A Guide to the Grid

The map of Manhattan is, for the most part, easy to follow: north of 14th Street, streets are laid out in a numbered grid pattern. Numbered streets run east–west (crosstown), and broad avenues, most of them also numbered, run north (uptown) and south (downtown). The main exception is Broadway, which cuts across the entire length of Manhattan on a diagonal. Below 14th Street, many thoroughfares are named, not numbered, and don't follow a strict grid pattern. It's worth noting that there's a Greenwich Street and a Greenwich Avenue; there's also an East Broadway and a West Broadway, both of which run north–south, and neither of which is an extension of Broadway, leaving even locals scratching their heads.