But is it Really in Hyattsville?

Map of Hyattsville city boundaries from OpenStreetMap.org. http://bit.ly/1feVORB

Map of Hyattsville city boundaries from OpenStreetMap.org. http://bit.ly/1feVORB

A lot of things that are supposedly in Hyattsville actually aren’t.

The Hyattsville Wire was excited to read earlier this week that a ZIP code in Hyattsville is among the best in the country for “hipster flipping” — a sadly nonviolent practice that involves fixing up a house and selling it to a hipster.

That ZIP code happened to be 20784, which as you can see from the map below might be more accurately described as Landover or New Carrollton.

This bothered the urban-planner-wonk readers of Greater Greater Washington, but in defense of WTOP, the U.S. Postal Service itself encourages this confusion by noting that the preferred city when using that ZIP code is Hyattsville.

It’s not just that ZIP code, either. In fact, the USPS encourages people to use Hyattsville for 20783, 20784 and 20785, even though those areas are not all within the city limits. (Hyattsville proper is mostly 20781 and 20782.)

Now, this isn’t much of a problem when it’s a story about how Hyattsville is a great investment (we’ve done it too!), but they also hurt the city too when the news isn’t so positive.

Below is a Google map of all of the Hyattsville ZIP codes which shows the scope of the problem.

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