OFF THE MAP

California Town Finally Adopts Street Addresses

Some residents are disappointed that the local tradition is ending.

For more than 110 years, houses in the upscale California village of Carmel-by-the-Sea have had no address numbers. Mail is delivered to P.O. boxes at a post office downtown and, for directions, residents name their homes or describe their location. This summer, Carmel’s city council voted to end that tradition and, last month, they began rolling out the change to the village’s population of roughly 3,000. They say street addresses will improve the city’s emergency response times by helping dispatchers and ambulances identify the right home and will make package and prescription deliveries easier for the town’s aging population. But some locals are reluctant. “I don’t like to see these traditions and uniqueness dissipate,” Frankie Laney told The New York Times. “Some change is inevitable, and you just have to suck it up.”