(across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?

[victor steinbok]

This expression would have been more likely in a city like Chicago, where
there is an exact correspondence between cross-streets and house numbers.
It's also 800 numbers per mile IIRC, although the numbers on any block
rarely run up to a full hundred. There are also "half-blocks" because some
small streets appear at x50 blocks (usually streets that don't run more than
a couple of blocks themselves--at least, not continuously). In any case, a
reference to "x-hundred block" is both somewhat ambiguous (although context
usually tells you whether it's NS or EW) and over-specifying, as it may
include more than one /actual/ block.

I've been told that parts of NYC also match some specified house numbers to
specific distances (e.g., 600 per mile, or something like that). I don't
know enough about NYC to be sure (or to care).

However, I have heard the  "x-hundred block" expression outside of Chicago
although in other locales it's usually more specific, i.e., "x-hundred block
of y-street". Obviously, if you are trying to give directions for a specific
address, such expressions would be unnecessary, but they may work in context
where the address is not specified, e.g., when a reference is to a specific
store within a known block but whose specific address is unknown. This
expression has been common in Cambridge, MA, although I can't possibly tell
whether it was Harvard or MIT students/faculty or visitors or local
residents who've used it (I've been a student and employee at both over the
past 2 and a half decades). When someone refers to "the 800 block on Mass
Ave", it's pretty clear.

VS-)

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> "The 300 block" phrasing is something I have never heard in NYC.
> Wouldn't work on the avenues in Manhattan, and the streets are better
> defined by the avenues: streets are defined as east or west of Fifth
> Avenue, 100 numbers to the avenue; Park Avenue replaces Fourth Avenue
> except for a few blocks south of 14th St.
>
> There was a recent to-do in the press when it was noticed that the
> street names on bus stop signs on the west side of Fifth Avenue,
> adjacent to the eastern edge of Central Park, were labelled west, as
> in W 72nd St., even though W 72nd St. actually exists only on the west
> side of the park, the equivalent of three avenues away.
>
> DanG

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