A Special Installment of “A Helluva Town”
[In Part 2 of “Rick’s Guide to New York,” I touch on some of Manhattan’s neighborhoods, mostly downtown near the Flatiron, and some of the “points of interest” I think are worth knowing about. There also a little more information about getting around the Big Apple.]
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!To the Big Apple
Some Manhattan Neighborhoods: As I mentioned, I live in what’s now called the Flatiron District, a relatively recent designation, dating from around 1985. (When I first got here in the mid-70’s, the neighborhood had no name. It went through several attempts to dub it something, including “SoFi” for “South of Flatiron,” until finally it seems to have accepted “Flatiron District”—taken, of course, from the famous skyscraper at 23rd Street, 5th Avenue, and Broadway.)
On 19 May 2024, the New York Times published a “Special Section,” inserted in the regular Sunday paper, entitled: “New York City, Defined by You.” The accompanying article, which was headlined “What’s in a Name? (Or Five?),” examined the various ways in which New York City neighborhoods are defined and named over the decades, including split-offs and name-changes.
A note at the end of the section, which is four segments folded into two pages—the inside is a giant, color-sectioned map of the city’s neighborhoods—declares “Thee Map Is Still Alive,” and explains how to send in information about “your neighborhood” for inclusion in the online version of the map.
The digitized edition of the section was originally posted on 29 October 2023 (that’s not a typo; the online version, called “An Extremely Detailed Guide to an Extremely Detailed Map of New York City Neighborhoods,” came out 29 weeks before the print version was published). There are slight differences in the texts.
The Flatiron District is now a shopping, dining, and entertainment destination, as well as a popular residential neighborhood. It’s bounded by 14th Street, Union Square, and Greenwich Village to the south; 6th Avenue and Chelsea to the west; 23rd Street and Madison Square (or NoMad) to the north; and Park Avenue South and Gramercy Park to the east.
Greenwich Village (“the Village”) starts a few blocks south and extends west to the Hudson and south to Houston Street (that’s HOW-ston, not HYU-ston—this ain’t Texas!). What is now called the East Village used to be part of the Lower East Side (now known colloquially as Loisaida because of its heavily Hispanic population).
South of Houston is SoHo, the artists’ area. Many art galleries, boutiques, bars, and restaurants. Great wandering! It’s also one of the two best-preserved areas of cast-iron architecture in the city—the other’s along 5th and 6th Avenues in the Flatiron. This was only revealed in the early 1970s when old anodized aluminum false façades were removed in the run-up to the Bicentennial Year celebrations in 1976.
The area North of Houston has become known as NoHo, and is an extension of SoHo in flavor and personality. It also used to be part of the Lower East Side. (Both SoHo and NoHo were originally areas off small manufacturing. The loft spaces that became ideal artists’ studios because of their large, open areas and, often, reinforced floor construction that supported the machinery—ideal for sculptors, especially—were small factories. My grandfather, a dollmaker, had his first factory in NoHo—see “Horsman Dolls,” 14 February 2017—until it became too small and he moved his operation to Trenton, New Jersey.)
Little Italy and Chinatown abut SoHo in the areas of Mott and Canal Streets, and run east to the river. Sometimes it’s hard to separate the two neighborhoods now because they’ve blended together. (By the way, there are much better Italian restaurants outside of Little Italy and better Chinese restaurants outside of Chinatown.)
Below SoHo/Chinatown/Little Italy to the west is now called TriBeCa (Triangle Below Canal), and has many interesting new restaurants, Off-Off-Broadway theaters, and loft buildings. It runs into the Financial District (“Wall Street”) to its south and east. The name was coined in the early 1970s and was originally applied to the area bounded by Broadway and Canal, Lispenard, and Church Streets, which appears as a triangle on city maps; it was formalized in 1976 by a New York Times article. (The neighborhood was the setting for the short-lived Fox TV series, TriBeCa [1993].)
(East of the Financial District, centered where Fulton Street meets the East River, is the South Street Seaport, which I describe briefly in Part 3 coming up.)
