The Manhattan Grid

[Kris]

July 2, 2006
Urban Tactics
City of Angles
By SAM ROBERTS

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/07/02/nyregion/thecity/02grid600.jpg
Not everyone considered the grid, shown here in an 1811 plan, to be a grand act of geometry. Harper's magazine complained that it created "a city in which all was right angles and straight lines."

CALL it 29 degrees of separation. That's approximately the angle that the Manhattan street grid is rotated from the north-south axis. And it's the reason that, looking west on the first day of summer, you couldn't see the sun set down the middle of any crosstown street, but you could have on May 28 and can again on July 13.

What inspired the grid itself and provoked New York's angular revolution, whose seeds were planted almost exactly 200 years ago? What biblical injunction or solar cult impelled the city fathers to discard their compasses? Which political, economic and cultural forces unleashed "armies of street openers," as James Reuel Smith, an amateur historian, called them, whose largely uncurbed execution of the grid obliterated much of Manhattan's topography and resulted in the demolition of 40 percent of the buildings north of Houston Street?

It was on July 1, 1806, that the city hired Ferdinand R. Hassler, a Swiss immigrant who would become the first director of the federal Bureau of Standards, to produce a "correct survey and map" of the "island of New York." Just a few weeks later, Hassler pronounced himself indisposed. The Common Council itself, a predecessor of the City Council, was fed up with the obstructions to rational development that were being thrown up by politicians, businessmen and competing property owners — opposition the city fathers described as "obstacles of a serious and perplexing nature."

So city officials did what they often do when they're stymied: they passed the buck to Albany. In 1807, the State Legislature authorized a three-man commission to hire its own surveyor. It is probably apocryphal that the commissioners decided on the rectangular street grid after placing some wire mesh used for screening gravel over a map of Manhattan. But that's pretty much what they suggested four years later when they issued what was known as the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

"To some," the officials candidly wrote, "it may be a matter of surprise that the whole island has not been laid out as a city. To others it may be a subject of merriment that the commissioners have provided space for a greater population than is collected on any spot on this side of China."

The plan provided for a reservoir, a public market and a parade ground, but few parks. Most of the streets ran river to river, rather than uptown and downtown, for several reasons: a number of rectangular blocks already had been built that way; at the time there was little reason to venture north of 14th Street; and officials assumed that maritime commerce along the two rivers would generate the most traffic.

And so, paralleling the Hudson and several existing roads, they laid out the avenues along the spine of Manhattan island (which Charles Petzold, a mathematician, calculated was rotated about 29 degrees from true north), to allow traffic on the avenues to cross the island's entire length, instead of heading into the rivers.

Even after the grid was executed, not everyone loved the idea. Decades later, invoking the ancient Greek region famous for geometric pottery and for stupidity, Harper's magazine complained that the commissioners "clapped down a ruler and completed their Boeotian program by creating a city in which all was right angles and straight lines."

The magazine might have complained even more had city officials pursued some of the more extravagant design ideas they were contemplating. William Bridges, the city surveyor, explained that one of the commissioners' chief concerns was "whether they should confine themselves to rectilinear and rectangular streets, or whether they should adopt some of those supposed improvements, by circles, ovals and stars, which certainly embellish a plan, whatever may be their effects as to convenience and utility."

In any case, given Manhattan's uneven topography, the grid system made considerable sense. According to one translation, the name Manhattan was derived from the Algonquin word for "island of hills." One historian described the idea of imposing a democratic rationality on an unruly terrain as the most radical transformation of New York's geography since the Ice Age. Hills, salt marshes and streams were replaced by what Reuben Skye Rose-Redwood, who just earned his Ph.D. in geography and wrote his master's thesis on the grid, called a "Cartesian flatland."

Many landowners were appalled by the plan, among them Clement Clark Moore, then a professor at the General Theological Seminary. Moore, who would go on to fame as the author of "A Visit From St. Nicholas," owned a summer home in Chelsea. In 1818, after the city plowed Ninth Avenue through his property, he delivered a devastating critique of government-anointed technocrats and eminent domain.

"Nothing is to be left unmolested which does not coincide with the street commissioner's plummet and level," Moore complained, saying the commissioners "are men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome, on which are erected her triumphant monuments of beauty and magnificence, and have thrown them into the Tyber or the Pomptine marshes."

Notwithstanding such objections or the later addition of more avenues, the rejection of a recommendation to straighten Broadway and the grand design for Central Park, the grid exists today pretty much intact. It lacks the embellishment of many circles, ovals and stars, but it's a nearly perfect place to practice taxicab geometry, in which the shortest distance between two points is rarely a straight line.

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[stache]

Yes we could use more parks and squares in particular but the grid makes the city easy to figure out and navigate. Plus I think the layout helped subway development etc.

[ablarc]

Yep; turned out pretty well.

It's also nice that the Island's lower part is different.

All in all: near perfect.

Or at least: very hard to imagine better.

