The Manhattan Home of a Princess

In New York, when someone says “downtown,” they don’t mean the commercial center of the city. In New York (in Manhattan, specifically), downtown means “in a southerly direction” or one of the neighborhoods below 14th street. So, if someone says “I live downtown,” it means that they live in one of those neighborhoods. But if we were standing on 79th street and I said, “I’m heading downtown,” I could mean that I’m making my way towards anywhere between 78th street, one block down, and Bowling Green, at the southernmost tip of the island.