New York

Getting Around

New York City consists of five divisions called boroughs. Manhattan and Staten Island occupy separate islands. Brooklyn and Queens, across the East River, are located at the western end of Long Island, and the Bronx occupies part of the mainland to the north, across the Harlem River.

City Fact Comparison
Indicator	New York	Cairo	Rome	Beijing
	(United States)	(Egypt)	(Italy)	(China)
Population of urban area¹	16,626,000	10,772,000	2,688,000	12,033,000
Date the city was founded	1613	AD 969	753 BC	723 BC
Daily costs to visit the city²
Hotel (single occupancy)	$198	$193	$172	$129
Meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner)	$44	$56	$59	$62
Incidentals (laundry, dry cleaning, etc.)	$2	$14	$15	$16
Total daily costs	$244	$173	$246	$207
Major Newspapers³
Number of newspapers serving the city	10	13	20	11
Largest newspaper	The Wall Street Journal	Akhbar El Yom/Al Akhbar	La Repubblica	Renmin Ribao
Circulation of largest newspaper	1,740,450	1,159,339	754,930	3,000,000
Date largest newspaper was established	1889	1944	1976	1948
¹United Nations population estimates for the year 2000.
²The maximum amount the U.S. Government reimburses its employees for business travel. The lodging portion of the allowance is based on the cost for a single room at a moderately-priced hotel. The meal portion is based on the costs of an average breakfast, lunch, and dinner including taxes, service charges, and customary tips. Incidental travel expenses include such things as laundry and dry cleaning.
³David Maddux, ed. Editor&Publisher International Year Book. New York: The Editor&Publisher Company, 1999.

Although it is the smallest of the five boroughs, Manhattan—bounded on the west by the Hudson River and on the east by the East River and Harlem—is geographically, financially, and culturally the heart of the city. The streets at the southern end of the island—in areas including the Wall Street financial district, Chinatown, and SoHo—are laid out in an irregular pattern that dates back to the days of Dutch settlement in the seventeenth century. As settlement later expanded northward, a grid pattern of streets and avenues emerged. The streets run east-west, with numbers ascending northward; avenues run north-south, with numbers ascending westward. Fifth Avenue, running north-south, is the dividing line between streets labeled "east" and "west": to the east of Fifth Avenue, 23rd Street is East 23rd, to the west it is West 23rd. Instead of numbers, a few avenues east of Fifth Avenue are labeled by names (Madison, Park, Lexington) or, in the southern part of the city, letters (A, B, C, and D). In addition, Sixth Avenue is also known as Avenue of the Americas, and some of the other numbered avenues on the west side are known by other names above 59th Street (Central Park West, Columbus, Amsterdam, and West End avenues).

The streets and avenues north of 14th Street are perpendicular to each other except for Broadway, which runs diagonally across the island, northwest to southeast, from the Upper West Side to 14th Street, after which it runs southward to the tip of Manhattan, serving as the dividing line between east and west for this section of the island. The famous "squares" of the city (Times Square, Herald Square, Union Square, etc.) are located at the intersections of Broadway and the major avenues.

A major point of reference in upper Manhattan is Central Park, which runs northward from 59th to 110th streets and from Fifth to Eighth avenues (Eighth Avenue is called Central Park West for the length of the park).