NYC’s longest street, stretching 150 miles, is long enough to get you from Manhattan to Albany, but NYC’s shortest street couldn’t get you anywhere near that far.
When it comes to the city’s shortest street though, there’s actually some controversy around it as two different streets seem to be competing for that tile.
One of the contenders, stretching just 63 feet long, is Edgar Street in the Financial District. Located just off of Greenwich Street, this thoroughfare is named after 19th Century shipping magnate William Edgar whose mansion ran along Greenwich Street, according to Untapped Cities.
Edgar Street sits right the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entrance and spans from Trinity Place to Greenwich Street.
Though, depending on who you ask, some would argue that NYC’s Mill Lane is actually a few feet shorter than Edgar Street.
“In addition to Edgar Street…tiny Mill Lane in the Financial District appears to be the shortest of them all, coming in a few feet shorter than Edgar Street,” said Michele and James Nevius, authors of Inside the Apple: A Streetwise History of New York City, in a Q&A with the NY Times.
According to Forgotten-NY, Mill Lane is one of the city’s dozens of streets named for mills that used to be in the area, though, first laid out in 1657, it used to be known as Ellet’s or Elliott’s Alley until 1664.
Spanning from Stone Street in the east to South William Street, Mill Lane is so tiny that it can’t even claim so much as an address or lamppost.
In comparison, due to a meridian that divides it, Edgar Street is technically two streets–so what it lacks in length it’s made up for in width–while Mill Lane no longer allows traffic through it.
So, while we may not actually know for sure, you can do what you must with the above information to come up with your own stance on which of these two streets can actually be considered the shortest.