[milleniumcab]

I always wanted to know who did this wonderful job.. Thanks Kris...:D

[hadronic]

Wonderful job ?
The Manhattan grid is maybe the worse grid ever built. Blocks are flat, very long, skinny rectangles, boring to walk (no wonder they added Madison between 5th and 4th and Lexington between 4th and 3th, but they should have done the same between the other avenues). The streets are narrow. The avenues are too large. All Manhattan is built up with long strips of residential, dead and dim areas (between the avenues) alternating with long strips of noisy, flashy and inhospitable freeways (the avenues). Wonderful, that restaurant terrace among the cars and the fumes !
The notion of neighborhood itself has become completely devoid of sense, giving way to sanitized strips and lots of other no-name areas, indefinitely interchangeable. There is almost no square : Union Square is the one and only (Times Square, Herald Square and Madison Square are NOT squares, there are just busy unfortunate intersections), and very few parks (Madison Square and Bryant Park, and that must be all).
For the metro, it's on the contrary a big catastrophe : all the lines are running north-south, and except for the 7 and the L lines crosstown embryos, Manhattan is crually lacking crosstown metro transit, like across Harlem, from UWS to UES, across 57th, 34th and 23th at least. Transfer between lines is almost inexistant (the 1,2,3 - A,C,E "transfer" at Penn is NOT a transfer, you have to walk the whole block distance between 7th and 8th avenue, it's simpler to go down one avenue, and walk the remaining crosstown distance on the street level, you save the waiting for the second metro). Only Broadway is there to bring some fancy to that cartesian delirium, and also, some real metro transfer.
And also, I'm not talking about the Harlem village and other hamlets and properties, completely levelled out and plowed by the Commissioner's buildozer. Yuk!

[stache]

Thank you for visiting our planet, and have a safe trip back to yours.

[ablarc]

^ lol +1

[hadronic]

I've also always been admirative at how little critical NYers are concerning their city. It's all just about "it's wonderful", "nearly perfect", but no arguments come along. Even when they find con agurments, they do everything to justify it and to minimize it.
If the lower part of the island being different is "nice", it's precisely because the remaing gridic part is plain boring.

> Yes we could use more parks and squares in particular but the grid makes the city easy to figure out and navigate.
Typical example of false logic. Having more parks and more squares has nothing to do with being a grid or a medieval mesh of streets. It's not because it's a grid, easy to figure out and to navigate, that it justifies by any means the horrendous absence of squares.

And also, I don't understand why NY is constantly boasting about its grid, as if it was something of a genius, nowhere to be seen outside the city. It just so happens that all other American cities have a grid. Why would NY be any different / more insteresting ?

[GordonGecko]

I have to agree that the grid was an excellent idea. Manhattan is a dense urban core and stars/circles/loops would have been a disaster. It could never have become what it is today if not for the circulation the grid provides. IMO, its biggest flaw is that there are no crosstown avenues. The north-south oneway avenues are the greatest roadways of any city in the world, as wide as 7-8 lanes with quadruple sized sidewalks on either side! They are an amazing design which showed a ton of foresight, it's just such a shame they didn't build any going east-west. You could say that 14th, 34th, 42nd, etc.. streets are avenue-esque, but until they make them one way they'll still suffer from gridlock and the inability to get people crosstown in an efficient manner.

[mariab]

You could say that 14th, 34th, 42nd, etc.. streets are avenue-esque, but until they make them one way they'll still suffer from gridlock and the inability to get people crosstown in an efficient manner.

I see that coming in the distant future. I've noticed a big difference driving crosstown in the last two years compared to even ten years ago. Not even during rush hour. It's like hell, in a car.



> Yes we could use more parks and squares in particular but the grid makes the city easy to figure out and navigate.
Typical example of false logic. Having more parks and more squares has nothing to do with being a grid or a medieval mesh of streets. It's not because it's a grid, easy to figure out and to navigate, that it justifies by any means the horrendous absence of squares.

Too late. They're not going to make that radical a change now. They would have to level an entire city block, or blocks. Even half blocks would not be approved. I also wouldn't call a grid design medieval. I know they go back to the ancients, but not everything works as well as it does in Europe. Or Boston for that matter. Heard from people who've driven there it's the worst US city they've driven in. Even worse than L.A.

[lofter1]

... I don't understand why NY is constantly boasting about its grid, as if it was something of a genius, nowhere to be seen outside the city. It just so happens that all other American cities have a grid. Why would NY be any different / more insteresting ?

Who did it first on such a scale?

[mariab]

Why would NY be any different / more insteresting ?

...and Mister, if you have to actually ask that question, nothing we say will satisfy you.

[ZippyTheChimp]

If you were all just a little more critical, perhaps they would scrap it and start over.

[stache]

Philly had a grid from the get go.

