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Block-to-Mile Conversion

Sun., September 17, 2006

A statistic I’ve been meaning to memorize is one that New York pedestrians should know: how many blocks are in a mile. This varies because only most of Manhattan’s map is gridlike, but in general, if you’re walking “street blocks” (streets in Manhattan run east-west or “crosstown,” as we say) or the much more variable “avenue blocks” (avenues in Manhattan run north-south, otherwise known as uptown-downtown), here are the conversions, according to Michael Pollak in the “F.Y.I.” department of today’s New York Times city section:

1 street block = 264 feet
20 street blocks = 1 mile

1 avenue block = 750 feet
7 avenue blocks = 1 mile

So back when I was living on the Upper West Side and walking to work, I was knocking back about 2.5 miles one way. If I tried that from where I live now, it’d be more than eight miles one way. Yow!

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