start with 555)?

watching 🙄

Strangely I always think about this. I thought it was because of their street system so 2033 would be the 20th house on the 33 street. I’m just thinking of New York where they have that system. Interested to hear from any Americans

Where I lived in the states house numbers were not consecutive, 1 would be at the start of the road but if the next house was a mile down the road it would be 1600

It goes on blocks, so for example when I lived on 9th street my house number was 901, 10th street would be starting at 1001, 11th 1101 etc

When I lived there we lived at 8501, the houses either side were 8417 and 8504. I’m sure there is a reason but I’ve no idea what it is! There were maybe 20 houses on the street.

It depends whereabouts the houses are, but some have numbering which references how many miles along a road they are. Others have numbers relating to the intersection along a longer road and for each intersection up the numbering moves up, often in 100s.

Where we lived, our number was 7338, apparently the 73 was like an area (or maybe the road code itself) and the 38 was more like the house number.

I always assumed they had massively long roads! Didn’t ever think about a block numbering system...that makes a lot more sense.

Yep, I lived in a Canadian city that had numbered streets and numbered avenues. It was really easy to navigate. So if the address was 1401 17th street, it was near the intersection of 14th av and 17th st.

Isn't it that in cities they're numbered in blocks so you have the 100s, 200s etc. rather than consecutively? Anywhere rural and I think it's the number of yards (maybe?) to the main road.

I lived in a commuter town, in a cul-de-sac of about 6 houses, and we were number 7203. I couldn't see any logic to it.

Everywhere we lived in the US we had 4 number house numbers. The whole block had the same 2 first numbers and different second numbers. So we were 64xx next block down the road was 65xx etc etc

It's based on blocks so that they can infill with new houses at a later date, but not have to renumber whole streets.

Gosh... those are fascinating answers to a relatively mundane question!

Pretty clever system....

The houses are in blocks, so if you are after 75th street you are 7501, 7503 etc, once you go past 80th the numbers are 8001, etc