[Fabrizio]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v33/ronaldo/Ancient_Alexandria_Map.jpg

[hadronic]

I also wouldn't call a grid design medieval. I know they go back to the ancients, but not everything works as well as it does in Europe

It's not what I meant. I was saying that that the city belongs to the grid pattern (like in the US) or the medieval pattern (like in Europe), has nothing to do with the absence or presence of squares. Both of them can accommodate some, plenty, or none.

And I'm just asking why NYers think that their grid is more perfect or interesting that other grids. I'm not asking why you think New York (the city as a whole, its people, architecture, street life, urbanism) is interesting.

Scrap it and start it over ? That's precisely what they have been determinedly and zealously doing over the past 100 years... (ok, not for the grid, but at least for the buildings, the streetscapes etc)

[hadronic]

That said, they've been able to carve out Madison and Lexington.
On a different note, does someone here have some link about these two audacious add-ons to the grid, relating the project, the reactions of the public, the number of demolitions, etc.. ? I find it very difficult to find valuable material on that.

[ZippyTheChimp]

grid[/U] is more perfect or interesting that other grids.Who said that?

[hadronic]

Interesting article :
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/realestate/23scap.html

Just one sentence made me smile : "New York survives because of the high quality of its public services."

[hadronic]

Who said that?
Not directly stated as such, but ablarc kind of did earlier in the thread.
But it's not just this thread, its a global feeling (I may be wrong), from books (and not only touristic guides), articles, internet, people... When you read these books, you feel like they want to induce you into thinking that there's something magic about it, near all perfection. Technically speaking, this grid is not even perfect : as stated in the article I posted above, the main cross-streets are layed out randomly, the spacing between the avenues also is still kind of a mystery...
I know only two cities, or maybe three, that constantly and with such a pride put their grid so high (for good or for bad): New York, San Francisco (mainly because of the topography I guess), and on a lesser extent, Washington.

[ZippyTheChimp]

Not directly stated as such, but ablarc kind of did earlier in the thread.Ablarc's post:


Yep; turned out pretty well.

It's also nice that the Island's lower part is different.

All in all: near perfect.

Or at least: very hard to imagine better.

The OP article and responses made no mention of any comparisons with other cities or street systems. So I interpret "near perfect" to mean near perfect for the needs of Manhattan. Would any other system work for a long thin island with hundreds of shipping piers?

The grid system was advantageous in ways not envisioned in 1811. Look how easy it was to place the large Central Park, and allow crosstown traffic.

The grid made it easier to construct subways. A cut-and-cover method could be used to run them down the avenues. A different street pattern would have forced them to go under structures. That would mean deep tunnels, a slow and expensive undertaking through Manhattan bedrock before TBMs.


But it's not just this thread, its a global feeling (I may be wrong), from books (and not only touristic guides), articles, internet, people... When you read these books, you feel like they want to induce you into thinking that there's something magic about it, near all perfection.Well generally, that's not New Yorkers. We talk about everything here, and this topic had 6 posts and was dormant for 5 years until you revived it.

Millenniumcab is a NYC cabbie, so his appreciation is a matter of daily life.

Maybe visitors think it's magical because it's so apparent to them. Once a friend of mine visiting from a city that didn't have them asked me, "What are those things on a lot of rooftops?" Water towers. Natives just accept their presence without a thought.

From many places, you can look down a canyon of tall buildings and see river to river. Not too many cities where you can see that.

What led you to this topic?

[hadronic]

I agree, ablarc wasn't saying that, I overstated his thought. But that doesn't void my other comments.

What I mean precisely, is that Manhattan's grid is very far from being "perfect". Seeing people so admirative of the grid has always let me perplexe. There are tons of other possible layouts for the streets. Just because this one went to be concretely realized and that it gives today "not too bad" a result doesn't mean its the only one workable, and that you can't "imagine better".
I wish the previous centenary roads, the former villages of Stuyvesant farm, Harlem and Manhattanville, what have you, were still here today, integrated in the "grid". Why do so many people think that diagonals would have been catastrophical ?

Once again, finding a place to plot a park (like Central Park) has nothing to do with the grid.

The grid maybe allows crosstown traffic, but it has prevented the crosstown traffic for the metro network, because it would have created to short branches. With diagonals or east-west curving roads (like Broadway), and with the same cut and cover technic, more east-west connections would have been possible. Why do you say that with a different street pattern, they would have had to tunnel under the structures ? Most of Paris metro lines for instance were built using that same cut and cover method, and for all that, Paris is not precisely known for its grid...

"Native just accept [their presence] without a thought" : this seems to work for a lot of things...

[hadronic]

What led me to the topic ? Was browsing trying to grasp that grid phenomenon a little better.

[lofter1]

You have to realize that NYC was founded as a Corporation, and has always been run, first and foremost, with business in mind. The Grid Plan was a real estate transaction / cataloguing system, created in a pattern that maximized building lots of the size (25' x 100') that were thought most useful for residential use (those lots could be combined into groupings to enlarge the building plots). The grid allowed for the most resourceful use of land for building: right angles everywhere. It was designed before automobiles & trains (and with little inkling of life as we now know it) -- and before the industrial revolution. As Zippy points out, it gave great access to the riverfront & piers (where the vast majority of goods come into and went out of NYC), allowing for smooth distribution from those points.

