Really short streets in Manhattan
Aug. 4th, 2022 01:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyWhat's the shortest street in Manhattan? (Restricting to the [current] island itself for simplicity.) I've seen it asserted that Edgar St is the shortest. Is that true?
I mean, Edgar St is a pretty plausible candidate! It's just a little strip of road connecting Greenwich St to Trinity Place where they meet (well, where they meet as distinct streets -- just a bit south of there, Trinity Place becomes the continuation of Greenwich St... Manhattan streets are like that). It's hard for a street to be shorter; there are plenty of short streets in lower Manhattan, but generally they're more honest streets than Edgar St, none of them is close to as short. (Was Edgar St longer at some point? I have no idea.)
There's one street though that I think is shorter, and that's Edens Alley. I mean, OK, it's an Alley, but even alleys aren't normally this short -- at least not named alleys, I guess there are various unnamed alleys, but those don't count. :P (And even they are often longer!)
Now the thing about Edens Alley is that the alley turns, and actually only the east-west part is Edens Alley; the north-south part is Ryders Alley. If we counted the whole thing as one street -- and I have no idea why they have separate names! -- it would easily be longer than Edgar St. But Edens Alley by itself may be shorter.
(I only know that the north-south portion is Ryders Alley because that's what Google Maps says; there's an Edens Alley sign near the west exit, but no Ryders Alley sign near the north exit. Again, I have no idea why they have separate names.)
So, is it? Well, I don't have a great idea about how to measure street lengths, but here's the lazy way I came up with. Ask Google Maps for the distance from the intersection at one end to the intersection at the other end.
By that metric, Edens Alley is indeed slightly shorter than Edgar St! A mere 108 ft as compared to 135 ft.
EDIT August 5: I just realized... Edens Alley may be shorter along flat ground, but Edens Alley has a substantial grade! Another complication, oy... I think we should probably just ignore that, as accounting for ups and downs of roads is a serious can of worms. But it does make measuring in person harder, if we want to try that.
ANOTHER EDIT August 5: Google Maps says Mill Lane is also only 108 ft!! Man, I wouldn't have guessed that... so, uh, I guess the answer is possibly actually a tie between Mill Lane and Edens Alley...? Unless one wants to measure more precisely, anwyay... O_o (Note that Mill Lane *also* has a substantial grade. :P )
But what about even shorter streets? What about streets with a length of zero?
There are two streets I have in mind here: Temple St and 208th St.
Temple St hasn't existed since 1968... but there's still a sign up for it. I don't know why this particular defunct street gets a sign when so many others don't, but apparently people liked Temple St. Here's a page with some information about its history; when it did exist, it was definitely longer than Edgar St. Anyway, you could say that Temple St has a length of 0, but really it just doesn't exist. Not counting Temple St.
What about 208th St? This one is weird. Now there's a bunch of street numbers that are skipped in upper Manhattan, but 208th St... sort of exists? I'm pretty unclear on this. I've never actually been up there, note, but from what I've seen on Google Street View, actually going there wouldn't resolve much.
So like -- 208th St existed at one point, it seemed? But then at some point it was reduced to just a driveway into a parking lot. And then said driveway and parking lot was closed off to the public. So it's not even really a public street anymore? I'm not sure if that driveway is even considered 208th St anymore... but since as mentioned it's closed off, a visit to the site wouldn't help. I'd need to like go finding an official map or something. I should probably learn where those are kept, actually?
Well, that's more effort than I'm willing to go for for this post. So yeah, 208th St is in a sort of limbo. Google Maps does recognize the location that is the intersection of 208th St and 9th Avenue (i.e., the start of the driveway)! But that's it.
Can we attempt to measure the length of said driveway? Well, with an official map, probably, but, again, I'm being lazy. I definitely can't measure it by going there, as mentioned. But if we ask Google Maps for the distance from the intersection mentioned above, to the parking lot, it gives 118 ft. I'm a little uncertain how much to trust this measurement! Nonetheless, I'm going to say that 208th St, to the extent that it exists, is probably longer than Edens Alley. Unless you want to count it as having a length of 0, but that seems kind of sketchy to me. Then again, so does any solution here.
