August 15, 2026 • 47 mins
Ever wanted to know more about how the Manhattan grid was made? Well this is your chance. Find out all about it in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
It is on our COVID timeline June eighteenth, twenty twenty,
and I am here to introduce the episode on the
Manhattan Grid. I loved, loved this episode, I think, as
most people know by now, I in particular, am pretty
obsessed with not just New York, like I love New
York as a town, but the inner workings of New
(00:22):
York and the garbage collection and the mail delivery and
building that city up from the ground up, which is
what this episode relates to, is how they laid out
that Manhattan grid. And here's one thing I remember from it,
and here's a fun tip if you're traveling to New York.
They use spikes in the ground, I think iron spikes
to map out that grid, and you'll learn that in
(00:43):
this episode to follow. You know, so they knew where
the streets and the street corners would meet up in
that big rectangle, and to this day you can still
find some of those. The only place I know about them,
I'm not sure if they're on the streets anymore at all.
It seems highly unlikely, but I know you can find
them for a fact in Central Park here and there
(01:04):
in the rocks, those big giant boulders there because I
learned about these and when I was in New York
sometime between June eighteenth, twenty twenty when we released this and
now I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I feel like it's a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I saw one of those spikes, and I think I
talked about that on a later episode, but it thrilled
me to no end, and I geeked out and told
everybody I was with what that was and what it represented,
and it was a real thrill for me. No lie,
just a spike in the rock. Thought it was super cool.
So check this episode out on the Manhattan Grid. Welcome
(01:39):
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you
Should Know another in our Endless Annals of New York
City edition.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
This is a pretty interesting episode, I think, And my
favorite part about it this was Dave ruse Are, one
of our writers, helped put this together.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And Dave is clearly annoyed.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah about this whole thing, and I think it's hysterical
how many times he gets annoyed by the laziness of
the commission.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I have to say I agreed with Dave too. I
was annoyed by it as well. I think, Yeah, it's
always annoying when you see somebody like have a great
opportunity and just pee it away, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, And we should also point out Dave got a
lot of his information from a really wonderful book called
City on a Grid colon How New York Became New
York by Gerald Keppel.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Not Gerald McCraney. Different Jerald, right, or is it Copple?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I think it's Kepel.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
If it's Koe That's what I was going with, was Keppel.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, I'm going to get this book though.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
This is right at Malley because you know, I'm obsessed
with the history and the sort of formation of New
York City as we know it today.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, where'd you get the idea for this episode?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Just my constant desire to learn about Mannahatta and how
that became eventually Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
That we know and love. Okay, I'm just fascinated by it.
I love it. I love everything about it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This is definitely a big chapter because what we're talking
about is the plan called the Commissioner's plan of eighteen
eleven that basically laid out Manhattan as we know and
understand and love it today. Everything north of Houston Street,
I should say.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, And here's sort of a quick primer is Manhattan
above Houston is almost a perfect grid. Broadway kind of
screws everything up, but you know, great street, but it's
just broadways.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Like I'm not following any rules, so I'm going to
confuse people.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
But aside from that, it's pretty very much a grid
of eleven numbered avenues that run north to south generally speaking.
Then you've got Lexington Park and Madison Avenues and then
two hundred and this was at the time numbered streets
running roughly east to west. And if you want to
get a little more granular than that, the southernmost street
(04:24):
in the East Villages East first, as you would imagine,
the northernmost is two hundred and twentieth Street as we
live in Breed today, and Enwood, well.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
That's on the island technically in Manhattan. If you're talking
about the borough, it goes up to two hundred and
twenty seventh I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Believe, right, And if you want to go through the Bronx,
you go all the way up to sixty three.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Man, that's crazy. You've got so many streets.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
That's so many streets.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
You've got it, two hundred and sixty three streets.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You've got an east and west signify, which says, and
this is sort of a dummies guy to getting around
New York for the first time. Too, if you broke
your smartphone, and you also don't want to walk around
just staring at your smartphone.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
The whole time, No, you're going to miss a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, So try and get a little intuitive feel, because
it's really easy to get around if you know this stuff.
