We could all use a little diversion - best street names

Jim K.

Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes

6y

There's some sly humor in this town.

There's a street near a house we own in the Greenfield neighborhood of the city of Pittsburgh that is so hilly it is called Theodolite Way. It's the immediate parallel back alley of the main drag, Greenfield Avenue.

There's another part of the city that's a long, narrow island in one of the rivers. Historically, it was called "Herr's Island" on maps. It is part of the Troy Hill neighborhood. The island is today called "Washington's Landing." A development of McMansions has been built on the island and a few companies and prominent non-profits have set up offices there, including the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy. The city has set up a "heritage trail" that includes the island as (so a local legend supposedly states) the first part of Pittsburgh that George Washington came to when he first surveyed the area before the French and Indian War. There's a marina, a boat club, and the local rowing association headquarters.

This elaborate and improbably rebranding was necessary, according to old timers around here, because Herr's Island was really called "Pig Island" up until the Depression. The island was used for pork processing and lard rendering. Local suppliers would cart their pigs daily down Troy Holl (which was really called "Pig Hill") and onto the island to be slaughtered and packed. Barges would land and move the pork and lard farther down the Allegheny River to the city center proper and up the Ohio River to supply all the river communities between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati. The area stank constantly of fuel oil and pigcrap.

The very steep street that comes down Pig Hill and leads to the main bridge on and off the island is now called "Rialto Street." I never understood how sly that upscale rebranding was until I went to Venice, Italy and actually visited the Rialto district and saw the wholesale market. What used to be the largest medieval slaughterhouse in Italy used to be right next to the famous bridge over Venice's Grand Canal.

I crack up every time I hear the area referred to as "Washington's Landing," invariably by local status-seeking social-climbing parvenues of a certain age gossiping enviously with each other about big homes and belonging to a boat club. Wouldn't it be SO NICE to live on Pig Island?

Mike Dymski

Investor · Greenville, SC · Member since 2016 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes

6y

OB Hospitalist Group, Obstetrics & Gynecology, 10 Centimeters Dr, Mauldin SC, 29662.

12 Reply

Jim K.

Handyman · Pittsburgh, PA · Member since 2018 · 5k+ posts · 13k+ votes

6y

Originally posted by @Mike Dymski:

OB Hospitalist Group, Obstetrics & Gynecology, 10 Centimeters Dr, Mauldin SC, 29662.

It IS real. I went all the way by plane, train, bus and taxi to a little monastary in a forgotten corner of Spain to visit Potato Jesus and see God's promise that He has a sense of humor. Today that is confirmed.

Account Closed

Investor · Columbus, OH · Member since 2017 · 861 posts · 1k+ votes

6y

For a while I lived just off "Street Road" which was a major road in either Delaware County or Chester County PA.

Here in Columbus there is a odd little street called "Bide A Wee Park Ave" .. shows up on crime reports and foreclosure lists relatively frequently

Daniel Judge

Rental Property Investor · Columbus, OH · Member since 2019 · 131 posts · 183 votes

6y

Thunder Road.

(Drop mic)

Kyle J.

Rental Property Investor · Northern, CA · Member since 2012 · 5k+ posts · 5k+ votes

6y

There's a street in the city where I have rentals called "Eight Mile Rd". It's about 22 miles long. Go figure.

There's another street name in my state called "Zzyzx Rd". No idea how to pronounce it.

I've fished in Idaho before and I know they have a street name there called "Chicken Dinner Rd". I'm not sure exactly how it got it's name, but I believe it had something to do with a family with the last name of "Lamb" who lived on that road a long time ago. Word is, the PETA folks find it all quite distasteful. ;)

Lastly, @Lesley Resnick since you're from Florida I'm surprised you didn't mention "I Dream of Jeannie Lane" named after the sitcom set there. :) I think it's in Cocoa Beach.

Sylvia B.

Rental Property Investor · Douglas County, MO · Member since 2014 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes

6y

In the newer section of our little town is a street named West Lane Ave. I've always thought that was strange.

Even stranger, though, is the difficulty of figuring out if a particular road is a "street" or an "avenue". I drove up Patton a few days ago and actually looked at the signs, which I usually ignore. The first sign said Patton St. but on the next corner the sign said Patton Ave. The next was street again, then avenue, and the last one was street.

Our house on that road gets a gas bill for xxx Patton St, but the water and electric is xxx Patton Ave. I guess no one knows.

John Litzenberger

Rental Property Investor · Denver, CO · Member since 2019 · 22 posts · 11 votes

6y

Pearl St in Boulder Colorado. Its like the Main street of Boulder ...

Guess what its named from? Old brothel's madam back in the gold rush days. No gold? At least there's still Pearl.

Don't hate.

Theresa HarrisPro Member

Member since 2019 · 15k+ posts · 11k+ votes

6y

I like it when the subdivisions have a theme. It makes it easier to find places. Where I currently live the city needs a smack, they pick a name and then add every possible ending to it...Greenwood St, Greenwood Blvd, Greenwood Ave, Greenwood Close....and it goes on. Way too confusing. Where I grew up they had an older area of town where the street names were in alphabetical order after people....Alward St, Burden Ave, Carney Dr, etc.

Byran FarrisPro Member

Rental Property Investor · Katy, TX · Member since 2015 · 7 posts · 3 votes

6y

In Galveston, TX they have a letters streets like Avenue R and Avenue S, but in between you will find Avenue R 1/2. I guess these were created as larger lots were subdivided and new roads cut through. Maybe it is common other places, but always found it funny.

