[HN Gopher] The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
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The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
Author : Renevith
Score : 124 points
Date : 2024-09-12 00:53 UTC (22 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (streets.mn)
(TXT) w3m dump (streets.mn)
| ggm wrote:
| Many cities could benefit from this exposition. Melbourne has a
| similar "WTF" moment in its grid alignment.
| mark-r wrote:
| The interesting part about Minneapolis is that it has two
| grids. Early development occurred at angles to the Mississippi
| river, while later development straightened out to N-S and E-W
| orientation.
| philwelch wrote:
| Seattle has a similar situation with the coast.
| mjevans wrote:
| I knew about the downtown (Seattle) street grid, but hadn't
| noticed that the cardinal directions were relative to the
| county's biggest city.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_layout_of_Seattle
| ggm wrote:
| This is precisely Melbourne's problem.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoddle_Grid
| unwind wrote:
| TIL about the chain [1] as a unit of distance, equal to 66
| feet and divided into 100 links of course. Wow.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_(unit)
| com wrote:
| Some of my family were stock farmers in Australia and
| talked about 10, 5, 3 and 2 chain roads a bit too when
| talking about driving routes between places in rural and
| forested regions. You'd know the (maybe abandoned or
| ruined versus still existing small settlement)
| destination - by the description of the width of the
| roads getting there.
|
| I'm not sure how much of this was connected to what
| seemed to be a multi-generational familial problem
| recalling proper nouns.
|
| As someone who didn't grow up there it was a bit
| different to what I was used to - named roads or road
| numbers, named settlements or geographic identifiers.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| So a 2 chain road is 40 meters wide...?!
| njb311 wrote:
| Yes, because the roads were used for driving herds of
| cattle or sheep.
| ggm wrote:
| Friends father did the forestry course in edinburgh
| during ww2: it was held to be sufficiently important it
| was a reserved occupation (not subject to the draft)
|
| On graduation and inevitable employment by the forestry
| commission you got your chain: a vital tool of the job,
| as well as useful for marking out cricket pitches. (They
| are one chain long)
| HighChaparral wrote:
| The chain makes more sense as being one tenth of a
| furlong (as still used in horse racing in the US, Great
| Britain and Ireland!), which is of course one eighth of a
| mile.
|
| Also, an acre is one furlong long by one chain wide.
|
| Not coincidentally, a cricket pitch is one chain long.
|
| My education was almost all in the metric system but a
| decent knowledge of the imperial system still makes the
| world a bit easier to understand.
| gazook89 wrote:
| This happens on train routes through towns (or, towns that
| developed where trains stopped) and the track is at an angle
| to North. Frequently the first few blocks nearest the track
| are aligned to the track, and then the town says "wait a
| minute" and suddenly everything orients to the cardinal
| directions
| angry_moose wrote:
| A related article I've always liked: Fictitious Minneapolis
| street addresses: A guide for writers.
|
| https://southtwelfth.tumblr.com/post/56794633391/fictitious-...
|
| Somewhat tongue-in-cheek article that explores the intricacies of
| our road system to come up with a fake address that sounds
| believable.
| deisteve wrote:
| interestng read. I've always been curious about how to generate
| realistic-sounding fictional addresses. The author's use of
| real-world street patterns and naming conventions is a good
| touch. Has anyone else used this guide or similar resources for
| writing purposes?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Minor nitpick with this article, it claims Minneapolis doesn't
| have a 21st St or 23rd St, but if you look at a map you will
| find that 21st St E runs between Chicago and Bloomington Ave
| one block south of Franklin. 23rd St E also exists in two
| 1-block segments between Chicago and Bloomington Ave as well. I
| used to live in this part of Philips.
| mark-r wrote:
| I spent a good part of my childhood on Girard Avenue North, part
| of the first alphabetical sequence running east to west. It was
| always a comfort to know I could find my way home if I knew the
| alphabet.
| euroderf wrote:
| NW DC does alpha order. First single letters, then two-syllable
| names, then three-syllable names.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Ironically, the author could have found a far more intricate mesh
| of stitched together street grids if they never left New York.
|
| Here are all the numbered streets of New York City, colored by
| the number of the street.
|
| https://i.redd.it/p48mipyctk5d1.png
|
| The New York street grid can really suck you in because its just
| organized enough to not be randomness, but not organized enough
| to instantly fit it to a simple pattern and move on with your
| life.
| tomcam wrote:
| The New York street grid patterns were covered tersely but
| sufficiently about 60 years ago by legendary cartographer Saul
| Steinberg:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/kft9cz/a_view_of_t...
