Discussions

Did you ever wonder how your house came to be numbered?  
When Mayor Robert Hall was in office between 1903 and 1904 his council passed a Byelaw saying all houses in Brandon must be numbered. A tender was duly issued for the job and sixteen applicants applied. The winning applicant was Mr. Percy Mason an Englishman, just off the boat. Before making his application he contacted a number of major cities for information as to how they numbered their houses. With this information he devised a plan that numbers would be allotted on the bases of footage. Streets that ran from north to south had their numbers increase by two for every fourteen feet from the intersection. On the avenues that ran east to west the measure was every twenty-two feet. Mr. Mason and his partner nailed numbers to every structure that was standing in the city, after all they received eleven cents per digit. It took them three weeks to complete the project and when they were finished, Brandon was one of the easiest cities to find your way around.