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

[Laurence Horn]

At 4:16 PM -0400 4/29/11, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>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

I remember it being much more complicated; there was a legend in the
beginning of the Manhattan phone book that provided a constant for
each avenue, and it was definitely not as simple as "3rd Ave thru 9th
Ave", but a different one for 784 Lexington, 1197 8th Ave., 1450
Broadway (my father's office building--guess which cross street?),
etc. etc. I remember the first time I visited a different city where
there was a simple algorithm for determining cross streets and it
seemed like cheating.

LH



>
>On Fri, Apr 29, 2011 at 3:17 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
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>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: (across the) "block" ~= street, and the OED?
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  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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