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Wow, it used to be way easier to park on the street in NYC.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| Relevant article: https://racketmn.com/the-history-behind-
| minneapoliss-alphabe...
| ls612 wrote:
| Penn Ave S is mostly really nice areas around Lake Harriet. Penn
| Ave N is one of the most dangerous areas in Minneapolis.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of the first things I learned after moving to Minneapolis
| is checking North or South when going to an address (before GPS
| street routing was common). My address in South Minneapolis
| near Minnehaha Creek was pleasant, walkable and peaceful. The
| equivalent in North Minneapolis, not so much.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| One of the things I find really amusing about "Minneapolis"
| streets is how they seem to go on forever. I now live roughly 40
| miles away from Minneapolis, but I often come across nearby
| streets with the same name as the corresponding Minneapolis
| street if you extended it 40 miles south. And the numbers are
| suitably extended.
|
| So Chowen Avenue might end at the 6200 address in Mpls, but
| you'll find a Chowen Avenue in Burnsville, about 25 miles south,
| in roughly the same place laterally as it would be if it were
| extended south from Mpls and the street numbers will begin with
| something like 130000.
|
| Don't know if this happens in other places, but it never fails to
| make me smile when I see it.
| blahedo wrote:
| Chicago has that, but only in some directions. The south and
| southwest suburbs continue the city numbering out for a long
| way; the northwest suburbs all have their own numbering. I
| think most of the north suburbs are also on their own (but
| possibly the innermost ones share the city grid). Not sure
| about west. :)
| nkrisc wrote:
| Western Ave. is just shy of 30 miles in length. I'm not sure
| if that includes when the name changes to Asbury in Evanston.
| Also not sure if the changes at the Southern extents. Like a
| typical Northsider I rarely went South of Roosevelt.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| North Ave. and Roosevelt Rd. go from the lake to about 2/3
| of the way to Iowa. The names end at the DuPage/Kane county
| line, though. After that, they are just IL64 and IL38.
|
| The numbering system for just about all Chicago roads ends
| at the Chicago city limits, except for some of the streets
| on the south side, which continue all the way down into
| Will County.
|
| Even stranger is that there is a pocket of streets in Dyer
| Indiana that are numbered according to the Chicago system,
| as if they had expected the street grid to expand that far
| south and east. Expand to Hammond, Schererville, St John
| and you'll see east/west streets that are numbered in the
| 40s (the Gary Indiana scheme), then in the high 90s (Lake
| County Indiana scheme?), then the 210s (Chicago scheme),
| then the 70s (back to the Gary scheme).
|
| EDIT - Chicago did a mass street renumbering (with a few
| street name changes too) in the early 20th century. It
| would be interesting to know if some of the suburban street
| numbering schemes for the roads that cross municipal
| boundaries are still using the old system and that is why
| the street numbers seem to reset once you exit the city.
| nkrisc wrote:
| > It would be interesting to know if some of the suburban
| street numbering schemes for the roads that cross
| municipal boundaries are still using the old system and
| that is why the street numbers seem to reset once you
| exit the city.
|
| I was wondering about that, particularly for the named
| roads. I believe Pulaski/Crawford was always Crawford
| first until Chicago renamed their portion to Pulaski and
| Skokie kept the Crawford name. I recall my dad telling me
| that when he was a kid in the 50s Pulaski was Crawford
| all the way down. I think that might have been the case
| with Western/Asbury as well, but I'm not too sure on that
| one. I'm sure there are many other examples.
|
| And here's an unrelated yet interesting Chicago street
| fact for anyone still reading: Elston starts and ends at
| Milwaukee Ave., so there are two Elston/Milwaukee
| intersections.
| retzkek wrote:
| > Not sure about west. :)
|
| Unincorporated addresses in Kane and DuPage Counties do use a
| reference system based off State & Madison as baseline
| (although it's been codified based off county and township
| lines). Eg. 40W100 Keslinger Rd is a bit over 40 miles west
| of State St.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Those are also called fire addresses, because they were
| assigned by the fire department rather than the postal
| service. 6 or 8 decades ago, the post office decided to
| accept them as official rather than force people to change.
|
| They have their own section in the postal addressing
| standards, under the "Unusual Addressing Situations":
|
| https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/pub28apd_004.htm
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Compare it to something like Eau Claire where you try to go
| easy on any given road ...you won't and it'll curve south or
| north almost guaranteed. I think Madison is a heavily planned
| city (Though I could be confused for Milwaukee as it's been a
| while since I read about either) where it's laid out as close
| to a north south grid as possible.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Probably Milwaukee.
|
| Downtown Madison is sandwiched between 2 lakes, and most of
| the city orients North East for the roads that run between
| them.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This is the correct answer.
