What Is Up With Mannakee Street?!
When I first moved to Rockville, I was really excited to be living right near a street with the cool name “>Mannakee.” It conjures all sorts of images in my mind, and that “k” makes the word itself sound powerful. Then, when I started mapping the Rockville police blotter, I noticed something very odd about my erstwhile favorite street.
Rockville Central friend Brenda Dunham noticed it, too. She writes:
A hot button of mine involves what I think is an error that has been widely propagated. Let’s take this recent entry in the police blotter: 02/06/08: (6:00 p.m. — 10:30 p.m.) Unit block of Mannakee Street, unknown suspect(s) removed a wallet containing U.S. currency, credit cards and a driver’s license from a purse in a college classroom.
I live on Anderson near the intersection of Anderson and Mannakee. I think that the unit block of Mannakee Street is near the intersection of Mannakee and West Montgomery. Mapquest thinks so too. The houses near me on Mannakee have single digit addresses.
However, for years, I have read in the police reports in the Gazette, and now these lovely police blotters, that the unit block of Mannakee is at Montgomery College, at the intersection of Mannakee and Hungerford Drive.
I read about a lot more crime events near the community college than I read about crime events on my end of Mannakee. However, all the community college’s events are placed near me.
I flipped when my insurance agent wanted to raise my rates because I lived in an area with elevated crime, and he cited the police reports. He showed me the reports (they all mentioned the college) and I showed him a map. He didn’t raise my rates, but he had to jump through hoops to stop it.
I wonder how many other people have had adverse effects, and not even noticed, due to this widely propagated error?
An excellent question.
Curious, I hopped in the Rockville Central sled and drove the length of Mannakee. I can only describe what I found as “mind boggling.”
I started by the community college, which has an address of “51 Mannakee Street.” You can follow along with my travels using this handy map:
So, starting out at Montgomery College, you’d think that this part of Mannakee surely would be the “unit block,” that is, the the block where the numbers terminate. But, keep traveling south and suddenly you get to the blue section I have indicated, where the numbers go (from north to south) 590 up to about 610 or so. Normally, traveling south, numbers are going down.
Oh, and here’s a funny thing: the numbers on the same side of the street as Montgomery College are all even — while the address for the school is odd. Odd indeed.
But stay with me. Now we hit the brownish line on my map. Here, the numbers still go up as you drive south, but the block of numbers drops down a hundred, and starts at 500. So you go from 610 to 500, then the next house you see is 502, etc. (note that I can’t quite read my notes so the numbers are approximate — but you get the gist).
It is not until you get to the green line in my map that things get seemingly normal: addresses dropping as you drive south, in an orderly fashion.
That is, until you cross the traffic circle, then the numbers go from the 100′s to the single digits, skipping over double-digits — no doubt, because there is a double-digit address ‘way over at the other end of the street.
So I believe we have identified the culprit here: Montgomery College has a funky address (I hasten to add that it is excellent in all other respects). When police report a crime incident on the “unit block” of Mannakee, when they mean 51 Mannakee, it appears to actually be occurring many blocks away when you map it out, because of the strange quirks of the numbering.
It stands to reason, because it is an area with more coming and going throughout the day than the surrounding neighborhood, and has a high concentration of parked cars, we would see relatively more incidents there than elsewhere (this is not a statement on the security at Montgomery College in any way).
So, I humbly offer this suggestion to Our Fair City’s police department: when recording incidents that occur around Montgomery College, dispense with the typical practice of just naming the block but instead say “51 Mannakee.” That way the silly mapping programs will know where it is and, more important, folks down at the other end of the street won’t worry they are in the middle of a crime wave!
Just a thought.
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Mannakee isn’t the only street with non-sequential numbering. The 500/600 block of Anderson jumps around, too. I know the city does periodically allow renumbering (they did it on the 300 block of Beall just last year due to new construction), and even changing the street portion of addresses (moving UUCR from Mannakee to Welsh Park Dr). But addresses on Mannakee and Anderson are perhaps too established to be renumbered. MCFRS knows about the anomaly, but other agencies may not.