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This paper focuses on the processes of identifying the homes of Lisbon residents in the late modern era. It looks at administrative practices established when home postal delivery was being organised around the turn of the 19th century. The stages of organising this service reveal – through the production of a specific discourse about the urban space as well as the implementation of basic, daily practices – the interplay of influences and confrontation between various ways of perceiving and identifying the urban space. We are endeavouring to understand why the use of these various systems, which are perceived as complementary rather than opposing, refers to an attempt to take into account the growing complexity of urban lifestyles in the late modern era.