Anaddress is a collection of information, presented in a mostly fixed format, used to give the location of a building, apartment, or other structure or a plot of land, generally usingpolitical boundaries andstreet names as references, along with other identifiers such ashouse or apartment numbers and organization name. Some addresses also contain special codes, such as apostal code, to make identification easier and aid in the routing ofmail.
Addresses provide a means of physically locating a building. They are used in identifying buildings as the end points of apostal system and as parameters in statistics collection, especially incensus-taking and theinsurance industry. Address formats are different in different places, and unlike latitude and longitude coordinates, there is no simple mapping from an address to a location.
Until the 18th and 19th centuries, most houses and buildings were not numbered.[1]In London, one of the first recorded instances of a street being numbered was Prescot Street in Goodman's Fields in 1708.[2] Street naming and numbering began under theage of Enlightenment, also as part of campaigns forcensus and military conscription, such as in the dominions ofMaria Theresa in the mid 18th century.[1] Numbering allowed the efficient delivery of mail, as the postal system evolved in the 18th and 19th centuries to reach widespread usage.[1]
InLondon, house numbering was not regulated until theMetropolis Management Act 1855, which granted the newly formedMetropolitan Board of Works the power to control street naming and numbering. Under pressure from thePost Office, the board began simplifying addresses in 1857, tackling the most confusing streets and assigning district codes, like EC (Eastern Central) and WC (Western Central), which laid the foundation for the postcode system.Postcodes, as we know them, were only introduced in the 1960s-1970s. Despite some public resistance to changing street names and numbers, by 1871, over 4,800 street names had been altered, and 100,000 houses renumbered in London. Though house numbering took time to become widely accepted, it eventually became firmly established.[3]
Comprehensive addressing of all buildings is still incomplete, even in developed countries.[1] For example, theNavajo Nation in the United States was still assigning rural addresses as of 2015[4][5] and the lack of addresses can be used forvoter disenfranchisement in the USA.[1][6] In many cities inAsia, most minor streets were never named, and this is still the case today in much of Japan. Over a third of addresses in Ireland shared their address with at least one other property at the time of theEircode's introduction in 2015.[7]
Land registration systems, known ascadastres, helped manage property ownership in Ancient Rome, especially as Rome expanded. The city was divided into 14 regions (regiones) byEmperor Augustus to streamline administration, which became the foundation for locating properties.[8][9][10]
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In most English-speaking countries, the usual method of house numbering is an alternating numbering scheme progressing in each direction along a street, with odd numbers on one side (often west or south or the left-hand side leading away from a main road) and even numbers on the other side, although there is significant variation on this basic pattern. Many older towns and cities in the UK have "up and down" numbering where the numbers progress sequentially along one side of the road, and then sequentially back down the other side. Cities inNorth America, particularly those planned on agrid plan, often incorporateblock numbers, quadrants (explained below), andcardinal directions into their street numbers, so that in many such cities, addresses roughly follow aCartesian coordinate system.[11] Some other cities around the world have their own schemes.
Although house numbering is the principal identification scheme in many parts of the world, it is also common for houses in the United Kingdom andIreland to be identified by name, rather than number, especially in villages. In these cases, the street name will usually follow the house name. Such an address might read: "Smith Cottage, Frog Lane, Barchester, Barsetshire, BZ9 9BA" or "Dunroamin, Emo, Co. Laois, Ireland" (fictional examples).
In cities with Cartesian-coordinate-based addressing systems, the streets that form the north–south and east–west dividing lines constitute thex andy axes of aCartesian coordinate plane and thus divide the city intoquadrants. The quadrants are typically identified in the street names, although the manner of doing so varies from city to city. For example, in one city, all streets in the northeast quadrant may have "NE" prefixed or suffixed to their street names, while in another, the intersection ofNorth Calvert Street andEast 27th Street can only be in the northeast quadrant.
Street names may follow a variety of themes. In manyNorth American cities, such asSan Francisco, USA, andEdmonton,Alberta andVancouver,British Columbia, streets are simplynumbered sequentially across the street grid.Numbered streets originated in the United States inPhiladelphia byThomas Holme, who laid out the original plan for the city in 1683.Washington, D.C. has its numbered streets running north–south and lettered or alphabetically named streets running east–west, while diagonal avenues are typically named after states. InSalt Lake City, and many otherUtah cities, streets are in a large grid and are numbered in increments of 100 based on their location relative to the center of the city in blocks. A similar system is in use inDetroit with theMile Road System. In some housing developments in North America and elsewhere, street names may all follow the same theme (for example, bird species), or start with the same letter. Streets inContinental Europe, theMiddle East, andLatin America are often named after famous people or significant dates.
Postal codes are a relatively recent development in addressing, designed to speed the sorting and processing of mail by assigning unique numeric or alphanumeric codes to each geographical locality.
For privacy and other purposes, postal services have made it possible to receive mail without revealing one's physical address or even having a fixed physical address. Examples arepost office boxes,service addresses andposte restante (general delivery).
In most of the world, addresses are written in order from most specific to general, i.e. finest to coarsest information, starting with the addressee and ending with the largest geographical unit. For example:[12]
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
| Name of recipient Company name Street number, name City area/District City/Town/Village County Postal code Country (inFrench or English) | Mr A. Payne ARAMARK Ltd. 30 Commercial Road Fratton PORTSMOUTH Hampshire PO1 1AA UNITED KINGDOM |
In English-speaking countries, thepostal code usually comes last. In much of Europe, the code precedes the town name, thus: "1010Lausanne". Sometimes, theISO 3166 country code is placed in front of the postal code: "CH-1010Lausanne".[13]
If a house number is provided, it is written on the same line as the street name; a house name is written on the previous line. When addresses are written inline, line breaks are replaced by commas. Conventions on the placing of house numbers differ: either before or after the street name. Similarly, there are differences in the placement of postal codes: in the UK, they are written on a separate line at the end of the address; in Australia, Canada and the United States, they usually appear immediately after the state or province, on the same line; in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and The Netherlands they appear before the city, on the same line.
East Asian addressing systems, including Chinese,Japanese,Korean, andTaiwanese addressing systems, when written in their native scripts, use the big-endian order, from the largest geographical area to the smallest geographical area, followed by the recipient's name. However, both have the same order as Western countries when written in theLatin script. The Hungarian system also goes from large to small units, except that the name of the addressee is put into the first line.
The Universal Postal Convention strongly recommends the following:
