One night I was watching television, and I saw Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory ask Penny if she knew what the most common street name in America was. His answer was 2nd Street, and he stated that most cities had numerical streets and 1st Street was usually renamed something else. This got me wondering, if 2nd Street was the most common street in America, then was it the most common street on which to do business?
To answer that question, I searched the entirety of the Superpages.com listing database, which contains approximately 17 million business listings across all 50 states.
As you can see from the data, Main Street is the undisputed winner. When splitting the streets out by direction, Main Street occupies the first five spots in the top ten.
The Top Ten:
- Main Street (177,278)
- North Main Street (77,538)
- South Main Street (76,782)
- East Main Street (72,009)
- West Main Street (66,360)
- Washington Street (25,725)
- Park Avenue (19,893)
- 5th Avenue (19,190)
- Central Avenue (18,867)
- Market Street (18,775)
The next chart shows how the data looks when we combine directional versions of the street as the same street (i.e. E Main Street and W Main Street as just Main Street).
Again as before, Main Street is the most common street in America for businesses.
The list includes:
- Main Street (469,967)
- Washington Street (49,881)
- State Street (42,391)
- Market Street (38,652)
- Broad Street (35,072)
- Central Avenue (33,969)
- Park Avenue (26,714)
- Church Street (24,176)
- and 5th Avenue (24,008)
In summary, Second Street may be the most common street in America*, but Main Street is where business happens.
*According to analysis done by the Washington Post, Park is in fact the most common street name in the United States and not 2nd.