East and west will signify whether you're in east or
west of Fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And then.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Here's a little trick too. Odd number street streets run west,
even numbers streets run east. So if you come out
of a subway and you and you know which way north, south, east,
and west are, then you will never do the thing
that I always do and walk in the wrong direction
trying to go up or down.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, because that's the thing, like, if you know what
direction you're facing, and you know where you're trying to
go and where you are right now, you can basically
make make your way anywhere in Manhattan above Houston Street.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, and if you're like me and you have no
idea ever what's north, south, east and west? And you know,
I had an easy time in LA because La has
the sun, well they have, they have that, but they
also have geographical landmarks that make it super easy to
tell which way north and like the Hollywood Sign and
(06:19):
the hills and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Is that real? Is the Hollywood Sign real?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Is it real?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So that makes a lot easier In New York when
I come out there are all those big tall buildings.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I never know. I can never come out and say like, well,
that's north.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
But if you know that stuff and you know that
the even numbered streets run east the odd ones run west,
then you can You won't walk in the wrong direction
for a block and then get there like I do
and go, oh, we should have gone the other way.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, because depending on what direction you're walking, if you're
walking north or south, going the wrong direction in a
block isn't that bad. But if you're going east or west,
it's real bad. We are very long blocks going east
to west. And that's all part of that Commissioner's plan
that was laid out in eighteen eleven. And on the
one hand, you know, we've kind of hit upon the
pros and the cons of it. That it's easy to
(07:12):
get around, which is really saying something because New York
is absolutely huge. But you could make it from one
end to the other without a map, just knowing that
it's on a grid and how the grid's laid out,
even roughly. But the problem is is it's on a grid,
and a grid is one of the least organic shapes around.
(07:33):
And because this grid stretches over almost all of Manhattan,
most of Manhattan, for sure, it's viewed by a lot
of people as kind of soulless and canyon esque because
you're just totally surrounded almost constantly by big, imposing buildings,
all at these right angles, which it feels like a
very built environment. And until Central Park came along, which
(07:56):
we did an episode on in what the eighteen fifties
or sixties, Yeah, like that was it.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
That was New York. There was nothing but that built environment.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I got a few more of my things, Oh, okay,
let's have them. But Manhattan's about thirteen and a half
miles long. And then so this grid makes sense. But
then once you get north of fifty ninth Street, you
start to get like Atlanta does, and a road will
just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta's very famous for that,
and people get very confused here.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Hey, it's very confusing also because the road will will
change names, but one of the names, Peachtree, will still
be there, but it's a totally different street, right, and
it does not help things.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So north of fifty ninth, avenues on the west side
change names, but avenues on the east side do not.
So eighth becomes Central Park, west ninth becomes Columbus Avenue,
tenth becomes Amsterdam Avenue, and eleventh becomes West End Avenue.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
What about Avenue of the Americas?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, that's six right or is that seventh?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Man, I thought I think it sixth. I think it's
might understanding. But that's really not a name change. That's
just that's something that tourists call it, right.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
I remember you making fun of me when I call
it that? Did I really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
It was really jarring.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And then to get people really confused between third and
fifth Avenue, there are three avenues instead of what you
would think would be one because Lexington Park and Madison
fall between those. Yeah, and then south of twenty third
you've got your lettered avenues ABC and D, which is
(09:35):
alphabet city.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
So you wouldn't need to ever pull out a map.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
You just have to stand in the middle of New
York and listen to the first like ten minutes of
this episode, and you'll find your way.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
No problem.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
All right, should we get into this? He said, people
don't like the grid. There are a lot of people.
I mean, what did Walt Whitman call it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Ikey? I think no, I think he.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Said he called it one perpetual dead flat.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, and streets cutting each other at right angles are
certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty
of situation.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
How about this one from Edith Wharton Rectangular New York.
This cramped horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, porticos, fountains,
or perspectives, hide bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, I like hide bound. That's great.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's a great word.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And mean ugliness definitely captures like a certain sense of
New York, depending on your mood or mindset, you know. Yeah,
there's one a guy named Peter Markhuse who's an architecture critic.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
He said that the grid layout.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Of Manhattan was one of the worst city plans of
any major city in the developed countries of the world.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Right, but some people love it. Some people said it
was pragmatic. Some people said it really accommodated for the
one thing it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Let me see here an architect named Raphael Vinoli, who's
I think a modern architect. Not modern, I just mean
current architect, right, but he may do modern.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Work, it knows.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
He said the grid is the best manifestation of americangmatism,
pragmatism in the creation of urban form. And then in
nineteen seventy eight, a Dutch architect named Rim Kool has
said that the grid was the most courageous act of
prediction in Western civilization.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Clearly talking about the growth.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes, but courageous act. That's like architect talk right that
right there. So, but for the most part, from what
I understand, and definitely Dave says the same thing, most
New Yorkers, especially born and raised New Yorkers, are not
happy that that's how their city is laid out. That
there's a lot of room for improvement. Yeah, your experience too, sure.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I mean Central Park is great. But you know, as
we'll find out, they did not. They didn't didn't really
plan for green spaces, and New York has done their
best to kind of carve them out since then. But
you know, let's get into this commission.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Well, let's talk about grids first.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Do you want to Yeah, all right, do you want
to take a break and then talk about the grid story?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So New York didn't invent the grid, as much as
they like to boast that they did, they did not.
In fact, a grid layout of a city goes back
to that Indus Valley civilization that for some reason keeps
popping up in the last like year or so. I
guess they're going to make a comeback or something like that,
but they've just been coming out all over the place.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
But one of the what was it, Chuck, was it?
Did they invent the zipper?
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I don't think it was a zipper?
