Clinton St Between East Broadway and Delancey St

There's an imaginary line that runs across all of Manhattan. This line is where the streets cease to follow the seemingly random layout of New Amsterdam and begin to to conform to the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 – which dictated the street grid of Manhattan starting around Houston Street and continuing up in to the Bronx. If you simply glance at a map you can clearly see this change occur. On the west side the grid doesn't take hold until 14th Street where the insane organization of streets known as the West Village finally meet its match. The east side, on the other hand, begins to have normal easy-to-navigate blocks as far south as Canal Street. Which is where we find ourselves today. While these blocks aren't your standardized "Commissioner's Plan" style, they at least follow the geography of the island in a more logical manner than their counterparts to the south.

The changeover between these different grid layouts often results in strange block arrangements and even the occasional curved street. Clinton Street begins its life down on South Street after which it cuts through the LES. However as it crosses East Broadway it makes the slightest turn east to make up for the change in orientation of the surrounding super blocks. Being in the middle of a housing project you encounter the expected oddities such as low-rise retail and spacious lawns, but off on the horizon you can see beacons like the Chrysler Building which help to orient you.

As Clinton settles into a route which will eventually find itself turning into Avenue B before looping around at 14th Street to morph into Avenue A, the surrounding apartments taper off into an industrialized wasteland. In the distance the gentrified high rise buildings of the East Village and Alphabet city stand out like sore thumbs amongst the older structures look utterly defeated.