North and west of Flatiron is Chelsea, running from about 14th Street to 34th Street and west from 6th Avenue to 10th Avenue. A large portion of the neighborhood was designated the Chelsea Historic District in 1970 and 1981. Chelsea is culturally and ethnically very mixed, with a large LGBTQ population and, starting in the 1990s, a growing (post-contemporary) art and gallery presence. The Hotel Chelsea (222 West 23rd Street at 7th Avenue) had some illustrious residents.
These are just of few of the named neighborhoods in Manhattan, each with its own personality. Others include the well-known Harlem, Kips Bay, Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Washington Heights, Morningside Heights, Yorkville, Diamond District, Hell’s Kitchen, Tenderloin, Meatpacking District, and many others. The other boroughs all have neighborhoods as well, of course—some of them originally independent towns or villages (remember, boroughs like Queens and the Bronx were previously separate counties) before Greater New York swallowed them up.
Note: I keep talking about 6th Avenue. So does everybody else, except the post office and the street signs. They persist in calling it “The Avenue of the Americas” (to which the street’s name was changed in 1947). No one uses that—even the subway line is called “the 6th Avenue line”—but you’d better know it, or you’ll get lost. Ed Koch (1924-2013), when he was mayor (1978-89), wisely had the street marked with both signs.
(By the way, while we’re on the topic of street names, there are streets and avenues in the other boroughs with the same names as in Manhattan, including “6th Avenue” and “5th Avenue”—as well as other, similar numbered streets—in Brooklyn. I was once approached by a woman looking for an address on 5th Avenue she couldn’t find, and when I looked at her written note, I saw that the address was in Brooklyn, not Manhattan. There are Broadways in Manhattan—three different ones, as I’ve noted—as well as Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.)
As I said above, street numbers increase south (downtown) to north (uptown) and avenue numbers increase east to west (1st Avenue is farthest east; 12th Avenue is farthest west). (Avenues A, B, and C run in that order east from 1st Avenue to the East River.)
House numbers also increase south to north going uptown (for the most part—consistency isn’t a big characteristic of NYC streets). They increase outward from 5th Avenue in both direction (i.e., on the East Side, they increase eastward from 5th Avenue; on the West Side, westward from 5th).
There are 100 house numbers between each avenue (except Madison, which splits 5th and Park, and Lexington, which splits Park and 3rd.) E.g.: 100 East 23rd is at 23rd and Park Avenue South; 100 West 14th is at 14th and 6th Avenue. (One caveat: there are almost never as much as 100 addresses on a block, so #50 is seldom in the middle. The last house number on the cross streets will usually be in the mid-50s.)
The address numbering for the avenues is not regular. There are street-number guides available in various places, such as in the yellow pages of the phonebook—if you can find one. (I carry a guide in my wallet to help figure out the nearest cross street to my destination, but mine’s on the back of a pocket calendar that banks used to give out—but they stopped doing that decades ago. I’ve duplicated one at the bottom of Part 3.)
Even-numbered addresses are on the south (for east-west streets) or west (for north-south avenues); odd on the north or east (again, for the most part).
For the uninitiated, the Manhattan grid, which was conceived by a commission appointed by the New York State legislature in 1811 and was implemented over the succeeding 60 years, isn’t universal in the borough. (Since the Commissioners’ Plan, as it was known, predates the formation of Greater New York, the other boroughs weren’t affected by the grid design.
Areas like Greenwich Village (which was actually an isolated rural Dutch hamlet named Noortwyck [‘Northern District’] to the north of the 17th-century European settlement on Manhattan Island—the original New Amsterdam [Nieuw Amsterdam]—and its streets are still narrow and some curve at odd angles), Harlem (another formerly separate Dutch village, named for the city of Haarlem in Holland), and lower Manhattan (the area of the 17th-century Dutch settlement) all have idiosyncratic street plans.
(The name ‘Greenwich Village’ sounds purely English—and most people assume as much. They assume incorrectly, however. In the 1670s, when Dutch settler Yellis Mandeville moved bought property and there, he took with him the name of a Dutch village on Long Island near where he previously lived, which has long since disappeared but which was then known as Groenwijck, Dutch for ‘Green District.’