Speaker 4 (13:11):
What was indigo?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (13:15):
There's been a number of them.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But anyway, about at least five thousand years ago, the
Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create
Mohan Joe Daro, which was a seven and fifty acre
city on a grid. And then shortly after that the
Greek said, I really like this. In fact, there's a
Greek thinker and mathematician named Hippodamus who's known as the
(13:41):
father of city planning, and he was bully for grids too.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, if you have a grid, that's still they people
still call that the Hippodamian plan, which is kind of
great all these years later to still get recognized for
your grid work.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, if you're ever talking to somebody and they refer
to a grid as a Hippodamian plan, that person knows
what they're talking.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
About, or listens to this show. It's one in the
same basically. And you were going to say that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Let me see, the conquistadors of Spain, they kind of
had a habit of coming in conquering and then having
their template in place to create these grids as what
they call the law of the Indies, and they would
sort of just come in setup shop. You got a
town with a big central plaza and then a grid
(14:29):
surrounding that central plaza.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right, and they use that for everything from Lima to
Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
And this took me back in my mind to.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
What was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala
that we visited.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It was wonderful, driving crazy, It really was wonderful. Is
one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in.
But it had like a central plaza with a fountain.
It was a much smaller town. But now that I
think about, it was laid out on a grid too,
And it was part of that law of the Indies
that you were mentioning that it was just like, this
is how you build a town. And apparently the reason
(15:10):
that they they used that law, like in town after
town after town that they just basically took over and
said this is ours now it's Spain's is applying a
grid was kind of a metaphor for applying order and
civilization to a formerly disordered and wild indigenous.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
You know town.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, which makes sense from a colonizer's perspective, but I'm
sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Like everything else.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, that's with this stupid right angle stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So New York City comes along. Philadelphia had been laid
out in a grid by William Penn very deliberately, though,
and that grid was kind of roomy and spacious, because
William Penn did not like the congestion of London. But again,
Philly very much purposeful too.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah. Boy, DC has has kind of a crazy grid.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, but once you understand it, it makes total sense.
Numbers and letters and directions. Yeah, I always, but it
takes a little more.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
It takes more getting used to than New York too,
from my experience and what I.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Understand, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So the Commissioner's Plan of eighteen eleven is really sort
of the demarcation point between what was first New York,
New Amsterdam and then what we now know is Manhattan.
Because anyone who's ever seen almost said Games of New York,
Gangs of New York knows that those were crazy days
(16:48):
down there in Lower Manhattan and things just sort of
sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as
the layout and the design, And you know, you can
still feel that when you go down to Lower Manhattan,
which is why I love the villages.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I think it's just I mean, I like the simplicity
of the grid, but I think what I love about
Lower Manhattan is how organic it feels.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It's a jumble, and I mean it's a jumble for
a reason, because those streets largely follow these original organic
paths that the Dutch settlers and earliest English settlers basically said, oh,
we need to get from the waterfront up to the
common lands or whatever. It's because here's a good path. Yeah,
and this path happens to meander around a salt marsh,
(17:35):
and we avoid having to go up a hill by going.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Around this way.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
So it's kind of like meandering, and it's it's definitely
locked in time from those streets down there in Lower Manhattan.
I like it too, but it is very easy to
be like, are you sure we're going the right direction? Still,
it's very easy to get lost in those because it
isn't at all a grid.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I've spent enough time in Lower Manhattan now to where
I can landmarket. It's just familiar enough to me to
where I kind of know, like this block in that block, right,
so I know where I'm going. And you mentioned something important.
I don't think we've even kind of said that New
York was not all this just big, one big flat
slab thirteen miles long that we love today because you
(18:18):
can walk forever without ever getting out of breath, because
it's not Seattle, right, New York was swamp land and
it had hills and marshes and creeks and rocks, and
it was you know, it was kind of wild East
Coast territory.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
And I mean the reason that those marshes and the
ponds and hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because
of this eighteen eleven commissioners Planet basically said tear it
all down, fill it all in, build this over it.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And they did. That's the most astounding thing is they
did that.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
They they you know, as we'll see, they passed a
law that basically said, we're going to appoint a commission
of three people. They're going to come up with three people,
and whatever they come.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Up with is law.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It can't be challenged in court, and we're not going
to back it up and change it in any way.
And they really didn't. As bad as the plan was
in almost every way, they really stuck to it. But
the thing that struck me, I had no idea about
this was that's the eighteen eleven Commissioner's plan was just
(19:24):
a ripoff of another earlier surveying map that basically provided
the basis of this of the Commissioner's plan, not even
the basis of it. They were like, oh, we'll take
this as a starting point. They just said, we'll take this,
print it and put our.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Names on it. And that's ultimately what happened.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So, pre Revolutionary War, most of Manhattan was in that
lower third of the island, and we got into big
time debt because of the Revolutionary War. And so the
city said in the seventeen eighties, all right, here's what
we got to do. We own tons of land, publicly land,
and all this marshy, kind of reedy, rocky pondy area.
