On The Avenue.(The Talk of the Town)(vanity address program)

When a large steel bucket fell from the roof of a fifty-four-story construction site in midtown the other day, a news account described the offending building's location as "1 Bryant Park"--a stately address, to be sure, but not a real one. "Bryant Park is a park, named Bryant," Anthony Borelli, the director of land use, planning, and development at the Manhattan Borough President's office, said recently. "That building is kitty-corner to Bryant Park." In other words, the building, also known as the Bank of America Tower, is on Sixth Avenue at Forty-second Street. It costs fifty-five hundred dollars to apply for a dispensation from the ordinary grid system, known officially as a "vanity address," from the Topographical Bureau, which Borelli oversees. "They have officially requested it, and we'll consider it," he said of the developers of the would-be 1 Bryant Park.

Borelli is a somewhat reluctant steward of the vanity-address program, which dates back several decades and can be blamed for, among other things, the proliferation of the word "plaza" and the disproportionate number of businesses and homeowners with Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue letterheads. ("Pulling an avenue address over" is the topographical parlance for denying that your building's real entrance is on, say, East Seventy-sixth Street.) "I usually try to talk them out of it," Borelli said, referring to vainglorious building owners. "If you're having a heart attack and you've got a vanity address, it could take a few crucial moments for the E.M.T. driver to figure it out. And you could be dead by the time help arrives." The residents of 44 West Sixty-second Street once sued the owners of 62 West Sixty-second Street, whose nifty mnemonic address comes at the expense of directional logic: it is east, not west, of No. 44. The plaintiffs were upset about missing out on pizza deliveries and Town Car pickups amid the confusion. (They lost.)

Borelli had a map of midtown on his desk, and noted that this magazine story was likely to be written and edited in a building whose address is 4 Times Square--an honorific that predates his taking office, two ...