House numbering

An example of a Central European house number.

House numbering is the system of giving a unique number to each building in a street or area, with the intention of making it easier to locate a particular building. The house number is often part of a postal address.

House numbering schemes vary by place, and in many cases even within cities. In some areas of the world, including many remote areas, houses are not numbered at all, instead simply being named.

Australia

In Australia, the current standard (Australia / New Zealand joint standard AS/NZS 4819:2003) for numbering newly created streets is to assign odd numbers to sites on the left and even numbers to the right (the European system). This standard came into force in 2003.

In New South Wales, the vast majority of streets were numbered before 2003 according to the typical British scheme, with odd numbers assigned to houses on the right of the street when facing in the direction of increasing numbers, and there is no plan to re-assign these numbers.

On very long urban roads (e.g. Parramatta Road in Sydney) numbers will typically ascend until the road crosses a council or suburb boundary, then commence again at 1 or 2. Long roads can thus have several occurrences of each number. In semi-rural and rural areas, where houses and farms are widely spaced, a numbering system based on tens of metres or (less commonly) metres has been devised. Thus a farm 2300m from the start of the road, on the right-hand side would be numbered 230.

Europe

European scheme

Paris is said to have been the first city to introduce house numbering, on the Pont Notre-Dame in 1512.

In Europe the most common house numbering scheme is to number each plot on one side of the road with ascending odd numbers, from 1, and those on the other with ascending even numbers, from 2 or sometimes 0. The odd numbers are usually on the left side of the road, looking in the direction in which the numbers increase. Where additional buildings are inserted or subdivided, these are often suffixed a, b, etc (in Spain and France, bis, ter, quater). Where buildings are later combined, they may use just one of the original numbers, combine them ("13/15"), or give their address as a range (e.g. "13‑17"; not to be construed as including the even numbers 14 and 16). Where some plots are not built upon, there may be considerable gaps in the numbering scheme. If a lot of buildings are later built along a stretch of the street, either a range of unused numbers above the current highest house number may be used, introducing confusing discontinuities, or the remainder of the street must be renumbered.

British houses started being numbered with the Postage Act of 1765. In rural areas many houses remain named but un-numbered. The odd numbers will typically, although not always, be on the left-hand side as seen from the centre of the town or village, with the lowest numbers at the end of the street closest to the town centre. Intermediate properties usually have a number suffixed A, B, C, etc, but there are several that have been given a half number, e.g. the old police station at 20½ Camberwell Church Street. At least one property (built next to no.2 after the street had been numbered) has been numbered zero.

Clockwise scheme

House number in Vienna

An example of a Polish house number.

An example of a Slovak house number.

Before the early/mid nineteenth century, it was common in England for numbering to proceed sequentially along one side of the road and then back down the other (in a similar way to "boustrephedon" writing). Subsequent changes to local numbering can present pitfalls to researchers using historic street directories, for instance.

This approach – numbering all plots on one side of a street consecutively, continuing clockwise back down on the opposite side of the street – still exists, for example in Pall Mall, culs-de-sac, streets with buildings only on one side, some new towns, and in many Welsh villages. For instance, 10 Downing Street, the official home of the First Lord of the Treasury (usually the Prime Minister), is next door to 11 Downing Street, the home of the Second Lord of the Treasury (usually the Chancellor of the Exchequer). Houses which surround squares are usually numbered consecutively clockwise.

Consecutive numbering is also used in some cases where only one side of the road is built up, as in Crayfield Road, Levenshulme, whose southern side is a former railway (now a cycle track).

Some UK local authorities avoid the number 13 for house numbering, because that number is considered unlucky.

In Haarlem, The Netherlands, red numbers are used for upstairs apartments.

In Venice, houses are numbered within districts known as sestieri, resulting in just six series for the entire city. In Genoa and in Florence houses are given black numbers and businesses are usually (but not always) given red numbers, resulting in two series per street.

In Central and Eastern Europe, with the exceptions below, houses are typically numbered in the European style. Many streets, however, use the "boustrephedon" system described above.

