Jo Lolley says...
the hyphen is a common feature in addresses in all of Queens, not just LIC, with only a few exceptions, like in Forest Hills Gardens, which has "normal" addresses.
although the system is not perfect, the numbers before the hyphen refer to the closest numbered street intersecting that address, so, for example, 36-01 35th Avenue in Astoria, which is the address of the Museum of the Moving Image, is at the intersection of 36th Street.
the numbers before the hyphen have from 1 to 3 digits, while the 2 digits after the hyphen refer to the regular sequential house number along that block, so that the number will go from "36-00" to "36-whatever", until 37th Street, when it will begin with "37-00".
i am pretty sure the dashes are used to avoid any sort of confusion with long numbers, although Brooklyn has a similar system with their numbered streets without the dashes.
(BTW, i realized later that the hyphens are necessary, because when you read them out loud, you say "thirty-six dash oh one", or "two twenty-two dash fifty", etc. and in case you ever had a house number such as "8-00", you would have to read that as "eight dash oh oh (zero zero)", never as "eight hundred"...)
Posted on October 26, 2010
Whenever I see Long Island City address It Will Have a hyphen in it (eg 15-00). Can someone Tell Me What That Means?