A large portion of Manhattan – despite the borough’s reputation for overwhelming, even intimidating, newcomers – is laid out in a neat, orderly way. 37th street is two blocks to the north of 35th, 6th Avenue is one avenue to the west of 5th, and every street runs perpendicular to every avenue.
Manhattan Streets
Granted, there are a few quirks. Broadway makes a haphazard diagonal across the island, and Park, Madison, and Lexington blithely disregard the convention of numbering avenues. But these are acceptable idiosyncrasies – exceptions that can be learned quickly that only highlight how ordered the grid system is otherwise.
South of Washington Square Park, the city becomes messier, as streets follow old, non-grid landmarks: Canal Street follows a 19th-century canal, Wall Street is understood to run along the site of a 17th-century wall. These one-off streets give character to the neighborhoods that they have come to define.
West Village Streets
The West Village Grid, however, is in a league of its own when it comes to city planning quirks that define neighborhoods. The Manhattan Grid is considerably offset from West Village’s, accentuating the transition from Midtown’s skyscraper’s to West Villages Historically protected leafy streets.
Where the two grids collide, the acute angles between streets create triangles of open space that are home to parks and subway stations and have a more pedestrian feel than the square intersections on the Manhattan Grid. It’s not only the streets’ orientation that highlight the West Village’s uniqueness. They tend to be narrower, more residential, with buildings rarely above 3 stories: the contrast between 6th Avenue and the Village streets that branch off from it could not be more telling.
With such a defining characteristic, West Village’s bohemian, artistic feel is even more apparent. The whole neighborhood feels slightly more secluded, more unique because of its geographical differentiation from the rest of the city.
The narrow, separated streets – with eateries and bars on most corners – truly do make West Village feel like a village, a unique little community sheltered from the rest of the city. Whether you’re interested in a quiet drink at a small cafe or a home away from the bustle of city life, West Village is the perfect place to go off-grid.