I'm going to explain Washington DC's street grid so that you can navigate the city like a pro.
Hello! Welcome to Trip Hacks DC. My name is Rob.
I'm a tour guide here in the nation's capital.
If you're coming to Washington DC and you're looking for the best tips, tricks, and hacks for exploring the city,
make sure to subscribe to this channel and hit the bell
notification icon so that you don't miss any new videos; and if you're interested in signing up for a Trip Hacks DC tour,
head on over to www.triphacksdc.com afterwards, to see the tours that I offer. In this video
I'm going to tell you about how our street grid works and give you some tips to help
navigate it. If you live in or have been to DC before and have your own tips for navigating the city, leave a comment on
this video and let everyone know what they are, otherwise,
let's get started... The most important thing that you must know about DC's street grid is that it is divided into four
quadrants. The center of the street grid is the Capitol, located right here. From there
the street running directly to the north is called North Capitol Street, directly to the east is East Capitol Street,
directly to the south is South Capitol Street. There is no West Capitol Street because where that would be is actually the National Mall.
Here's where the Lincoln Memorial is over here on the end. From there you can see the four quadrants: NW, NE, SE, and SW.
Whenever you're trying to navigate to an address you need to know which quadrant it's located in. For example,
everyone knows that the address of the White House is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, right?
Well, the thing is, the actual address of the White House is
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. That's important because if you went to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE
you would wind up at this apartment building. Now,
it looks like a perfectly nice apartment building, but it's definitely not what most visitors are looking for.
Historically, most visitors spent a bulk of their time in the northwest quadrant, which is why you could get away with saying things like 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue,
because everyone assumed that you were talking about Northwest.
Northwest is where most of the downtown hotels are located as well as a lot of the major tourist sites like the White House,
the National Zoo, and
Georgetown; however
these days, depending on exactly what you want to see and do,
you might wind up in all four quadrants at some point during your trip.
If you're traveling through Union Station, that's over here in northeast, if you want to go to a baseball game,
Nationals Park is over here in southeast, and the brand-new and very cool Wharf development is over here in
southwest. OK, so now that we've covered the quadrants,
let's talk about some of the naming conventions. Starting at the Capitol, numbered streets run north and south. So 1st Street,
2nd Street, 3rd Street, etc.
And remember that officially you have to include the quadrant name at the end of each street.
This stuff is probably the most straightforward. Lettered streets run east and west, but they're a little bit trickier. You start with A Street,
there's actually no B Street anymore because in the 1930s
they were renamed to Independence and Constitution Avenues. Then it goes C, D, E,
etc. until you get up to I Street. It skips over J
because the old fashioned I and J actually looked remarkably similar and they didn't want people to get confused. Then it continues up to W
but skips over X, Y and Z. But wait!.. you're thinking, that's only 22 letters. What happens when they run out? Well,
after W Street
the system switches to using two syllable words starting with the letter of the alphabet that they correspond to. For example Adams,
Bryant, Channing, Douglas, etc.
When you get even higher up they switch from two syllable to three syllable names,
but honestly most visitors probably won't find themselves far enough out of downtown where you will experience this.
So once you're confident in your quadrants, your letters, and your numbers, DC is actually a surprisingly easy city to navigate. But wait!
What about all those avenues that are named after states?
We all know about Pennsylvania Avenue, but each state actually has its own Avenue (except Ohio, which has a drive in California,
which has a street but that's a topic for another video). State avenues run diagonal to the lettered and numbered streets,
but what's annoying and sort of confusing is that they don't run parallel to each other. So for example, Pennsylvania Avenue is over here,
Massachusetts Avenue up here, Louisiana Avenue over here, and New Jersey Avenue over here.
Using these avenues is often the fastest way to get from point A to point B,
and if you're using an app like Google Maps or Citymapper, it might be possible to navigate them.
But if you are relying on your instinct and the street grid alone,
it can get a bit confusing. All of that said, once you get here and get a little practice using it,
it's really not so bad. Just make sure you don't forget which quadrant you're looking for.
If you found these tips helpful, you can subscribe to this channel for more by clicking on the Trip Hacks DC logo
which is popping up right now at the bottom of the screen. Or if you want to sign up for a Trip Hacks DC tour,
you can click on the Capitol dome on the left side of my head,
that'll send you over to www.triphacksdc.com where you can see all of the tours that I offer. Enjoy your trip!