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