(20:06):
It's not developed. Let's sell this stuff off and make
some dough. It's called the common Lands. And we need
somebody to get in there and just sort of, you know,
survey this and plot it all out so we know
exactly how to best sell this.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah, so they hired a guy named Casimir Theodore Girk.
That's how I'm going with this, Girk. Sure it's not
a cucumber, it's a girkin. Do you remember mister cabbagehead
from Kids in the Hall? Sure, well this had nothing
to do with that, right, right. So this, this surveyor
actually went through the common lands. Like, basically, what we
(20:43):
understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and North Harlem.
He just went across and broke it into five hundred
acre parcels. He had a sixty six foot chain on
his surveying poles, and so he said, well, I'll just
use that as the basic measurement for the widest streets.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Sixty six feet is what it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I think he said, five hundred acre parcels. Weren't they
five acre?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Oh yes, I'm sorry, this is a little bit of
a difference. They were five acre parcels. So that's even
more work. That's one hundred times more work than what
I described.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So he laid him out as a grid because he
wasn't like, this guy wasn't out to say here's how
Manhattan should be built.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Right right, this is the best way to promote the
future of growth in Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
No, that was not his charge.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
His charge was like, hey, let's just to buy this
stuff up and sell it. He had some interesting constraints.
They had to be five acres, they had to have
a central road that all of these could sort of
access like fairly easily. And then he had a survey chain.
It's crazy to think about. This was one of the
things that informed what is modern New York. His survey
(21:55):
chain was sixty six feet. So he said, all right,
that's how why the road.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Is exactly So, I think that was like the widest road,
the central access road. He called that one Middle and
now I believe that's Fifth Avenue is Middle what was
originally Middle Road back in seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, that's adorable.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So he carved this up, this place up into into
these plots that are two hundred feet on the east
and west boundaries of it, so going up and down,
running north south, but if you're on the plot, it
would be on the east side of the plot, in
the west side of the plot. If that was not
confusing before it is now. Yeah, and then across or
(22:38):
the width was nine hundred and twenty feet and that
was the Those were the plots. He said, here you go,
this is a there's a bunch of them up there.
But I've carved up all of these common lands and
you can start selling them if you want.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, did you mention the names of the other two roads?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna put two more
in of these sixty six feet wide roads, and he
had some very clever names for them.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
One was Middle, remember yeah. The one to the east
he named East, and the one to the west he
named west.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, which which makes sense if you're looking at it
from if you're on the Middle Road to the east
is the East road to the west of the West road.
But they run north south right, man, I hate directions.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And like you said that, it was fifth in the center,
so that's now fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
A right or fourth Avenue, fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And the avenue that are in America. You know, you're
really not supposed to say that. What a jerk. I
can't believe I said that.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
You didn't say it like that, and you just you
just made sure that you waited until the crowd had
gathered and really laid into me.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I think I remember it was that our first trip
to New York.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Probably, man, probably.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That's funny. We've been back a couple of times since
then as a team. Huh.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yeah, I know. I've got some really great memories of
New York.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I miss it.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Twenty two. We will see you again, Yes, we will.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
New York. Don't you work at.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Least I hope. So there are no guarantees, right.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
No, we will see New York again, all right, So do.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
We take another break? I feel like there's still a lot.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
There's still a lot. We should keep going for now,
I think, all right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So in eighteen oh seven, this is when the New
York State legislature said, you know what we need to like,
we're growing here. It's clear that this southern tip of
Manhattan is just the beginning. So they passed a bill
that they described as an Act of Relative, an Act
relative to improvements touching the laying out of the streets
(24:36):
and roads in the City of New York and for
other purposes.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Right, which made sense.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But like I said, this law they decided to just
vest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said, we're
going to follow whatever they come up with, whatever they
seems to them most conducive to public good. We're just
going to take on its face that it is most
conducive to public good and just go with it.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
That's crazy that it was just three people, and that
it wasn't like ten teams of three people submitting the
best designs that then would be gone over and voted
on like.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, took this. No one took it seriously weirdly enough,
very odd.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So who were these guys?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So there are three commissioners appointed. One was Governor Morris.
