Pronunciation of street/road/avenue/etc. names

Solution 1:

I'll contribute my share of anecdotal evidence. I'm from the U.S. (Massachusetts), and I pronounce street names as the book describes (CEDAR Street, Pilgrim ROAD, etc.). However, I do notice the leftward shift (I say OLIVE oil, for instance).

Solution 2:

I'm English. I grew up in Sheffield (northern accent and slight dialect), and have lived a while in Cambridge (prestige dialect of english) and London (random melting pot). My unconscious voice wanders around all three, and I can fake all of them

I think in all those places it would be CHESTerton ROAD, REGent street, CITY ROAD, vicTORia AVEnue, CATHerine street.

Which is to say, "street" is never stressed, and it would instantly mark you out as a foreigner if you did stress it, but all others get one stressed syllable per word, and the stress is roughly even between the two words.

Sometimes there does seems to be a slightly stronger stress on the second word, (Hyde PARK, but BATTersea PArk), but it's subtle, slightly different for each place, and it doesn't sound wrong if you do it the other way!

One place you'd always strongly stress the second word would be a query like 'Do you mean victoria ROAD, victoria STREET or victoria AVEnue?'