Me, too. If Western New York counts. Elmwood too. God, I grew up hating New York City. No offense, of course! 
Regarding water towers–as others have said, all tall buildings have water tanks. New York, and, to a lesser extent Chicago, have a lot of buildings with wooden towers that are not enclosed. If a building has an apparently decorative peak, that’s usually where the tank is.
I’m from Boston. The area below 14th is the only part of Manhattan that makes sense to me. Grids just seem so unnatural.
On the other hand, that really would have been a trouble sign in Cleveland, where E. 41 st. is parallel to W. 41 st., 82 blocks apart.
On Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” show, they did a segment on Rosenwach Tank Company, one of the companies that builds rooftop water tanks in NYC. The video of that segment is available on their website, and covers the removal/replacement of an old tank with a brand new one.
That was pretty much me the other day. I was walking up West 38th Street, looking for 69. I was in the 300s, and wondering how many more hundreds of blocks it would take me to get there.
T.M.I.!! 
(Didja find someone who’d do it with ya?)
Well there’s your problem right there, you can’t walk up 38th street.
If you have cable, watch out for a rerun of the episode of Dirty Jobs where Mike Rowe assembles one of those wooden water tanks atop a New York City skyscraper.
If you’re afraid of heights, I would not recommend this as a career choice.
Like tdn, I found this info new to me. Other essential NYC navigation principles are that (above 14th St.) there are 20 blocks to a mile going n or s (ie, via numbered sts.), and that normal (NY-style, non-sauntering) walking speed is a block a minute.
I never get right the number of n-s blocks that the larger ave-to-ave distances comprise. Anyone?
Five avenue blocks to a mile, so one avenue is 1/5 mile. The major middle-of-Manhattan exception is Madison/Park/Lexington Avenues, which are closer together than others, but you can approximate by pretending Park isn’t there, and treating Madison<->Park as one avenue block.
Yeah, tourists should be careful when booking a hotel that is 3 blks from the subway. If they are 3 N/S blocks, no big deal. But 3 E/W blocks could be a 10 minute walk!
That’s what the crosstown bus is for. 
(Tourists seem afraid of buses for some reason.)
I hear what you are saying. We visited NYC many times before trying a bus.
However, in Midtown they run on 57st, 49/50 st, 42 st, 34st. Not useful in many situations. And if traffic is bad, you can walk faster than the bus!
Locals don’t use crosstown busses much either, since it’s not much faster than walking. Of course, maybe I just haven’t taken the fast crosstown busses. Are there any?
There are at 3AM. Not so fast during the day, though.
The ones that go across Central Park (72st, 79th, 86th, 96th) are OK as long as it isn’t rush hour.
To hide the body.
Really, you need to watch more Law & Order.