A few weeks ago, I was walking in Central Park on the Upper West Side. As I strolled past some benches near the Diana Ross Playground, I saw a young man, likely in his late twenties, with his face buried in a huge, white-covered book. When I got closer, I noticed he was reading a brand-new copy of Robert Caro’s 1974, 1,300-page biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York.
It struck me that I was witnessing a quintessentially New York act—to buy the Power Broker and read it in the park. In such an act, we glory in our ability to enjoy ourselves in the vast urban wonderland that is Central Park while reading a book about a man who built more parks in New York than anyone and yet who today is vilified as a power-hungry titan who initiated the fall of Gotham.
The Caro Narrative
It also occurred to me that Robert Caro’s legacy is not just that he provided a chronicle of 20th-century New York’s most important public figure but has also affected the course of public policy.
Caro’s story is about the abuse of power—how Moses transmogrified into a Kurtz-like figure in The Heart of Darkness. Moses began his career as an ambitious idealist Progressive. His genius and endless drive to create parks and parkways pushed him forward and showed New Yorkers how government can improve people’s lives. Yet, with each success, he became increasingly power-hungry and gamed the system to feed his bottomless appetite.
Because of the arrogance that was so basic to his nature…Moses’ susceptibility to the addiction of power was unusually strong….Once Robert Moses had sought power only for the sake of his dreams, only as a means to an end; even then, however, there were signs that he was beginning to seek it for its own sake, as an end in itself. And the avidity with which he sought power—and the lengths to which he went to get it—revealed the depth of his need for it.
After World War II, as Caro’s portrait goes, Moses became deeply entrenched in his “Fortress of Solitude” on Randall’s Island as head of the Triborough Bridge Authority. With a wave of his hand, he clear-cut the “slums” that resulted in massive residential displacements; he ramrodded expressways through vibrant working-class neighborhoods; and his highway construction program drove New Yorkers to become automobile junkies while generating rampant white flight and the collapse of the subways.
Caro provides a gripping tale. We all love a Greek tragedy—the king who becomes so blinded by his power and is convinced of his own perfection that he is unable to see the damage he causes.
Robert Moses in 1939 viewing a model for a Battery Bridge (a tunnel was built instead). Source: Wikipedia.
The Caro Effect
Yet, whereas Moses, the man, was in power until the early 1960s, Caro’s portrait of Moses has been “in power” since 1974. He hovers as a living ghost that haunts New York and holds vast influence, perhaps more so than the flesh-and-blood version ever did.
This is not to say that Moses’s career was not problematic. His policies were not race- or class-neutral and often harmed people of color and the poor to benefit the white middle class. As a master bill writer, he crafted legislation that left him untouched by the democratic process to implement his programs as he saw fit. He swatted away community pushback with the epithet, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”
Bogeyman Moses
However, the overly simplistic residual of Caro’s book—the belief that people cling to—is that because Moses was a power-hungry bully after World War II and presumably harmed New York, we shouldn’t build important megaprojects that the city needs today (megaprojects that other cities worldwide are building easily).
Because Moses brooked no community input, the logic seemingly follows, we must allow full-on community input, and, by extension, local veto power that stops the city from addressing its problems head-on. The defining legacy of Caro’s book is that we have become paralyzed by the fear of Moses’s ghost which Caro conjured to life.
The Harm
New York faces 21st-century crises that need to be addressed directly and strongly. Most notably, the city must become resilient against climate change, dramatically expand its housing stock, and upgrade and produce other services, including mass transit, to improve quality of life and prevent the high cost of living from pushing people out.
Today, Gotham is tiptoeing its way to climate change resilience. It builds out the shoreline here, adds some bluebelts there, and buys out some households over there. But the truth is that a patchwork of programs only offers partial protection against increasingly damaging storms, flooding, and sea level rise.
New York is on the path toward building $52 billion worth of seawalls that will be used sporadically to stop storm surges. Politically, erecting seawalls away from any residential neighborhood is the easy path, but practically, its cost-benefit ratio is questionable. Billions more will be spent against sea level rise and coastal disappearance.
The Housing Affordability Crisis
Just as important is housing affordability. Over half the city’s renters are rent-burdened, paying more than 30% of their income for housing, and one in three low-income households is severely rent-burdened, paying more than 50% of their income for an apartment. There is hardly any rental housing to be found with the current vacancy rate at a mere 1.4%, the lowest in half a century.
To his credit, Mayor Adams’s City of Yes Housing Opportunity will attempt to add more housing in each neighborhood, but it’s unlikely to have a meaningful impact on affordability. He has to tread gingerly to avoid total rejection of his plan.
Additionally, climate change resilience and housing affordability are not independent. Housing will become scarcer and more expensive as more land is removed from use because of rising sea levels or to mitigate flooding.
The Interchanges to and from the Cross Bronx Expressway ca. 1973. Source: Wikipedia.
Moses: A 20th-Century Centurion
In the decades following the Power Broker’s publication, there have been more nuanced reevaluations of Moses’s career and impacts. The most forceful and comprehensive is the 2007 book, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, edited by Hillary Ballon and Kenneth Jackson (which contains a comprehensive list of Moses’s New York City projects). But the revisionists have been drowned out by the howling of the Caro’s spirit.
Lost in the collective memory is that Moses was a product of his time. He rose out of the Progressive Movement, frustrated with machine politics’ failure to eradicate urban ills like overcrowding and lack of fresh air and sunlight. His genius was in figuring out (for good and for bad) how to overcome nimbyism and status quo politics. He had the support of leaders and the people because he delivered the results that they wanted.
Moses existed within the political spectrum of reformers. On the far left were the socialists who sought to abolish private property. Just to their right were those who wanted to master plan the metropolis, deconcentrate it, and create a network of garden cities. Moses pushed back against those that he saw as being too extreme. He decided that a project-by-project strategy was to be preferred to grand schemes. The populace agreed with him, being suspicious of grand plans that would disrupt the culture of laissez-faire New York.[1]
Slum Clearance
Moses did not invent slum clearance.[2] It had been the dream of reformers since after the Civil War with the rise of hyperdense slums in Five Points. In the 1890s, Jacob Riis’s expose, How the Other Half Lives, provided more fuel to the slum clearance movement.
One of the earliest examples of slum clearance was that of Mulberry Bend, a dense cluster of tenements in the Lower East Side that was notorious for its poverty, crime, and vice. It was cleared in 1904 and the land was converted into a park (today Columbus Park).