In Czech and Slovak cities, two numbering systems are used concurrently. Buildings display both a "descriptive number" (Czech číslo popisné, Slovak súpisné číslo) (red in Czech, black in Slovak) and an "orientation number" (Czech číslo orientační, Slovak orientačné číslo) (blue or black in Czech, red in Slovak). The descriptive number is unique to the building in its section of town and may not be concurrent with addresses of nearby buildings. The orientation number is a simple sequential number, similar to the house numbers used in other European cities. Either number may be used in addresses. Sometimes, businesses will use both numbers to avoid confusion, usually putting the descriptive number first: "Hlavní 20 / 7."

Russia and former USSR countries

In Russia and many other former USSR countries, the European style is generally used, with numbers starting from the end of the street closest to the town center. Buildings or plots at street intersections may be assigned a composite number, which includes the number along the intersecting street separated by a slash (Russian: дробь), like in Нахимова, 14/41 (14 is the number along Nakhimova street and 41 is the number along intersecting street).

The odd numbers are usually on the left side of the road, looking in the direction in which the numbers increase; though in some cities (including Saint Petersburg) the odd numbers are on the right side.

In some cities, especially hosting large scientific or military research centers in Soviet time, the numbering might be different: houses may have numbers related to the block rather than the street, thus 12-й квартал, дом 3 (Block 12, House 3).

When a numbered plot contains multiple buildings, they are assigned an additional component of the street address, called корпус (building), which is usually a sequentially assigned number unique within the plot (but sometimes contains letters as in 15а, 15б, 15в and so on). So, a Russian street address may look like Московское шоссе, дом 23, корпус 2 (Moscow Street, plot 23, building 2), or Льва Толстого, дом 14б (Leo Tolstoy Street, plot 14, building b).

On very long roads in suburban areas kilometer numbering system also may be used (like Australian rural numbering system). For example, 9-й км Воткинского шоссе (9th kilometer of Votkinsk Highway), and Шабердинский тракт, 7-й км (7th kilometer of Shaberdy Road).

Japan and Korea

Japan and South Korea use a system where the city is divided into small sections each with its own numeric code. The houses within that zone are then labelled based on the order in which they were constructed, or clockwise around the block. This system is comparable to the system of sestieri (sixths) used in Venice.

Further information: [[:Japanese addressing system and Addresses in South Korea]]

Latin America

Some countries in Latin America use systems similar to those in Europe. Houses are numbered in ascending order from downtown to the border of the city. Usually the cities are divided in Colonias, which are small or medium areas. The colonia is commonly included in the address before the postal code. Sometimes when houses merge in a street or new constructions are built after the numbering was made, the address can become ambiguous. When a number is repeated a letter is added to the newest house. For example, if there are two 35's, one remains as 35 and the second one becomes 35A or 35Bis.

It is sometimes common that in remote towns or non-planned areas inside the cities that the streets do not have any name and the houses do not have numbers. In these cases the address of the houses are usually the name of the person or family, the name of the area or town, and "Dirección Conocida" (Known Address), which means that the house of the family is known by almost all the community. This kind of addressing is only used in remote towns or small communities near highways.

Distance scheme

For people living near highways or roads the usual address is the kilometer of the road in which the house is established; if there's more than one, some references might be written or the "Dirección Conocida" may be added. In countries like Brazil and Argentina, but also in some villages in France, this scheme is used also for streets in cities, where the house number is the distance, measured in meters, from the house to the start of the street.

United States and Canada

9 West 57th Street, New York City

On most streets in the United States and Canada, odd numbers are on one side and even numbers on the other. Often the number assigned is proportional to the distance from some baseline, so not all numbers are used. On very long roads, four- and five-digit addresses are common.

In cities with a grid plan of streets, addresses often increase by 100 for each cross street, though in some cities they are consecutive within each block, so that a block where one side is numbered 501, 503, 505, 507, 509, 511 is followed by a block beginning with 601.

Addresses may also correlate with a street-numbering system. Thus, in Cleveland, Ohio, a building with the address 900 Euclid Avenue would be at the corner of Euclid Avenue and 9th Street. Similarly, in Philadelphia, a building whose address is "1610 Walnut Street" would be located on Walnut Street between 16th and 17th streets, more-or-less across the street from 1609. In Queens, New York City, a so-called "Philadelphia Plan" uses a dash to separate the cross street number from the rest of the house number, as in 34-55 107th Street, home of Louis Armstrong.

