X

X: (See Luella.)

XENOPHON: This Greek historian and philosopher was born in Athens about 430 B.C. He is best remembered for his writings about having Athens use its influence to maintain peace in the Greek world and for using the Temple of Delphi to settle questions of diplomacy. 1

TYPICAL STREET CLASSIFICATIONS

Street classifications define the function of each of our many highways and byways. The Houston Planning and Development Department considers many factors when determining a street’s classification including: travel demand, street right-of-way width, maintenance cost, needs for access to adjacent property, safety, preservation of neighborhood character, distance between major streets known as arterials, adjacent land uses and connections to the regional transportation system and to major destinations. The following table details the characteristics of each type of street. ⁵¹

why historic galveston has so few streets named for famous citizens

As one our most historic towns it seemed odd that only a handful of streets in Galveston recall the people who made it what was once called the “Wall Street of the South.” Well there is a very simple reason. It was laid out using a gridiron pattern copied from eastern cities like New York City and Philadelphia by an eccentric surveyor named Gail Borden. He rode his pet bull around town, tried to make jelly from oxen hoofs and horns, invented condensed milk and founded the Borden Company. The plan was simple. Avenues that paralleled the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay were labeled alphabetically. Streets that intersected the avenues were named numerically. As Galveston grew the city officials just continued to expand Borden’s grid. Over the years half of the alphabetical avenues and 13 of the numerical streets were renamed as follows:

Avenue A – Port Industrial (now Harborside)

Avenue B – Strand

Avenue C – Ship’s Mechanic

Avenue D – Market

Avenue E – Post Office

Avenue F – Church

Avenue G – Winnie

Avenue H – Ball

Avenue I – Sealy

Avenue J – Broadway

Avenue P - Bernardo de Galvez

Avenue P ½ – Heard’s Lane

Avenue S – Stewart

2^nd Street – Ferry

4^th Street – Holiday

6^th Street – University

14^th Street – Christopher Columbus

21^st Street – Moody

22^nd Street – Kempner

23^rd Street – Tremont

25^th Street – Rosenberg

29^th Street – Martin Luther King

39^th Street – Mike Gaido

41^st Street – Jack Johnson

53^rd Street – Mary Moody Northen

61^st Street – Central City

And finally, where did the ½ streets come from. Legend says the Galveston City Company felt Borden had made the lots too big so they halved some of them by placing a street between say O Street and P Street and calling it O ½. More likely as the town grew toward the Gulf they had run out of letters so they back filled with the use of the ½ 52