|
| I mean, yes, Madison is heavily planned. But so is any city
| you build on an isthmus. You have to heavily plan the
| layout or it won't work. At the same time they made a
| north-east flowing layout. Now it may be a "grid" if you
| rotate a grid 45%, but when someone generally thinks of
| "grid", they think of a grid oriented in cardinal
| directions. Obviously, this is not possible in Madison
| because of two giant lakes.
|
| Minneapolis has more of a "grid" layout that most people
| would consider a true "grid" layout.
|
| Milwaukee and Chicago obviously have grid layouts on
| steroids because of their history and the nature of the
| original people inhabiting those places. They are places
| built for moving men and material to the front so to speak.
| And they don't too much care what they have to do to make
| that possible. Giant hill of rock in the way? They'll
| happily blow right through it. City keeps flooding because
| it's basically a swamp/marsh? No problem, they casually
| lift the entire city into the air and continue right on
| building. Just a whole lot of things most other places
| probably wouldn't do.
| lapcat wrote:
| > You have to heavily plan the layout or it won't work.
|
| This is presuming that Madison roads "work", but they
| don't! They're a mess.
|
| Note also that the state capitol was originally built at
| the present site in 1837, before the rise of the
| automobile. And North Hall, the first building on the
| University of Wisconsin campus, was built in 1851. I'm
| not aware of any grand road plan.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I think Madison is a heavily planned city
|
| LOLNO Madison is complete mess because it's on an isthmus.
| Also the state capitol is right in the middle of the isthmus,
| so all of the streets there have to go _around_ the capitol
| grounds. And then there 's Schenk's Corners for example, just
| a total nightmare. The entire city is going in every
| direction at once.
|
| The only way you can figure out how to get around Madison is
| to live here for decades (which I've done), via rote route
| memorization.
|
| Before Madison I actually lived in downtown Minneapolis, and
| I always appreciated the orderliness of its streets.
| hecanjog wrote:
| Milwaukee has grid areas downtown, but the street layout
| between there and south to bay view gets a bit weird and
| jagged in between. The story I heard was it's leftover from
| two competing shipping(?) businesses who wanted to make some
| passages difficult as some kind of competitive advantage, but
| the details are pretty fuzzy. :) Milwaukee gets pretty windy
| and non-grid-like though.
| brk wrote:
| Metro Detroit, particularly the northern side, is like this as
| well. Grid streets extend for dozens on miles with the same
| names and numbering schemes.
| gullywhumper wrote:
| My mom grew up in what was then mostly farms northwest of
| Detroit. When Eminem's Eight Mile came out, I immediately
| connected it with the street we turned off to get to my
| grandparents' place but never thought it could actually be
| the same road Eminem was referencing. Very different worlds.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Portland has that to a degree. A lot of streets will end due to
| terrain, only to start up again half a mile further where the
| terrain levels out a bit.
|
| There's a related item that's amused me a lot. 110th at one
| point shifts like 50 feet to one side and becomes 111th.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Before everyone had a navigation computer in their pocket,
| I'd often get confused calls from pizza delivery people
| saying "I'm on your street, but that address doesn't exist"
| for a similar reason: farms instead of terrain.
| divbzero wrote:
| > _Map made using ArcGIS._
|
| Were these maps made manually using ArcGIS? Or is there a way to
| make them programmatically?
| blahedo wrote:
| Did all this arise because multiple smaller towns with their own
| survey grids got absorbed into the city at some point, or did the
| different alignments happen within an already-extant Minneapolis?
| nemo44x wrote:
| I heard that in Milwaukee the bridges that run over the river
| that divides their downtown area are crooked because when
| developed each side was fiercely independent and disliked the
| other. So their streets didn't align. Was a pretty heated thing
| I guess. [1]
|
| [1] https://news.yahoo.com/news/milwaukees-bridge-war-story-
| behi...
| vitaflo wrote:
| It's important to remember that Minneapolis is actually the
| merging of two cities, Minneapolis and St. Anthony. St. Anthony
| is everything east of the river (so the NE and SE quadrants).
| At one point in time St. Anthony was larger than Minneapolis.
| There was a large competition between the two cities because of
| their flour mills, Pillsbury on the St. Anthony side, and
| Washburn-Crosby (modern day General Mills) on the Mpls side.
|
| The cities merged because of competition with St. Paul, which
| had better rail access and was further down the river (didn't
| have to deal with the waterfall in Mpls).
