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

[Dan Goncharoff]

The general rule for Manhattan avenues is 400 numbers per 20 blocks = 1 mile.

Fifth Avenue never followed a good single rule, however.

Because the avenues did not all start counting at the same place,
there is no effective "zero" street, although Houston St. is the
closest to serving that role.

If you take a house number, divide by 20, and add +3 (from the East
River thru 2nd Ave.) or +10 (3rd Ave thru 9th Ave.) or +15 (Fifth
Ave.), you'll have a good estimate of the cross street.

DanG

On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 3:17 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: (across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?
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>
> 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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