About this guide

How a place gets listed

Someone checks the practical details and writes the page: what the place is, who it is for, what stands out, and a verdict. The date on the page is the day those details were last verified. Hours change. When the date is old, trust the door before you trust the sentence.

A place is listed because it earns a trip or a habit. Being open is not enough. The list will stay incomplete. Parks, museums, and other landmarks are listed the same way. When a place is free, or a price does not apply, the page leaves the price off.

Areas and history

Smaller sections of the neighborhood can have their own pages, nested when one section sits inside another. A separate set of pages covers residents and historic events. Both are notes with sources, not a full history and not a map of every block. A place can point at the section it sits in. A person or an event can too.

Verdicts

A verdict is an opinion, and it is not for sale. Payment does not create a listing, soften a sentence, add a rating, or earn the editor’s pick mark. If we would not list a place for free, we do not list it for a fee.

Affiliate links and sponsorships

Some pages include affiliate or referral links. Each one is labeled “Affiliate link.” If you use one, this site may earn a commission. The address and the business’s own website stay on the page, so the referral link is never the only way to find it. A commission does not change the verdict.

A local sponsor can pay for a placement. Those listings show the word “Sponsored” on the page and anywhere the place is featured, including the home page. The word means the placement was paid. It does not mean the write-up was edited to suit the sponsor.

Referral links sit apart from the verdict, with the label on them. They are not woven into the opinion.

Corrections

If an address, an hour, or another fact is wrong, write towashingtonheightsguide@gmail.com. Say what you checked and when you checked it.

The map

The guide covers Washington Heights, roughly from West 155th Street north to the Dyckman Street edge of Inwood. A place on that seam can be included when people in the Heights use it as part of the neighborhood. Inwood proper, central Harlem, and the Bronx are outside the list. The river is the west boundary; the Harlem River is the east.

Placeholders

The project ships with example listings, one example area, and one example person so the pages have a shape before real notes are written. They are named EXAMPLE. They do not describe real places, real sections, or real people. Production builds leave them out.