(The first record of the name-change to Greenwich Village occurs in 1696, in Mandeville’s will—the British had conquered New Netherland (Nieuw Nederland) in 1664—so it seems likely that he was responsible for the new name and thus that ‘Greenwich’ was an anglicization of a Dutch name, not a reference to the area in south-east London, England, called Greenwich.)
Even within the grid plan, numerous crazinesses exist.
Beside 6th Avenue/Avenue of the Americas, there are a few other changes it might help to know about:
3rd Avenue, below Astor Place (East Village), is the Bowery, famous for bums and derelicts (though not so much since the ’90s, when the whole Lower East Side started to gentrify). The Bowery’s still New York's principal market for restaurant equipment and lamps.
Lexington Avenue starts at 21st Street (Gramercy Park). Between 14th Street and 21st Street, there’s a charming little street called Irving Place (named after Washington Irving, 1783-1859) where Lex should be. (In Herb Gardner’s [1934-2003] 1962 play A Thousand Clowns, he mentions “14th and Lex,” an intersection that doesn’t actually exist.)
4th Avenue exists only between Union Square/14th Street south and Astor Place (ca. 8th Street). Below Astor Place/Cooper Square in the East Village, it’s Lafayette Street. Between the north end of Union Square (17th Street) and 34th Street, it’s Park Avenue South (along the Square, it’s Union Square East). It used to be 4th Avenue, and the house numbers still act as if it were. Above 32nd Street, it is Park Avenue, with a new numbering system (1 Park Avenue).
(By the way, at 32nd Street, Park Avenue rises up and actually passes through the building that houses Grand Central Station. It then returns to ground level on the north side of the terminal. Talk about your railway overpasses!)
Below Canal Street, 6th Avenue merges with and becomes Church Street.
7th Avenue below 11th Street is 7th Avenue South. Below Clarkson Street, it becomes Varick Street. The street is co-named Fashion Avenue in the Garment District (25th Street to 42nd Street); between 26th and 28th Streets along 7th/Fashion Avenue sits the campus of the Fashion Institute of Technology, part of the State University of New York (SUNY). FIT focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry.
7th Avene intersects with Broadway at 42nd Street at Times Square, the center of the Theatre District. Then the avenue is interrupted by Central Park between 59th Street (Central Park South) and 110th Street (as is 6th Avenue), and is known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in Harlem, north of the park.
8th Avenue becomes Central Park West (CPW) at 59th Street (Central Park South) as it runs along the western side of the park. At Abingdon Square in the West Village, 8th Avenue merges with and becomes Hudson Street.
On the Upper West Side, at 59th Street, several name-changes take place: 59th Street itself is called Central Park South (CPS) between 5th Avenue and Central Park West as it runs along the southern border of Central Park.
9th Avenue becomes Columbus Avenue.
10th Avenue becomes Amsterdam Avenue.
11th Avenue becomes West End Avenue (WEA).
On the Upper East Side, at 53rd Street, east of 1st Avenue, Sutton Place replaces Avenue A. This isn’t really a name-change, since the three lettered avenues end at 14th Street because the East River cuts off the land. At 60th Street, Sutton Place (New York’s highest rent street) becomes York Avenue.
(Addresses on York Avenue are continuous with that of Avenue A, but on Sutton Place and Sutton Place South, house numbers don’t follow the usual pattern in Manhattan. Address numbers along Sutton Place South increase when headed south, unlike most north–south streets in Manhattan. Just remember what I said about consistency on New York City streets.)
Madison Avenue starts at 26th Street (Madison Square, where Madison Square Garden was first built; it has moved twice to get to its current site above Pennsylvania Station; see Part 3).
Riverside Drive (lovely old mansions and once-elegant apartment houses overlooking the Hudson River) starts at West 72nd Street and meanders along the river (and Riverside Park) on the far West Side.
South of 8th Street (Greenwich Village, SoHo) and north of 110th Street (Harlem, Fort Washington, Morningside Heights), things get very screwed up. You need a map or a native guide!
