Manhattan’s Grid - EXPLAINED

Learn how to navigate Manhattan with this compact grid explanation.

Manhattan is one of the most intriguing cities in the world, but its street grid often confuses visitors. This short video lays out how the map of Manhattan NYC works, and will get you oriented to the key regions of the city, like lower Manhattan, the Upper East Side, or the Financial District.

We’d love to hear from you which maps and what cities you’d like to see explained, so leave a comment below!

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===== KEY MOMENTS =====

0:47 - Map Orientation
1:50 - Financial District
1:58 - Midtown Manhattan
2:09 - Upper East & Upper West Sides
2:19 - Harlem
2:28 - Avenues
3:38 - Lettered Avenues (Alphabet City)
3:54 - Streets
5:11 - Exceptions
6:58 - Broadway

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===== ABOUT BRIGHT TRIP =====

Bright Trip creates video-based travel courses to help you travel smarter. From our location courses that visually demystify places like Tokyo, London, Costa Rica, or Cape Town to our skills courses that cover how to travel solo, with kids, or how to document your travels more effectively and efficiently - each course is created by real travelers, like you, and aims to create a community of curious travelers that are eager to travel smarter.

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[bertinspace]

A New Yorker of 43 years, great job, simple and to the point.

[FinancialShinanigan]

Always thought Houston was pronounced Houston. Now I know Houston is pronounced Houston and not Houston.

[crazytek]

New Yorker here! This is a really helpful and concise video for those who don’t know the city. The one thing I would point out is that you referred to everything south of midtown at one point as the financial district, which I think could be a bit misleading as it is only the bottom tip of the island. Otherwise great video

[Gorboduc]

A helpful hint from a local: within the grid there are 20 streets to a mile. This means you can cover about a block per minute.

An avenue block is the length of *three* street blocks, so it'll take you about three minutes per avenue.

That means (for instance) a trip from the Flatiron Building at 23rd & 5th to Times Square at 42nd & 7th will take you:

- 19 streets = 19 minutes
- plus 2 avenues = 2x3 or 6 minutes

So you'll be in Times Square in 25 minutes if you hike it.

I used this all the time before map apps took all the adventure out of life.

PS - why isn't it pronounced SowHow?

[dianem]

Manhattan's grid is amazing. About 30 years ago, my boyfriend and I were driving from Boston to a convention in NYC, held at a hotel near Madison Square Garden. We set off in the general direction of NY without a map, just following the signs. We figured that when we got closer to NYC, we'd stop and buy a map of the city. We ended up driving right into Manhattan from the highway, like, oh crap, there's nowhere to stop, we're in it now. We navigated right to the hotel using just the address. The street numbers were counting down to the street that our hotel was on, then we just found the cross street and we were there. I was astonished, as this is very much not possible to do in gridless Boston. We never did buy a map. We had our weekend at the convention and just drove out the same way we drove in. I loved it.

[DaveTan]

I refuse to live in NOHO, can't live without 'em 'hos.

[darlagts]

I have been to New York City numerous times and I can say I know my way around Manhattan. Yet, getting out of a subway station and walking in the opposite direction to where I'm going still happens to me. Don't get me wrong, getting lost in NYC can be a magical experience since you get to "find" gems along the way that otherwise you'll never get to know, but learning that even streets runs East would be a time-saver on my next visits. Thank you for a very informative video!

[darkwoodmovies]

I lived in NYC my whole life and never connected the dots that even streets go east and odd streets go west. Wow.