When Moses was in his heyday, slum clearance advocates were in positions of power through the New Deal programs. After World War II, Title I and public housing funds were made available on a level never seen before in human history.[3] Moses was able to grab the lion’s share for New York. He was largely supported in his endeavor because he was carrying out the work that previous reformers had been unable to accomplish. Moses was their Trojan Horse.
The Automobile
Moses did not invent America’s love of the automobile, and we can’t blame New Yorker’s car addiction on him (and which is certainly no worse as compared to the rest of the country). It’s good that he didn’t get his way in various projects, such as building elevated highways across Greenwich Village and SoHo, and it’s bad that he did not consider neighborhood impacts when helping to build America’s highway system within Gotham’s borders.
But America’s automobile dependence is based on a much larger institutional and cultural framework—subsidies for cheap oil, various Federal Highway Acts (the National Highway Act of 1956 had the Federal Government covering 90% of localities’ highway construction expenses), and the fact that people highly value the personal freedom that comes with cars.
Moses’s radial highway system for New York City was not his invention. As historian Leonard Wallock states:
Far from being novel, [Moses’s] ideas for a circumferential system of roadways were nearly identical to the ones proposed by the Regional Plan Association in 1929, which in turn were based on Edward H. Bennett’s Brooklyn City Plan (1914) and Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago (1909).
Parts of New York that Will Be Underwater if Sea Levels Rises by Six Feet (a likely projection by 2100). The green areas are those likely to be prone to flooding. Map Source: NOAA.
Moses and “The Fall”
The most influential element of Caro’s book has been its subtitle, “Robert Moses and the Fall of New York,” as if Moses destroyed New York. Yes, Moses did some bad things, and blaming him for Gotham’s post-industrial woes makes for good copy, but it’s just plain wrong.
In fact, after the massive wave of deindustrialization that hit manufacturing cities in the 1960s, New York fared better than most. It lost population from 1970 to 1980 but rebounded after that, and today, the city holds its highest population ever. Detroit and St. Louis, on the other hand, are still losing people. Chicago, Boston, and Newark, for example, have rebounded, but their populations remain far lower than their peak in the 1950s.[4]
More broadly, while Moses is seen as godlike in his impact on New York, the truth is that there was nothing wholly unique about his building spree. As Wallock writes:
In The Power Broker…Moses is not merely the lawgiver but the creator, for he transcends the role of his Biblical progenitor and usurps the place of God. By making Moses the prime mover responsible for the city’s genesis, [Caro’s] interpretations disregard a crucial fact: from the 1920s through the 1960s, New York’s physical and spatial development was markedly similar to that of other large American cities….The Power Broker fail[s] to explain why other cities, not blessed with a Moses figure, assumed the same physical and spatial configuration as New York.
But Caro was writing in the late 1960s and early 1970s when New York was seemingly coming apart at the seams. To many, including Caro, the “fall” was brought about by Moses’s opening the barn doors. In hindsight, this seems to be a confusion of correlation with causation.
Ironically, in his Introduction, Caro hedges on Moses’s net impact, which is quite rich, given how powerful his book has become. He concludes:
Would New York have been a better place to live if Robert Moses had never built anything? Would it have been a better city if the man who shaped it had never lived? ….
Moses himself, who feels his works will make him immortal, believes he will be justified by history, that his works will endure and be blessed by generations not yet born. Perhaps he is right. It is impossible to say that New York would have been a better city if Robert Moses had never lived.
Time to Move On
It’s time to move on. Let’s put Moses in the past where he belongs. We need to learn the true lessons of Moses and use them as a guide to improve New York’s future, rather than clinging to outdated myths that keep the city nearly paralyzed. The true lessons of Moses are that big projects that will benefit New York can and should be built, but they also need to minimize the negative spillovers and unintended consequences and be done in a way that engenders trust and confidence in the government. Getting community input is vital, but community input should not mean complete veto power.
How to Vanquish Moses’s Ghost
However, once lodged in the public consciousness, myths are hard to kill.[5] We long for simple explanations for complex phenomena, and when the “truthiness” of the simple explanations is strong, we cling to them. Blaming Moses for the planning mistakes of the 20th century is easy because he stood in the center of these changes and was seemingly waving his magic wand like Lord Voldemort.
So, how do we remove the Moses Myth from blocking policies needed to keep New York safe, affordable, and viable in the 21st century? I believe the answer is twofold. One approach must come from the top down and the other from the bottom up.
Trust Building
First is that our leaders need to engender trust. Nimbyism is, in large part, motivated by a failure of confidence that the government will do what’s good for individual residents and that large-scale building projects will do more harm than good. The legacy of Moses and Caro was to remove this trust.
Enabling communities to have strong veto power over large projects forces policymakers to employ half-hearted measures instead. When these measures fail to achieve their purpose, residents blame the government for its inability to solve problems, thereby reinforcing their mistrust.
Leaders need to say, “Yes, people like Moses were heavy-handed and their decisions led to projects that today we feel were poorly implemented, but we must move forward. Some large problems require big solutions, and we can’t tiptoe our way to the future. The cost of inaction is much greater than the cost of action and we have learned from the mistakes of the past and will not repeat them. Here are the ways that we have your back….”
Just as importantly, leaders need to create the institutional mechanisms that will bring residents and communities on board. Community input is vital and should be part of the bargaining process. However, all large-scale policies need to lay out the costs, benefits, and the likely negative spillovers, and directly address how these spillovers will be mitigated to reduce the fear of change. (I have spelled out examples here). One mechanism is that a large project also comes with a compensation fund to which people can apply if directly harmed and which is objectively administered by an impartial board.
Rebranding Moses
While leaders work on the issue of trust and compensation, we, the people, need to rebrand Moses and reframe how he is seen in the public eye.[6] Yes, Moses did many things that, in hindsight, were regretful. But he also did many wonderful things. What’s wrong with a story about a complicated man who was a product of his time?
We need to change the narrative. We need to get the word out that Old Man Moses died in the 20th century and we refuse to be afraid of the Spooky Ghost Moses. Let’s put him in the history books along with other 20th-century figures like Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, and Fiorello La Guardia. It’s time to create a future with new leaders who help build New York by incorporating the lessons from the best version of Moses while leaving behind those from his worst side.
