May 25

Maple Leaf's phantom block – where'd it go?

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4  comments

Here’s a question we hope our readers can answer. It comes from Tracey.

My husband and I live in New Westminster, B.C., and we were in Seattle for the weekend.  We visited the Maple Leaf neighborhood because I learned that my great uncle once lived in a house at 423 N.E. 91st Street.  We met confusion when we saw that the house numbers on 91st St. go from the three-hundreds to the five-hundreds, skipping the four-hundreds altogether.  Any idea if the numbering system has been changed since the 1940s?  I’d love to see if the house is still there under a different number.

She’s quite correct. There’s a 300 block on one side of Fifth Avenue Northeast, and a 500 block on the other, east side, but no 400 block addresses at all.

Northeast 92nd has a 400 block, but 90th and 89th do not. (Clue: Fourth Avenue Northeast doesn’t go through.) Northeast 88th does.

Who knows if those missing blocks ever existed?

About the author 

Sara W

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  1. I think Valerie’s right, we need the uncle’s name to check Polk’s before moving forward. According to some of the Kroll’s maps I looked at, there is an E 91st St in 1955, where NE 91st St is today.

    I have easy access to the Polk’s going way back, so if someone can give me a name, I’ll start digging.

  2. Check the uncle’s address by looking up his name in the old city directories published by the Polk’s company. These directories are available at the Seattle Public library. Contact the “ask a librarian” service, give a date range (such as the 1920’s and the uncle’s name) and they can look up his address.

  3. I checked a map from the 1940s and it appears that 4th Ave stopped at NE 86th and never reappeared North of that line. Tracey, where did you get the address from?

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