City on a grid: how New York became New York

337 Pages·2015·154.809 MB·English

by  Koeppel, Gerard T

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“ Rarely does one come across a book that makes you E
E C I T Y The never-before-told
ADVANCE rethink the city you thought you knew … . Koeppel’s R
PRAISE masterful storytelling does that and more.” P A story of the grid that
FOR P
— Kate Ascher, author of The Works: R
C I T Y ate Manhattan
E
Anatomy of a City
D O N A
ON A L
G R I D
G R I D You either love it or hate it, but nothing
“ If Manhattan has a subconscious, it’s the angular
says New York like the street grid of Manhattan.
numbered street plan that, for two centuries, has C
Created in 1811 by a three-man commission featur-
informed the island’s destiny. Koeppel does a
ing headstrong Founding Father Gouverneur Morris,
Gerard Koeppel is the author of Bond of masterful job of telling the little-known story behind I
the plan called for a dozen parallel avenues crossing
Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American this humble yet hallowed grid. Along the way, he T HH OO WW
at right angles with many dozens of parallel streets
Empire and Water for Gotham: A History. He has introduces a vivid cast of characters and spins some
in an unbroken grid. Hills and valleys, streams and
contributed to numerous other books, including the lively anecdotes. A thoroughly enjoyable read, and New York
Y
ponds, forests and swamps were invisible to the grid;
Encyclopedia of New York City, of which he was one that will cause you to view Manhattan with fresh
so too were country villages, roads, farms, and estates
an associate editor. Before writing mostly about the eyes.”

and generations of property lines. All would disap-
past, he wrote, edited, and produced the present at O
— Justin Martin, author of books about A BB EE CC AA MM EE
pear as the crosshatch fabric of the grid overspread
CBS News. He was born on the grid and has lived N
a pair of New York eminences, Walt Whitman
the island: a heavy greatcoat on the land, the dense
all over it since.
and Frederick Law Olmsted New York
G undergarment of the future city.
No other grid in Western civilization was so
“ I’ve spent most of my life walking the straight lines R large and uniform as the one ordained in 1811. Not
of the world’s greatest city and have never thought to without reason. When the grid plan was announced,
GE R A R D K O E P P E L
Da Capo Press ask: Is this a different shape from other cities, and if New York was just under two hundred years old, an
I
so, why, and who did it? Koeppel’s book answers these overgrown town at the southern tip of Manhattan, a
A Member of the Perseus Books Group AUTHOR OF Water for Gotham
questions in an easygoing, good-humored manner, D notorious jumble of streets laid at the whim of land-
dacapopress.com
with interesting facts unearthed on nearly every page. owners. To bring order beyond the chaos—and good
This is one of those books you always wished would real estate to market—the street planning commis-
Cover illustration: The new intersection of Second Avenue
(looking north into the endless distance) and 42nd Street, be written, and here it is. Indispensable for anyone sion came up with a monolithic grid for the rest of the
sketched for the 1861 Valentine’s Manual. On the right, the past: interested in the history of New York and cities island. Mannahatta—the native “island of hills”—
a decaying country house lingers on the remains of its hill, both
generally, and bound to fuel cocktail conversations became a place of rectangles, in thousands of blocks
soon to disappear; on the left, the future: a new lot-line building,
up, down, and across the city for years to come.” on the flattened landscape, and many more thousands
among the many thousands to come. In the middle, New Yorkers
of right-angled buildings rising in vertical mimicry.
afoot in their gridding city. (From the J. Clarence Davies Street —David Duchovny, actor, author,
Views Scrapbook, Collection of the Museum of the City of New York) The Manhattan grid has been called “a disas-
native New Yorker
ter” of urban planning and “the most courageous act
Jacket design by Alex Camlin
of prediction in Western civilization.” However one
Map illustration © Jacqueline VanDusen
feels about it, the most famous urban design of a liv-
Author photograph by Diane Connal Koeppel ing city defines its daily life. This is its story.
CITY ON A GRID
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Endpapers: The 1811 Commissioners’ Plan, the founding document of modern New
York. Nearly nine feet long and defying easy print reproduction, the map appears here
on the front and back endpapers, enclosing this book in a firm embrace, as the rigid lin-
ear grid plan itself did to Manhattan. (New York City Municipal Archives)
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CITY ON A GRID
New York New York
HOW BECAME
Gerard Koeppel
DA CAPO PRESS
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
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Copyright © 2015 by Gerard Koeppel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechani-
cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of
the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da
Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, Third Floor, Boston, MA 02210.
Designed by Jack Lenzo
Set in 11-point Goudy by The Perseus Books Group
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Koeppel, Gerard T., 1957–
City on a grid : how New York became New York / Gerard Koeppel.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-306-82284-1 (hardcover : alkaline paper) — ISBN 978-0-306-82285-8
(e-book) 1. City planning—New York (State)—New York—History. 2. Streets—
New York (State)—New York—History. 3. Grids (Crisscross patterns)—New York
(State)—New York—History. 4. City and town life—New York (State)—New
York—History. 5. Social change—New York (State)—New York—History. 6.
Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)—History. 7. New York (N.Y.)—History. I. Title.
HT168.N5K64 2015
307.1’216097471—dc23
2015020980
Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
www.dacapopress.com
Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the
U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information,
please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300
Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call [phone], ext.
5000, or e-mail [email protected].
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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For Diane, Jackson, Harry, Kate, and Scrappy
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9780306822841-text.indd 6 8/20/15 11:10 AM
C
ontents
Prefatory Note ........................................................................ix
Introduction ...........................................................................xi