|
| So the original grids of both cities were created
| independently, however, once the cities merged they renamed
| almost all of the streets in both cities to be what is the
| modern day naming. This was mainly because there were many
| duplicate names on either side of the river. If they hadn't
| done this the street naming would be utterly confusing.
|
| So the answer to your question is really "it's complicated".
| angry_moose wrote:
| Also, everything up to Lake Street used to be Richfield:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richfield,_Minnesota#/media/Fi.
| ..
|
| Minneapolis extended down to 62nd street in 3 successive
| annexations.
|
| Though, this had a pretty minor effect on the streets as they
| were already continuous.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| > When I moved to Minneapolis from upstate New York last year
|
| ah ha. Welcome to PLSS land, neighbor.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Land_Survey_System#/med...
|
| you will find this pattern EVERYWHERE. They didnt turn the entire
| country into squares, but by golly they got a lot of it.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Baseline Road in Maricopa County, AZ can be picked up at the
| Salome Highway in Tonopah:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/bTe4WUQydug22Kqw6
|
| That's nearly 50 miles west of Central Avenue in Phoenix, and it
| stretches another 33 miles east of Central, out to Apache
| Junction: https://maps.app.goo.gl/VrjSYy7QEuX9yNee6
|
| The Phoenix-area grid is super-square; I figured it out by way of
| city bus routes, which are usually numbered according to the
| block address of the street they travel on. Mileage can be
| estimated by the number of major intersections you pass.
|
| It is important to distinguish between numbered "Avenues" on the
| west side and "Streets" on the east side, and in Phoenix as well
| as other cities, the "east/west/north/south" designator of a
| road, as well as the city, must be considered when looking at any
| given address.
| mark-r wrote:
| I've flown in/out of Phoenix a couple of times at night, and
| it's glorious. All the streetlights on a regular grid make a
| beautiful sight.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| I wish more cities would compile and publish this information.
|
| I grew up in Miami that has a sort of less-structured grid system
| where avenues are the primary north-south roads and streets are
| the primary east-west roads. There's a through road every half
| mile, or numbering-wise every 8 streets or 5 avenues. So if you
| know this fact, you'll know that SW 47th ave is extremely likely
| to be a through road until it reaches the coast, and SW 42nd Ave
| is maybe a bit less likely but still probably a through road.
| Same with SW 88th st (main through road) and SW 96th st (probably
| a through road). In between these main grid streets you're on
| your own.
|
| Incredibly, most people I speak to who live there do not realize
| this! As far as I can tell, it's not explained anywhere on the
| county or city website, at least that I can easily google. It
| makes getting around the city's surface streets much, much
| easier, but it's just not common knowledge.
| glitcher wrote:
| Yes, this is a great idea. I grew up with a similar pattern
| where streets are mostly east-west and avenues are mostly
| north-south. But whenever I have explored new cities there
| always seems to be hidden patterns unique to that place, or at
| least new to me. And figuring out what they are sometimes takes
| more time than a short visit.
|
| An example that bit me once, before smartphones and widespread
| gps, is that numbered streets and avenues in Phoenix both run
| north-south. The numbering gets higher in both directions as
| you move away from Central Ave, so the smaller numbered
| streets/aves are relatively close to one another. Very simple
| pattern indeed, but it was very surprising the first time I
| encountered it, didn't match my expectations I guess.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Southeast and Northeast streets reminds me of back in the 90s
| when I lived in a house on East street. I was on the south end of
| the street so telling delivery drivers I was on South East street
| was always tricky.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Similar situation to living in West, TX.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| Despite living in Minneapolis for 5 years, I never understood the
| street grid until reading this article. The fact that streets and
| avenues are opposite in Northeast vs South Minneapolis (and how
| North Minneapolis only has avenues) is a constant source of
| confusion. Obviously it can be worse (I've spent enough time in
| Pittsburgh to know that), and having GPS navigation means the
| inconsistency hasn't caused me very many actual problems. But
| still, it's annoying that the grid system isn't more consistent.
| vitaflo wrote:
| At least Mpls's streets are mostly in order (numbered and
| alphabetical). If I'm on Colfax and trying to get to Girard I
| know I'm only a few blocks away. If you want a real clusterfuck
| go drive around St. Paul.
| donatj wrote:
| I've lived here my whole life and still don't understand. I'll
| need to reread the article a few times for that I suspect.
| TMWNN wrote:
| Relevant: TIL that the West Side of Saint Paul, Minnesota is
| south of downtown. The separate city of West St. Paul (note the
| spelling) is also south of downtown Saint Paul. East of West St.
| Paul is the also separate city of South St. Paul. There is also a
| separate North Saint Paul (note the spelling).
|
| <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/1cbvtwt/til_t...>
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