Grid

I love maps, and if I'm on a boat, charts.

I find them interesting. When we observe the world visually, we do so at the limits of our ability to see straight line distances. On the ground this is hampered by objects, air quality and even the curvature of the earth. Therefore to make a logical representation of a large area and, to keep it from running into the abstract, we have developed maps. These help us maneuver around when we can't bridge the visual and spatial differences to get from point A to point B.

Between 19th and 20th looking south

Here in downtown, midtown, and to a certain degree East Sacramento, we don't need maps to get around. I know I have repeatedly extolled about the area here and you might suspect I would infer some near magical reason for this but no, it is simply because we have a grid system for the streets. And more importantly, a logical way of naming these said streets and making the address fit in the same logical way.

In general, east/west streets are lettered, with a small named alley in between, from "C" in the north to "X" in the south. "M" streed is missing as this is named Capitol Street, and it would bisect the capitol building on it's was from Tower Bridge in the west to the east.

North/south streets are numbered. From 2nd in the west to 69th in the east. But for today's blog we will stop at 29th, the eastern limit of midtown.

Downtown/Midtown

Address on letter streets start are prefixed with the number street on the west, example, just east of 16th street on H street will have the first 2 numbers at 16, followed by 2 more.

Numbered streets are a bit different, these are counted down from the letter street on the north. A address on 16th street south of S street has an address of 19xx as S is the 19th letter. 

So it is very easy to navigate the city, as long as you can count and read. Perfect.