Chapter 1: Come Hither Old Grid ........................................1
Chapter 2: Five Acres and a Rule:
The Great Grid’s Common Origins ..............................17
Chapter 3: The City to Be or Not to Be? .............................29
Chapter 4: The City Not to Be ............................................49
Chapter 5: Now What? ........................................................65
Chapter 6: Three Man Island ..............................................73
Chapter 7: Into the Woods ..................................................89
Chapter 8: A Grid Is Born ..................................................117
Chapter 9: Getting Square with Right-Angled Living .......129
Chapter 10: The Grid That Ate Manhattan .....................145
Chapter 11: The City Gridded ...........................................169
Chapter 12: The City Unbeautiful .....................................195
Chapter 13: Back to the Rectilinear Future .......................229

Notes ..................................................................................241
Bibliography ........................................................................263
Acknowledgments ................................................................277
Index ...................................................................................281
vii
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P n
refatory ote
This book goT its start after the attacks that brought down the
World Trade Center towers in 2001. The original trade center
was built in the 1960s over a wide area of its neighborhood, in par-
ticular the intersection of Greenwich and Dey Streets, where, at the
northwest corner one January midday in 1810, a mother helped her
child pump water from a public street well. The scene was painted
in watercolor by a French émigrée, Anne-Marguerite Hyde de Neu-
ville, a prolific artist of early America who then lived across the
street. This casual—and my favorite—glimpse of Old New York
showed modest wood and redbrick homes, dirt streets, bare trees,
and a scattering of other New Yorkers—a lumberman, a house-
keeper sweeping her sidewalk, two men talking, a few ladies walking,
and other neighbors going about their business on what appeared
to be a mild winter day. (Have a look online; the image, Corner of
Greenwich Street, is easy to find.) Over a century and a half later, the
intersection of Greenwich and Dey disappeared beneath the plaza of
the first World Trade Center.
Then, in the rebuilding after 2001, a smaller trade center
emerged and, with it, the long-lost segments of Greenwich and Dey
streets, ironically just for foot traffic, much as they were used centu-
ries earlier. This got me thinking that the street arrangement of now
densely urban Manhattan is more plastic than I imagined. Streets
and corners can come and go, and come back again.
ix
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