Times Square is a "vanity address" – it was "renamed from Longacre Square in 1904 when The New York Times moved there".
In the UK, if your address ends in “Street” rather than “Lane”, it’s worth half the price.
These are two of the nuggets I picked up from a New York Times excerpt of Deirdre Mask’s The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power.
I’ll be spending the next few days catching up on reading the book itself, because Josta van Bockxmeer, Housing correspondent at our sister site De Correspondent, is publishing a review of it in English next week.
We’ve touched on street names a little here at The Correspondent. Some members shared the most interesting historical street names with our former Everyday Colonialism correspondent Elliot Ross.
We’d like you to join us, if you have time, to read either the excerpt or the book and discuss it together with:
- Deirdre Mask , US author of The Address Book
- Giles Rhys Jones, of what3words, a geolocation tech startup
- Chris Hildrey, British architect and founder of ProxyAddress, a system that allows those faced with homelessness to avoid being severed from support the moment they lose an address.
Join us on Tuesday 24 November to the conversation under the article. This is a text-based chat.
We’ll fix the time, and share the book review here too next week – pop back to this page to find out more, or make sure you’re subscribed to our daily newsletter for the latest updates. See you Tuesday, and happy reading.
*UPDATE*: you can now read Josta’s book review; the conversation with Deirdre, Chris and Giles is taking place below (for members who are logged in).