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Notes
[1] When Jane Jacobs emerged on the scene in the early 1960s, her antidote to planning was to eliminate it altogether. Death and Life directly response to the wide-eyed planners who wanted to remake the city from scratch or to build towers in the park. Her “cure” for neighborhoods was to leave them alone (or allow residents to veto any new construction) and permit mixed uses. In terms of city planning, her recipe for utopia was to build more playgrounds and cut long blocks in half to create more sidewalks and street frontages.
[2] Moses did not invent the tower-in-park style of housing either. It was an invention of reformers and visionaries, such as Le Corbusier, starting in the 1920s. The planning consensus during the Great Depression and beyond was that building towers surrounded by green space would cure urban ills.
[3] Arguably federal mortgage programs that created redlining and with which Moses was not involved had a greater effect on cities like New York than Moses’s housing and slum clearance projects.
[4] Ironically, public housing—something in which Moses had a more behind-scenes role in developing—today is a success story in New York. Given the massive affordability problem, NYCHA housing provides a huge benefit for those with low incomes. See Nicholas Dagen Bloom’s book, Public Housing that Worked: New York in the 20th Century. More broadly, given recent economics research on the impacts of highways (such a Brinkman and Lin, 2024) and slum clearance on cities (such as Collins and Shester, 2013), measuring the net impact of Robert Moses on New York relative to what happened in other cities, would not be too difficult. To my knowledge, no one has specifically measured whether Moses’s projects were a net plus or negative for the city’s economic growth.
Many cities around the world are facing housing affordability crises. In New York, for example, a majority of renters are rent-burdened, meaning their housing costs eat up more than 30% of their income. Even worse, nearly one in three low-income renters are severely rent-burdened, spending more than 50% of their income on housing.
To his credit, Mayor Eric Adams is pushing his City of Yes Housing Opportunity agenda, which, if approved, would allow for more housing throughout the city. These rezonings will produce up to 100,000 additional units over the next 15 years, if all goes well. While this may sound like a lot, it’s only about 6,700 units per year, on average—hardly what’s needed to make a meaningful impact in affordability.
Where to Build?
One of the biggest hurdles is finding new sites on which to build housing. With only a slight bit of exaggeration, we can say that current housing is where future housing goes to die. In other words, when housing is built, it creates barriers that make future, denser buildings more difficult to construct.
Tenants in rental buildings, for example, would need to be evicted or relocated, which is frequently impossible as retnal laws give tenants the right to remain in their units (and with New York City vacancy rates at 1.4%, where will they go?). In suburban areas, zoning for single-family housing dominates, and densification is nearly impossible (more than 50% of residential land in New York City is zoned for one- or two-family homes and is likely much higher outside the city boundaries).
Last year, Governor Kathy Hochul introduced a bill to upzone parcels near transit lines around the state. However, it was voted down by the state legislature because suburban residents are opposed to having multifamily buildings in their towns or neighborhoods. Mayor Adams’s City of Yes Plan is now working its way through the legislative process. It remains to be seen if key parts will be gutted because of local opposition.
Lower Manhattan with Map of New Amsterdam Superimposed. Manhattan Island has been dramatically expanded over the centuries by landfill. Source: Created by Jason Barr from the 1660 Costello Plan and Google Maps.
New Mannahatta
However, there is another option that we can add to the list—creating housing on new land.
In the long sweep of urban history, when cities have been land constrained, they have frequently made more of it by draining wetlands or building out the shorelines into the sea. The process of land reclamation is as old as civilization itself.
The proposal was greeted, of course, with a flood of skepticism. Much of the knee-jerk nay-saying was based on the idea that my plan was too radical. However, I don’t think most people realize that land reclamation has been part of New York’s DNA since New Amsterdam was founded in 1624 and has continued well into the 20th century. Lower Manhattan south of City Hall is about 50% bigger than it was before the Dutch arrived. In fact, there’s nothing wholly original about my proposal as it follows a long line of such proposals (discussed below).
Second, a tour around the world (to be discussed in Part II of this series) will show how common reclamation is in cities seeking to grow and accommodate their populations (I will discuss the environmental concerns in Part III of this series).
The Ghost of Moses
Today, American cities are mired in paralysis—residents are afraid of mega-projects that could substantially benefit us. People in New York constantly chime in about how the city was, so to speak, bitten by the snake of Robert Moses, the master builder of New York from the 1930s to 1960s. Because Moses was heavy-handed and power-hungry in the mid-20th century, the logic goes, we can’t do big projects today.
So, I want to demonstrate in this blog series that land reclamation for urban expansion and new housing is not only an age-old tradition but something we should consider for our future. Let’s turn to New York’s history.
Jason Barr’s Proposal for a Manhattan Extension. See here for more details.
New Amsterdam
When the Dutch created New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan in 1626, one of their first acts was draining the wetlands along the shoreline (today this is a bad idea, but I’ll return to the environmental issues in Part III). They dug a canal from a creek that ran down what is Broad Street today and shored up the coastline. Elminating wetlands was also seen as good for public health to prevent insect-borne diseases. By draining these wetlands, they created new land, and the canal allowed boats to enter the city itself.
Another early act was to build a fort on the lower tip of Manhattan (today, where the Museum of the American Indian resides). As the map above shows, by 1660, the Dutch had transformed Lower Manhattan into a hub for commerce and defense (and the seat of government). If the Dutch had remained in control of the colony and had not lost it to the English in 1664, Lower Manhattan would likely be ringed by a series of canals, like its father city in the Netherlands.
When the English arrived on the scene, local officials sold off so-called water lots—those parts of the shoreline that were exposed during low tide—to private landowners, who would create a retaining wall and fill in the land. Over time, water lots were sold further and further out.
Land creation had multiple purposes. First, it provided new real estate to help the city grow. Additionally, since the new land was now in deeper water, ships laden with merchandise could dock at the wharves and piers rather than anchoring further away and transferring their wares on barges, thus reducing transportation costs and creating a bustling port.
On the eve of the American Revolution, British New York had added nearly five hundred acres of land along the Lower Manhattan shorelines. As the historian Ann Buttenwieser writes, “Ballast was dumped and ships sunk, hills leveled, building sites and roadways excavated, wastes, ashes and sweepings collected, and all were deposited at the water’s edge. When space was needed for services, work places, homes, or recreation, it was always possible to create more land.”
Over the last two-thirds of the eighteenth century, the harborside facilities of New York were transformed. Two full blocks were reclaimed out of the East River. The city once had ended at Pearl Street; by the end of the century, Front Street was the southeastern border of lower Manhattan.…It is a certainty, however, that waterlot grants were used, as they were designed, to provide New York City with the streets, wharves, and port facilities of a growing seaport.
