For quite a few years now, friends and recent acquaintances have sighed over my tendency to be an address snob. I am, though, and I’m not about to give it up now. In my native Baltimore, I’ve always held up the ideals. Nice people from Baltimore would never take a cross street address, nor would they live south of Baltimore street. Of course, my world is somewhat skewed in both Baltimore and Richmond by the influx of auslander, who are not entirely sure what cross streets and neighborhoods and correct stationery actually entail.
Given the architectural limitations of a rowhouse, it is not uncommon for a big, fancy corner house in Baltimore—or Richmond, or Washington for that matter—although very few nice people deign to live in what has unfortunately been designed our national capital—to actually have its entrance on the side street. Sometimes, that big house just works out a little more conveniently if the front door opens to the side, rather than the front. In every case, though, these houses take the address of the fashionable main street. The Hooper house, about fifty yards north of my own, sits at the corner of St. Paul and 23rd. Being one of those deranged Victorian piles with no apparent sense of design, logic or order, the house eschews any obvious place to put a front door. Probably through a quirk of design they stuck the front door on 23rd—but the Hoopers wouldn’t have dreamed of a cross street address, so despite the actual location of entry the house is numbered 2301 St. Paul. In the same vein, the McKim mansion a bit further downtown actually fronts on Biddle, but since it’s at the corner of the more fashionable Calvert street, it carries the Calvert address.
Perhaps my Baltimorean heritage compels me to carry this silliness wherever I go. For the few blissful years that I lived in Richmond, I gave my address quite simply as “2806, on the Avenue.” Native Richmonders knew exactly what I meant—though they probably found me more than a bit presumptuous. Those who had to ask “Which Avenue?” –well, I probably didn’t want to have them calling on me, anyway. (Confidential to non-Richmond readers: That’s Monument Avenue, l’addresse du choix in the Holy City.) My cat, by the way, has never forgiven me from leaving that hallowed precinct, and if she had calling cards would surely still list her address as “No. 4, The Jackson, The Avenue, City”.
Even so, I thought that the Baltimoreans had gotten out of hand back in the ‘70s when they created nonexistent addresses for new Urban-Development Hell buildings. When O’Neill’s department store and the beautiful Century and Valencia theatres were destroyed, one might think the old addresses on Charles and Lexington streets—two of the city’s most revered thoroughfares—would have garnered a bit of respect. A tract of land that should have been 200 North Charles was miraculously christened as One Charles Center. Its baptismal gift was a black steel and black glass horror, immortalized thanks to the tag line of Mies van der Rohe. (Hmm. This is a concept: no matter how old, ugly and unfashionable I might become, if I attach myself to a bad Dutch architect, I can live forever!) Meanwhile, the Blaustein Building across the street—the Blausteins had hoped to compete with the miserable Charles Center development—hights itself One North Charles, although it isn’t really. That address should properly be held by an unassuming storefront one half-block south.
And in this week’s New Yorker, I discover that the big new development on Columbus Circle has decided that its address is on Central Park West. Hmm. By that logic, I suppose I live on Mount Vernon Place, instead of on St. Paul near 23rd. Turning a house around a corner is one thing—and a foolish one at that—but glomming onto an address by several blocks takes presumption into the field of idiocy.
In old Baltimore, if you couldn’t afford to live on one of the “Social Streets” and HAD to take a cross street address, you made the best of it. At least you lived around the corner from everyone in the Blue Book, and they knew you and you probably got invites to their parties. If you had a corner house, you could still legitimately claim the main street as an address. No one ever dreamed of giving his 22nd street house an address on Maryland Avenue.
The wonder is that the New Yorkers will actually buy into it.
Given the architectural limitations of a rowhouse, it is not uncommon for a big, fancy corner house in Baltimore—or Richmond, or Washington for that matter—although very few nice people deign to live in what has unfortunately been designed our national capital—to actually have its entrance on the side street. Sometimes, that big house just works out a little more conveniently if the front door opens to the side, rather than the front. In every case, though, these houses take the address of the fashionable main street. The Hooper house, about fifty yards north of my own, sits at the corner of St. Paul and 23rd. Being one of those deranged Victorian piles with no apparent sense of design, logic or order, the house eschews any obvious place to put a front door. Probably through a quirk of design they stuck the front door on 23rd—but the Hoopers wouldn’t have dreamed of a cross street address, so despite the actual location of entry the house is numbered 2301 St. Paul. In the same vein, the McKim mansion a bit further downtown actually fronts on Biddle, but since it’s at the corner of the more fashionable Calvert street, it carries the Calvert address.
Perhaps my Baltimorean heritage compels me to carry this silliness wherever I go. For the few blissful years that I lived in Richmond, I gave my address quite simply as “2806, on the Avenue.” Native Richmonders knew exactly what I meant—though they probably found me more than a bit presumptuous. Those who had to ask “Which Avenue?” –well, I probably didn’t want to have them calling on me, anyway. (Confidential to non-Richmond readers: That’s Monument Avenue, l’addresse du choix in the Holy City.) My cat, by the way, has never forgiven me from leaving that hallowed precinct, and if she had calling cards would surely still list her address as “No. 4, The Jackson, The Avenue, City”.
Even so, I thought that the Baltimoreans had gotten out of hand back in the ‘70s when they created nonexistent addresses for new Urban-Development Hell buildings. When O’Neill’s department store and the beautiful Century and Valencia theatres were destroyed, one might think the old addresses on Charles and Lexington streets—two of the city’s most revered thoroughfares—would have garnered a bit of respect. A tract of land that should have been 200 North Charles was miraculously christened as One Charles Center. Its baptismal gift was a black steel and black glass horror, immortalized thanks to the tag line of Mies van der Rohe. (Hmm. This is a concept: no matter how old, ugly and unfashionable I might become, if I attach myself to a bad Dutch architect, I can live forever!) Meanwhile, the Blaustein Building across the street—the Blausteins had hoped to compete with the miserable Charles Center development—hights itself One North Charles, although it isn’t really. That address should properly be held by an unassuming storefront one half-block south.
And in this week’s New Yorker, I discover that the big new development on Columbus Circle has decided that its address is on Central Park West. Hmm. By that logic, I suppose I live on Mount Vernon Place, instead of on St. Paul near 23rd. Turning a house around a corner is one thing—and a foolish one at that—but glomming onto an address by several blocks takes presumption into the field of idiocy.
In old Baltimore, if you couldn’t afford to live on one of the “Social Streets” and HAD to take a cross street address, you made the best of it. At least you lived around the corner from everyone in the Blue Book, and they knew you and you probably got invites to their parties. If you had a corner house, you could still legitimately claim the main street as an address. No one ever dreamed of giving his 22nd street house an address on Maryland Avenue.
The wonder is that the New Yorkers will actually buy into it.
posted by Daniel | 1:26 AM
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