His first name was Governor. He was one of the
founding fathers. He wrote a lot of the Constitution, including
the preamble. Yeah, he had a peg leg. He lost
his leg in a carriage accident, although there's rumors that
it was something else. But he was known as a
Dave puts it, an energetic philanderer. But he was apparently
(25:42):
a very likable Benjamin Franklin esque kind of dude who
seemed to be fairly smart, but had really no understanding
of surveying as far as I can tell.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Then his nephew in law, John Rutherford. He was a
landowner in New Jersey, in fact, I think the largest
landowner in New Jersey at the time. And by all
accounts it looks like this was pure nepotism. He was
late for meetings, he was not especially interested, even to
the annoyance of Governor Morris.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
All the reasons to not exercise nepotism. This guy brought
to the table is one third of this commission, who's
figuring out how to lay out the plan for New
York City.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And then the third guy, Simon Lebon No, no, no,
Simeon DeWitt, excuse me. And this guy actually knew what
he was doing. He was a really very respected, accomplished surveyor,
worked with George Washington, I think eventually became the which
I didn't even know was a thing, was the official
(26:44):
surveyor for the Continental Army, and then the surveyor General
of New York State.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Right, So he knew what he was doing, which makes
his role all the more shameful that he didn't say like, oh, well,
we really got to we gotta get cracking. It's been
three years and we've got four year to do.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Maybe he did, though, who knows, he might have been
completely run over by these other two jumps.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Oh and he just got shouted down. I guess.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Well, at the very least.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Governor Morris was also one of the founding members of
the commission that created the Erie Canal, which was for
a very long time considered one of the greatest public
works projects in the history of America, certainly in the
history of New York State, and that kind of energy
and imagination and drive just did not make it to
this eighteen eleven Commission for the Planning of New York.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I wonder if he, I mean this sounds cynical, but
I wonder if he literally was, like, man, that Erie
Canal project really was a big bummer in how hard
we had to work, and let's just kind of, Hey,
look at these maps that this guy drew to sell
off New York.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Let's just use those.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So that's I mean, that's kind of what they did.
Like they had four years or they took four years.
I'm not sure how long they had, but they took
four years from eighteen oh seven to eighteen eleven to
turn in their report. Four years of meeting sporadically true,
but they still met. Over this four year period, they
(28:09):
came up within eleven page report to lay out these
thirteen miles in length, not even square miles of Manhattan,
these common lands, all the way from House and Street
up to North Harlem. They came up with eleven pages
to explain their map, and their map really made sense
as a grid. But again they stole the grid from
(28:31):
Kashmir Gork. I can't remember what I called them before, Girk.
I'm going with Gork now, okay, sure, but they didn't
give them any credit for it whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, I mean, I don't want to go so far
as to call it a tracing project. But you know,
they borrowed pretty heavily. Like the streets and the avenues
were basically the exact same when you know, earlier you
mentioned the blocks were two hundred by nine hundred and
twenty feet in Girk from Kirk, right, Yeah, this had
the exact same way out and that was no accident.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
No, and they were in virtually the same spot. They
did do some stuff, you know, they didn't just take
his map like you were saying and trace it and
call it their own. They made some changes to it.
They created instead of the three middle, east and West,
they created twelve avenues running north south and not true
(29:26):
north south, but just you know, for our purposes north
and south. And then they created one hundred and fifty
five numbered streets.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
What they added this stuff, but it's sort of just
copy paste kind of.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But the big thing is so adding the twelve numbered
avenues was definite change to the Girk's. Gorks never going
to say the same thing twice. But was it Yeah,
because he only had the three, I know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But he just had the three and they were like, well,
we need more, so let's just do what he did
all over the place.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Sure, sure, okay, all right, yeah, you know what I'm saying,
that's fair. Yeah, I'm they're these guys are definitely not
a hill I'm willing to die on, So say what
you will about I think they're lazy schmos too, all right.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
And then they took these they took these cross.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Streets that are formed by the surveying of these blocks
and turn them into numbered streets. So avenues running north south,
they were the big ones, one hundred and fifty five
numbered streets running east to west. They they widened the avenues.
They said they're going to be one hundred feet.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Why. I guess they had a longer survey.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
In the bigger chain, right, And then they widened some
of the cross streets. I guess ease congestion. I think
they widened fifteen of them total.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, they I think the other streets were sixty feet,
and then fifteen of them went to one hundred at fourteenth, twenty, third, thirty, fourth, forty, second,
fifty seven to seventy two, seventy nine, eighty six, ninety six,
one o six, one sixteen, one twenty fifth, one thirty fifth,
one forty fifth, and one fifty fifth.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Right, but why why those particular ones?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
It doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason because
if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride into
keeping them separated by ten cross streets until eighty sixth Street. Yeah,
so there's not really much rhyme or reason there.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
When they only did that for three of them.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Right of them, and then the.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Streets that they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make
much sense one way or the other. Like, for example,
seventy first Street was already fairly wide. It was definitely
wider than seventy second Street, but they decided to make
seventy second Street the widened the widen cross street rather
than seventy first, And apparently no one knows why. The
(31:41):
closest thing I could find is there's some record in
eighteen fifty seven of somebody having to remove a big
rock from seventy second Street to widen it. But that
doesn't even explain it. It makes sense because there was a
bunch of houses that had to be torn down to
make seventy second Street widen rather than seventy first, which
(32:01):
was already.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Wide and had almost no houses exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So these guys were just when you start to compile
all the evidence, we'll kind of pay more out. It
really seems like these guys didn't even go to the
common lands, that maybe they were just working from Girk's map,
or if they did go to the common Lands, they
took zero notes or paid zero attention, and that all
(32:26):
of this came from a place of laziness and ignorance,
like not knowing that seventy second was wider than seventy
first or vice versa would explain that decision more than
anything else.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, if the another example is if you've ever been
on the West Side and you feel like, man, these
avenues are big, it's because they are. The avenues on
the east side are spaced at six hundred and fifty
and six hundred and ten feet apart or six hundred
and ten feet apart, and on the west they are
all eight hundred feet apart for no reason.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Reason at all.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Again, it just it
seems like they just phone this in and what's even
more astounding is that New York's founding father said, Okay,
we're going to do exactly what you say without questioning it.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, and actually we kind of do have the reason
if you read closely, and we'll tell you the secret reason.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Right after this was that for a cliffhanger, it was great.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay
it all.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
All right, here's the real reason everyone, and it all
lies in this quote that is pulled from their commission report.