The Dutch fort (though rebuilt) remained a defensive location for the English as well. Colonial Governor Thomas Dongan began building batteries along the shore in 1683, giving the area its name. In 1788, the fort was demolished, and the rubble was used as landfill to create a public promenade. Between 1808 and 1811, a new, circular fort was built 200 feet offshore on an artificial island to prepare for the War of 1812. Originally called the West Battery, it was re-named Castle Clinton in 1815. In 1824, it was repurposed as Castle Garden, and became a popular entertainment venue and beer hall.
During the 1840s, as people began clamoring for more park space on Manhattan, the idea of infilling the area between the Battery and Castle Clinton took hold. Battery Park was thus created with landfill, uniting Castle Garden island with Manhattan. From 1855 to 1896, Castle Clinton operated as the city’s official immigrant processing depot before Ellis Island opened.
Over the course of the 19th century, New York continued to expand it shorelines. In 1865, the engineer Egbert Viele published a topographical map, which shows how much of the city had been expanded through fill up to that point. Many housing projects built in the 20th century, like Stuyvesant Tower and the Lillian Ward Public Houses on Avenue D in Alphabet City are on land reclaimed in the 19th century.
The Viele Map with Some Modern Developments Built on Made Land.
The World Trade Center
After World War II, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) moved the city’s port to the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, which could accommodate the large container ships. Between the declining fortunes of Manhattan’s port and the aging Art Deco offices, Lower Manhattan was falling on hard times.
In 1957, David Rockefeller, Chairman of Chase Bank and grandson of oil baron John D. Rockefeller, spearheaded the creation of the Downtown Lower Manhattan Association (DLMA) to help revitalize Lower Manhattan. The DLMA commissioned Skidmore, Owings & Merril (SOM) to create a master plan, which included a World Trade Center and office and exhibition space near the East River south of the Brooklyn Bridge. The DLMA turned to the Port Authority as a natural agency that could spearhead construction.
After protracted negotiations and “slum clearance,” the PA took control of a 15-acre (6-hectare) site on Manhattan’s lower west side and built the World Trade Center, including the Twin Towers, on landfill created in the 19th century.
Left: Battery Park City Landfill ca. 1970. Right: Waterside Plaza Housing Development. Sources: here and here.
Battery Park City
Excavation for the World Trade Center produced a lot of material that had to go somewhere. Thus, the idea of creating a new neighborhood, Battery Park City, emerged by reusing the fill for new land next to the World Trade Center site. However, the plan was expanded to 92 acres (0.37 km2) and only a quarter of the fill came from World Trade Center site.
The Battery Park City Authority developed the complex, which was formed in 1968 by the New York State Legislature. While the neighborhood took a while to be fully built out, today, it is hailed as a success story of how to create a mixed-use neighborhood from scratch. The site contains 9,300 residents in 30 residential towers, 10 million square feet of office space, parks, museums, a marina, and a riverside promenade.
Waterside Plaza
Another example of a successful housing development is Waterside Plaza. In 1973, twelve years after it was first proposed, the “ambitious and dramatic Waterside housing development over the East River was formally opened…by Mayor Lindsay and former Mayor Robert F. Wagner.” The project contains 1470 residential units within three towers and rows of townhouses on a six-acre platform built over the East River. Two thousand steel piles were sunk 80 feet in the riverbed to support the platform. Many units are reserved for middle- and low-income households, made possible by various housing subsidy programs.
Visions of a New New York. Starting in 1911, the engineers T. Kennard Thomson offered several visions of expanding New York City through land reclamation. Source: NYPL.
The Unbuilt Future
Producing visions of expanding Manhattan is something of a cottage industry. In fact, despite the shock created by my Manhattan expansion proposal, there’s not all that much original about it. What is unique is that it has been updated to reflect our current needs: protection from climate change and the need for more housing.
Arguably, the most brash—much more so than mine—was proffered by the engineer T. Kennard Thomson in 1911. He proposed to dam and fill in the East River while also expanding Manhattan and Brooklyn four miles into the harbor. His plan added new peninsulas on Staten Island. And, he proposed digging a canal from the Long Island Sound to Jamaica Bay and moving the city’s port to southern Queens.
Thomson argued that “The method of reclamation to be followed is extremely simple. I would merely erect concrete seawalls from the Battery toward Staten Island for the desired length, and then fill them in.”
In 1921, the New York Times reported on a scaled down version of the plan, which was simply the Manhattan extension part—four miles into the harbor (my plan is a mere 2.5 miles). The consensus among the panel of lawyers, planners, and engineers was that there were no legal or engineering barriers to building it, and that new land would help the city grow and reduce congestion.
In 1924, engineer John A. Harris proposed damming up the East River and creating new land in place of the river (and a canal to the east running through Brooklyn and Queens). The centerpiece of his proposal was a vast new civic center and arts complex on top.
New Land for New Cities
While land reclamation has been part of New York’s long history, many cities around the world are using it to expand their cities. In the next post, I will discuss what’s happening globally.
[Note this post is a part of a series on the history of New York’s grid plan. The entire series can be found here.]
Manhattan 1.0
In 1811, the Street Plan Commissioners produced Manhattan’s grid system. Accompanying their map was a brief set of remarks highlighting their decisions. First, they felt a gridiron plan was best because “straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.”
Second, they believed there was little need for abundant park space because “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.” Lastly, they decided to stop at 155th Street because “it is improbable that (for centuries to come) the grounds north of Harlem Flat will be covered with houses.”
Manhattan 2.0
Ironically, one man in the second half of the 19th century would be largely responsible for “reversing” or adjusting those choices in Manhattan and beyond. That man was Andrew Haswell Green, one of New York’s most important but least-known leaders who helped to shape, both literally and figuratively, the path that New York would take in the second half of the 19th century.
Green would oversee the creation and expansion of Central Park from 1857 to 1870. He would also be responsible for laying out a street plan north of 155th Street and would help influence street planning and parks in the Bronx. In essence, he was Grid Commissioner 2.0, altering New York’s landscape beyond the repetitive street layout.
Just as importantly, he was a forceful advocate for the city’s physical expansion, which led to New York first annexing the Bronx and then, in 1898, to the final joining with Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island to create the City of Greater New York. The new municipality would have the power to plan and layout streets and coordinate transportation and infrastructure, enabling Gotham to become one of the world’s greatest cities.
