I Love New York
Especially Manhattan
New York City is composed of five boroughs. While Manhattan and Staten
Island are islands, Brooklyn and Queens are geographically part of Long
Island, and the Bronx is attached to the US mainland. The islands are
linked by bridges, tunnels and ferries.
Check here for helpful NYC maps and guides.
Manhattan is roughly 13.4 miles long and about 2.3 miles
wide at its widest. Except at its northern and southern tips, the
borough’s avenues run roughly north and south, and streets run east and
west. One-way thoroughfares are common, with traffic moving east on
even-numbered streets and west on odd-numbered streets. Fifth Avenue
divides the island into east and west sides (for example, locations on
57th Street west of Fifth Avenue are designated “W. 57th St.,” and east
of Fifth Avenue, they’re “E. 57th St.”). As you move farther east or
west from Fifth Avenue, street addresses increase, usually in increments
of 100 from one block to the next. For north-south avenues, 20 blocks
equals a mile, and the street numbers increase as you go uptown. Blocks
can be a useful measure of distance, but keep in mind your direction:
walking uptown from 1st Street to 6th Street is about a quarter of a
mile, but walking the same number of blocks crosstown, from First Avenue
to Sixth Avenue, is approximately a mile.