This gem from the Free Press comes from Paul Sewick.

Here is a fun excerpt from the article (read in full):

“One great trouble is that Detroit is a country town in everything but size. . . If a lot of people had their way they’d still be pasturing cows in Grand Circus park and the Campus would be a duck pond.”

On the renumbering:

“There’s a number every ten feet – 2, 4, 6, 8 . . . We’re the third lot from the corner. Somewhere on this lot there’s a point 100 feet from the corner – ten times ten feet – so they tag us 20.”

The Jefferson Problem:

Instead of taking Jefferson avenue as the base line street, and numbering north and south from it, they took the river bank as a base line. New at the foot of Woodward avenue it is several blocks below Jefferson. When you get way out on the east side, where there are no streets south of Jefferson, you’ve got to number from the river just the same, with the result that Steve’s 342, although he’s just off Jefferson.