The lowest numbered street address is easy. It's 1. I currently live at number 3 which is also pretty low.
At the other end of the spectrum, the highest numbered street address is probably pretty big isn't it? There are seven billion people on the planet and so you'd think that of all the addresses in the world, because this is clearly a limited series, there must be a biggest number.
This is the quest to find that address.
The conventional way to number a street is to put all of the odd numbers on one side and all of the even numbers on the other.
On the street that I live on, it starts 1, 3 and 5, on one side and 2, 4 and 6 on the other. When you get to the end though, there are 11, 13 and 15 and 16, 18 and 20 on the other. This means that there are no houses numbered 17 or 19. If the street had been numbered as though it were like a court or a circle, then it could have been numbered 1 - 9 up one side of the street and 10 - 18 down the other. 1 would be next door to 2 and across the street from 18.
This is not the only way to number a street address though.
http://www.shibuya109.jp/en/
2-29-1 Dogenzaka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
The Shibuya 109 building is one of the few buildings I could reliably find in Tokyo (that and Tokyo-Eki). 109 doesn't refer to its address but is a pun on the characters tō (meaning 10) and kyū (9) as in Tōkyū (109).
The numbering system of Japan is basically: City District - City Block - Building Number.
The Shibuya 109 building is in District 2, Block 29 and because it was the first to be built on that block, it gets number 1. This can get confusing if an intersection has buildings which have been demolished and replaced on multiple occasions because the newest building gets the next number. It might be entirely possible to have numbers 5, 18, 3, 4, 22 and 19 next to each other on the same block.
Irish band U2's song "Where The Streets Have No Name" inadvertently describes most addresses in Japan. Although city blocks have numbers, only the major streets have names; which must have confused the American military in their post-war occupation and reconstruction of Japan.
In some cities in the United States and Canada, streets are often numbered according to a grid. The most common practice is to increase the street address by 100 when you get to the next block. It might be entirely possible to have a block numbered 701, 703, 705, 707, 709, 711, 713, 715, 717, 719 and then the first address on the next block is 801.
On the Overseas Highway which runs through the Florida Keys, house numbers indicate their distance from the zero mile marker in Key West; divided by 1000. The highest house number I've found on Google Maps is 106201; which means that it is 106 miles away from the zero mile marker.
This leads me to wondering what the highest numbered street address is in the world. To that end I've found an address in an amusingly names place called Punkeydoodles Corners in Ontario, Canada; with the address of 986075 Perth-Oxford Rd, Ontario.
I have no idea how or why the number needs to be so big but 986075 is certainly winning the title at the moment.
If anyone can think of a bigger number, please let me know.
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