Calgary Heritage Initiative forums

Elsewhere on this site, it has been mentioned that in 1904, Calgary implemented a numbering system to replace many of the colorful street names in downtown Calgary. There appears however to have been a short-lived reversal of this policy in 1910. The Glenbow map collection contains a 1910 City engineering map, most likely prepared in conjunction with the 1910 annexation. It outlines a number of proposed street names for inner city districts, some of which were in use briefly. In Crescent Heights for example, 6th Avenue N is Somerville and 7th Avenue is Lincoln. Sidewalk stamps still in existence confirm these names and the names were used in both the 1911 city property assessment rolls as well as the 1911 Prairies census. What I don't know is why these names fell into disuse. My suspicion is that the economic downturn which arrived at the beginning of WW 1 had a big impact, but I'm curious as to exactly when the city again reverted to its previous policy. Has anyone else ever followed up on this?

Could it be possible that those names were in use *before* the annexation, and then once annexed the City reverted them to the numbered system? I too have seen at least one of those sidewalk stamps in Crescent Heights.

That's indeed a possibility, at least for the older residential areas. However, the 1910 annexation boundaries ran as far north as 48th Avenue and as far east as Barlow Trail; many of the new districts with "named" streets on the 1910 map existed at that time only on paper and wouldn't be developed for many years. The answer to my question probably lies somewhere at City Corporate Archives.

It would seem that these names were still in use in 1944. I have in my hands a copy of the Municipal Manual Presenting Interesting Information and Authoritative Statistics - Calgary, Alberta, 1944.

Among many interesting items, there is a 4 page section entitled "Location of Named Streets and Avenues in Calgary". It would appear to have been current rather than past names as it doesn't include streets such as Atlantic, Pacific, McTavish, etc. Although, interestingly, Scarth is mentioned and given as "18th Ave. and 1st St. S.W., near station."

Anyway, for the two particular streets mentioned earlier, it gives these entries:

Lincoln Avenue - Centre St. North and West on 7th Avenue N.W.
Somerville Avenue - Centre-A St. on 6th Ave. N.W.

There are approximately 180 streets listed here (most of which no longer exist) so if you're interested in any particular street, let me know. I may type all of this up one day soon anyway.

Just a link to the news thread on this topic. Keep the chat here.

http://www.calgaryheritage.org/CHIForum/vi ... =1616#1616

Thanks for the response, McM, the document you have in your possession contains some intriguing info! Apparently, most of the proposed street names listed on the 1910 City Engineering Map no longer existed in 1944 if just 180 remained by then. I'm not sure, though, whether all of the remaining names were in common use by 1944. The other day, I noticed that across the street from the 1910 "Lincoln" sidewalk stamp on 7th Avenue and 1st Street NW is a 1913 "7th Avenue" stamp, which leads me to suspect that there'd been a city policy change in the interim.
Rather than put you to the trouble of typing all this up, would it be possible to scan the 4 pages you mentioned and submit them that way?
I'm not sure how many HI forum participants are interested in such arcane topics as early street names and historic sidewalk stamps, but I guess we'll find out in due course.

^^ That's awesome, thanks for that.
I'll see if I can't superimpose those onto a current map of Calgary.