West 4th Street is a weird little street. Though numbered like the others, it is not straight and actually intersects with 12th and 13th Streets in the West Village. It is still called West 4th Street as far east as Broadway in the East Village, when it finally straightens out and becomes East 4th Street, and fits neatly between East 3rd and East 5th Streets. It also becomes Washington Place when it forms the southern boundary of Washington Square Park. You go figure it out.
West 3rd Street is very similar to West 4th. In both cases, the house numbers are as unruly as the street itself. Be careful looking for addresses on these two village streets. Or the streets themselves, for that matter.
There are no numbered streets below 8th Street on the West Side (except the above-mentioned West 3rd and West 4th Streets). 1st through 7th Streets only exist east of the Bowery in the East Village.
Most New Yorkers use simple abbreviations for some of our streets. Most are well known and obvious—Mad Avenue and Lex for Madison and Lexington Avenues, for instance—and one, by common usage, is almost not an abbreviation at all—FDR for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, which everyone just calls the FDR Drive anyway—but others are less well known outside the city (though probably just as obvious):
CPS.......... Central Park South RSD....... Riverside Drive
CPW......... Central Park West WEA...... West End Avenue
Be careful, especially in the Village: there are both a Washington Place (southern edge of Washington Square) and a Washington Street (far west in the Village, parallel to the Hudson), not to mention Washington Mews (a private street north of Washington Square). There are also a Greenwich Street (one block east of Washington Street) and a Greenwich Avenue (running from 9th Street and 6th Avenue to 14th Street and 8th Avenue).
There is Broadway and also West Broadway (running from Canal Street to Washington Square; its last block, near NYU, is called LaGuardia Place) and East Broadway (on the Lower East Side). There is MacDougal Street and MacDougal Alley (both near Washington Square), Minetta Street and Minetta Lane (both near 6th Avenue south of Washington Square) and Jones Street (West Village) and Great Jones Street (East Village).
Along with Park Avenue, there’s also Park Row (near City Hall), Park Place, and Park Street (near the World Trade Center); there are also both a Madison Avenue and a Madison Street (Lower East Side). There is also both West 12th Street and Little West 12th Street (in the West Village meat-packing district).
Just a few other major points of interest:
Libraries: With so many schools in the city, there are obviously many libraries, but you’ll need to make special arrangements to get into the school facilities since they all require student ID’s for entry. Some will arrange for reciprocity if you are connected to another university elsewhere.
The New York Public Library (92 branches, 4 research libraries) is, of course, one of the best libraries in the world, and there are many specialized branches and divisions around Manhattan. The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, the main research library, at 42nd Street on 5th Avenue and any other NYPL research library can issue a “Metro Card” for some of the restricted libraries if you need specific access for research or study, but not loans.
(Note that the NYPL serves only the boroughs of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. The Brooklyn Public Library (61 branches) and the Queens Public Library (62 branches)—both established in 1896—are separate institutions.)
Jefferson Market Branch (my local branch, and a wonderful building in its own right!), 425 6th Avenue at 10th Street. The NYPL website is at https://www.nypl.org/ for information about all its 92 branches and services.
The Morgan Library & Museum (originally known as the Pierpont Morgan Library until 2006) is a museum and research library at 225 Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Founded by J. P. Morgan (1837-1913) in 1906, is open to the public by appointment (which can be made online. The Morgan Library & Museum contains illuminated manuscripts, authors' original manuscripts, books, and sheets of music. The Morgan also houses collections of drawings, photographs, paintings, maps, and other objects. There is an online catalogue, CORSAIR, of the Morgan’s holdings.
Some historic theaters:
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, 74A East 4th Street; the Ellen Stewart Theatre, formerly the Annex (renamed in 2009 for La MaMa’s founder (1919-2011) is at #64. Originally, one of the premiere avant-garde theaters of the ‘50s and ‘60s, and still producer of some extraordinary events; (212-254-6468), https://www.lamama.org/.
