WOW.
Some amazing maps.
Thanks
Nice.
Thanks.
Pretty neat site. I have a (cheap) program I bought a number of years ago that has new and older maps (primarily the 1940s if I remember correctly) which can be overlaid on the newer maps. Only for a few major cities though.
The Maryland state archives also has some very old maps and plats posted.
Thanks! They don't make maps like they used to!
1807 Manhattan Island
Near the top of page 2 of 27 is an 1807 map of Manhattan Island that might interest those familiar with it today.
1807 Manhattan Island
That map (details in the article linked below) is currently on display at the Museum of the City of New York, until April 15, 2012.
It's nearly 9 feet by 3 feet, in three sections.
And the surveyor's field notes (John Randel, Jr., who took ten years to survey the island and then stake out marble monuments or iron bolts at each intersection), are held at the New York Historical Society, just across Central Park.
The Park, by the way, was not part of the original mapping, but it fit nicely into the grid once it was conceptualized, bordered by Eighth Avenue, 110th Street, Fifth Avenue and 59th Street.
Below is a simple, but interesting video.
FWIW, there is still ONE STREET that actually runs due east west in Manhattan....Stuyvesant Street, which was laid out from a plan for the division of the original Stuyvesant Farm prior to the Commissioner's Plan. There were already several brick houses on the street (one from 1803 still stands) and the Stuyvesant name still had political pull, so that particular block remains today, running between the Bowery (another original street) and Second Avenue, in the area of East 9th Street.
