Twenty-Block Radius

We launched Twenty-Block Radius on the two-hundredth birthday of the grid that makes Manhattan the world's best walking city. Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas described this brilliant system (in which every twenty blocks add up to roughly one mile) as “undreamed-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy.”

Our TriBeCa studio lies south of the grid - in the middle of what once was the Lispenard Salt Meadow. The grid's chief draftsman cut through here every day on his way to work (where he was attacked by dogs and pelted with produced by angry farmers). We are surrounded by history - walking distance from the customs building where George Washington was sworn in, a few blocks from the underground railroad stop where Frederick Douglass found refuge from slavery (and where we now buy our coffee).

In this blog we celebrate all that the streets of New York have to offer within a twenty-block radius of our studio - good eats, exotic finds, cultural attractions, unique characters, and just plain oddities.