The split phase arrangement comes from Edison's DC systems. For large installations they found out that the losses were unacceptable and solved thet by running the lighting on 220V with sets of two 110V bulbs in series, usually combined with some somewhat funky wiring scheme in order to even more reduce the required wiring cross-section (it is somewhat reminiscent of later British ring mains construction and strikingly similar to various arrangements for powering long LED strips). This is also the reason why it is somewhat common for the US commercial lighting to use 220V.

Three phase for residental connection is pretty much a standard everywhere with 230/400V system. Only small flats and really small houses get single phase. This is because the 230/400V output of the larger distribution transformer is inherently threephase and this gets distributed to essentially all the points of connection and the only reason why there are single phase residental connection is that they are slightly cheaper (both in terms of fixed monthly payment for capacity and in terms of initial installation costs). While in US the input to the typical residental pole/pedestal mounted local distribution transformer is already single phase, so you cannot really get three phases without running additional wires to the substation (and probably also having you own dedicated distribution transformer) and thus in a residantal area you are simply stuck with split-phase.