Cross Streets

[Fred314X]

Originally Posted by Chava61

In Manhattan people tend to give a cross street when giving an address. Also streets are designated west or east so you know if they are west of 5th Avenue or east of 5th Avenue. (In Manhattan streets run west-east and avenues run north-south).
In Queens, people know the cross street in most areas according to the address as Queens' addresses are part of a grid-system for the most part. Queens street addresses have double number (xx-yy where the xx part is the cross street).

In Manhattan, east-west streets run in the 100s according to the distance from Fifth Avenue (Park and Madison being the exceptions to the rule). So 7th Avenue, for example, marks the 200 block west of Fifth; 3rd Avenue is the 200 block east of Fifth, etc.

There are also cross-street identifying systems in Brooklyn, but they're not consistent--a holdover from the history of urban development. For instance, in the central part of the borough, where avenues are designated by letters of the alphabet, the avenues themselves (east-west) have addresses according to the streets (north-south). So an address like 1515 Avenue J would be between East 15 and East 16 Streets. And an address like 1015 East 15 Street would be off Avenue J (because J is the tenth letter of the alphabet!)

Same in the southwest quadrant of Brooklyn (Bay Ridge/Bensonhurst/Borough Park). There, avenues run north-south and streets run east-west, and addresses tell you which avenues or streets they're between.

[NY Annie]

You make it sound so simple in Brooklyn. Except when travelling along 86th street, you have numbered streets and avenues as cross-streets - so it goes Bay 8th St, 15th Ave, Bay 9th, Bay 10th, Bay 11th, 16th Ave.

Not at all confusing - riiight.

I live in NYC (Staten Island is still a borough) and can easily find my way around most of Manhattan - I have problems down in the named streets but I can still figure out how to get where I need to be - assuming it's daytime and the sun is out and I know whether it's morning or afternoon -- but Brooklyn is a whole 'nother planet.

[rp23g7]

So, If your a tourist like i will be in a few weeks, would you give him the exact address of the hotel, 330 W 40th, or would you tell them to take you to W40th and 8th,the Marriott please?

[tpk-nyc]

Originally Posted by rp23g7

So, If your a tourist like i will be in a few weeks, would you give him the exact address of the hotel, 330 W 40th, or would you tell them to take you to W40th and 8th,the Marriott please?

I would say 40th and Eighth. You can't just say "the Marriott" or "the Sheraton." There are multiple hotels in Manhattan run by these and similar companies.

By the way, if it's a numbered street in Manhattan, the cross avenue is pretty easy to figure out. After that it get's much, much more complicated. The addresses on Broadway are very hard to predict. There is a formula, but no one uses it anymore. That why we have iPhones, or similar devices.