If it should be asked, why was the present plan
adopted in preference to any other? The answer is because
after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be
the best or in other more proper terms, attended with
(34:11):
the least inconvenience.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
And I think that's the magic phrase right there.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That last phrase attended with the least inconvenience. And Dave
rightfully says, what is obvious which is inconvenient for the
three commissioners.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, because their plan was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved.
Like there was from the people who were in charge
of like making this this like building this grid or
this plan, to the people who were already living in
places that were torn down. Yeah, forty percent of places
(34:50):
were torn down to adhere to this plan, this eighteen
to eleven commission plan. Yeah, that's crazy. And again when
you start to add all stuff up, it does seem
like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
And the fact that if that is true and they
just included that is kind of like a cheeky little joke.
You know, these guys are They're not necessarily burning in hell,
but they're probably in purgatory somewhere.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I also have a lot of respect for that kind
of laziness at times, So.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
The kind that makes fun of itself in public documents, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Just is that upfront about the fact, Like, you know what,
I didn't really want to work too hard on this, so.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Here's here it is, right.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
So, yeah, it was very inconvenient for everyone but them.
They did this because of the growth population they expected,
so it sort of made sense.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But they even got that wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
They were wrong by about half of what they thought
the growth rate was going to be.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, that's the thing is they were saying, like, Okay,
this is this affords enough population growth, afford a population
greater than any other this side of China.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Is how they put it.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So they clearly did have at least growth on their mind,
and that if you build on a grid, it affords
for the most growth.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
It's the easiest to build on.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Right angled structures are the easiest to build and settle
and live in. But the thing is is part of
that law, that eighteen oh seven law that established the commission,
charged them with creating public squares, although it said in
size and form and all that in number that the
Commissioners see fit. Unfortunately, the Commissioners didn't see fit to
(36:39):
make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green
spaces for mental health, I guess is what you would
call it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, And the reasoning is kind of kind of bs. Actually,
I'm not sure which one it was. I guess it
was Morris that I'm not going to read the whole quote,
but he basically we said, hey, listen, we don't have
the sin River or the Thames winding through the middle
of town. But what we do have are these two
wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan. And that's
(37:13):
enough because everyone's just going to go hang out the
river all the time, right, because it's beautiful and gorgeous
and you can swim in it, and the East River
and the Hudson River will forever be our green space.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Basically, Yeah, basically that was the city had enough. It
didn't need green spaces because of the East and the
Hudson rivers, and like in about forty years people were like, no,
we do we need to build Central Park.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, which was a savior because I think it says
here on their original plan, only five percent of the
grid was public green space, and two hundred and forty
of those four hundred acres was a parade ground.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yes, which I didn't know exactly where that was, so you.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
No, I'm not sure, I don't know. I mean, you know,
there's Washington Square Park, there's some cool kind of central
promenades and things like that, and then these you know,
New York's famous for these tiny little slivers of park
kind of all over the place, but they're small.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
They are very small, especially compared to the surrounding areas.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
For sure, in the buildings.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
That's why the highline was such a big deal.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, it was a big deal. And I remember not
quite grasping why. I know, I definitely do, because there's
just people need that. People need green space, they need nature,
they need to be like outside of a built environment,
even if it's a built natural environment, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, And Central Park is amazing and we love it,
but that's a long way if you're in southern Manhattan
to get up there.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Right right.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
But basically, these guys said, you don't need it, go
hang out at the hud center of the East River.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
It's so wonderful and lovely.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So there were a lot of people, like we said,
that were really unhappy with this. This was a huge
exercise of eminent domain. There were a lot of people
on these lands already. Remember Seneca Village that was destroyed
to create Central Park. They managed to survive the eighteen
(39:15):
eleven commission. I can't remember how long that was around,
but I want to say Seneca Village was around for
a good fifty years before it was leveled in the
eighteen fifties, so it would have been around on the
common lands during this time. But there were, like you said,
about thirty nine or forty percent of homeowners or established
(39:36):
buildings had to be torn down. They filled in ponds,
they filled in salt marshes, they completely altered the ecosystem
of stuff that could have been built around or incorporated
had they stopped and thought about how to do that.
