Random NYC question

[empirestate]

Why does the transition between Park Avenue and Park Avenue South happen at 32nd St. rather than 34th, which is the major cross street?

I'm guessing it has something to do with the tunnel and/or Cornelius Vanderbilt.

[Alps]

Possibly may have to do with the history of being renamed from Fourth Avenue. If the name Park was only originally applied north of 32nd Street (possibly as part of tunnel construction), then they may have added Park South later to avoid complications re: addressing.

[storm2k]

Basically because a couple of business groups wanted it changed, got their way with the city council back in 1959. Was Fourth Ave below 32nd until then, they wanted a fancier name. Park Avenue itself was renamed in dribs and drabs starting in the 1860s.

[Duke87]

If the name Park was only originally applied north of 32nd Street (possibly as part of tunnel construction)

That is exactly it. The name "Park Ave" was created when the tunnel was built and originally applied to the segment from 32nd to 42nd only. It was extended northward as the tunnel was.

[empirestate]

So, Fourth Ave originally extended north to 32nd Street and stopped there, at the base of Murray Hill before it was cut through?


iPhone

[Duke87]

So, Fourth Ave originally extended north to 32nd Street and stopped there, at the base of Murray Hill before it was cut through?

No, the entirety of what is now Park Ave and Park Ave south was once all part of 4th Ave. At the time of the name change to Park Ave, whatever buildings that already existed along it had their address numbers changed as well. Which was doable because everyone's new address was entirely new. What was 501 4th Ave became 1 Park Ave and the post office could easily redirect any mail addressed to the former to the building at the latter.

Extending the name southward, however, would create an address problem. Since Park Ave already started at 1 it wasn't possible to count backwards since negative address numbers would be highly confusing. If the city had gone and assigned numbers that were unused higher up (say, add 5000 to the existing number) that would also be confusing. And renumbering all the buildings to the north would result in "1 Park Ave" suddenly describing a different building than it used to, with no way for the post office or anyone else to tell if the person who wrote it meant the old 1 Park Ave or the new 1 Park Ave.

So the solution was to just call it "Park Ave South" and leave everyone's address numbers alone. Note that Park Ave South's addresses don't begin at 1, they continue from 4th Ave's numbers.

[ixnay]

Here's *my* random NYC question, pertaining to another borough.  All over Queens there are hyphenated number street addresses, but street addresses in the other boroughs don't have these.  How did Queens end up with such funky house/block numbers?

ixnay

[Roadgeek Adam]

Here's *my* random NYC question, pertaining to another borough.  All over Queens there are hyphenated number street addresses, but street addresses in the other boroughs don't have these.  How did Queens end up with such funky house/block numbers?

ixnay

To make life easier on 911 and the first responders to find the emergency. Queens is far the from the only place with these numbers. Fair Lawn, NJ has them as well.

[empirestate]

Here's *my* random NYC question, pertaining to another borough.  All over Queens there are hyphenated number street addresses, but street addresses in the other boroughs don't have these.  How did Queens end up with such funky house/block numbers?

ixnay

To make life easier on 911 and the first responders to find the emergency. Queens is far the from the only place with these numbers. Fair Lawn, NJ has them as well.

But it's the only borough in NYC that does this, which I think is what prompted the question. My guess is that it's partly due to the high number of duplicated street names between Queens, especially, and other boroughs (Manhattan in particular). Another part is probably that the grid system in Queens, while regular in small patches, is very haphazard overall. The hyphenated addresses (which denote the cross street) help place a certain block in the crazy patchwork of street grids.

[cl94]

From what I can tell and have heard, correct. The first number is the next cross street north/west.

A lot of why Queens is so weird is because, prior to unification, it was a bunch of towns and villages that made up the western half of then-Queens County (eastern half became Nassau County in 1899). Brooklyn was one large unified city. Not Queens.

[Duke87]

But it's the only borough in NYC that does this, which I think is what prompted the question. My guess is that it's partly due to the high number of duplicated street names between Queens, especially, and other boroughs (Manhattan in particular). Another part is probably that the grid system in Queens, while regular in small patches, is very haphazard overall. The hyphenated addresses (which denote the cross street) help place a certain block in the crazy patchwork of street grids.

But this is only helpful for differentiation if done correctly and consistently. Which, let me tell you, it's not. If I had a nickel for every time someone wrote a Queens address without a hypen, or a Brooklyn address with one...

Hell, I've had more than one website choke on the hypen and say my address is invalid. And have had many more autocorrect the address to omit it. Mail that I receive is similarly spotty about including it. Apparently a lot of database systems can't handle hyphens in addresses.

[vdeane]

Definitely.  My apartment complex uses [building number] [complex name] - Apt. [apartment number] for mail.  Someone else in my building decided to give everyone the address [building number] [complex name] - Apt. [building number]-[apartment number].  Many mail systems truncated at the hyphenated apartment number, resulting in the mail being redirected.  The reason I know about this?  My apartment number is the same as my building number!  After months of writing "return to sender" on every piece of mail, the post office screwed up and accidentally sent an item with an unaltered address to my unit, allowing me to finally figure out what was going on.  Haven't had issues since I bundled a bunch of his mail, crossed out the incorrect stuff on the mangled addresses, and dropped a packet above his mailbox.

[ixnay]

Here's *my* random NYC question, pertaining to another borough.  All over Queens there are hyphenated number street addresses, but street addresses in the other boroughs don't have these.  How did Queens end up with such funky house/block numbers?

ixnay

To make life easier on 911 and the first responders to find the emergency. Queens is far the from the only place with these numbers. Fair Lawn, NJ has them as well.

For many years from my first college semester (eastern PA, fall 1979) I had a Hagstrom NYC street atlas, bought in a new-books bookstore (mom and pop type) in my college town.  It showed hyphenated block numbers in Queens.  This was maybe 3 years before the 911 number was launched.

ixnay

[cl94]

I don't have any issues with hyphenated numbers here. Maybe it's because my hyphen is in the apartment number?

[vdeane]

Not necessarily.  I was getting mail addressed to "Apt. 4-20" because the computers were shortening it to "Apt. 4" (the person SHOULD have been writing "Apt. 20" but wasn't).