Account Closed

Investor · Columbus, OH · Member since 2017 · 861 posts · 1k+ votes

6y

Heres one that runs straight thru my neighborhood:

East North Broadway Street

there is no Broadway, no South Broadway, no other Broadways anywhere here that i am aware of

They could have just called it Broadway.

Interestingly enough it used to be called Mecca Rd a long time ago. There is still a Mecca Rd on the other side of a dividing road... which is in the middle of a huge Somali community, who are mostly muslims... always wonder if that street name played a part of their deciding where to land....

Kirk R.

Peoria, IL · Member since 2013 · 967 posts · 383 votes

6y

Sesame Street! I looked at a house on that street.

Steve K.

Realtor · Boulder, CO · Member since 2016 · 3k+ posts · 5k+ votes

6y

Colorado has some good ones:

1. 100 Year Party Ct., Longmont, CO

2. Incoriggable Circle, Longmont, CO

3. A Dog Will Lick His Butt But Won't Eat A Pickle Rd., Fountain, CO (Look it up if you don't believe me)

4. No Name (a street in Alamosa as well as a town in Glenwood Canyon). The name actually originates with the Native American tribe called the Noname tribe (pronounced NoNAHme), which means "land of the gullible".

The streets in Colorado are interesting to me because they're laid out a lot more intentionally than in other parts of the country that were developed earlier. For example the old part of Denver (Downtown, LoDo, RiNo, Ballpark, Five Points, Curtis Park, Auraria campus) is laid out in a grid that is positioned perfectly diagonal to the four cardinal directions, and most of the rest of the city is laid out in a perfect N/S, E/W pattern.

Boulder was laid out in a similar N/S, E/W grid, with numbered streets only. Streets went N/S, Avenues went E/W. Many streets follow the longitudinal and latitudinal meridians exactly. Eventually they realized that although highly practical, it was also highly confusing (and boring) to have both a 1st St. and a 1st Ave, a 2nd St. and a 2nd Ave, etc, that all intersect each other, so they switched all the avenues to nature-related names (mostly trees, birds and flowers but also some scientists and wealthy people's names peppered in like Carnegie, Curie and Tesla). The nature names progress in Alphabetical order South to North. Thankfully they branched away from numbers only, otherwise we never would have been blessed with names like...

Table Mesa (Mesa means table in Spanish)

Moorhead Ave. (which intercourses, I mean intersects, with Tantra Dr.)

and Packer Gulch (named after the famous cannibal Alferd Packer)

However some streets didn't fit into the grid (like the county roads that were there before the grid layout idea was implemented, and the interstates that came later), so the grid is hacked apart by roads like Santa Fe, Diagonal, 70, 25, 36, and Colfax, that go where they want.

Some of the chosen names didn't work out as intended either, such as Kalamath St.. Meant to be named after the Klamath tribe of Native Americans, apparently they spelled Klamath wrong originally, and then just said, "Whatever we're going to double down on the miss-spelling", and kept it that way.

Lesley Resnick

OP

Real Estate Agent · Jacksonville, FL · Member since 2015 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes

6y

These are great.

Jacksonville was originally known as COWFORD. It was a shallow spot in the St John's River to allow cows to cross. Where they were going or why I am not sure.

Rich Bultema

Crown Point, IN · Member since 2018 · 56 posts · 23 votes

6y

When driving down the main road past our mall, the intersecting streets are named in order as the following,

Mall Entrance A

Mall Entrance B

Mall Entrance C

Mall Entrance D

Mall Entrance 5

[email protected]786-494-6766

Robert EllisBusiness Member

Developer · Miami, FL · Member since 2014 · 3k+ posts · 1k+ votes

6y

Originally posted by @Account Closed:

For a while I lived just off "Street Road" which was a major road in either Delaware County or Chester County PA.

Here in Columbus there is a odd little street called "Bide A Wee Park Ave" .. shows up on crime reports and foreclosure lists relatively frequently

I had never heard about this street in columbus until this year when that foreclosure came up and we also quoted a basement clean out there last week. lol

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Ai Ling Chow

Denver, CO · Member since 2020 · 2 posts · 1 vote

6y

Off the Denver-Boulder Turnpike is Tape Drive, which also branches into Disc Drive. Seems it used to have a StorageTek campus.

Joe Cassandra

Rental Property Investor · Woodstock, GA · Member since 2017 · 517 posts · 772 votes

6y

Not fully the street name...

But in college in Charlotte, our immature minds got a kick out of the road "Cox"

More because there was an iHop on it.

"Where are we meeting?"

"iHop on Cox"

...

I havent matured as I still giggle.

Pat L.

Rental Property Investor · Upstate, NY · Member since 2012 · 3k+ posts · 3k+ votes

6y

"iHop on Cox"...
reminds me when one of my daughters friends got into college on the rowing team..celebrating at dinner with her parents she blurted out that she was a now "a Cox working at Dicks"'. We cried laughing.

Best one was a small village in Austria (F**king) that we came across driving through it to our destination Hallwang. Allegedly, it was founded in the 6th century by a Bavarian noble named Focko, and F**king means "(place of) Focko's people." The name of the town is F**KING and people keep stealing their signs.

Levi Woodman

Member since 2019 · 1 post · 0 votes

6y

I grew up on Upper Swallow Road. I know where there’s Alcohol Mary Road, Jackass Annie Road and Smutty lane.

Matt M.

Specialist · Easton, PA · Member since 2018 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes

6y

@Lesley Resnick

There is a road about 30 mins from me in NJ called Shades of Death Rd

Jordan Norr

Salmon, ID · Member since 2017 · 59 posts · 12 votes

6y

@Lesley Resnick

I’m sure it’s already been said, we’ve got a few here in Idaho, I think the best one is Chicken Dinner