Figure: Manhattan’s Expanding Footprint.
This map shows Manhattan’s expanding footprint over the 19th century. The increase in population and the development of mass transit around 1830 allowed for a dramatic northward movement of the population. Before that, New York was a walking city and expansion occurred rather slowly. Source: Robert Ernst’s book, Immigrant life in New York City, 1825-1863 (1949) and the Taylor map of 1879.
[…] as a result, they tended to cluster along the outer fringes of the city, which was then the area just north of City Hall. Without mass transit, the city had the opposite layout as to what we normally see today. The rich […]