Unlike my usual posts, this one is not about a particular ride. Instead, it is a sort of compilation of many rides, most of them in 2014. Today’s post focuses on addresses, or house numbers, as they are officially known.
You might correctly suspect that properties were first given addresses in the early days of Saint Paul, July 29, 1874 to be exact.(1) Just six years later a new ordinance was approved that more precisely defined how addresses were assigned.(2) Don Empson, in The Street Where You Live, tells the fascinating and sometimes confusing story of how addresses are assigned now and the progression of the process since 1874.
There is a vast melange of house and building numbers around town, something I really noticed last year. Some differences, like size and materials (i.e., metal, wood) might be obvious. But there is a whole lot more to this numbers game than those characteristics.
The address numbers in Saint Paul range from a single digit to four. The ‘zero point’, or place where single digit house numbers for north–south streets start, roughly follows Summit Avenue to Ramsey Street, the Mississippi River and effectively along Upper Afton Road. Address numbers grow larger as one moves north or south of this imaginary line.
The ‘zero point’ for east west streets is basically along Sylvan Street south to Wabasha through Downtown and to the West Side to Humbolt Avenue to the Saint Paul’s border with West Saint Paul.
5 Heather Place in the Crocus Hill neighborhood.
1636 Englewood in Hamline-Midway.
Some have home-made house numerals.
The address numbers at 1394 Englewood Avenue in the Midway neighborhood.
Not all house numbers are posted on the house (at first glace that doesn’t really make sense.) From signs to stoops to steps, addresses appear in assorted places on Saint Paulites’ property.
At this Dayton Avenue home, the address number adorns the wrought iron fence.
I’m not certain if this is a step or a stoop, but here the address sits.
Not just an ordinary sign, but a decorative one!
Sign posts.
I don’t know that there were house numbers at the time represented by the horse and buggy.
Of course, homes are not the only structures that have address numbers. Even undeveloped lots have an address, although it might not be posted. Buildings, too, must display an address and do so with nearly the variety of homes.
One of the buildings at Luther Seminary in the Como Park neighborhood.
These painted numbers are from two or three colors ago. From the building on Snelling at Charles Avenue.
Horizontal and vertical address numbers at 362 Cleveland.
Really BIG, brown numbers on an apartment building on Central Avenue in Frogtown.
The Elmer L. Andersen Human Services Building Downtown.
250 Fuller is the only one of the Fuller Apartment buildings to have address numbers like this above the main entrance.
The yellow awning with the building’s address stands out like no other. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
Although uncommon, there are fractional addresses. This one is on a building on St. Peter Street Downtown.
There are horizontally, vertically and diagonally-oriented house numbers.
Vertical.
Vertically AND horizontally oriented. Juliet and Wheeler, Macgroveland.
A diagonal, on Charles Avenue, Frogtown.
Duplexes, naturally, require two house numbers.
On Oxford Street, two address numbers keep Snoopy company.
No caption necessary.
Tile and ceramics add some panache to the lowly house number.
Tiles on Lafond.
Scripted addresses are rare, perhaps because people aren’t learning how to write or read it.
1246 Lafond, Frogtown.
Finally, a smattering of unusual house numbers.
An old and worn house number on the stone fence in front of 118 Douglas, West End.
Neon numbers on Hague Avenue.
These address numbers were really popular during the 60s and early 70s, at least where I grew up. Usually they were placed on the storm door.
The fish is on the rectory of The Church of St. Columba on Lafond.
Another Art Deco beauty on a Grand Avenue apartment building.
Finally, my favorite address sign. This beautifully crafted Art Deco address sign has so many things to look at–different color and type of stone, various textures and nearly flawless symmetry. The Grand Avenue apartment building on which this sits was built in 1926.
This assortment is just a sample of the creative, odd, mundane, lavish and gaudy ways house numbers are presented. Let me know if you see an interesting address number on your travels in Saint Paul.
Footnotes:
(1) The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul by Donald Empson; page 248
(2) The Street Where You Live: A Guide to the Place Names of St. Paul by Donald Empson; page 249