I just thought it was interesting...

Colleges and Universities A-Z Swarthmore College
1

<p>I was just checking out Google</a> Maps and looked up Swarthmore.</p>

<p>There I saw "Dartmouth Ave" as a street name around campus. I thought, "ha, interesting, same name as another college(s)!"
And then I saw "Yale Ave", as well as "Vassar Ave", "Bryn Mawr Ave" and I figured this couldn't be a coincidence!
Now, I was wondering why Swarthmore (The town, the school, who?) decided to name its streets by some other colleges like aforementioned ones + some others like Haverford, Cornell, Princeton, Oberlin, Drexel, Drew, Wellesley, Columbia, Amherst, Kenyon, Harvard, Mt. Holyoke, etc. Is there any meaning behind it and why exactly those schools?</p>

<p>Anyhow, I thought it was interesting.</p>

<p>Swarthmore</a> College - Google Maps</p>

2

<p>as well as Dickinson, Lehigh, Lafayette, Rutgers, Michigan...Never really thought about it, but it must have been the borough of Swarthmore's doing.</p>

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<p>Yes indeed--the college predates most of the town, and the story I've heard is that Swarthmore civil engineering students planned out much of the town's layout. Incidentally, there are no streets in the town of Swarthmore: we have avenues, roads, circles, places, terraces, lanes and just about anything else, but no streets.</p>

4

<p>The area around Swarthmore was undeveloped farmland when the College bought it. Some of the houses around the College date that far back, but they were definitely out in the country. By the time development around the College began, Swarthmore College was already the focus of the area surrounding the train station.</p>

<p>It's actually not that unusual to see college towns name their streets after colleges and universities.</p>

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<p>BTW, Google Earth just updated its satellite photos of Swarthmore. The new satellite imagery must have been taken fairly recently. The Science Center is complete. Alice Paul Hall is complete. And, the construction work on the New New Dorm is underway.</p>

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<p>

Oh, wow, that's really cool! I guess they ran out of idea when they started naming them after numbers then :p (10th Ave, 9th Ave...) I wonder how they picked the colleges that will get the names; students' second favorite colleges? The ones that rejected them? :p haha</p>

<p>

I didn't know that. We don't have actual college towns in my country.</p>

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<p>It's actually not that uncommon to see entire neighborhoods of college named streets anywhere in the United States. </p>

<p>So much of the US was developed as suburban developments and the builders often picked a "theme" for naming their streets. One popular theme has been Old English towns, so almost every city has a suburban neighborhood with street names like Sussex, Ramsgate, and so forth.</p>

<p>College town names have been another popular "theme".</p>

<p>BTW, Claremont California (home of Pomona College) has a bunch of college street names...</p>

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<p>Yeah, Claremont went crazy with school names:</p>

<p>Ivys: Harvard Ave, Yale Ave, Princeton Ave, Dartmouth Ave, Cornell Ave, Columbia Ave, Brown Drive, Pennsylvania Place</p>

<p>LACs: Amhert Ave, Williams Ave, Oberlin Ave, Wellesley Drive, Middlebury Court, Vassar Drive, Colby Circle, Grinnell Drive, Carleton Ave, Bryn Mawr Road, Williamette Lane, Whitman Ave, Guilford Ave, Occidental Drive, Antioch Rd, Bard Court, Radcliffe Drive, Beloit Ave, Berea Court, Ursinus Circle</p>

<p>Universities: Stanford Drive, Duke Ave, Berkeley Ave, Oxford Ave, Cambridge Ave, Tulane Rd, Baylor Ave, Wharton Drive, Bucknell Ave, Vanderbilt Ave, Pepperdine Way, Georgetown Place, Villanova Drive, Fordham Place, Notre Dame Rd, Lehigh Dr, Purdue Drive, Bowling Green Drive, Loyola Court, Trinity Lane, Carnegie Ave</p>

<p>Others: Providence Way, Julliard Drive, West Point Drive, Citadel Ave</p>

<p>But no Swarthmore…</p>

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<p>Oh, wow, I didn't know that. That's interesting about urban planning in US :D
So they basically give names of top schools only?
Do they need any permission to use it before naming a street after it?</p>

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<p>Pacific Palisades: Radcliffe, Mount Holyoke, Haverford, Swarthmore, Bowdoin...</p>

<p>pacific</a> palisades - Google Maps</p>

<p>Santa Monica: Amherst, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Harvard, Yale, Grinnell,...</p>

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<p>Actually--there is a Swarthmore Court in Claremont--but not near the campuses. It's above Foothill Blvd., in the foothills near Padua Rd, and right off of Deep Springs Dr. and near Brandeis Court! Snoop Dogg used to live there (or maybe still does--somewhere in the last year I saw the house listed for sale--so who knows!) </p>

<p>Boho Girl--in the US streets are often named after schools that have name recognition--usually top schools. But my son used to go to a camp where the cabins were named after the alma maters of the people who endowed them--so there was really interesting mix of schools.</p>

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<p>Haha, that's cool.</p>

<p>I'd love to live in a street (or ave, or drive, whatever) that's called "Swarthmore". Don't you think it'd be so pretty to have an address like "128 Swarthmore Avenue"? :D</p>

<p>Btw, when SarahsDad wrote that there was no Swarthmore among street names, it reminded me of some site with pictures of people wearing shirts that say "Swarthmore - school that doesn't exist", lol.</p>

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<p>I stand corrected. I had searched Mapquest for a Swarthmore, Claremont, CA and came up empty - must have missed it. Probably some other schools I missed too.</p>