-Harry
I mean, Edgar St is a pretty plausible candidate! It's just a little strip of road connecting Greenwich St to Trinity Place where they meet (well, where they meet as distinct streets -- just a bit south of there, Trinity Place becomes the continuation of Greenwich St... Manhattan streets are like that). It's hard for a street to be shorter; there are plenty of short streets in lower Manhattan, but generally they're more honest streets than Edgar St, none of them is close to as short. (Was Edgar St longer at some point? I have no idea.)
There's one street though that I think is shorter, and that's Edens Alley. I mean, OK, it's an Alley, but even alleys aren't normally this short -- at least not named alleys, I guess there are various unnamed alleys, but those don't count. :P (And even they are often longer!)
Now the thing about Edens Alley is that the alley turns, and actually only the east-west part is Edens Alley; the north-south part is Ryders Alley. If we counted the whole thing as one street -- and I have no idea why they have separate names! -- it would easily be longer than Edgar St. But Edens Alley by itself may be shorter.
(I only know that the north-south portion is Ryders Alley because that's what Google Maps says; there's an Edens Alley sign near the west exit, but no Ryders Alley sign near the north exit. Again, I have no idea why they have separate names.)
So, is it? Well, I don't have a great idea about how to measure street lengths, but here's the lazy way I came up with. Ask Google Maps for the distance from the intersection at one end to the intersection at the other end.
By that metric, Edens Alley is indeed slightly shorter than Edgar St! A mere 108 ft as compared to 135 ft.
EDIT August 5: I just realized... Edens Alley may be shorter along flat ground, but Edens Alley has a substantial grade! Another complication, oy... I think we should probably just ignore that, as accounting for ups and downs of roads is a serious can of worms. But it does make measuring in person harder, if we want to try that.
ANOTHER EDIT August 5: Google Maps says Mill Lane is also only 108 ft!! Man, I wouldn't have guessed that... so, uh, I guess the answer is possibly actually a tie between Mill Lane and Edens Alley...? Unless one wants to measure more precisely, anwyay... O_o (Note that Mill Lane *also* has a substantial grade. :P )
But what about even shorter streets? What about streets with a length of zero?
There are two streets I have in mind here: Temple St and 208th St.
Temple St hasn't existed since 1968... but there's still a sign up for it. I don't know why this particular defunct street gets a sign when so many others don't, but apparently people liked Temple St. Here's a page with some information about its history; when it did exist, it was definitely longer than Edgar St. Anyway, you could say that Temple St has a length of 0, but really it just doesn't exist. Not counting Temple St.
What about 208th St? This one is weird. Now there's a bunch of street numbers that are skipped in upper Manhattan, but 208th St... sort of exists? I'm pretty unclear on this. I've never actually been up there, note, but from what I've seen on Google Street View, actually going there wouldn't resolve much.
So like -- 208th St existed at one point, it seemed? But then at some point it was reduced to just a driveway into a parking lot. And then said driveway and parking lot was closed off to the public. So it's not even really a public street anymore? I'm not sure if that driveway is even considered 208th St anymore... but since as mentioned it's closed off, a visit to the site wouldn't help. I'd need to like go finding an official map or something. I should probably learn where those are kept, actually?
Well, that's more effort than I'm willing to go for for this post. So yeah, 208th St is in a sort of limbo. Google Maps does recognize the location that is the intersection of 208th St and 9th Avenue (i.e., the start of the driveway)! But that's it.
Can we attempt to measure the length of said driveway? Well, with an official map, probably, but, again, I'm being lazy. I definitely can't measure it by going there, as mentioned. But if we ask Google Maps for the distance from the intersection mentioned above, to the parking lot, it gives 118 ft. I'm a little uncertain how much to trust this measurement! Nonetheless, I'm going to say that 208th St, to the extent that it exists, is probably longer than Edens Alley. Unless you want to count it as having a length of 0, but that seems kind of sketchy to me. Then again, so does any solution here.
-Harry
