Informal poll #537B

This arose from a brief discussion-cum-playful argument that Alma and I had on the train the other day. The question is for people who either live in Chicago or nearby areas or have done so in their lives.

Chicago is, of course, set up on a numbered grid wherein 100 in the number system corresponds to a furlong, or roughly one block. 800 is a mile. The 0/0 marker is at the corner of State and Madison.

Now, the nearest major E/W street to me is Addison St, at 3600 north. Everyone knows how you'd say that number: "thirty-six hundred."

About a mile and a half west of me is the N/S street Damen Ave, located at 2000 west. The question all this has been leading up to is this: how would you say that? Not so much the number itself as what it means within the city block system.

I always said "two thousand" (not that I had much cause to say it, but any street with three zeroes in its number was a "thousand," not a "hundred"), but when I said it in front of Alma, she thought I was crazy, and explained that it was said "ten hundred," "twenty hundred," "thirty hundred," and so forth.

Today I called my dad, who was born in Chicago and raised mostly in the near north suburbs. He said that he always thought of them as thousands as well, but when he asked my mom - who at no point in her life lived in Chicago itself and lived in Illinois for fewer than ten years - she said that they should certainly be called "ten hundred" and et cetera, and seemed baffled that anyone should think otherwise (as Alma had).

So, my question to Chicagoans of various kinds who read this: what do you say/think, and what (if anything) have you heard? If possible, to what would you attribute your choice?

Bonus question, which can be answered by the handful of people already polled as well: how would you refer to something that was at, say, 103rd and Western? Is it at "103 hundred South Western," "ten three hundred South Western," or perhaps just "103rd and Western?" I can at least make sense out of "thirty hundred," but "one hundred three hundred" seems to be pushing it.