Lucille Lortel Theatre, formerly the Theatre de Lys, 121 Christopher Street in the West Village. Another Off-Broadway booking house; (212-924-8782), https://lortel.org/.
New York Shakespeare Festival/Joseph Papp Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street at Astor Place in the East Village. This is the busiest theater in New York with 4 performance spaces, plus films and other occasional events. There’s always something going on there, especially while it’s doing its Shakespeare Marathon; (212-260-2400), https://publictheater.org/.
Orpheum Theatre, 126 2nd Avenue. An Off-Broadway commercial space, formerly a Yiddish theater; (212-477-3932), https://hennepinarts.org/venues/orpheum-theatre.
Provincetown Playhouse, 133 MacDougal Street, off of Washington Square in the West Village. This famous theater, the New York home of the Provincetown Players with a permanent cyclorama that Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) helped build, is also a booking house now; (212-477-5048), https://www.nyc-arts.org/organizations/new-york-university-provincetown-playhouse/.
Two New York City public transportation forms other than the subway and MTA busses are the famous Staten Island Ferry, which departs from South Ferry, and the Roosevelt Island Tram, which takes you from 59th Street and 1st Avenue over the East River to Roosevelt Island. Neither island offers a lot of sightseeing interest, but the ferry and cable car rides are enjoyable ways to see the city from different perspectives.
The Roosevelt Island Tram takes the same fare as the busses and subways, but the Staten Island Ferry became a free ride courtesy of former Mayor Giuliani. (Hey, when it opened, it cost a nickel!)
Museums:
American Folk Art Museum (212-977-7298), 2
Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at West 66th Street. (Lexington Avenue Local to 65th Street)
American Museum of Natural History
(212-769-5100), Hayden
Planetarium (212-769-5900) and the NatureMax Theatre (212-769-5650), 79th Street
and CPW. (7th Avenue IRT or 8th Avenue
IND)
Children’s Museum of Manhattan (212-721-11234), 212 West
83rd Street (Tisch Bldg.). (7th Avenue
IRT 1/9 to 79th or 86th Streets)
Cooper-Hewitt Museum (212-860-6868), The
Andrew Carnegie Mansion, 2 East 91st Street.
(Lexington Avenue IRT to 86th or 96th Street)
The Frick Collection (212-288-0700), 1 East 70th Street. (Lexington Avenue IRT to 68th Street)
Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum
(212-245-0072), Pier 86 on the Hudson River at W. 46th Street and 12th Avenue. (M11 bus to 49th Street and 10th Avenue
[traveling north] or 9th Avenue [traveling south]; transfer to M27 going west
[east-bound M27 runs on 50th Street])
Jewish Museum, an art museum and
repository of cultural artifacts. (212-860-1888), 1109 5th Avenue at 92nd Street. (Lexington Avenue Local to 96th Street or
Express to 86th Street)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (MMA –
212-879-5500), 5th Avenue and 82nd Street. (Lexington Avenue IRT to 76th Street)
Morris-Jumel Mansion (212-923-8008), 65
Jumel Terrace between 160th and 162nd Streets.
(closest subway: C to 163rd Street; also: 1 to 157th Street or A to 168th
Street)
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA – 212-708-9500), West
53rd between 5th and 6th Avenues
(F-train to 5th Avenue).
Museum of the City of New York (212-534-1672),
5th Avenue at 103rd Street. (Most
direct: Lexington Avenue IRT to 103rd Street; safest: get off at 96th Street
and walk up 5th Avenue)
Museum of Sex (212-689-6337), also
known as MoSex, is a sex museum located at 233 Fifth Avenue at the corner of
East 27th Street in Manhattan. (N, R, or
W to 23rd Street or 28th Street)
National
Museum of Immigration (212-363-7620), in the Great Hall on Ellis
Island. (Lex. Avenue IRT’s 4 or 5 to
Bowling Green; Broadway BMT N or R to Whitehall/South Ferry; 7th Avenue IRT 1/9
to South Ferry; then the Ellis Island Ferry from Battery Park)
National Museum of Mathematics (212-542-0566),
or MoMath, 225 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan.