Green was born in 1820 on the family farmstead near Worcester, Massachusetts. He moved to New York when he was 15 and eventually studied law under the tutelage of Samuel Tilden, a well-known lawyer and politician. After a successful law practice, Green moved into government service, emerging as one of New York’s most influential civic leaders. Though he was a Democrat, he was opposed to the corruption and excesses of the Tammany Hall wing. His sweeping plans gained wide support from Albany’s republicans and city reformers eager to check Tammany’s corruption and provincialism.
Green was known as an honest and capable administrator. If anything, he had a reputation for extreme frugality, as he strongly felt that the government should administer public works with the least amount of expenditure. New York City historian Thomas Kesner describes him as,
Self-righteous in the extreme, he kept few friends while gaining many admirers for his versatile skills in municipal planning and his undoubted integrity. Severe, demanding, caustic in debate, with a reputation for cantankerousness, he could be very persuasive in person and even more so in his writing, which had greatly improved over the years.
His first foray into public service was as a member of the Board of Education from 1855 to 1860, becoming its president in 1857. Then, he was drafted into the state-appointed Central Park Commission in 1857, which was charged with creating a green oasis on Manhattan Island.
Indeed, for the twenty years between 1857 and 1877, he would be identified with almost every major project aimed at municipal improvement, ranging from Central Park and Brooklyn Bridge to New York’s annexation of a portion of lower Westchester and the reform of municipal administrative practices.
In 1870, Green moved into citywide government as comptroller and was instrumental in rehabilitating the City’s budget after years of graft, corruption, and a general feeding at the public trough during the reign of Tammany leader, William “Boss” Tweed.
After 1811, as the grid began to “eat” Manhattan, it became clear to many that the street plan was a juggernaut, devouring the natural world in its path and ignoring many of Manhattan’s topological and ecological features. Streams were buried, hills were leveled, marshes drained, and forests cut down.
As a result, by the late 1840s, there was a movement for Manhattan to have a large park. In 1853, New York State passed a law to take 778 acres of land through eminent domain. In 1857, the state legislature established a Central Park Board of Commissioners to begin the planning process.
The Zeitgeist
Having a large park was seen as vital for many reasons. The first, of course, was to undo the omissions of the 1811 plan. But just as important was the social and economic context. Urban reformers witnessed the poverty and dislocations in neighborhoods like Five Points and the Bowery and felt the masses needed a becalming natural outlet.
In Europe, revolutionary activity was in the air. American reformers worried that without some palliative balms, the American apple cart could be, so to speak, easily turned over. The rich also wanted the pleasure grounds for their Sunday strolls and horse races. Collectively, the wealthy, the propertied interests who wanted to reap the benefits of higher land values, advocates for the poor, and urban reformers united to turn the movement into a reality.
A Green Park
Green was initially appointed a board member but then was made president and treasurer in 1858. In 1859, he became the park’s comptroller, a newly created position that allowed Green to be, effectively, the Central Park CEO. Under Green’s leadership, the Commission surveyed and assessed 34,000 lots owned by 561 property owners, 20% of which were owned by three families. The Commission paid $5 million for the parcels, three times what leaders assumed the park would cost. One-third of the park’s construction cost was paid for by abutting property owners through special tax assessments.
Squatters had to be removed. As historians Edwin Burrows and Mike Wallace recount, “The sixteen hundred or so Irish, German, and blacks who lived on the land—dismissed and disparaged as ‘vagabonds and scoundrels’—were evicted by 1857.” Today, historians are recovering these residents’ forgotten histories.
For example, the land between 82nd and 85th Streets on the west side of the park was the home to Seneca Village, which was a successful lower-income cluster of dwellings far north of the city proper. One resident was Andrew Williams, the first African American to purchase land in the area in 1825. He lived in the village with his family and other black residents.
Seneca Village. On the West Side of Central Park between 81st and 85th Streets was a small settlement far above the city. Its residents were scattered when the Central Park Commissioners bought the land to create the park. Source: Photo by Jason Barr of sign in Central Park.
Green and Greensward
To find a design, the Central Park Commissioners sponsored a competition. Green was a leading voice that led to the choice of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s design. As Mazaraki writes, “[T]heir Greensward Plan proposed a reformer’s vision—a space designed to school both patrician and plebeian cultures by transmitting, almost subliminally, civilized values and a ‘harmonizing and refining influence.’”
No commercial activity was allowed inside its boundaries. Four transverse roads would be built below grade to allow the park to remain seamless from south to north. Within its acreage, there would be a wide range of uses, from promenades to wooded glens and hills to open fields.
Olmsted was also chosen as the park superintendent to oversee the implementation of his plan. Olmsted, whose vision was expansive and expensive, would frequently butt heads with Green, who sought to keep those expenses in check. They would fight and argue, but the finished product was a masterpiece.
The creation of Central Park formed Green’s apprenticeship in city planning. He mastered its every detail as well as the larger vision. For the ten years that he presided over the Central Park Commission, Green set aside his other work to give the project his full attention. He was the commission’s workhorse and its most forceful member. “No one but Green knows,” Olmsted wrote of his sometime adversary, “or will take the trouble to inform himself, of the facts bearing on any question of policy sufficiently to argue on its effectuality….Not a dollar, not a cent, is got from under his paw,” Olmsted would complain regarding his prickly nemesis, “that was not wet with his blood & sweat.”
However, Green was not such a spendthrift that he was blind to opportunities as they arose. He advocated for expanding the park’s northern edge when he saw that the Commissioners could buy the land from 106th to 110th Streets before it was developed, thus adding 65 acres. To encourage the arts, Green invited the Metropolitan Museum of Art to build on the grounds. And Green was instrumental in creating the zoo.
Beyond the Park
Thanks to the success of Central Park—an example par excellence of a well-executed public work with a sublime design—the Central Park Commission was given control of planning outside of the park. In 1858, Green made the case for the opening, widening, and improving of the streets and avenues bounding the park in parallel to the park’s opening. This was particularly important because the northern part of the city was only at 42nd Street, with only a single paved road—Seventh Avenue—above it. The Park Commission opened Seventh Avenue from 110th Street to Harlem River, along with Central Park East and West.
