The Sun, the Grid, and the Upper West Side: Finding Magic in Manhattanhenge — Rain or Shine

 by Yvonne Vávra

It was supposed to be Manhattanhenge last Wednesday. And sure, there was a big crowd at the 72nd Street entrance to Central Park, just like every year. But no one was looking at the horizon. No one even seemed to know it was the first of four evenings each year when the setting sun aligns perfectly with Manhattan’s street grid. The crowd, for one, was all runners just finishing a corporate challenge in the park, power-walking toward dry socks and post-race beers. But more importantly, there was no solar magic to see. The rain had stolen the whole show.

Still, I was there. And so was the sun. We just couldn’t see each other through the thick clouds.

I love Manhattanhenge, whether I can see it or not. It’s when the cosmic universe above seems to acknowledge our man-made one below. The sun slips perfectly into our concrete canyons, and it feels like the sky is tipping its hat to the city — or maybe the other way around. There must be some cosmic reason our avenues are rotated about 30 degrees east of the north-south axis, allowing us to worship the sun on exactly four days a year.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History, coined the term Manhattanhenge to evoke the mystery of Stonehenge, where the sun aligns with the solstice. “What will future civilizations think of Manhattan Island when they dig it up and find its carefully laid out network of streets and avenues?” he asks. “Surely they will presume the grid had astronomical significance, just as we have done in the case of that prehistoric circle of large vertical rocks known as Stonehenge, in England’s Salisbury Plain.”

Of course, cosmic considerations were the last thing on the Commissioners’ minds when they devised the 1811 plan to bury Manhattan’s hills, fields, marshes, and streams beneath a rigid street grid. This is New York, built to make money. The grid was the work of visionaries who foresaw what the city would become, and what it needed to make business boom. It was all about commerce and — then, now, and always in Manhattan — real estate. And that 30 degree tilt of the grid? It simply allowed traffic to run the length of the island without being stopped short by the rivers. No spirituality here. Just business spirit.

The street grid forced fast-growing Manhattan to spread in an orderly way. It was designed to rationalize unruly terrain and the unruly things people did in it. But try to conquer nature, and it creeps back in through the cracks — or the cross streets. We tried to build our own universe, but with Manhattanhenge, the sun returns with a bang, reminding us that our creation, however vast it feels, is still just a tiny speck in the vast beyond.

That sense of alignment with a cosmic force may be part of what fascinates us about Manhattanhenge. But there’s also the way it connects us to the city and to ourselves. The sun couldn’t make its grand, center-stage appearance if it weren’t for our perfectly straight streets, framed by tall buildings like theater curtains. The phenomenon reminds us of the grid, that fundamental system organizing both the city and us. It’s democratic, open, approachable, pragmatic, and remarkably easy to navigate. When you’re lost, it takes just about five seconds to find your place in the world again. Watch people emerge from a subway exit into the daylight. There’s a flicker of vulnerability in their faces until they look left and right, translate numbers into cardinal points, and get their bearings. That’s New York. That’s who we are.

Perhaps the most powerful force pulling us to gaze toward New Jersey is our love of symmetry, balance, and rare, perfect moments. It’s balm for our harried souls when things come together in pure harmony, and everything is — just this once — in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. Like a bagel with the perfect amount of everything and just the right proportions of lox to schmear, Manhattanhenge is our celestial comfort food.

The next Manhattanhenge is on July 11 and 12. But don’t wait that long to enjoy a good sunset. Especially as Upper West Siders, we don’t need perfect alignment to feel the magic. The sunset is always just a short walk away — none of us is more than five blocks from the Hudson. It doesn’t need to be framed by the city to be perfect. The sun doesn’t care what day it is. It just shows up and does its thing, waiting for us to have a moment together. No appointment needed.

Yvonne Vávra is a magazine writer and author of the German book 111 Gründe New York zu lieben (111 Reasons to Love New York). Born a Berliner but an aspiring Upper West Sider since the 1990s (thanks, Nora Ephron), she came to New York in 2010 and seven years later made her Upper West Side dreams come true. She’s been obsessively walking the neighborhood ever since.

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