When I moved to Milwaukee, I got a good laugh at the fact that Downtown's Broadway carried the designation "Street," unlike New York's Great White Way, which stood alone as Broadway.

It was curious that a street that has the distinction "way" as part of its name would also need a "Street" after it. But as a dutiful copy editor, I followed this rule and corrected when I saw it used incorrectly.

Yesterday, Gary Petersen, the City of Milwaukee's marketing guru, sent us a note telling us that Broadway stands alone. No "Street" required.

Search "Broadway Street" on the City's own Web site and you'll find among the results:

• "...the relocation of handicapped parking to Broadway Street."
• "Handicapped parking is available on North Broadway Street."
• "...North Market Street to North Broadway Street."
• "...moved to the abandoned morgue on Broadway Street."

But if you want tax information for a property on that thoroughfare, you'd best leave the "street" out when searching the city's site.

"(It's) not the easiest thing to prove," Petersen told me in an e-mail. "It's just sort of common knowledge around here. But I did go to one of the City's computer mapping jocks and he showed me two things.

"He pulled up a quarter section map that included Broadway and went to the engineering layer on the map. Every street has a suffix (St. Ave., etc.) attached to it except for Broadway. He also went to another file that lists street names. That program evidently requires that a suffix be attached to the name. Broadway is listed as "Broadway ZZ."

A quick Google search showed that the UWM library, the daily newspaper and the Milwaukee 7 group all use -- or have used -- the "Street" designation, which has, apparently, been correct at times in the city's history.

However, in his book "Milwaukee Streets: The Stories Behind Their Names," published in 1995, Carl Baehr notes that, "Broadway is one of only three streets in the city that have no suffix, such as street, avenue, lane, etc." The other two, according to Baehr are Back Bay and Tory Hill.

MapQuest prefers the absence of "Street," but Google Earth is eager to oblige and will take to you to see the rooftops of either version.

UWM's historic photo collection, which can be viewed online, has photos that carry the descriptions, "Broadway Street, Armory and Police Station," "Broadway Street, Kuryer Polski," "Broadway Street, looking north from Wisconsin" and "Broadway Street, delivery truck in front of Kuryer Polski office," among others.

Even MSOE hasn't sidestepped the confusion. On its site, Broadway correctly stands alone in the footer of each page, but the directions to the Kern Center suggest turning onto Broadway Street.

The Yellow Pages suggests that the Zeidler Municipal Building is located at 841 N. Broadway St., but it lists the Wicked Hop as being at 345 N. Broadway.

Visit Park Milwaukee.com and you'll see that Broadway Street is located in the Third Ward and Broadway Avenue -- yowsah, that's a new one! -- is in East Town.

Going to the source -- see photo above -- we took note that the street signs on Broadway say just "Broadway." We'll stick with that from here on out.

Next week, we'll try to figure out exactly when Bluemound is one word and when it's two. Then stay tuned for in-depth Milwaukee Challenge pitting Humboldt Avenue against Humboldt Boulevard. Finally, it's on to whether or not Fifth Ward is a section of Walker's Point or has seceded to become its own separate neighborhood.