The city of Dunkirk would like residents and landlords to take a look at their housing numbers and make sure they are present, easy to see and legible.

“Address identification and building numbers are essential to locating homes and businesses,” Housing, Building and Zoning Officer Alan Gustafson stated. “Whether in a city, town or village, properly identified buildings help avoid confusion and make finding specific buildings as easy as possible.”

Gustafson shared that building numbers are used by US Postal Service for mail delivery as well as other various delivery services, but more importantly, they are vital to emergency services personnel such as police, fire and ambulance services.

“In New York State as well as the city of Dunkirk, the display of building numbers is also the law,” Gustafson added.

According to the Fire Code of New York State, these rules apply to new and existing buildings. The address identification, or building numbers, must be at least four inches high and half-an-inch thick. To ensure they may be seen from the street, they must be legible and installed in a conspicuous location on the building and they must be a different color than their background, so they are easily seen rather than blending in. The numbers must either be Arabic numbers or alphabetical letters and the numbers must not be spelled out.

“For the safety and convenience of your family, tenants, employees, customers or visitors, please take the time to ensure that your buildings are properly identified,” Gustafson said. “The few seconds or minutes saved by emergency personnel by having properly identified buildings, could save a life.”

The City of Dunkirk Housing, Building and Zoning Office is responsible for ensuring compliance with these regulations and personnel are available to answer questions pertaining to the address identification requirements. To contact the Housing, Building and Zoning Office, call (716) 366-9858 or email building@cityofdunkirk.com.