The Grid plan had its critics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners'_Plan_of_1811#Reaction_to_plan):



The plan was vociferously criticized from the start, with one commentator in 1818 saying, "These are men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome." Thomas Janvier's book In Old New York (1894) criticized the plan as only "a grind of money-making." More recently, the plan has come in for praise despite its shortcomings. One critic recently pointed out that the wide avenues attract retail and commercial use, among other benefits.[1]

As found online at Old And Sold (http://www.oldandsold.com/articles14/new-york-12.shtml):

The Gridiron Plan Of 1807-11

The Commissioner's report, an admirable presentation of their logic and foresight, issued in 1811, contains the following:



. . . that one of the first objects that claimed their attention was the form and manner in which the business should be conducted; that is to say whether they should confine them-selves to rectilinear and rectangular streets, or whether they should adopt some of those supposed improvements by circles, ovals and stars, which certainly embellished a plan whatever might be their effect as to convenience and utility. In considering that subject they could not but bear in mind that a city is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight sided and right angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in. The effect of these plain and simple reflections was decisive.

Having determined therefore that the work should be in general rectangular, a second, and in their opinion, an important consideration, was so to amalgamate it with the plans already adopted by individuals as not to make any important change in their dispositions.

This, if it could have been effected consistently with the public interest, was desirable, not only as it might render the work more generally acceptable, but also as it might be the means of avoiding expense. It was therefore, a favorite object with the Commissioners, and pursued until after various unsuccessful attempts had proved the extreme difficulty, nor was it abandoned at last but from necessity. To show the obstacles which frustrated every effort can be of no use. It will perhaps be more satisfactory to each person who may feel aggrieved to ask himself whether his sensations would not have been still more unpleasant had his favorite plan been sacrificed to preserve those of a more fortunate neighbor. If it should be asked why was the present plan adopted in preference to any other, the answer is, because, after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best; or, in other and more popular terms, attended with the least inconvenience.

It may be to many a matter of surprise that so few vacant spaces have been left, and those so small, for the benefit of fresh air and the consequent preservation of health. Certainly if the City of New York was destined to stand on the side of a small stream such as the Seine or the Thames, a great number of ample places might be needful. But those large arms of the sea which embrace Manhattan Island render its situation, in regard to health and pleasure, as well as to the convenience of commerce, peculiarly felicitous. When, therefore, from the same causes the prices of land are so uncommonly great, it seems proper to admit the principles of economy to greater influence than might, under circumstances of a different kind, have consisted with the dictates of prudence and the sense of duty. . . . The City of New York contains a population already sufficient to place it in the ranks of cities of the second order and is rapidly advancing towards a level with the first. It is perhaps no unreasonable conjecture that in half a centuryóit will be closely built up to the northern boundary of the parade and contain four hundred thousand souls. . . .

To some it may be a matter of surprise that the whole island has not been laid out as a city. To others it may be a subject of merriment that the Commissioners have provided space for a greater population than is collected at any spot on this side of China. They have in this respect been governed by the shape of the ground. It is not improbable that considerable numbers may be collected at Harlem before the high hills to the south-ward of it shall be built upon as a city; and it is improbable that (for centuries to come) the grounds north of Harlem Flat will be covered with houses. To have come short of the extent laid out might, therefore, have defeated just expectations; and to have gone further might have furnished material to the pernicious spirit of speculation. . . .

(Signed) Gouv. MORRIS
SIMEON DEWITT
JOHN RUTHERFURD.

The blocks are for the most part laid out in a very regular pattern, with the majority of the blocks on the west side of Manhattan measuring 200' x 800' (allowing for a very regular number of building lots per block, and resulting in the very easy to catalog system of Block & Lot used by the NYC Department of Buildings to identify property sites):



The numbered streets running east-west are 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets, resulting in a grid of approximately 2,000 long, narrow blocks. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide: 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 72nd, 79th, 86th, 96th, 106th, 116th, 125th, 135th, 145th and 155th Streets.[2]

The width of the crosstown blocks was irregular. The distance between First and Second Avenues was 650 feet, but 610 feet was the gap between Second and Third Avenues, while the blocks between Third and Sixth Avenues were 920 feet, and 800 feet from Sixth to 12th. Lexington and Madison Avenues were added after the original plan.[1]

From the recent NYPL Exhibition: Designing the City of New York: The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 (http://www.nypl.org/blog/2010/07/30/designing-city-new-york-commissioners-plan-1811)

From Cornell: REMARKS OF THE COMMISSIONERS FOR LAYING OUT STREETS AND ROADS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, UNDER THE ACT OF APRIL 3, 1807 (http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/nyc1811.htm)

[ZippyTheChimp]

What I mean precisely, is that Manhattan's grid is very far from being "perfect".Once again, who said it is? We've eliminated Ablarc.