San Francisco has several numbering systems in different districts; where these systems meet, parallel streets may be numbered in opposite directions. For example, the streets parallel to and east of Masonic Avenue are numbered northward, while Masonic and parallel streets to the west are numbered southward.

Along the Overseas Highway in the Florida Keys, house numbers indicate their distance from Mile Marker 0 in Key West. The mileage is found by dividing the house number by 1000 (for example, 77220 Overseas Highway is 77.2 miles from Mile Marker 0).

Buildings in many rural areas in the United States used to lack these kind of addresses. Instead, an old rural address might have been simply "Rural route 3, Box 15." However, the adoption of 9-1-1 emergency systems has required the adoption of street names and house numbers in rural areas, typically numbering 1000 for each mile from the nearest town center.

In areas of rural Wisconsin, the address layout of many counties features a baseline in one corner of the county, with numbers increasing from that point and appended with a cardinal direction; for instance, an address on a north-south road 45 blocks north from the baseline is written as 'N4500', while an address 45 blocks west from the baseline on a east-west road is shown as 'W4500'. Some counties and suburban communities (such as Waukesha and the Town and City of Cedarburg) use a two-part address for both directions for easier referencing within a map and the numbering system (N4500-W4500 for instance).

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California lacks any house numbering whatsoever. Houses are referred to, instead, as (for example) "Junipero 3 SW of 10th", meaning "The third house on the west side of Junipero south of 10th."

Block numbers

Block numbers are a system of assigning numbers based on distance rather than strictly sequentially. Typically, each block is assigned 100 numbers, such that the building numbers on that block vary only in the two least significant digits. For example, in Washington, D.C., the block of 7th Street, N.W., between D and E streets, N.W., is designated as the 400 block, meaning that building numbers on that block are in the range from 400 to 499 inclusive. It is common to indicate block numbers on street signs.

Some localities, such as the Borough of Queens in New York City, use a block numbering system in which a hyphen separates the hundreds digit from the tens digit. For example, a building number that might elsewhere be written 16709 is instead written 167-09. In most cases, the first number refers to the street, avenue, drive, etc. where the numbering begins. For example 99-40 63rd Road is numbered because the starting point was 99th Street. Likewise, an address on a perpendicular block would have its number starting with 63-XX. In Queens (unlike other areas, such as Los Angeles, where one may see numbers such as 16700 Sunset Blvd.) rarely is the 00 number used to refer to an address, but rather the numbering starts at -01 or -02 depending on the side of the block.

Some localities in Utah and Wisconsin have a more elaborate system of block numbering. Such localities use compound block numbers to indicate the number of blocks from both the north-south and the east-west dividing lines. For example, an address in Utah might be of the form "226 N 3300 W" where other systems might use "226 33rd Ave NW". Such an address is in the northwest quadrant of the addressing system. Another system, used in Wisconsin, might use "N112 W16709 Mequon Rd" rather than "16709 W. Mequon Rd". This numbering system is based on the southeast corner of each county and is based on a grid that will increase when traveling in a northerly or westerly direction using N and W, respectively. In Illinois, specifically in DuPage and Kane counties near Chicago, addresses in unincorporated and newly annexed areas are given according to their placement in a square mile section relative to downtown Chicago. North-south streets use an address number beginning in N or S, and east-west streets use an address number beginning in W. The three-digit unique number that follows is assigned according to distance from the beginning of the quadrant. For example, "30W221 Butterfield Road" is in Naperville, 30 miles west of downtown Chicago. Addresses in adjoining suburban Cook County and Will County do not use this system, and instead use addresses that simply increase in number rather than have a letter such as "W" or "S" in the address. Two examples: "16701 South 96th Avenue" would be just south of 167th Street, and "9603 West 191st Street" would be just west of 96th Avenue.

Taiwan

Taiwan's "61, Alley 351, Lane 410, Gongguan St." allows direct navigation from Gongguan St., whereas in North America, one would need to know where the intervening, say, Jefferson Lane and Williams Alley were.

The above navigation being: on Gongguan St. turn right the lane at house number 410, then left at the alley at house number 351, proceed to house number 61.