The Park Commission was also permitted to make changes in the widths, directions, and grades of streets on the Upper West Side. It could also redesign the area entirely if so desired. In an 1865 report, Green expressed his doubts about the grid plan:
It is not too much to say, that [the 1811 Commissioners] carried to an extreme, a system well enough adapted to the tolerably level ground of the lower part of the city. They found something similar to it already existing in the neighborhood of the Seventh Ward and they fixed it upon irregular and precipitous portions of the island to which it was not at all adapted. The Commissioners failed to discriminate between those localities where their plan was fit, and those to which its features were destructive, both in point of expense and convenience.
The Upper West Side
Despite his desire to do away with the grid plan on the rocky and hilly Upper West Side, his hands were tied. Though the area was composed of little more than hamlets separated by few country seats and small farms, the streets and blocks had already been marked for creation, and to undo what the grid plan established would have been too disruptive.
However, there remained some opportunities. Where Broadway curved around the park’s western edge, Green created a large oval, named Columbus Circle in 1892. Broadway was continued north to the end of the island and beyond. Green and the Commission also saw to Riverside Park’s creation along Manhattan’s western edge. The plan also included the windy Riverside Drive, running from 72nd to 129th Streets, and later extended to 158th Street
Olmsted and Vaux were drafted to create the plan. Riverside Park too is a masterful work, a narrow green oasis along the Hudson River, with multiple levels that make it feel more spacious than it is. Along Riverside Drive is a paved promenade. Below them are steep wooded slopes, and meandering paths. Below that are more promenades and public spaces. In the 1930s, the park was extended by Robert Moses to the shoreline, after the New York Central railroad tracks were covered.
Plan of Northern Manhattan created by the Central Park Commissioners (1873). Source: NYPL.
North of 155th Street
By the mid-19th century, it was clear that the 1811 Grid Plan Commissioner’s projections that the land north of 155th Street would not be opened for a century was a bit off the mark. (They did not foresee the invention of rail-based mass transit, including railroads, streetcars, and elevated lines.) As a result, in 1851, the Common Council asked the street commissioner to create a plan for upper Manhattan. But there was no money allocated, and nothing happened.
Next, in 1860, a state law empowered a commission to formulate a street plan—especially to create something different than the grid plan. Olmstead and Vaux were hired as the landscape architects. However, in 1863, the Commission rejected their mandate and advocated for the continuation of the regular rectangular blocs.
The public’s outrage and property owners’ desire for better planning led to the Central Park Commission being awarded in 1865 the right to create a street plan north of 155th Street. The dramatic elevation changes, however, made it economically unfeasible to level the area. As Mazaraki writes,
The area’s rough and varied topography made any extension of the 1811 gridiron street pattern impossible. Elevated and exceedingly rocky in some parts, while low-lying in others, the expense of establishing a uniform grade would have been financially prohibitive even if technically possible.
A Thorough Review
Unlike the 1807 Commissioners, Green undertook a more detailed review of the topology and geographic and environmental conditions of the northern section. In 1868, he called for gridding areas in the flat valleys. However, looking at the highlands on the west side, Green questioned the cost of blasting cross streets through the rocks and the risk of making the grades so steep that the horse-drawn wagons would not be able to use the roads. As Mazaraki concludes,
Expecting that future traffic would tend to be longitudinal (north-south) he saw no need for numerous cross streets or the forcing of city lots into high ground. In this respect, Green made a major mistake. Not north-south, but east-west traffic would come to predominate and a series of lateral avenues would have served the region better.
The Commission planned three major north-south roads. It kept the historic Kingsbridge Road (which became Broadway) and created St. Nicholas Avenue out of what was formerly known as Harlem Lane. Green also proposed an eastern road that would run along the shoreline of the Harlem River. For this, a new bulkhead line was required. Where avenues such as Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh intersected with each other or with the shore drive to form small triangular plots, Green called for a series of small parks.
Green’s interest in parks also led him to preserve the views of the Hudson River from the hills of northern Manhattan. From this wish emerged an eight-acre park at Fort Washington Point, forming the kernel of today’s Fort Tryon Park. Later, between 1915 and the early 1940s, the City purchased the land that makes up the forested Inwood Hill Park at the northern tip.
In the end, Green created a hybrid plan. In the lowlands, the grid plan was continued, while in the highlands, the roads and blocks followed the land’s natural contours. However, unlike Manhattan below 155th Street, where all blocks had an east-west orientation, the northern plan has blocks with various directions that fit more naturally into the terrain.
Beyond Manhattan
One of the of the great ironies of the 1811 Grid Plan was that its call for leveling and paving nearly all of the island led to a strong pushback. New York would get its nature yet. Central Park, though thoroughly sculpted and arranged, is one of the world’s greatest green spaces. And just importantly, Manhattan’s growing density would generate a cry for more open spaces elsewhere. In the next post, we turn to the story of how the Bronx became the borough of parks, zoos, and botanical gardens.
Continue reading the rest of the series on Manhattan’s grid plan here.
[Note: Starting Monday, March 4, 2024, Gerard Koeppel and I will be co-teaching a six-week online course on the history of the Manhattan grid plan for the Gotham Center for New York City History. More information and registration can be found here.]
Planting the Seeds
In April 1811, New York’s Street Plan Commission created the now-famous grid plan—but on paper only. The commissioners handed the City their map and said, “Goodbye and good luck.” Two of them, Simeon De Witt and Gouverneur Morris could now focus on their Erie Canal work. And the third, John Rutherfurd, was never very interested in the position.
The municipality had to find a way to make the plan a reality, and somehow, it did. As historian Hilary Ballon writes,
The miracle of the 1811 plan was that it was enforced. It took about sixty years for the grid to be built up to 155th Street, sixty years during which mayors and administrations, interest groups and aesthetic values frequently changed and might have undermined the plan—but the grid prevailed.
Randel Returns
However, the Common Council was not completely lost. They still had John Randel, Jr, who surveyed Manhattan for the Commission since 1808. Nobody knew Manhattan better, and with his expertise and diligence, he was best qualified to figure out where the streets and blocks would actually go. At age 23, Randel was hired by the Common Council, as its chief engineer to make the grid plan a reality.
Randel remains an enigmatic figure. While highly motivated and brilliant, he was also a crank. He spent much time and coin in litigation against those he thought were cheating him of his due. Though Randel would go on to other surveying and engineering projects, his work in Manhattan was arguably the high point of his career.
Nonetheless, we can take a few minutes to chat with him.