They just leveled everything and built a grid over it.
And so a lot of people were really really unhappy
about us, and they were particularly unhappy that the city
(40:00):
the administration was just sticking to this no matter what.
And there were a lot of lawsuits in all of them,
from what I understand, were unsuccessful.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Oh yeah, for about sixty years, there were tons of
lawsuits going on. And I know you said it was
a big eminent Domain Act, but it was I think
still the largest act of eminent domain in New York City. Yeah,
and that includes Central Park and the how they get
their water, which was another good episode.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, because I mean Central Park was huge, but it's
just a small sliver of this larger area.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
This one quote from landowner Clement Clark Moore. He published
a pamphlet about the Tyrannical Commissioner's plan, and in it
it says this nothing is to be left unmolested, which
does not coincide with the street Commissioner's plummet and level.
These are men who would have cut down the Seven
Hills of Rome.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Burn big time yeap, So it didn't matter, though.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
It really didn't matter.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
They just went ahead with it blindly and thoughtlessly and
did and again like it did accommodate growth, although they
underestimated the growth. But it took a little while for
this stuff to fill up. This plan was delivered in
eighteen eleven, but it wasn't until eighteen seventy five that
enough people had started to move in that there were
(41:22):
more New Yorkers living above fourteenth Street than there were
living below it. Because remember, I mean, Lower Manhattan was
where it all began, so that I mean it took
a little while to fill in, and it didn't even
necessarily fill in uniformly. By that same year, in eighteen
seventy five, there were still forty thousand vacant lots left
(41:44):
in this grid plan, and that was like about half
of the space.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, I love that fact. That's good. Dave has some
nice facts here. At the end.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Eighteen sixty nine, the very first apartment build in New
York was built, called the Stivesant and they called them
I don't even think they called them apartments at the time.
It was called a French flat or a French house.
But prior to that it was you know, tenement houses
and houses, and so the Stuve is Ant is built
(42:14):
and everyone thinks it's silly that anyone would want to
live in the same building as other people, and they
called it stuives Ant's folly, but that it was at
one hundred and forty two East eighteenth between Irving Place
and Third and it was a huge hit, Like people
made fun of it in the newspapers, but people signed
(42:37):
up to live there almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
It filled up.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
It was demoed and replaced in nineteen sixty, so this
is eighteen sixty nine. Very it didn't take long though.
In eighteen eighty four the Dakota was built, which still
stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came into fashion,
I think probably due just stuive's Ant's folly.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah I will yeah, I mean it went over so
well and so quickly that it really opened the way for.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
More and more to be built.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So one thing that people point to is this Commissioner's
plan of eighteen to eleven is just like that same
principle or the same significance that the Spanish coming in
and imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow
taming the wild or the organic.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Or something like that. There's a This is the turning
point between kind of unplanned, organic, much more harmonious, naturally
New York and the planned modern New York that we
know and love today.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
This is where it went from one to the other,
almost like flipping a switch. And granted, for it took
decades and decades to realize this plan, but when it
was delivered and when it was adopted, that was that
was it. That change happened and the transition began.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
What else is there for New York?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
I mean, we figure we got water, we got the
subways covered, We've got Central Park, We've got this.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Yeah, yeah, let's see, there.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Can't be much else as far as just the bones
of Oh I know what I want to do is
maybe how that how the mail and the trash work?
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Okay, all right, yeah, we did the rockets once even too.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
I mean we've done a lot of New York topics,
it's true.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Or maybe we should move to a different city. Let's
start talking about des Moines.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Holy cow, dude, it almost simultaneously came out of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Des moines.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Yes, it's so weird. It is weird. It's in the zeitgeist.
Apparently you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Okay, Well, if you want to know more about New
York to start reading and then eventually travel there. They'll
give you the all clear when they're And since I
said that, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Hey guys, my sixteen year old son Owen is probs
your biggest fan for real. He also has narcolepsy. I
appreciate you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding
of it to the masses. He was diagnosing his ten
and it affects every single aspect of his life. I
think it has made him wise beyond his years personally
and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
But it still sucks.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
If you ever want to read or hear first hand
accounts from people with narcolepsy, check out Julie flygare That
is f l y g a r E or flygare A.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I'm not sure how would you say that?
Speaker 4 (45:43):
Oh? I like the one with flavor of the second one.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Who is doing all kinds of advocacy for people with narcolepsy,
including a scholarship foundation. She founded projects Sleep and Voices
of Narcolepsy. She also read a great book about her
experiences with being diagnosed during law school called Wide Awake
and Dreaming. When Owen received his diagnosis, I reached out
to her for help. She sent own a care package
with a book, a T shirt, wristbands, a very kind card, etc.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
To let him know that he's not alone. That is
very sweet, it is.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I think she deserves an award for the work she's
doing anyway, A great resource for sure.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Thanks for the work that you do. I mean, could
we get an award?
