How do I orient myself in New York/Manhattan?
Finding your way around New York is not as difficult as some people might think. This is particularly true for Manhattan, which is known for its uniform street network system. grid – is known. Similar to Saint Petersburg, the island was built on a drawing board and closely resembles a chess board. To make it easier to remember the streets, Manhattan's street grid was given different additional names: the longitudinal streets from south to north were given the addition of "Avenue" and the transverse streets from east to west were given the addition of "Street". Manhattan Island is further - roughly speaking - divided into three areas: Downtown , Midtown and Uptown . As the name suggests, Downtown is located in the south of the island below 14th Street, or in other words south of Union Square. The Uptown area extends north of 59th Street. The city's green lung also begins there: Central Park, which divides the area into the Upper East and Upper West Side . Midtown is located between Union Square and Central Park. For further guidance based on the cardinal points, see the House Numbers section below.
A few exceptions you should know about:
There is a street that has defied the order of the chessboard system since its inception and runs as a central axis across Manhattan from Washington Square Park in the south to Central Park in the north: the world-famous Broadway.
In the Greenwich Village district, downtown, the streets south of Houston Street do not have numbers, as is usual, but names.
There are also exceptions for the avenues: only a total of 12 avenues are numbered. The other avenues have names, in the east they are Madison, Park and Lexington Avenue. In Uptown, most of the avenues have names, such as Amsterdam, Manhattan or Columbus Avenue.
House numbers
In the United States, the house number comes before the street name and not after it, as is common in Europe. 5th Avenue runs down the middle from south to north and divides Manhattan into two mirror-inverted sides, at least as far as the numbering of houses is concerned. The house numbers increase as we move away from 5th Avenue to the right toward the east and to the left toward the west.
So we have the phenomenon that an address occurs twice in Manhattan and is only distinguished by the addition of the respective cardinal direction: for example, 324 East 47th Street on the east side, to the right of 5th Avenue and 324 West 47th Street to the west or left from 5th Avenue.
Cross streets and intersections
If you feel like you're starting to lose your bearings in all the confusion, don't be afraid. New Yorkers have developed a system for navigating this jungle of duplicate street names and numbers, alternating avenues and different boulevards. Just do as New Yorkers do: state the street across the street from your destination address, or name the intersection if you want to go somewhere and ask someone for information or take a taxi. This will make your stay in New York a lot easier and you'll feel like a real Yankee. Because what makes a stay somewhere in the world greater than feeling like a local, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle?
Our tip : To get a more accurate picture of Manhattan, especially on your first visit, we recommend that you take part in our Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn tour , ideally on the first day of your visit. On the five-hour tour, our German-speaking guide will show you the northern side of the island of Manhattan and Harlem, followed by the three other districts. The tour is available here: CLICK