The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained | Hacker News Reader

The Minneapolis Street Grid: Explained

streets.mn

139 pointsRenevith62 comments

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.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

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

Thanks for this. . . I've been writing lots of GOTV letters across the country and paying attention to the addresses, rather than simply writing them on the envelopes, help make the process interesting.

I spent 20+ years in Washington, DC so am used to NW, NE, SW, and SE with avenues, numbered streets, flower streets of two syllables, blah blah blah. But I now live in rural Virginia and state routes are the norm.

Your explanation got me to focus more on what and why. And, I learned something, so thank you.

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.

> 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.

Insightful information, and yeah, I incorrectly remembered :)

Another interesting thing not talked a lot about online is that these midwest cities typically have a ton of documented (or not?) underground tunnels. There used to be a cool website for the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul) that showed them off. My parents recall walking from the University of MN to further parts downtown where you can transition to skyways and basically never go outside. I guess -40' weather really pushes people to become moles in a sense. I think a lot of big cities also have huge tunnel systems for heating fuel (coal delivery and the like) and other utilities

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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...

Wow, it used to be way easier to park on the street in NYC.

Everything used to be closer together too. The world felt smaller. You could swim to Japan from where Vegas meets the Sea. Life was just better, except for the fact that Hawaii hadn’t been invented yet.

As if Hawaii were real

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.

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.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's not already in the Municipal Code for the city, since they need a way to maintain consistency. For example, here's the divisions in Renton, which are oddly complicated relative to the size of the city: https://www.codepublishing.com/WA/Renton/#!/Renton09/Renton0...

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.

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.

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.

NW DC does alpha order. First single letters, then two-syllable names, then three-syllable names.

Penn Ave S is mostly really nice areas around Lake Harriet. Penn Ave N is one of the most dangerous areas in Minneapolis.

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.

> Map made using ArcGIS.

Were these maps made manually using ArcGIS? Or is there a way to make them programmatically?

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...>

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.

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.

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.

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?

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...

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".

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.

Many cities could benefit from this exposition. Melbourne has a similar "WTF" moment in its grid alignment.

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.

Seattle has a similar situation with the coast.

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

This is precisely Melbourne's problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoddle_Grid

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)

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.

So a 2 chain road is 40 meters wide...?!

Yes, because the roads were used for driving herds of cattle or sheep.

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)

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.

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

Denver has a downtown grid aligned to the SW-NE course of the South Platte, covering I suppose about a square mile, with the rest in a N-S E-W grid.

Relevant article: https://racketmn.com/the-history-behind-minneapoliss-alphabe...

> 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.

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.

Similar situation to living in West, TX.

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