Key takeaways:
- Within Manhattan’s official street grid, approximately 20 north-south street blocks equal one mile, making each block about 264 feet long.
- East-west blocks between avenues are longer and less consistent, averaging roughly 7 blocks per mile.
- A distance described as “10 blocks” depends on the direction, equaling about a half mile north-south in street blocks or 1.4 miles east-west in avenue blocks.
- Overall, NYC block lengths vary considerably: blocks between Third and Sixth Avenues can reach 920 feet (0.17 miles), while Lower Manhattan’s Edgar Street and Mill Lane measure just 64 feet (0.01 miles) each.
- Manhattan’s grid was established by the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, which created 12 north-south avenues intersected by numbered cross streets.
On average, New Yorkers walk more miles per day — and walk them faster — than anyone else in the country. We can’t help it: NYC has long streets (which in Manhattan run east-west) and long avenues (which run north-south). All in all, this translates to about 7,000 steps per day, or roughly 3.5 miles.
But how many NYC blocks are in a mile? If you’re told something is “a block away,” what does that actually mean? In NYC, the answer depends heavily on the direction. StreetEasy is here to explain this common unit of measurement in New York lingo, including how it came to be (somewhat) standardized.
So, how many NYC blocks are in a mile?
The average length of a north-south block in Manhattan runs approximately 264 feet, which means there are about 20 blocks per mile. This is a reliable rule of thumb for north-south street blocks within Manhattan’s official grid, which runs from Houston Street to 155th Street.
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But what about the lengths of blocks between avenues, which run north-south — say, from Park Avenue to Lexington Avenue? They’re longer, and not so standardized. Generally speaking, the distance between avenues is roughly 750 feet, which means about 7 blocks per mile. But there’s some serious variance of avenue block lengths. In other words, if someone says they’re “10 blocks away” in Manhattan, the actual distance depends on the direction: north-south from one street to another, or east-west from one avenue to another. (If it helps, that would be about a half mile for the former, and 1.4 miles for the latter.)
If we’re talking about the region stretching from Houston Street to 155th Street, which is the official area of Manhattan’s street grid, these are your numbers:
- Between First and Second Avenue: 650 feet (0.12 miles)
- Between Second and Third Avenue: 610 feet (0.12 miles)
- Between Third and Sixth Avenue: up to 920 feet (0.17 miles) per block
- Between Sixth and 12th Avenue: 800 feet (0.15 miles) per block
What accounts for the variability?
Look to history. When the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 (more on this later) laid out a proposal for the now-famous Manhattan grid, NYC’s landscape looked quite a bit different. According to The Encyclopedia of New York City: Second Edition, blocks along the Hudson and East River waterfronts were built closer together in anticipation of increased development, creating more opportunities for water-adjacent property. Avenues were designed long and wide to make room for vehicles like the omnibus, or the horse-bus: an old-fashioned, horse-drawn form of mass transit.
What are the longest and shortest NYC blocks?
As for the longest NYC block? Take your pick, as long as it’s between Third and Sixth Avenues, where block length runs up to 920 feet (0.17 miles).
And the shortest NYC block? It’s a toss-up: Edgar Street between Trinity Place and Greenwich Street, around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange, is just 64 feet (0.01 miles). About as small is Mill Lane between South William Street and Stone Street, east of Bowling Green, which is so short that it bears no addresses.
The size of Manhattan blocks was determined back in 1811
Again, it all goes back to the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811.
Around 1800, the Common Council of New York — “City Council” these days — surveyed Lower Manhattan and decided that its anarchic layout, organically forged through animal paths and wandering whims, could use some regulation. They soon required that any new streets receive approval, and levied fees from property owners to maintain their local streets.
As NYC grew, competing viewpoints on furthering development logjammed any progress, and the city turned to the state legislature for aid. What it got was a commission imbued with “exclusive power to lay out streets, roads, and public squares … [in a way that seems] most conducive to public good.”
Years of surveying commenced, and what the commission landed on was so tried-and-true that the ancient Egyptians once relied on it: the gridiron, or grid.
How the NYC street grid came to be
The rectangular grid may not be sexy, but it sure does work. The plan — the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, that is — was simple:
Straight streets and avenues should intersect at right angles. There would be 12 north-south avenues, and as many numbered cross streets as needed. The grid would be tilted 29 degrees east of true north, to account for Manhattan’s angling — that’s why, when looking at Google Maps or your app of choice, Manhattan is slightly titled but the grid itself is not.
Unlike the east-west numbered streets, which run 60 feet wide, certain crosstown streets were given increased width to serve as thoroughfares. Their constituents won’t be surprising: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 72nd, 79th, 86th, 96th, 106th, 116th, 125th, 135th, 145th, and 155th streets are each 100 feet wide. (Nowadays, 106th, 110th, and 116th streets run 100 feet wide in some places and 60 feet in others.)
To actually build the grid, 1,549 marble markers were placed at each intersection. Though the process faced vandalism by disgruntled property owners, constant legal bickering, and environmental obstacles, the city’s grid got built. It took 60 years for the grid to reach 155th Street, but it finally did.
Is the Manhattan street grid sensible, or ugly?
It’s hard to deny there’s a beautiful pragmatism to Manhattan’s grid. Marguerite Holloway, in her biography The Measure of Manhattan of grid designer John Randel Jr., points out that at its inception, the grid was created to illustrate the idea that the “government ought not to act in such a way as to create inequality of special privilege.” The grid is the every-person’s shape. It’s democratic.
Some artists disagreed. Walt Whitman said: “I always think it a pity that greater favor is not given to the natural hills and slopes of the ground on the upper part of Manhattan Island. Our perpetual dead flat, and streets cutting each other at right angles, are certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation.” Edith Wharton called it “hidebound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.” Henry James lamented that the plan didn’t capitalize on Manhattan’s natural topography, saying it was “the uncollected labor of minds with no imagination of the future and blind before the opportunity given them by their two magnificent waterfronts.”
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In his 1955 essay “New York, the Colonial City,” even philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre chimed in: “In the numerical anonymity of the streets and avenues, I am simply anybody, anywhere. No matter where I may be, my position is marked out in longitude and latitude.”
Today, of course, New Yorkers and visitors alike celebrate the grid for being easy to navigate. And some big thinkers did see a worthy aim in its imposition of order. “[The point is] not to make the city into a huge machine and man into an automaton,” wrote French critic and philosopher Roland Barthes, “but on the contrary to master the distances and orientations by the mind … [so] that each individual should be poetically the owner of the capital of the world.”
Looking to find your place in the grid, or elsewhere in the city? Check out thousands of listings to rent or buy on StreetEasy.
