CASUAL walkers around Greenwich Village will probably come across fractional addresses, such as 548 1/2 (I know there’s a way to access the one-half fraction on my keyboard, but I don’t know it) and wonder why the house was numbered like that. Nearly invariably, the building has a partner without a fraction; here, #548 1/2 Hudson Street, home of the antiques shop The End of History on the ground floor, can be found between #548 and #550, on the corner of Perry.
The reason for this is simple. Most building lots in NYC were laid out to be the same size and houses tended to be the same general size. Occasionally, though, a building didn’t take up the entire lot and there was some empty space in between. Often these were used, later on, for relatively small buildings or stables. But how to give them a house number?
If a new whole number were to be assigned to the newer building, renumbering all the houses north of it would be necessary. Therefore an elegant solution is to give the new building a fractional address. 548 1/2, therefore, comes between #548 and 550. A similar situation arose further north at #615 /12 Hudson.
There are other reasons for fractional addresses. In an unusual situation, the western end of Leroy Street between Hudson Street and 7th Avenue South is named St. Lukes Place, with houses only on one side of the street, with numbering on one side only. The house where #13 would be was numbered #12 1/2 instead.
The NY Post has more on this fascinating occurrence.
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8/22/22
12 comments
How about addresses with letters at the end like 400A and 400B since they exist too
I live in Upstate New York, a house we lived in was very old and at some point was renovated years ago it was split into two separate units. One side kept the original address 83 and the other became 83 1/2 N. Main St. That’s my story.
S.I. was laid out with one number every 20 feet frontage. When started or if it is now a defunct rule I don’t know.
And on the other hand, there’s 6 1/2 Avenue, which you’ve already covered.
I’m kind of divided on this topic.
Any house addresses with 1/4 in their number?
There’s a 3/4 on West 4th st https://goo.gl/maps/z5CkbVR3VKi4uEtQ6
Kevin, try alt+0189 on your keyboard to get 1/2. The num lock must be on.
(I can’t do alt on my cell phone keypad)
https://www.alt-codes.net/
How about a 3/4 address? https://goo.gl/maps/z5CkbVR3VKi4uEtQ6
For HTML the half sign is found here: https://www.toptal.com/designers/htmlarrows/numbers/fraction-one-half/
Re: 12 1/2 St. Luke’s Place…maybe a case of triskaidekaphobia?
In the 1970’s I grew up in a townhouse that went from a single address (business on the bottom three floors, single residence on the top with a shared entrance) to two addresses when the new owner wanted us to use the side entrance to access the upstairs. That initially didn’t require a fractional address but the new owner was very cavalier with our mail. Maybe we would get it the day of delivery, maybe a week or month later, maybe it would get thrown out. So I went to the post office and asked if we could designate the side entrance as a “1/2”. They said sure, just put the number on the door, fill out a change of address form and tell all your subscriptions and bill senders the new address. Worked great. Forty years later, the last time I passed by the building, the vinyl numbers I got at Sam Flax are still on the door.