San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names

Re:San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names by lxgr on Sunday May 03, 2026 @06:14AM (#47995419)

I’ve always wondered if some of the downtown Manhattan/downtown Brooklyn streets were continued continuations of one and the same street, maybe connected by ferries in earlier days, or just references to the same namesake (or possibly each other).

And speaking of Brooklyn, I really wonder what city planners were thinking with that thing in Williamsburg where numbered streets exist twice, once as “<j> North <i>th Street” and once as “South <i>th Street”, which completely clashes with Manhattan naming the Eastern/Western part of the same street (“<j> <E/W> <i>Th Street”). Not to mention the completely separate set of numbered streets (“<j> <i>th Street”, without cardinal direction indicators) in the south or Brooklyn…

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Re:San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names by esho on Sunday May 03, 2026 @12:13PM (#47998420)

Brooklyn and City of New York (Manhattan/Bronx) were separate cities until 1898. Prior to that, Brooklyn was on an expansion spree annexing cities and towns to the north (Williamsburg, Bushwick) to the east (New Lots) and south (New Utrecht, Flatbush) to make the size of the current borough hence the confusing street names. Queens has a solution to that.

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Re:San Francisco streets with confusingly similar names by lxgr on Sunday May 03, 2026 @12:51PM (#47998826)

Ah, I didn't consider that even Brooklyn itself wasn't always a single city. That makes sense, thank you!

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