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.
The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
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Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. :)
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.
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#43A 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.
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#44One 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 Bur…
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.
> 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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#45Did 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?
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".
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#46One 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 Bur…
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.
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#47Despite 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 ma…
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#48One 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 Bur…
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.
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#49Despite 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 ma…
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.
Re: The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Probably Milwaukee. Downtown Madison is sandwiched between 2 lakes, and most of the city orients North East for the roads that run between them.
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.