[jaehongsong]

I couldn't believe how well designed NYC was when I visited before google map was a thing in the 2000s. It was impossible to get lost as long as you knew the street and the avenue of your destination

[pauliandelrosario]

I'm not from Manhattan but I live in Brooklyn and everytime I look out my apartment window I see our beautiful Manhattan Skyline.
Proud New Yorker here 😘

[southpond]

Just came across this...a Youtube recommendation. A few points: for orientation and navigation purposes, it's good for visitors to know that streets are pretty close to each other but avenues are pretty far apart. So, it someone tells you to walk from 28th to 29th Streets on 5th Ave, that will take you at the most a minute, but walking from 28th and 5th to 28th and 6th is a longer trek. I agree with other posters about your over-simplification of the neighborhoods. I realize you were just trying to not clutter the map, but everything north of Central Park is NOT Harlem, and there are tons of very unique and distinct neighborhoods below Midtown. It's not all just the financial district! It also would have been helpful to explain why Broadway doesn't follow the grid pattern (it was an original trail used by the indigenous population prior to the arrival of the Europeans).

[dyamoy]

Super cool!!! As someone who has not been to and has only known NY through movies and videos and stories and literature, this is cool to see on an actual map! More of this please! :)

[TheStockBrain]

And I thought I knew NYC. Wow, so informative.

[DiscoverTopPlaces]

I love to watch such videos and understand more about this beautiful world.

[jamesjudelson]

Informative video but for those watching this before visiting nyc for the first time, there are a few inaccuracies that are worth pointing out:

1:30 - No one in their right mind refers to the entire area from Union Square down as the Financial District (FiDi). FiDi is essentially the southern tip of the island. If you're trying to go to union square or Houston street, etc. and ask for directions to the Financial District, you will be sent very far out of your way.
Along that same vein, I would also argue that Midtown does not go nearly as far south as Union Square, but that's not as egregious.
You can actually see this in the photo at 2:00. The tall buildings in the foreground are FiDi, and the tall buildings in the background are Midtown. That entire huge area of more low-lying buildings in the middle are almost entirely residential neighborhoods that are completely glossed over in this video.

2:24 - "The further uptown you get the more residential it becomes" statement isn't accurate. Yes, the neighborhoods uptown are mainly residential, but so is the massive area between Fidi and Midtown. In fact, many downtown neighborhoods are some of the most densely populated in the city.

3:03 - 4th Avenue is called Park Avenue for literally its entire length except for a small stretch between Union Square (14th Street) and Astor Place (8th Street), not because it's just in a particularly fancy part of town.

3:10 - Both Madison and Lexington Avenues span far longer than just the Upper East Side (UES). Both avenues pass through the entirety of Midtown and Harlem, as well as some downtown.

3:50 - The area circled is not all Alphabet City. Alphabet is only the upper half or so of the circled area. Lower East Side is the lower half of the circled area and is a distinct neighborhood.

4:20 - SoHo and NoHo are small neighborhoods that, yes, are located below and above Houston Street, respectively. But absolutely neither one covers the entire area below or above Houston. For example, nobody from New York would call the Lower East Side SoHo or the West Village NoHo.

4:58 - Yes, the two-way streets are exceptions to this rule, but there are also a few special case exceptions even with specifically 1-way streets. For example, both 60th and 61st streets on the east side flow West.

6:25 - Forgetting the pretty significant Union Square here on the intersection of Broadway and Park.

[QemeH]

It's funny that Broadway in this video is "the little exception I have to mention at the end" - when in reality it's literally the oldest of all the roads they talk about :D It follows the path of the old trail native americans carved into the manhattan brush, later made wider by the dutch (which is where it gets it's name from: when the british took over New Amsterdam, they saw the unusually wide path through the brush and called it: "the broad way")

[TheGroceryman]

the trick about orienting yourself out of the subway is much more useful when thinking about the avenues because of exactly what you said - the main streets that the subway stops stop at are two-way, like 23rd, 34th, 42nd, etc. Even avenues go north and odds go south - much more helpful when orienting yourself than 2-way streets!

[elkawade]

Would love to see these breakdowns for more cities around the world!

[busiestytnerd]

This is one of those hidden gem channels on YouTube, akin to SmarterEveryDay and Two Minute Papers

[leonelalvarado]

for a foreigner who loves NYC this was insightful and fun!