Identifying Buildings

A simple and intuitive system to identify buildings

Addresses change over time.  As a matter of fact, downtown Brevard addresses have changed a lot since the early 1900s.  The Post Office doesn't keep records of past addresses, and the 911 emergency center only began to keep limited address records in 2004.

Imagine going through newspaper and government archives to find all the businesses and people who have occupied a single building for over 145 years. Consider discussing its architecture, changes, renovations, and tales you have heard from people who were owners or patrons. Now multiply that by the number of buildings in Brevard and think about how all that information will be organized. It’s a lot.

To keep track of data collected from the library, Internet, longtime residents, books, newspaper articles, and other sources, you first need to label the "boxes" where you’ll store everything. In the long term, giving a box the name of a current business would make no sense because enterprises go out of business all the time. What is less likely to change, the name of a company or the actual building where it is located.

Buildings have been known by different names over the years.  They have been called by the name of the builder, the owner, or referred to by the name of an occupant.  Some examples include the O.L. Erwin Building, later known as the Plummer building, and the Pickelsimer Building (one of several!), known later as the Patterson Building.  Parcel numbers only go back so many years, and parcels have changed with land ownership.

Each time data is collected about a building, whether from a newspaper article, a photo, a book reference, county records, or from a person, it must be categorized and referred to using an identification mark - or number - that doesn't change with time.

First, consider that the center of town from which all things emanate, is the town square.  This is the middle of the intersection of Main and Broad streets.  From those streets, along their entire lengths, addresses of streets that cross them start low and increase. If we refer to something on Broad street, it's North Broad if it's north of Main and South Broad if south of Main.  In the same way, West Main and East Main begin at Broad.  The same applies to all streets crossing Main or Broad.  They are either West or East of Broad or North or South of Main.  

If you're standing on Main Street in front of the Courthouse, you're on East Main.  The courthouse is on the North side of the street. It's also between Broad and (the next street) Gaston.  That makes it in the first block of East Main, North side.  So, EMN means East Main, North Side.  Append a "1" for the block number and it becomes EMN1.  

Individual building numbers always begin with "1".  So the courthouse is EMN11:  East Main, North Side, 1st Block, Building 1

Once you understand this system, you can walk down any street and come up with a building's unique number just by counting how far it is from Main or Broad.

On this site, each building's page shows its number - and there is always a button at the top to take you right to this map page so you can quickly see where it (or any building) is located. You don't need to understand how they work!