Where Is Turtle Bay in Manhattan? East 43rd to East 53rd, Lexington Avenue to the River

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Accepted Answer

Turtle Bay runs roughly from East 43rd Street to East 53rd Street, between Lexington Avenue and the East River, on Manhattan's East Side.

The boundaries

Turtle Bay sits between East 43rd and East 53rd Streets, from Lexington Avenue east to the East River. Nobody in New York argues hard about the edges: some people push the southern line down to 42nd Street to take in Tudor City, some stop the northern line at 51st. What everyone agrees on is the middle, which is the block-by-block stretch of Second and Third Avenues in the high 40s.

It's part of the larger area people call Midtown East, so both names are correct. Midtown East is the umbrella. Turtle Bay is the specific neighborhood inside it, and it's the residential half: office towers on the avenues, low brick and brownstone blocks running between them.

What's in it

The United Nations headquarters, First Avenue between 42nd and 48th. The visitor entrance is at 46th and First, and the tour is worth doing.
Turtle Bay Gardens, twenty houses on East 48th and East 49th between Second and Third, built around a shared interior garden in the 1920s. Katharine Hepburn lived on 49th for decades. You can't go in the garden, but the block itself is one of the prettiest in Midtown.
Greenacre Park, East 51st between Second and Third: a small privately funded park with a 25-foot waterfall that runs loud enough to erase the traffic. Free, open to anyone.
Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza at East 47th and Second, with the Katharine Hepburn Garden along the north edge.
Japan Society at 333 East 47th, for exhibitions and film.

Why it's called that

There was an actual bay here. A cove cut into the East Side shoreline around present-day 45th to 48th Streets, filled in during the 19th century as the grid pushed east. The name likely comes from the Dutch, either from turtles in the shallows or from a Dutch word for a bent blade, describing the shape of the inlet. Either way the water's been gone for well over a century, and First Avenue runs where the shoreline was.

Getting there from the Upper East Side

From our block on East 62nd Street it's about a 15-minute walk south. Head down Second Avenue and you're at 51st and Greenacre Park in a quarter of an hour, the UN in about twenty-five minutes. By train, the 6 from 59th Street to 51st Street is two stops. We send guests down there most often on a slow afternoon, when the Upper East Side museums feel like too much and a waterfall in a pocket park feels like exactly enough.