Unexpected character after line continuation character

[Gribouillis]

my only question is why does the \n work when enclosed in quotes? Doesn't that denote a string type?

Exactly. A text between quotes is technically called a literal string. These strings may contain ordinary characters and some special characters that cannot be directly typed with a keyboard. They are entered with an escape sequence such as \n. When this escape sequence appears in a literal string, it is transformed in a single character named ASCII-linefeed.

is there another way to accomplish this same output in a single print statement?

Yes there is, one can use the format() method

print('{} {}\n{} {}\n{}, {}  {}'.format(firstname, lastname, houseNumber, streetName, cityName, stateName, zipCode))