Does Your City Have a Lot of "State" Streets? Which Ones? (house, neighborhoods)
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Does your city have a lot of state streets? A lot of them? Which ones are most prominent?
My city (Milwaukee, WI) has several "state streets" (streets named after U.S. states), and they are primarily downtown and in the lakeside neighborhoods just south of downtown.
There are several other "state" streets in the city and adjacent suburbs, but not all states are represented: only around 20 or so, I reckon: Florida, Virginia, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, California, Nevada, Alabama, Texas, Dakota, Wyoming, and a few more. There is also a Manitoba Ave, the only street I know of in Milwaukee named after a Canadian province.
I *think* all of the "state streets" in my city (Bellingham, WA) are in my hood (Sunnyland Neighborhood), just north of downtown. I bought a house on Carolina, and coincidentally I lived in North Carolina for 15+ years before moving out west. Anyway, here are the streets:
Many of them stay almost completely within residential neighborhoods, with little commercial traffic. The exception is Alabama Street, which is somewhat of a main east-west arterial in that part of town.
Ironically, one of the main roads through town is not an actual state, but "State Street" itself.
Albuquerque has these streets named for states in the Heights area of town running mostly north-south along the city's grid system:
Arizona Street
California Street
Carolina Street (represents both the Carolinas)
Colorado Street
Connecticut Street
Dakota Street (represents both the Dakotas)
Delaware Street
Florida Street
Georgia Street
Indiana Street
Kentucky Street
Louisiana Boulevard
New Hampshire Street
Pennsylvania Street
Rhode Island Street
Tennessee Street
Texas Street
Utah Street
Vermont Street
Virginia Street
Wisconsin Street
Wyoming Boulevard
In the more urban Southeast Heights the streets are straight, long and arranged alphabetically from west to east. In the more suburban Northeast Heights the streets are more curving, not continuous, and not always alphabetically arranged. In this area additional streets and cul de sacs pop up in certain neighborhoods/subdivisions to carry additional states' names.
Louisiana Boulevard and Wyoming Boulevard are major arterial streets and very prominent in the city, with lots of businesses, shopping centers, etc. located along them. Pennsylvania Street is a minor arterial street that is mostly residential, but still has a fair amount of businesses and institutions located along it to have it be prominently known in the city.
Of course, let's not forget the most famously planned example with them:
Washington, D.C.
In addition to having all 50 states present, mostly as "avenue", except that California is a "street" and Ohio is a "drive" along the Potomac and Tidal Basin. Some of them were laid out when they were just territories, including Alaska and Hawaii avenues. There's also a Puerto Rico Avenue in Northeast (you can actually see it from the Metro Red Line between the Fort Totten and Brookland-CUA stations), as well as a Luzon Avenue in far northern DC, since Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines, was US territory when it was originally laid in the early 1900s.
Generally speaking, the original states (just 15 when the city was planned) were arranged based on geography, with the New England states up north and the southern states down south, including the original Georgia Ave. which is today's Potomac Ave. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Avenues got the longest and widest lengths in the original plan since they were the most important states in the young nation at the time. The newest state at the time, Kentucky, had its avenue the shortest and narrowest. Afterwards, some of the new avenues were laid out with no sense of locality or importance, with a few exceptions like Mississippi, Alabama avenues south of the Anacostia, but this lead to things like Texas Avenue being a short, three block, suburbanesque residential drive while Florida Avenue is placed at the original northern boundary of the city as opposed to Maine Ave, which is along the Southwest Waterfront.
Atlantic City, NJ is probably the next most famous example with them thanks to a little board game, and that includes more states that aren't even featured. That said, the former Illinois Ave. is now named after MLK. Generally speaking, most states east of the Mississippi are includes, except for Alabama, Wisconsin, and the two that straddle them: Minnesota and Louisiana. There's also a California, Texas, and Iowa avenue, and to take it even further, a lot of streets in the southern part of Atlantic City are named for state capitals, and this extends into the northernmost part of Ventnor City. Ventnor City also have a Wyoming Avenue and a section where most of the streets are named for cities. Interestingly, despite their states not being featured, there are Montgomery and Baton Rouge avenues. The next town down, Margate City, mainly begins by using two streets that start with the same letter alphabetically, with A being the northernmost at the Ventnor City line. When it gets to around the "L" street (Lancaster Ave.), it drops down to a single street per letter, continuing through the "W" street (Wilson Ave.). After a couple more random streets with no logical reasoning, the next grid down is based on presidents, but its illogical and only includes the first five, and then jumps to what was the current president at the time it was laid, Coolidge Ave due to hitting the city limit with the next town. The southernmost Abescon Island town, Longport, just uses numbered avenues from north to south, with 36th Ave. at the northern border with Margate City, with a few named exceptions towards the center of town and also for the mid-block alleys. That said, the southernmost is 11th street, which implies that a storm wiped out the southern part of Longport.
Last edited by Borntoolate85; 09-13-2018 at 09:22 AM..
I think my hometown of Midland, Texas has Ohio,Kansas,Michigan,Texas,Illinois,and maybe some others.
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