Streets and roads appear frequently on Twelve Mile Circle and so do patterns. We can combine both as observed with any logical street grid featuring either numbers or letters. I’ll focus on the latter. Fortunately lists of alphabetical patterns appeared all over the Intertubes. So I sorted through a multitude of possibilities and selected a few of my favorites. This was not intended to be an exhaustive examination.
My Local World
My fascination probably originated with my longtime hometown, Arlington, Virginia. The north-south streets fall nicely into order for three complete alphabets plus the first letter of a fourth alphabet, as the county explained. The number of syllables represented alphabet sequences, so Arizona Street — four syllables — fell within the fourth alphabet and became the final street on the grid (map).
This location actually presented a triple-geo-oddity:
- The only Arlington street in the 4th Alphabet.
- A practical exclave separated by road from the rest of Arlington. It’s approachable only through Fairfax Co. or the City of Falls Church; and
- The location of the West Cornerstone of the original District of Columbia.
I was also quite familiar with the Washington, DC alphabet system for east-west streets. The city went first to single letters of the alphabet. Then two-syllable words. Then three syllable words. And then, finally and somewhat enigmatically, to flowers and trees. Greater Greater Washington provided the best concise explanation I’ve seen. The final District street — all the way up next to the North Cornerstone — was Verbena Street. I wasn’t familiar with Verbena although apparently it’s a flowering plant.
Before we proceed I’ll note that I found anomalies and exceptions on all of the grids. Thus, there’s no need to point them out unless something truly bizarre comes to light. For instance, Washington, DC doesn’t have a “J” Street. That is common knowledge and cited frequently.
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Well, I think Tulsa might be my favorite instance. The city named North-South avenues located east of Main Street alphabetically for cities geographically east of Tulsa. The same pattern held for streets west of Main, named for cities geographically west of Tulsa. The pattern continued for quite a distance, too. Heading east it appeared to run for about two-and-a-half alphabets ending with Maplewood (map), which could represent a town in Minnesota or New Jersey.
Tulsa won a 12MC award for creativity.
Twin Cities, Minnesota
I stumbled upon a wonderful explanation and a detailed map that I can’t possibly improve upon at Streets.MN. Somehow the site snagged a Mongolian IP address that shares a common abbreviation with Minnesota (“.mn”). Maybe I should grab a domain from Monaco so the 12MC website becomes 12.mc?
“Applications for persons or informal groups are not accepted.” Darn. So much for that idea.
The Twin Cities, Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and immediate environs developed an absolutely crazy number of alphabets. The website I referenced suggested a naming convention extending all the way to the second letter of the eighth alphabet, Brockton Lane. So that may set some kind of record.
Denver–Aurora Metropolitan Area, Colorado
Denver and surrounding areas certainly rivaled and maybe exceeded the Twin Cities for alphabetical street naming wackiness. The alphabets went on-and-on even into distant rural areas in the vague hope that maybe someday the matrix will fill-in. The last one seemed to be Calhoun-Byers Road, a distance of 45 miles (73 kilometres) from the grid’s baseline intersection at Ellsworth Ave. and Broadway!
New York City, New York
A lot of 12MC readers live in New York City and I’m sure many were already wondering whether I’d mention Alphabet City in the East Village. The name derived from Avenues A, B, C and D, which ran through the neighborhood, the only single-letter avenues in Manhattan (map). That was nice and such, although it represented a measly four letters of the alphabet.
There were better alphabets in NYC. However one must leave Manhattan and enter Brooklyn to experience them. The Greenpoint neighborhood, just across the East River from Manhattan incorporated a partial alphabet from Ash through Quay with a couple of letters missing (map).
Travel farther into Brooklyn and one can experience Avenues A through Z (map). This might lead one to wonder — well, it lead ME to wonder — if the Sesame Street parody musical Avenue Q happened to be named for this particular alphabetic progression. It’s claimed that it was not:
“The set of Avenue Q depicts several tenements on a rundown fictional street located ‘in an outer borough of New York City.’ This fictional Avenue Q could be in the Midwood and Gravesend area of Brooklyn, where there are Avenues A through Z, with a few exceptions. One of those exceptions is Avenue Q. The street between Avenue P and Avenue R is known as Quentin Road, named for the youngest son of President Roosevelt. The Q subway train, whose symbol used to be a Q in an orange circle resembling the Avenue Q logo, travels through this neighborhood. However, the authors have stated that Avenue Q is fictional and is not related to this or any other particular street.”
I’m not sure I necessarily believe that, though. Or maybe I don’t want to believe it.
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