Monday, March 21, 2011

200th anniversary of Manhattan's grid

John Randel, surveyor, drew the map for the City's
Street Commissioners
Sam Roberts reports in the Times about the 200 year old map that laid out Manhattan's street grid.
There is a terrific interactive street map from 1811.
If you look carefully you will see that the Spurten Duyvil Creek (over which the Henry Hudson Bridge now passes) leads into the tidal basin (now Inwood Hill Park and Columbia boathouse) and then heads back north over a kind of thumb. That "thumb" is now Van Cortland Park.  It was cut off by the ship canal which joined the Spuyten Duyvil and Harlem Creeks.  So part of Manhattan Borough is "in" the Bronx.

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