Throughout much of the city, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour.

At a road leading into the Staten Island Ferry Terminal - just for city workers - it's 4 and 1/2.

The city's transportation department thought adding that one-half mile an hour would make drivers pay attention.

In a city with everything, sometimes doing half is what it takes to stand out.

Take the black and white cookie. Half vanilla, half chocolate. It helped to turn Glaser's bake shop on the Upper East Side, which closes at the end of the month, into a New York institution.

"It's the combination of vanilla and chocolate, the half and half. People who can't make up their mind, possibly, so they have both," Glaser said.

When Fred Huber moved to Long Island, he still wanted to say he was living in Queens. So he split the difference. His house is in Nassau County but the backyard is in Queens. 

He pays taxes to both the city and Great Neck. And says he gets twice the services for being half in each place.

"We do use New York City garbage. We put that down on the side - cause this side is the New York City side. And if need to do another garbage pickup we can put in the front and that's when Nassau County can take it," Huber said.

The city's narrowest house measures 9 1/2 feet wide. It's address is 75 1/2 Bedford Street.  

Its teeny-tiny size and that half address draw crowds every day. There are several other half-addresses in the neighborhood - the result of properties being subdivided.

The city's most famous half address may be 6 1/2 Avenue, a mid-block pedestrian walkway in Midtown.

But there is no half was when it comes to that NYC staple, the bagel.

"Most people don't order bagels by the half dozen," said Norman Sverdlen of H&H Midtown Bagels East.

Probably because bagels usually are cheaper by the dozen. 

And when it comes to a bargain, for many New Yorkers half measures just won’t do.