I don’t know about you guys, but I always thought that most street name endings were pretty much assigned at random. As it turns out, there is a distinct difference between roads, avenues, boulevards, ways and streets.
Roads run between two distant points — two towns, for example. In each of those towns, you’ll find streets: paved roads lined with houses and other buildings.
Berhard
That is the song “I am on a road to nowhere” is just nonsense, as long as there is no defined landscape point called “nowhere”?
Damn talking heads…
Jim
Down here we have a Winkler Road and a Winkler Avenue and they are not near each other. I finally figured out that Winkler ROAD is in the country and Winkler AVENUE is mostly in the city. We may ask ourselves a George Carlin-like question: why is there always a Main Street, but never a Main Road?
Sharyn
In Australia, we also have a “Close” – no idea what it means, but I had a friend who had a hilarious & Pythonesque conversation with the lady at the electricity company when he wanted to get the electricity connected.
He said I need to organise connection to Anton…and paused to check the details. She offered Street, he said no, Close. She said Road, he said no, it’s Close. She was becoming visibly annoyed as she suggested Avenue. He ended up showing her the lease agreement so she could read the address off it.
Inspectah Deck of the Scotland Yard
Seeing that picture at the top made me wonder if they’d illustrate the article entirely with pictures from Atlanta, where we have not only Peachtree Street, bu West Peachtree St., North Peachtree Rd., Peachtree Lane, Peachtree Circle, Peachtree Ave, Peachtree Drive, Peachtree Plaza…
Jolly
“Roads run between two distant points — two towns, for example.”
And he falls at the first fence. A street is a paved road, simple as that. It comes from the latin Via Strata meaning paved road. The naming convention has never been strictly applied except occasionally by pedantic local authorities. The article doesn’t even seem to touch upon Grove Close, Gate, Crescent, Mews or Court. All of those do have meanings, but they have seldom been rigidly applied.
Craig
Those may be the original definitions, but in real life modern-day America those definitions are not really applicable. I live on a “Road” that is about half a mile in length (it does NOT connect two distant points) and intersects a “Blvd” that is neither straight nor lined with trees and shrubs.
Craig
Also, I grew up on a “Drive” that was neither “a private road for local access to one, or a small group of structures”, nor was it “meandering, rather than straight”.
Mitch
So city planners can practice word economy. I live in a city with a Park Street, a Park Avenue, a Park Lane, a Park Drive, a Park Lane, a Park Way, a Park Terrace, and a Park Boulevard.
wonderer
I grew up in a ‘place’. A lovely cul de sac road, (it was tarred but not paved) and it was called sunnycliffe place, and it certainly was a sunshine place…… but what is the origin of ‘place’ for a road? there were 9 houses in it
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