Vanity addresses seem like a cheap way to increase the value of real estate, but they can cost more than money. Police and firemen might struggle to find a building with a Fifth Avenue address that is not actually on Fifth Avenue (one problem Manhattan and rural West Virginia share). In Chicago, where a similar program allowed developers to manipulate addresses, thirty-one-year-old Nancy Clay died in an office fire when firefighters didn’t realize that One Illinois Center was actually on the less grandly named East Wacker Drive.
