Community Chat

[madzonie]

Has anyone ever heard of a street/avenue designated as such? There is one in Tucson. I'd never heard the word before.

[deepwaterdotter]

Maybe it's a Tucson thing.

[Marp2]

I had to look up Stravenue and Deep is correct, it is a Tucson thing. From Wiki:

A stravenue (portmanteau of street and avenue) is a type of road particular to Tucson, Arizona. The United States Postal Service officially supports the abbreviation STRA for stravenues.^[1] A Stravenue runs "diagonally between and intersects a Street and an Avenue."^[2] In a few areas of Tucson, primarily around the central part of the city, which is divided by railroad tracks running diagonally from southeast to northwest, builders created small subdivisions of roads and houses that also are laid out on a diagonal basis rather than the normal east-west or north-south. Most of these subdivisions are located near either Benson Highway or Aviation Highway, which also run southeast to northwest.^[3] "The word Stravenue was originally coined by Roy Drachman when he was delevoping the subdivision called Pueblo Gardens," perhaps in the 1950s or 1960s.^[4]

ETA: Thank you Madzonie for today's something new.

[aubnwa01]

I live in NW Tucson & I can think of at least two Stravenues: Cherrybell Stravenue & Cerius Stravenue & there are probably more. Never heard the term before I moved here.

[aubnwa01]

Here's another little blurb about them from the archives of the local paper:

http://azstarnet.com/news/local/road-runner-by-andrea-kelly-stravenue-is-it-unique-to/article_a6b8e...

[tucsongal]

It took me a long time to figure out Cerius Stra, lol. Actually I think a friend told me what it was.

[aubnwa01]

On 4/15/2014 tucsongal said:

It took me a long time to figure out Cerius Stra, lol. Actually I think a friend told me what it was.

And, neither or the roads that Cerius Stravenue runs between is a street nor an avenue, so I don't get why it's called a Stravenue!

ETA: It does run sort of diagonally, though!