There are tons of other possible layouts for the streets. Just because this one went to be concretely realized and that it gives today "not too bad" a result doesn't mean its the only one workable, and that you can't "imagine better".Give us a few that would work better, and tell us why?


Once again, finding a place to plot a park (like Central Park) has nothing to do with the grid.Look at a map.


The grid maybe allows crosstown traffic, but it has prevented the crosstown traffic for the metro network, because it would have created to short branches.I don't understand what you are saying here.

If you're talking about a radial transit network, you're overlooking the fact that Manhattan is only 2 miles wide, and 13 miles long.


Why do you say that with a different street pattern, they would have had to tunnel under the structures ? Most of Paris metro lines for instance were built using that same cut and cover method, and for all that, Paris is not precisely known for its grid...Now look at a map of Paris. How is it different than Manhattan? Circular? The Paris metro follows its radial street plan. Running subway tunnels along winding (or radial) streets on a narrow place like Manhattan is very inefficient; therefore the tunnel routes would be straightened out somewhat to a north-south axis.


"Native just accept [their presence] without a thought" : this seems to work for a lot of things...Straw-man.

Or are you suggesting that we should think about the grid, and change it? I already made one joke about that.

[stache]

This would be SO MUCH BETTER - :rolleyes: 12170

[lofter1]

"Cross town" would be about the only thing a cabbie would understand.

[GordonGecko]

This would be SO MUCH BETTER - :rolleyes:

Yeah what a mess that would have been

http://newyork.untappedcities.com/files/2011/02/perrault_week-2.jpg

http://wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6635

[GordonGecko]

The Grid turns 200 years old tomorrow. The Times has an interactive comparison tool of the grid's evolution:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/21/nyregion/map-of-how-manhattan-grid-grew.html

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/03/21/nyregion/jpgrid1/jpgrid1-popup.jpg

[futurecity]

I hate the grids and I find it sad that so many US cities look the same. Sorry, but grid systems may be efficient, but they are incredibly boring. I much prefer the romantic winding streets of old unplanned cities or the circle/square/boulevard plans that you often see in modern planned cities. Thank God for broadway. Imagine NY without it, ugh.

If you look at Manhattan at night, it looks like a giant circuit board with buildings for fuses, capacitators, resistors, etc.. It is a plan for machines, not humans.

[futurecity]

I'm always amazed how design people are so reluctant to admit that the grid isn't the only way to plan in the US. It's like they are stuck to that concept.

There has got to be a nicer way to plan cities.

[GordonGecko]

Well they have the diagonals in DC, and traffic is difficult & the city isn't all that romantic. In Boston you have a mess of labyrinths and god forbid you're in the wrong neighborhood at rush hour and you'll be going around in circles at 5 mph for the next 3 hours

[Merry]

On Grid’s Birthday, Beautiful Manhattan Maps

By Zachary M. Seward

Tuesday marks the 200th anniversary of Manhattan’s street grid, which was adopted in 1811 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27%20Plan%20of%201811) “to unite regularity and order with the public convenience and benefit and in particular to promote the health of the City.”

Two of the best representations of contemporary Manhattan are Howard Horowitz’s “wordmap” (http://www.wordmaps.net/#manhattan), a spectacular poem that ran (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/30/opinion/manhattan.html) in the New York Times in 1997 (left), and Jenny Beorkrem’s graphical representation of the island’s neighborhoods (http://www.orkposters.com/manhattan.html) (right). Both are available as posters.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5012/5548779130_5ac6095a75_b.jpg


Here and There

Well before “Inception” made perpendicular streetscapes cool, the design firm BERG imagined what Manhattan would look like without a horizon (http://berglondon.com/projects/hat/), “putting the viewer simultaneously above the city and in it where she stands, both looking down and looking forward.”


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5134/5548606006_314e7323be_b.jpg


Manhattan Topography

Ever the minimalist, designer Nicholas Felton created this representation of Manhattan’s hills and valleys (http://feltron.tumblr.com/post/712477954/manhattan-topography-made-with-geocontext) at various intervals on the island. You can explore the data on Geocontext (http://www.geocontext.org/publ/2010/04/profiler/v1/?html=link&mode=direct&map_type=hybrid&w=560&h=200&color=008000&y=Elevation%20m&dist_txt=Distance:%20&lang=en&slogan=Create%20a%20topographic%20profile&path=40.742384122842154,-73.97198394736328;40.756559102059306,-74.0059729).


