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Originally Posted by DizzyEdge
Actually makes sense. The 'main' streets in various towns and cities might be Main, Railway, Queen, King, Centre, 1st, but the one beside it is probably often 2nd
50th is on the list because many prairie towns middle intersection is 50th ave and 50th st, supposedly to make them sound bigger at the turn of the century to prospective immigrants from the east, not sure if that is actually true though. You'd have some villages where the entire village is from 48th to 52nd street and ave, but that address on 51st street sure makes it seem like a happening place  |
It wasn't for that reason so much as to avoid repeating numbers and having to have directional suffixes, which happens with a crossing-1sts system (as in Calgary's multiple Xth streets/avenues and SW, SE, NE, NW suffixes). The crossing-50s allowed a town to expand as much as it was likely to expand without running out of numbers in the directions that descended from the "50".