hundredblock

Hundredblock is a term used in urban geography and city journalism to describe a defined segment of a street within a grid-based street system. It typically denotes the range of addresses that fall within a hundred-number interval on a given street, such as the 100 block of Main Street, which would usually include addresses from 100 to 199 Main Street. The exact block length and address range can vary by city, because municipal grids are not standardized and may differ in street naming conventions, lot sizes, and the presence of divisions such as alleys or rivers.

In practice, residents, real estate professionals, and city officials refer to blocks by these numbers to describe locations, property boundaries, and planning areas. Newspapers and police logs may list events by block (for example, the 400 block of Oak Street) rather than by precise coordinates. The concept is descriptive and local rather than a fixed measurement; it provides convenient geographic reference within a city’s specific grid.

Origin and context: Many American and Canadian cities adopted grid plans that organized streets into numbered blocks. The “hundred” prefix arises from numbering blocks in increments of one hundred units, though the exact meaning can vary by jurisdiction. In some locales, the same street may span multiple hundred blocks or have irregularities that affect where a “hundred block” begins or ends.

See also: Block (urban planning); Addressing; Grid plan.