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5291/5548845654_067c89ede9_b.jpg


Overlapping Neighborhoods

There are many (http://bigthink.com/ideas/21059), many (http://www.jamessobol.com/212289/Manhattan-Type-Map) maps of Manhattan’s neighborhoods, but most insist that a location can only be in one neighborhood at once. The map below made the rounds on Tumblr (http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_lcpdsdfnt71qa0uujo1_1280.png?AWSAccessKeyId =AKIAJ6IHWSU3BX3X7X3Q&Expires=1300836246&Signature=laDunTQ%2F5YQAd2Hdn%2F6w92w3EWk%3D) a few months ago, though its creator wasn’t credited. It’s not pretty, but the map earns points for allowing neighborhoods to overlap. (Bonus points for drawing it over the Commissioner’s Plan of 1811 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners%27%20Plan%20of%201811).)


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5021/5548810682_25f72a6a83_b.jpg


Mannahatta

The Wildlife Conservation Society spent a decade attempting to discern what Manhattan looked like in 1609, when Henry Hudson and his crew (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry%20Hudson) likely became the first Europeans to lay eyes on the island. You can explore Manhattan’s original ecology (http://welikia.org/explore/mannahatta-map/) on the project’s website or view a slideshow (http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/01/slideshow_071001_maps) at the New Yorker. Below, the island’s modern-day expansion is shown in dark blue.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5260/5547865779_a4052bc285_b.jpg


A Literary Map of Manhattan

In 2005, the New York Times Book Review compiled a map of 99 Manhattan locations (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/khtml/2005/06/05/books/20050605_BOOKMAP_GRAPHIC.html) that figure prominently in works of fiction. It’s a wonderful, if incomplete (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/books/review/05RAND01.html), guide to the literary landscape.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5012/5547982111_69ba2e1147_z.jpg


The Center for Missed Connections

For a show at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, artist Ingrid Burrington mapped the “missed connections” posted to Craigslist (http://www.lifewinning.com/index.php?/cmc/missed-connections-map-2/) by lovelorn New Yorkers in May 2010.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5029/5548647906_ebf1c47a95_b.jpg


Castello Plan

Before Manhattan came to be seen as a vertical island, it was mapped horizontally, and this one dates to 1660, when the Dutch settled lower Manhattan. It’s known as the Castello Plan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castello%20Plan) for the man who later discovered the map.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5100/5548861656_cb85296733_z.jpg


Viele Map

Egbert Ludovicus Viele (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egbert%20Ludovicus%20Viele), the engineer-in-chief of Central Park, published his “Sanitary and Topographical Atlas of the City and Island of New York (http://www.discoveryeditions.com/cgi-bin/iowa/english/product/C-NYCM-00001-01-100/VieleMapofNewYork/history.html)” in 1865. It’s now known as the Viele Map and, according to the Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyregion/thecity/11viel.html), “remains the bible for many of the city’s structural engineers.”


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5026/5547552722_a5671c5c5f_z.jpg


Mapping the World’s Photos

What’s this? It’s the faint traces of Manhattan, but the only data represented here are the locations of photos uploaded to Flickr (http://www.cs.cornell.edu/%7Ecrandall/photomap/). The map, created by computer scientist David Crandall and others, is formed by the lenses of photographers, who appear particularly interested in Central Park, Times Square and the Brooklyn Bridge.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5305/5548887170_bcb99b508a_b.jpg


Manhattan Timeformations

Architect Brian McGrath created a fantastic Flash graphic (http://skyscraper.org/timeformations/intro.html) that lets you manipulate the landscape of Manhattan over space and time. Definitely try out the “perspectival fly-through.” Below, Manhattan’s original farms (orange) are displayed over the island’s topography (green).


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5024/5548111929_3ac4b31cc7_z.jpg


Manhattan Elsewhere

Inspired by a similar project (http://www.radicalcartography.net/?manhattan) by Bill Rankin, blogger Jason Kottke imagined what Manhattan would look like alongside other major U.S. cities (http://www.kottke.org/plus/manhattan-elsewhere/). “The view of Central Park from the Coit Tower would be lovely,” he wrote of this Google Maps mashup with San Francisco.


http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5309/5548625064_9d531dfd9b_z.jpg


Meanwhile, the Times has an excellent exploration of the 1811 map (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/21/nyregion/map-of-how-manhattan-grid-grew.html) that turns 200 today.

http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2011/03/22/on-grids-birthday-beautiful-manhattan-maps/?mod=WSJBlog

[Merry]

Off the Grid: Minetta Street and Minetta Lane

By Andrew

Today is the 200th anniversary of the official adoption of the Manhattan street grid (http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/02/25/welcome-to-off-the-grid/), an event of enormous importance to New York as a whole, and in a slightly different way, to neighborhoods like the Village, East Village, and NoHo, which have remained in large part defiantly “off the grid.”

