OPINION|
I've been thinking about Lyon Avenue recently.
You know, the street on the north side of Springfield that runs parallel to Campbell Avenue. It starts at Talmage Street, a block from Doling Park and a javelin throw from Interstate 44.
I've been wondering how it came to be that a street that spans a bit more than a mile on the north side of town, ending at Nichols Street, which is the same latitude as the Greene County Circuit Court on Boonville Avenue, can reappear briefly six miles to the south — outside the Library Center at 4635 S. Campbell Ave.
If you ask me — which you didn't — it's confusing to have a sliver of a street bearing the same name as a street that you assumed ended six miles to the north of where you are now.
What I've learned is that the naming procedure in Springfield is designed to do just the opposite; it's intended to make directions clearer and more logical. It's designed to make the job of 911 dispatchers and emergency responders more effective and precise.
The latitude and longitude of street naming
So my question is: Who names streets? More specifically, who named the street outside the Library Center “Lyon Avenue?”
Why wasn't it named “Library Way” or “Book Boulevard?”
Or maybe put in a roundabout and call it “The Pokin AroundAbout?”
I Gugeled my question. As in Martin Gugel, the city's assistant director of public works.
He says it's likely the street in front of the Library Center was named “Lyon Avenue” because if you head due north six miles, it would line up with the better known Lyon Avenue of the north side.
Lyon Avenue, to the best of my knowledge, is named after Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general killed in the American Civil War. He died at the Battle of Wilson's Creek on Aug. 10, 1861. In fact, his portrait hangs on a wall in the Library Center.
According to the latitude-and-longitude theory of street naming, since Lyon Avenue is just west of Campbell Avenue on the north side, why shouldn't a street just west of Campbell Avenue on the south side have the same name?
Yes… but… first, there's a gap of six miles.
Second, one section of Lyon Avenue has been around 100 years longer than the other section. I think it should have exclusive naming rights. Otherwise, you just confuse people.
We have rules for street naming. Buc-ee's could not name its outer road “Buc-ee's Avenue” and had to settle for “Beaver Road,” I, apparently, could develop an acre at the city's southern boundary and call it “Boonville Avenue” — as long as it lines up.
Where will tow truck driver go when I say I'm somewhere on Lyon Avenue?
Back to Lyon Avenue.
What if it's 1 a.m. and my car breaks down and I tell the tow truck driver I'm somewhere on Lyon Avenue? I'm out of luck if he heads for the library.
Or if I tell my accomplices I stashed the loot by the big oak on Lyon Avenue? Which Lyon Avenue? Which oak?
It's likely, Gugel says, that the Lyon Avenue — or at least part of it — that is near the Library Center was named “Lyon Avenue” before the library was even there.
This leads to a part of the Library Center's history I did not know. The building was once a Payless Cashways lumber and building supplies store. The Springfield-Greene County Library Board of Trustees bought it in 1998. It was only three years old.
The store had its grand opening in May 1995. The address was 4643 S. Campbell, the same as the library. The company later filed for bankruptcy and closed its store on Campbell and a store in Joplin.
The purchase was a bargain, says Annie Busch, executive director of the library district from 1989 to 2008.
“We paid 50 cents on the dollar,” says Busch.
When the Library Center was renovated, it was located in unincorporated Greene County. It later was annexed into Springfield.
Busch tells me the library board did not name the nearby street “Lyon Avenue.”
It was once part of a longer outer road
Gugel looked at old maps and tells me that the street now in front of the library once was an outer road to Campbell Avenue that extended farther south.
That is no longer the case. It was reconfigured as the property to south of the library has been developed as the Ridge at Ward Branch.
According to Gugel, the first time the road at the library was publicly recorded as “Lyon Avenue” was in a 2020 plat map that is part of the Ridge at Ward Branch development. He suspects people called it that before the plat map was filed.
I asked Gugel if he knew of any street in Springfield that had a gap greater than six miles from where it ends and where it resumes with the same name.
Sort of. Gugel's example matched county streets with city streets.
Hattiesburg Heights is a subdivision in Greene County, west of West Bypass. It has several streets with familiar names, despite the fact there is a disconnect of 4 or 5 miles. They are Kingsbury, Portland, Stanford and University.
These Hattiesburg Heights streets generally line up with the same streets in the city.
As I've said, I would think this is more confusing than helpful.
When I think of University Street, I think of the University Heights neighborhood.
By the way, if you live on University Street in Hattiesburg Hills and for years no one has shown up to your big summer barbecue bash, I think I know why. They can't find your house.
This is Pokin Around column No. 139.
