Before you could look up addresses on the internet, how did people find smaller locations like houses and restaurants?

Question

I know atlases and roadmaps were a lot more common, but from my understanding those give more of a broader view of a large area like major roads and stuff. If you needed to find a small subdivision or small road, how would you do that before the internet?

In: 27

Answer 1

City maps were pretty commonly available. And most cities are organized so that streets are split between those with names and those with numbers. So maybe north/south streets are called 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. East/west streets have names like Main, Rood, White, etc. if you want to find 740 Rood Street you know it is on Rood between 7th and 8th Street.