Something I never understood

[CarsonCaliBrotha]

Why do some cities go by East and West but some cities go by Southwest and Northwest? For instance, in L.A. it'd be "101 E. 1st St." but in Washington, D.C. it's "1600 N.W. Pennsylvania Ave." What's that about?

[xzmattzx]

washington, dc is split into quadrants, and the streets only reflect the quadrants. so a street with "ne" is in the northeast quadrant.

other cities, like l.a. for example, also separate their city into two overlapping "hemispheres" (for lack of a better word), and the street names reflect the hemisphere, and at the same time indicate direction. so a street with "e" is in the eastern "hemisphere" of the east-west grid, and the "e" also indicates that the street goes east-west.

[PotatoGuy]

yea, i think matt's rite

[Bond James Bond]

Seattle has not just W, E, N and S it also has NE, NW, SE and SW.

[the pope]

cleveland's "hemispheres" are defined by the cuyahoga river which runs through the heart of downtown.

[sequoias]

Seattle grid works by North, South, SW, NE, NW, S, N....from downtown Seattle is the center that does not have those. For example, you're in Capitol hill, all the grids with names have E. in it. It doesn't matter with number sometimes. It's strange, haha.

Utah has a very strange grid system, you could get a little confused at first, but get hang of it later. The streets can say 1500E 440N Orem, Utah 84058 (this is a example) The 1500 is a house number in East Orem, the 440N is the street north of "center" street so it means it's in North East of Orem.

[waj0527]

DCs system is sort of confusing for first time drivers. Let's say that Im looking for C Street NW, thats totally different from C Street SE or SW or whatever.

Baltimore, for the most part, has a typical grid system. The city is pretty much split into quarters by major streets. Sections of the city are primarily refered to as N, S, E, and W although NW, SE, etc are often used.

[hudkina]

In Detroit, Woodward Ave is the divider between East and West.

[dave8721]

Miami is split into quadrants but it was done very stupidly. The boundary of NE, SE, NW and SW is in the middle of downtown Miami which happened to the on the far Eastern edge of the city. As a result 95% of streets are either NW or SW.

[ROCguy]

Most cities are split into quadrants. Rochester is. NW, NE, SW, and SE. They aren't the same size in land area or population though, It is just like a grid with the origin at downtown.

[teshadoh]

Atlanta is also NE, NW, SE, & SW.