2 ms·

I share your complaints about Manhattan. I guess when they did Manhattan they had figured out "numbered streets are good" but not "having the addresses work ni

• nobody9999 4y ago
  >By the time they put addresses on the streets in Queens they did what you want them to. That is true, but 34-15 61st Street is a very different place than 34-15 61st Road, 34-15 61st Avenue and 34-15 61st Place. Which is even more confusing and annoying than Manhattan addresses. About which I'd point out that there are other smart things and other confusing things too: On side streets (not avenues), odd-numbered addresses are on the north side of the street and even-numbered ones on the south side. And on avenues, addresses are generally odd-numbered on the east side of the street and even-numbered on the west side. Where it exists (north of West 4th Street) the East Side/West Side divide is 5th Avenue, so 5 East 23rd Street is just east of Fifth Avenue and 5 West 23rd is just west of Fifth. And my favorite: Uptown is (generally) north and downtown is (generally) south, so by walking one block and seeing how the street numbers increase/decrease (and remembering the avenue layout from river to river), you can pretty much determine your whereabouts pretty quickly. Also (with some variation) one city block (say from 43rd to 44th street, rather than avenue blocks, e.g., from Park to Lexington which have much more variable lengths) is approximately 1/20th of a mile.