Arlington County, Virginia, street-naming system

Street naming system

This article details the street naming system of Arlington County, Virginia in the United States. Although the streets of Arlington County are not laid out on a grid plan, its local streets follow sequential numbered or alphabetic patterns that are both rational and provide address numbering information.

A numbered and alphabetical street naming scheme suggests that Arlington is or once was laid out on a continuous rectilinear grid plan, which in many parts of the County it is not (although very few parts of the county are laid out using the cul de sac type development which is more common in the outer Washington, DC suburbs). Originally, the various communities in the county had independent street naming conventions. However, when county officials asked the United States Postal Service to place the entire county in a single "Arlington, Virginia" postal area, the USPS refused to do so until the county had a unified addressing system, which the county developed in 1932. For that reason, and also because Arlington contains a number of locations that interrupt the road grid network (including military facilities, parks, golf courses, and limited access highways), it is common for streets to terminate and continue later on in another location. Arlington now has a policy of adding to the street grid when feasible as part of new development—for example, connections for Quinn Street and Troy Street were recently added to the Master Transportation Plan between Wilson and Clarendon Boulevards.

Address numbers can be determined from the numbers or names of intersecting streets. Addresses on north–south routes, including exceptions from the numbering and naming system, follow the numbers of intersecting (or implied intersections of) numbered streets. For example, 2005 South Glebe Road would lie just beyond the intersection of South Glebe Road and 20th Street South. Addresses on east–west, including exceptions from the numbering and naming system, are based on the intersecting (or implied intersections of) named streets with each letter/syllable combination representing 100 address numbers. The chart below shows the block numbers on east–west streets. Full Lot houses often skip 4 numbers in between houses, and town homes generally skip two; while the opposite side of the street is offset by one number, so that one side can be even, and one odd.