Perhaps one of the most charmingly off-the-grid locations in our neighborhood are Minetta Street and Minetta Lane, which actually intersect between MacDougal Streets and Sixth Avenue, Bleecker and West 3rd Street. It would take a great series of blog posts to do these two tiny but incredible thoroughfares justice (and one may be forthcoming…), covering everything from their history as the center of “Little Africa” to the story of Minetta Creek which runs underneath, to their redevelopment in the 1910s by visionary realtor Vincent Pepe.

http://gvshp.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/11-13-Minetta-Street-ground-floor.jpg-1024x805.jpg (http://gvshp.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/11-13-Minetta-Street-ground-floor.jpg.jpg)11-13 Minetta Street

But for now, I will focus on the one simple element of the faded sign which still appears at 11-13 Minetta Street, just north of the bend in the street, which says “the Fat Black Pussycat Theater.” The Fat Black Pussycat was one of many notable cafes and music venues which dotted this area and which played vital roles in the story of the beat and folk music revolutions of the 1950s and 60s.

By many accounts, it was here at the Fat Black Pussycat that a young Bob Dylan wrote ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ in April, 1962, which appeared a year later on “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan.”

You can see more about Minetta Street and Minetta Lane on GVSHP’s Virtual Tour (http://www.gvshp.org/south_villageenter.htm) of the South Village HERE (http://www.gvshp.org/south_village938.htm). Remarkably (and frustratingly), none of the South Village (http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/south_village/south_village-main.htm) east of Sixth Avenue, including Minetta Street and Minetta Lane, are landmarked (http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/south_village/doc/sv-histdistricts.pdf), though GVSHP has proposed them for historic district designation. The city had promised to act upon this area (they landmarked the South Village west of Sixth Avenue in 2010 (http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/south_village/south_village-06-22-10.htm)), but has not yet (http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/preservation/south_village/south_village-09-16-10.htm).

http://gvshp.org/blog/2011/03/22/off-the-grid-minetta-street-and-lane/

[Ninjahedge]

Thanks Merry.


After driving through many of the towns mentioned here (and walking through them) I am glad Manhattan went to grid. The only thing that COULD have possibly made it a bit more interesting was if a few of the N-S avenues were not on strait lines, but had a BIT of meander to them to break up the rectilinear run of all the streets in town.

Asking for organic is a nightmare, with Boston being an EXCELLENT example. For a town that takes 30 minutes to WALK across, it is easy to see how people can get stuck there where a 6-road intersection is as common as a traffic circle in the surrounding "'burbs".

Other neighborhoods, such as Tokyo and Kyoto in Japan can also be a real trip to get around by foot or by car. Their own layout being developed from various permutations of their own through time, although not a completely "organic" evolution.

It is interesting to see the development of the neighborhoods. Are there any animations of where these neighborhoods started and how they grew, shifted and disappeared? It would be interesting to see things like the German neighborhoods leaving and Chinatown growing and displacing what was Little Italy.....

[lofter1]

Downtown San Francisco has a good grid system, with the major diagonal of Market Street splitting the grid into two gridded configurations. When you move farther out from downtown the streets get a little crazier (http://mappery.com/maps/San-Francisco-Public-Transportation-map.gif), what will the hills and all.

http://www.staysf.com/upload/desc_img/20080612174318_Downtown%20San%20Francisco%20Map.pn g

[Merry]

Manhattan's Grid System Celebrated in 200th Anniversary Exhibit

By Della Hasselle

http://assets.dnainfo.com/generated/photo/2011/12/1322764890.jpg/image640x480.jpg
The Mangin-Goerck plan, 1803, shows the city's early grid.

MANHATTAN — It's the building block of the city.A new exhibit at East Harlem's Museum of the City of New York (http://collections.mcny.org/MCNY/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MNY_HomePage#/CMS3&VF=MNY_HomePage) celebrates the 200th anniversary of Manhattan's grid system — a plan that defines New York's unique and concentrated structure.

"The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811 — 2011" (http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/future/The-Greatest-Grid.html) chronicles the history of Manhattan's streets and avenues, from the birth of the 1811 Commissioner's Plan to the grid's construction and development over the next two centuries.

Rare historical maps, original plans and photographs dating back as far as 1763 illustrate how the grid's production transformed Manhattan from rolling green hills and farmland to a bustling metropolis during the 19th century.

The 1811 plan specified numbered streets and avenues outlining equal rectangular blocks from what is now Houston Street to 155th Street, from First to 12th avenues.

The grid's forward-thinking nature is one of the most fascinating things about it, according to Susan Henshaw Jones, the Ronay Menschel Director of the Museum.

"City commissioners anticipated New York’s propulsive growth and projected that the city — still relatively small at the time and concentrated in what is now lower Manhattan and Greenwich Village — would extend to the heights of Harlem," she said.

"The 1811 plan has demonstrated remarkable longevity as well as the flexibility to adapt to two centuries of unforeseeable change, including modifications such as Broadway and Central Park. The real miracle of the plan was that it was enforced.”

The exhibit contrasts the marked difference in the city's growth and transportation before and after the plan.

Highlights include maps created for the official 1811 plan by John Randel Jr., the surveyor, cartographer and civil engineer who surveyed the island before the grid was designed. His ten Randel Farm Maps are now considered among the most important records of a forgotten New York, according to a museum spokeswoman.