(N, R, or W to 23rd Street or 28th Street)
New-York Historical Society
(212-873-3400), 170 CPW at 77th Street.
(7th Avenue IRT or 8th Avenue IND)
Paley Center for Media (formerly the Museum of
Television and Radio; the Museum of Broadcasting – 212-621-6800 [recording];
212-621-6600), 25 West 52nd Street. (F
or E to 5th Avenue and 53rd Street)
Schomburg Center for Research
in Black Culture (212-862-4000), 515 Lenox Avenue. (8th Avenue IND to 135th Street)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
(212-360-3513/-3500), 5th Avenue at 89th Street. (Lexington Avenue IRT to 86th Street). The Guggenheim has just opened a branch in
SoHo, 575 Broadway at Prince Street (212-423-3500)
Spyscape (212-549-1941), 928 8th Avenue at 55th
Street, Manhattan. (A or C to 50th or 59th
Street; B or D to 59th Street)
Studio Museum in Harlem
(212-865-2420), 144 West 125th Street (8th Avenue IND to 125th Street)
Whitney Museum of American Art (212-570-3676), 99 Gansevoort Street, Lower Manhattan.
There’s one New York City museum that’s not well known that I want to recommend especially:
The George Gustav Heye Center of the National Museum of the American Indian, (212-668-6624), in the historic Alexander Hamilton US Custom House at 1 Bowling Green, near Battery Park. This is the original, private Museum of the American Indian that was absorbed by the Smithsonian Institution’s NMAI. George Gustav Heye (1874-1957) opened his Museum of the American Indian to the public in 1922 to house and display his own collection of Native American art. He’d started collecting in 1903 and established the Heye Foundation in 1916 to oversee it and promote the study of Indian art and culture.
The museum was located at 155th Street and Broadway in Harlem until it was acquired by the Smithsonian and moved to the Custom House in downtown Manhattan in 1994. The Smithsonian took over Heye’s museum in 1989 and then opened the main building for the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in 2004.
The Heye Center, now a satellite of the Smithsonian’s NMAI in Washington, D.C., maintains its own permanent collection (based on Heye’s original holdings) and exhibits. (Because it’s a Smithsonian museum, it’s free and open every day except Christmas.) It’s a stunning building and wonderful museum in its own right. (Lexington Avenue IRT’s 4 or 5 to Bowling Green; Broadway BMT N or R to Whitehall/South Ferry; 7th Avenue IRT 1/9 to South Ferry).
Schools in the downtown area near Union Square, many with excellent libraries if you can get access to them, include NYU, centered on Washington Square; The New School (formerly, and famously, the New School for Social Research) and Parson’s School of Design, on 5th at 14th and along 12th near 6th Avenue, and Cooper Union, at Cooper Square near Astor Place There is also the Benjamin Cardoza School of Law, part of Yeshiva University, at 5th and 13th, and Hebrew Union College, behind NYU on Mercer Street.
CUNY, the city’s public college, has several branches and community colleges in every borough; its Graduate Center is at 365 5th Avenue in Midtown. The Fashion Institute of Technology, part of SUNY, as 227 West 27th Street (27th Street and 7th Avenue) focuses on art, business, design, mass communication, and technology connected to the fashion industry.
Columbia University is in Morningside Heights, at 116th Street and Broadway. Nearby is the Union Theological Seminary at West 120th St. and Broadway. Fordham University has a big campus in the Bronx, and a smaller facility near Lincoln Center at 113 W 60th Street. Pace University has campuses in Long Island City, Queens; Westchester County; and downtown Manhattan near City Hall at 1 Pace Plaza (along Spruce Street between Park Row and Gold Street).
There are dozens of other schools of greater or lesser repute all around the city and the nearby areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. (Rutgers University (Queen’s College, New Brunswick, NJ), Princeton, and Yale are all near enough to get to easily by train or bus.)
[There’s
still more to say—it’s New York City, after all!—so, I’ll be back with Part 3
of “Rick’s Guide to New York” on Thursday, 5 December.]
