The lights, the sounds, the density — there is enough stimuli in NYC to make you think navigating the city is complicated. Luckily for you, streets in most of Manhattan and some other parts of NYC are laid out on a grid system that is pretty simple to understand. The first thing you need to know is that in the gridded part of Manhattan, which is most of everything above Houston Street, there are two kinds of roads: streets and avenues as its mentioned in NYC street map. They run perpendicular to each other, never parallel.

 

Most numbered streets in NYC begin with an “East” or “West” signifier, which tells you whether you are east or west of Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. South of 8th Street of NYC, the east/west divider is Broadway, which confuses things by snaking through Manhattan with no respect for the rules as you can see in NYC street map. Avenues run north and south, their numbers ascending from east to west. In much of Manhattan, First Avenue runs along the East River, while 12th Avenue, on the other side of the island, runs along the Hudson River, and is also known as the West Side Highway.

 

The most basic thing to remember is that avenues in NYC run north and south while streets run east and west (…ish, Manhattan does not a perfect compass make, but do not try telling any New Yorker that). Most streets and avenues in NYC only accommodate one-way traffic as its shown in NYC street map, but there are some thoroughfares (14th, 23rd, 42nd, etc…) that do have two-way traffic and are a bit bigger (I will fill you in on the history in my next post). This might not seem all that important now, but eventually, you will be sending a text, reading a book or just generally not paying attention as you walk down the street and suddenly find yourself in the middle of two-way traffic because you only glanced down one direction.