The exhibit shows over 200 other artifacts, including rare, detailed maps from 1776, photographs of the excavation required to implement the system during the next century and original documents that show street-by-street explanations of how the grid should be laid out.

Some of the most striking photographs on view are of the shanty towns that existed in the late 1800s, years after laborers had begun to pave the rugged and hilly landscape in 1860.

Decades after the grid was outlined with iron rods, wooden shacks nestled amongst rugged dirt hills and piles of firewood, a demonstration of the stark transformation the city underwent in the next century.

The exhibit also notes reactions to the grid over time by various political figures, writers, historians and artists, including Thomas Jefferson and Jane Jacobs.

In one example, a journalist from the 1950's marvels over the precision of the measurements and design; in another, 19th century journalist and social critic Frederick Law Olmstead gripes about the design's lack of monuments or ornamental features.

The museum, however, highlights the poetic marvel of architect Rem Koolhaas. (http://architecture.about.com/od/ideasapproaches/a/koolhaas.htm)

The grid is “the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization: the land it divides, unoccupied; the population it describes, conjectural; the buildings it locates, phantoms; the activities it frames, nonexistent," Koolhaas is quoted as saying.

http://www.dnainfo.com/20111202/harlem/manhattans-grid-system-celebrated-200th-anniversary-exhibit#ixzz1fS9sIOlp

[lofter1]

The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011

MUSEUM of the CITY of NEW YORK (http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html)
Dec 6 through Apr 15


Manhattan’s Master Plan: Why NYC Looks the Way it Does

THIRTEEN.org (http://www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/culture/is-the-grid-locked-reimagining-manhattans-master-plan/#)
MetroFocusNYC
December 9, 2011

New Yorkers take it for granted that we can say things like “meet me at 85th Street and Third Avenue” and know that regardless of whether someone has been to that intersection, they will easily be able to get there. It’s all thanks to Manhattan’s legendary street grid, which celebrates its 200th anniversary this year.

A little history of the grid …

In 1807, frustrated by years of uncontrolled development and a decade of public health epidemics attributed to lower Manhattan’s cramped and irregular streets, New York City’s Common Council (the predecessor to today’s City Council) petitioned the State Legislature to develop a street plan for Manhattan above Houston Street, at that time a rural area of streams and hills populated by a patchwork of country estates, farms and small houses. The adoption four years later of the Commissioners’ Plan (http://www.library.cornell.edu/Reps/DOCS/nyc1811.htm) established the grid of 12 north-south avenues and 155 east-west streets that, though it would take most of the 19th century to build, continues to fundamentally shape life in New York.

But is something so infrastructural, something that’s taken for granted every day, really worth celebrating?

The grid is definitely worth celebrating — without it, New York might not be the great city it has become. That’s why the Museum of the City of New York (http://www.mcny.org/) and the Architectural League of New York (http://archleague.org/) have organized a pair of exhibitions about its past and future. The first of these exhibitions, “The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011 (http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html),” curated by architectural historian Hilary Ballon, traces the creation, implementation and evolution of the plan from 1811 through the 20th century. A tour de force of historical research that constitutes the first sustained examination of this subject, “The Greatest Grid” tells the story of a young New York that is full of optimism about its future and unafraid to take on bold challenges.

WATCH VIDEO:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0NV-qlTawk

[Merry]

Manhattan Grid Plan: Planning The Future Design Of New York City (SLIDESHOW)

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/438969/thumbs/r-MANHATTAN-GRID-PLAN-large570.jpg

Earlier this year we marked the 200th anniversary of the Manhattan grid plan, that easy-to-navigate layout of streets and avenues that gives us Manhattanhenge, drives Speed Levitch crazy, and might just be based off some ancient urban planning.

In June 2011, the Architectural League, in partnership with the Museum of the City of New York and Architizer, issued a Call for Ideas inviting architects and urban designers from around the world (this, by the way, is the grid plan around the world (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/manhattan-grid-system-ext_n_1095724.html)) to "speculate about how Manhattan's grid might be adapted, extended, or transformed in the future."

120 teams from 22 countries submitted proposals and out of those, a jury of architects and curators selected 8 to go on display at the MCNY.

The proposals are more imaginative than they are literal recommendations-- extending the grid into the water, rerouting traffic to go underneath intersections, North-South pedestrian avenues cutting through the lobbies of buildings, and a second grid built 700 feet up in the air--and will be displayed at MCNY in conjunction with "The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan for Manhattan, 1811-2011 (http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html)."

Slide Show (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/mahattan-grid-plan-planning-the-future-design-of-nyc_n_1149428.html?ref=new-york#s543534)

http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543534_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543545_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543567_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543572_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543586_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543600_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543606_small.jpg http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/201161/slide_201161_543612_small.jpg

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/14/mahattan-grid-plan-planning-the-future-design-of-nyc_n_1149428.html?ref=new-york#s543534

[mariab]

2 1/2 min video on Manhattan grid history.


http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/video?id=8480051