The San Francisco call., 1898-03-25
NUMBERS ON
 MARKET STREET South Side Merchants Trying to Block the
 Last Ordinance.
They Claim It Will Throw Awry the Whole System
 Now in Use.
How the New Method Will Conform to Nothing on Either
 Side.

The Street Department is trying to en- force the ordinance regulating the num- bers on Market street, but the effort is not meeting with mucn cooperation from the merchants who must change All along there has been decided objection to the shifting of the numbers on the south side. as provided for in the ordinance, and this has eliminated In a petition filed with the Supervisors yesterday. The petition asks that the numbers be left alone or that if they must be changed that they may be made to conform to the system now obtaining on the south side of the street.
 The petition has received the signature of every merchant of prominence from Third street to Seventh on the south side. and many of the larger concerns are adding personal letters to the document in circulation. The petition is as follows:
 To the Honorable the Board of Supervisors of the City of San Francisco: We your Deti- tioners doing business on the south side of Market street hereby ask that the ordinance recently passed by your honorable body requir- ing change in the numbering of the stores on the south side of Market street may be re- peaIed as far as it affects said Market street.
 l. That our numbers have now been long es- tablished, becoming in many instances almost of the force of trademarks and ought not to be
 g. The reason given, viz: that the numbers 
 numbers on the north side does not seem to us to be sufficient to justify the damage done by
 g. While the change only very imperfectly harmonizes the numbers on the two sides of Market 1t entirely throws . out of Of haTm9ny M d son. which, by the squareness or their streets, should correspond with the south side Of Mar Mar should have similar numbers on Market as in other parts of the city
 A. The placing of more than one hundred numbers in block is scarcely Justified in any modern city.
 sides of Market street should correspond Ga ne cessity which is not apparent to your peti- tioners) why not change the numbers on the north side of Market street. since the series now on that side correspond with nothing else in the city?
 As it has been, the numbering of Market street was enough to puzzle the brightest brain and badly befuddle the stranger in quest of any particular location. What was 1900 on one side was 1000 on the other, and whoever sat on the wrong side of the car was as apt to be carried beyond his destination as to be left far below where he wished to go. The change in the numbering was to straighten out this diff ficulty, and the complaint is not so much against the changing as to the manner of it. The north side parallels nothing. Its numbers correspond to neither those on the north and south streets nor on the east and west streets; and even With the most complete system it cannot but be an inaccurate designation of the houses. on the south SlOe, however, IL IS CldlUleu, the situation is different On the south side Market street is cut into regular blocks by the intersection of the streets running in from the south side, and the numbering on the south side therefore corresponds to the numbering on all the streets from Market down to Harrison: A number on Market street now identifies all the numbering on the corresponding blocks to the southward to Harrison street and, in consequence, 1t is claimed, the system has a value beyond the mere location of the Market-street houses.
 Should the system be changed in the way in which the ordinance directs 1t is claimed that the street will have a sys- tenn peculiar to itself of no value in the location of blocks not on Market street, and at best doing but poor service on the street it is intended to benefit.
 The stand of the larger property own CTS is one of almost indifference but with the merchants the feeling runs high. The merchants look on their street number in the same light as they look on their trade lars in impressing it on their customers and correspondents, they object to hav- ing it changed Several are willing that the numbers should be let alone: others think it a good thing that they should be made to conform: but with all on the south side the argument Is that, were it possible to form a basis for any such er- ratio thing as number system for Mar ket street must necessarily be, 1t is bet ter to found it on the same system as is present on the streets which parallel MdTkeC dHu DOl upon the Ir1anRuldr blocks of the north side.
 The new numbering is provided for in a special order passed February 20, 1898, which refers to Market street only, and in that order 1t is attempted to equaliZe the blocks by adding fifty more numbers to each of the blocks between Third and Ninth, and this, too, is most strongly ob- jected to by the southsiders. They claim 1t is in the face of all custom to put more than 100 numbers in any city block Be- sides this does not help matters as much as would at first seem for what is 1264 under the new system Is oposite 1232. It Is declared that should the north side be made to conform to the old numbering of the south side there would never be more difference than this. At Sansome and Second there would be a discrepancy which would only go as far as Third and Kearny, which are opposite; Fourth runs even with Stockton. and at Fifth and Powell there is more trouble Sixth and Taylor are even, but Seventh and Jones do not come together. Eighth and City Hall avenue, Ninth and Larkin, Tenth and Polk. Eleventh and Van Ness avenue and on out are all even
 These arguments will be presented to the Supervisors when the petition comes up for action, and the south side mer- chants hope to be able to prevent the en- forcing of the order. Some one will have to be put out, they say and so the thing may as we'll be made correct at once