The Great Unfurling. These maps show the built up area of Manhattan over time with the corresponding implementation of the grid plan after 1811. From Left: 1796, 1834, and 1879.
“Q&A” with John Randel, Jr.
Q: When you were doing your surveying work, did you encounter any troubles?
A: Col. Richard Varick, who was Mayor of the city of New York for the twelve years from 1789 to 1801, always became bail for my appearance at Court, when, in the absence of the Commissioners, I was arrested by the Sheriff, on numerous suits instituted against me as agent of the Commissioners, for trespass and damage committed by my workmen, in passing over grounds, cutting off branches of trees, etc., to make surveys under instructions from the Commissioners. The persons who instituted those suits were a few of the numerous opponents of the field of operations of the Commissioners, which included their property in the then new Plan for the city, many of whose descendants have been made rich thereby.
Q: Were you able to fully complete your work?
A: The time within which the Commissioners were limited by Statute to make their Plan of the streets, avenues, and public places on Manhattan or New York island, and also to lay out the same upon the ground, being barely sufficient to enable them to comply with the letter, although not fully with the spirit of the Statute, by only making the Plan therefor…without locating the whole of any one of the avenues permanently upon the ground; and also by establishing on the ground only one point in some part of 16 out of the 155 streets laid out on their Plan, which subsequently required and received 1,549 marble monumental stones and 98 iron bolts, at their several intersections with the avenues; and directing that the spaces between all the streets falling between each two of those points named and described by them therefor, should be of equal breadth, without specifying the breadth of any of those spaces, or locating any of those streets permanently upon the ground.
Q: After the Commissioners submitted their street plan in April 1811 did you have to look for another job?
A: The Commissioners reported to the Corporation this insufficiency of time to complete their work, and recommended that, as their Secretary and Surveyor I had become acquainted with the ground, and the Plan for laying out the same, I should be employed to complete the work according to it.
In accordance with this recommendation of the Commissioners, I was employed under contract with the City Government to lay out those streets and avenues and public places upon the ground, according to the Plan reported therefor, and to place monumental stones and iron bolts at their several intersections—these amounted to 1,647—and also to survey and make maps of the possession, fences, and bounds of real estates, and of all buildings upon that part of New York Island on which I had placed monumental stones and bolts, all of which work…I completed about the year 1821.
Q: Did you ever see any famous New Yorkers on your way to work?
A: Our office at Christopher street was, at the time, more than a mile north of the settled part of the city, which then terminated south of Lispenard’s Salt Meadow (now Canal street). And during the time it remained there, I boarded in the city, and in going to the office I almost daily passed the house on Herring street (now No. 293 Bleecker street) where Thomas Paine resided, and frequently, in fair weather, saw him sitting at the south window of the first story room of that house….”
Q: Some people think the Grid Plan was the worst planning mistake of all time. What is your view?
A: This Plan of the Commissioners, thus objected to before its completion, is now the pride and boast of the city; and the facilities afforded by it for buying, selling, and improving real estate, on streets, avenues, and public squares, already laid out and established on the ground by monumental stones and bolts, at the cost of the city; and of greater width and extent, safety from conflagrations, beautiful uniformity and convenience, than could otherwise have been obtained…and admitting free circulation of air through them; thereby avoiding the frequent error of laying out short, narrow, and crooked streets, with alleys and courts, endangering extensive conflagrations, confined air, unclean streets, etc. must have greatly enhanced the value of real estate on New York Island, thus laid out on the Commissioners’ Plan.
Profile of Twelve Avenues. This map shows the elevations of Manhattan’s twelve avenues as created by the grid plan. Source: NYPL Digital Collections.
Implementing the Grid
After Randel placed his markers—mostly in the middle of people’s farm or even at their front doors—the plan had to be put into action. In the 27 years from 1830 to 1856, there were nearly 200 openings of road segments or public squares. A road would be constructed when property owners formally petitioned the government. Then the work began: Trees were torn down, the ground was dug up, and the land was leveled to the proper grade.
But such a process was not easy. The land had to be created if the street was in a valley. The bedrock had to be chipped away if it was on a hill. Manhattan was also crisscrossed with streams and ponds. Most of the time, they were filled in with dirt and rubble from removing the hills.
The Tab
Initially, owners had to bear the burden of the costs. First, they were credited for the value of their property taken for the street, and then they were charged 70% of the cost of creating it. If there was a difference, it had come out of the landowners’ pockets. While many of them, no doubt, were angry that they had to pay a significant fraction of the expense, the process of assessing property owners for improvements on and around their property was an age-old tradition that went back to the Dutch and British colonial days as well. After the Civil War, as the city’s government became larger and more “governmental,” the City picked up half the costs.
House Perched Above Second Avenue. As the grid plan was unfurled, houses like the one in the picture were often “stranded” above the street. The property owners was responsible for leveling their lot. Source: here.
The Mountain Myth
For example, an 1861 drawing of the newly formed Second Avenue at the newly formed 42nd Street illustrates this transformation. The avenue appears as a kind of urban gorge, enclosed by steep hills of bedrock. On the east side, a solitary farmhouse is perched 20 feet atop an extrusion of schist. A temporary wooden staircase strapped to the rock allows access to the domicile. The image has helped fuel the conventional wisdom that the grid plan was a great leveler, tearing the city down to a uniform, flat topography. But to what extent is this true?
Based on my statistical analysis of Manhattan, however, the results suggest that rather than a great leveling, the island was subject to a great smoothing. In fact, about two-thirds of all blocks had changes of less than 10 feet, and 40 percent had average elevation changes of less than 5 feet. The modal change was to add between 0 and 10 feet, which was also due to infill along the riverbanks. Nearly as much of the island was “brought up” as it was “brought down.” Valleys needed to be filled in while the hills were lowered. The average change across all blocks, in fact, was an increase of elevation of 1.7 feet.
The Lots Myth
Another myth that pervades the historiography is that the plan created the typical small lots of 25 feet by 100 feet. In 1894, noted architect Ernest Flagg voiced a popular belief about Manhattan’s lot sizes: “The greatest evil which ever befell New York City was the division of the blocks into lots of 25 x 100 feet…for from this division has arisen the New York system of tenement-houses, the worse curse which ever afflicted any great community.”
Flagg was lamenting that builders chose not to erect housing on larger lots, which, he argued, would have alleviated over-crowding and disease. While he was not commenting on the grid plan per se, it is easy to see how people have come to confuse Manhattan’s small lots as emanating from the plan itself. Today, the common perception remains that the small lots were a result of the plan. But the grid plan had nothing to say on this matter.
