Deny Pleas of 10,000 Autoists For Special License Plate Numbers

Deny Pleas of 10,000 Autoists For Special License Plate Numbers

Publication: The New York Times
Date: 31 December 1926

Automobile owners who have hoped to get license plates bearing numbers they particularly liked—lucky combinations or figures or the same numbers as their houses or telephones—are being empathetically turned down this year. Ten thousand such requests have been received and rejected already at the offices of the Motor Vehicle Department, 220 West Fortieth Street.

One such person complained yesterday to Commissioner Charles Harnett that the number given him this year was three numbers higher than last year.

“You are lucky to get any number at all,” Mr. Harnett told him. “Neither you nor anybody else is going to come in here and bullyrag me into giving you a distinctive number.”

At the close of business Wednesday night 207,000 licenses had been issued at the Fortieth Street office, compared with 157,000 at the same time last year. 30,000 day have been issued.