The Real Story
The ubiquity of the (approximately) 25 x 100 square foot plot size was a mainstay of land subdivisions long before 1811; it was the de facto standard from the earliest time of settlement and never existed in any legal statutes.
Instead, decisions about lots and blocks were made on an ad hoc basis based on the residents’ incentives. 25 x 100 square feet represented the best balance between several competing considerations. A two- or three-story house of a 20- or 25-foot width and 50-foot depth would be a reasonable size, with a functional backyard with space for a privy and a rainwater cistern. Additionally, wooden joists used to support the floors could not be longer than 25 feet without having to add internal columns to support the floors. If a family wanted a house larger than 25 feet across, it would have added a new expense. For most homeowners, the additional space was not worth the cost.
When the Commissioners chose their block sizes of either 800 or 920 long feet by 200 feet wide, they implicitly encouraged this age-old tradition to continue. Landholders would subdivide the blocks into two equal north-south halves of 100 feet each, and then the lots on each side would be subdivided equally into 20 or 25 feet and sold off as individual parcels. Even today, nearly 40% of Manhattan’s lots retain their “standard” size, but don’t blame the grid plan.[1]
Birth of Chelsea. In 1833, Landowner Clement Clarke Moore subdivided his blocks into lots for sale. But the lot sizes were his choice and were not part of the street plan. Source: Museum of the City of New York.
Remapping
Since the grid plan was initiated as an idea—as a piece of paper—it could, in principle, be altered, and altered it was. The 19th century would witness several changes to the original blueprint—not so many that they would fundamentally re-form what it was, be enough to add a modicum of diversity to the pattern. Alterations took two types—additions to the avenues and changes to public spaces.
New Avenues
One of the earliest changes emerged from the efforts of wealthy landowner Samuel B. Ruggles, who owned property on the east side, north of 14th Street, which has subsequently become known as Gramercy Park. To increase the value of his holdings, Ruggles designed a small square with homes surrounding them. He also petitioned the Common Council to create a 75-foot-wide avenue from 14th Street to 30th that would then cut in half the blocks between Third and Fourth (later Park) Avenues. Ruggles named the new avenue Irving Place after his friend Washington Irving.
Ruggles’s plan looked good on paper but not the ground. A creek, the original Dutch “Crommessie” from where “Gramercy” derived, wound through one side of the property in a deep gulley surrounded by swamp; the other side was high hill. Ruggles eventually spent $180,000 dumping a million cartloads of hill into the valley, burying the creek and filling in the bogs.
Other landowners appreciated the smaller blocks created by Ruggles’s new avenue, giving them more valuable frontage. As a result, Irving Place was continued northward under the name Lexington Avenue, running up to East 132nd Street, where it intersects with the Harlem River. Similarly, Madison Avenue was mapped in the 1830s, partly from Ruggles’s urging. Madison divided Fourth and Fifth Avenues in half, and it also runs up the rest of the island.
Broadway
Broadway, a major thoroughfare since the Dutch days, was one of the most important nods to historical lock-in. The grid plan had no use for Broadway, and was “cut from the show.” However, Broadway north of 23rd Street (then called Bloomingdale Road) remained in use. In 1838, Broadway/Bloomingdale was officially re-mapped and folded into the street plan. From a planning perspective, Broadway’s diagonal run from 10th to 72nd Streets makes it interesting. When it intersects other avenues, it lends itself naturally to the formation of squares.
As a result, Broadway’s path has sparked the creation of Union Square, Madison Square Park, Herald Square, Times Square, Columbus Circle, and Verdi Square at 72nd Street. The beautiful Flat Iron Building—so named because its triangular shape was reminiscent of a clothing iron—was produced on the three-sided lot where Broadway intersects Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street. As a side note, Broadway today continues its run long outside of Manhattan, ending some 20 miles north of Gotham.
Parks
The original street plan called for relatively few parks, and over the 19th century, the “park scene” would change. First was the shrinkage: The extensive parade grounds at 23rd Street from Third to Seventh Avenues were scaled back to create Madison Square Park. Other squares on the street plan map were de-mapped at the urging of local property owners who wanted to sell their land on the free market.
However, places where the geology and topography dramatically changed and were unsuited for housing were converted to parks. For example, Morningside Park, which is situated where Manhattan’s geology shifts. The high ground on the west is Manhattan Schist. The low ground on the east is Inwood Marble. Because marble erodes faster than schist, the line where they meet creates a steep slope. In 1873, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux of Central Park fame were commissioned to put this sloped schist to good use.
In the case of St. Nicholas Park from 127th to 141st streets, it was originally land condemned for the construction of the Old Croton Aqueduct in 1885. New York State laws of 1894 and 1895 authorized the creation of a public park instead.
But as the relentless pace of removing the city’s natural landscape continued, many wondered if their entire island would be soon covered in cobbles and bricks. The street plan commissioners’ claim that the rivers—“those large arms of the sea which embrace Manhattan island”—were enough to give Gotham open space and fresh air was not correct. The greatest irony of the grid plan, thus, was the creation of Central Park, one of the world’s best public spaces.
By the mid-19th century, several coalitions would unite to advocate for a large urban park. The rise of industrialization and the commitment formation of slums filled with impoverished immigrant workers generated political and economic strife. Reformers saw urban parks as a way for people of different stripes to come together, and for the working classes to be becalmed by nature’s charms. The wealthy also demanded park space, as the grid was eating up land for their peacock-style strolls and horse racing hobbies. Finally, were the property owners whose land would abut any such large park, and stood to gain from the rising property values.
In 1853, a state law initiated a park of 778 acres (later expanded to 843) in the center of Manhattan, where the land was rocky, and the City still owned significant acreage that was once the Common Lands. The Central Park Commissioners chose Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to implement their Greensward design. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Straight out of Manhattan
Though Manhattan has had an outsized role in Gotham’s history, it’s land area is only 7.5% of the city. It’s small stature but large influence begs the question: Was it’s unusual grid plan replicated in the other boroughs of New York? We will dive into this question in the next post. Stay tuned….
Continue reading the rest of the series on Manhattan’s grid plan here.
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[1] Using the NYC PLUTO file, I counted the number of Manhattan lots between 15 and 30 feet wide and 90 by 110 feet wide. The results show that they constitute 16,800 out of 42,700 lots.