Speaker 4 (46:24):
You know we've won a Webby before.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
I think, well that's true. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes and often it's
really important and educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of
your biggest fan. And that is from Brooke.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Thanks Brooke, and thanks Owen for listening. It's really good
to hear from you, guys. And I feel like we
should send Owen something too. Sure, let's do it, Chuck, we'll.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Figure it out, all right. We can't be shown up
by this flygawary person.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
No no, no, send us your physical address and we'll
mail you.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Something that's right and in the meantime, thanks for listening,
and thanks for being a fan, and thank you for listening,
and thank you for being a fan. Tune and if
you want to get in touch with us, like Brook did,
you can send us an email, wrap it up, spanking
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, everybody.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
It is on our COVID timeline June eighteenth, twenty twenty,
and I am here to introduce the episode on the
Manhattan Grid. I loved, loved this episode, I think, as
most people know by now, I in particular, am pretty
obsessed with not just New York, like I love New
York as a town, but the inner workings of New
(00:22):
York and the garbage collection and the mail delivery and
building that city up from the ground up, which is
what this episode relates to, is how they laid out
that Manhattan grid. And here's one thing I remember from it,
and here's a fun tip if you're traveling to New York.
They use spikes in the ground, I think iron spikes
to map out that grid, and you'll learn that in
(00:43):
this episode to follow. You know, so they knew where
the streets and the street corners would meet up in
that big rectangle, and to this day you can still
find some of those. The only place I know about them,
I'm not sure if they're on the streets anymore at all.
It seems highly unlikely, but I know you can find
them for a fact in Central Park here and there
(01:04):
in the rocks, those big giant boulders there because I
learned about these and when I was in New York
sometime between June eighteenth, twenty twenty when we released this and
now I can't remember.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
I feel like it's a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
I saw one of those spikes, and I think I
talked about that on a later episode, but it thrilled
me to no end, and I geeked out and told
everybody I was with what that was and what it represented,
and it was a real thrill for me. No lie,
just a spike in the rock. Thought it was super cool.
So check this episode out on the Manhattan Grid. Welcome
(01:39):
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and this is Stuff you
Should Know another in our Endless Annals of New York
City edition.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
This is a pretty interesting episode, I think, And my
favorite part about it this was Dave ruse Are, one
of our writers, helped put this together.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
And Dave is clearly annoyed.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah about this whole thing, and I think it's hysterical
how many times he gets annoyed by the laziness of
the commission.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
I have to say I agreed with Dave too. I
was annoyed by it as well. I think, Yeah, it's
always annoying when you see somebody like have a great
opportunity and just pee it away, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, And we should also point out Dave got a
lot of his information from a really wonderful book called
City on a Grid colon How New York Became New
York by Gerald Keppel.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
Not Gerald McCraney. Different Jerald, right, or is it Copple?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
I think it's Kepel.
Speaker 4 (02:57):
If it's Koe That's what I was going with, was Keppel.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Yeah, I'm going to get this book though.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
This is right at Malley because you know, I'm obsessed
with the history and the sort of formation of New
York City as we know it today.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
Yeah, where'd you get the idea for this episode?
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Just my constant desire to learn about Mannahatta and how
that became eventually Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
That we know and love. Okay, I'm just fascinated by it.
I love it. I love everything about it.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
This is definitely a big chapter because what we're talking
about is the plan called the Commissioner's plan of eighteen
eleven that basically laid out Manhattan as we know and
understand and love it today. Everything north of Houston Street,
I should say.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Yeah, And here's sort of a quick primer is Manhattan
above Houston is almost a perfect grid. Broadway kind of
screws everything up, but you know, great street, but it's
just broadways.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
Like I'm not following any rules, so I'm going to
confuse people.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
But aside from that, it's pretty very much a grid
of eleven numbered avenues that run north to south generally speaking.
Then you've got Lexington Park and Madison Avenues and then
two hundred and this was at the time numbered streets
running roughly east to west. And if you want to
get a little more granular than that, the southernmost street
(04:24):
in the East Villages East first, as you would imagine,
the northernmost is two hundred and twentieth Street as we
live in Breed today, and Enwood, well.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
That's on the island technically in Manhattan. If you're talking
about the borough, it goes up to two hundred and
twenty seventh I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Believe, right, And if you want to go through the Bronx,
you go all the way up to sixty three.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
Man, that's crazy. You've got so many streets.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
That's so many streets.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
You've got it, two hundred and sixty three streets.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
You've got an east and west signify, which says, and
this is sort of a dummies guy to getting around
New York for the first time. Too, if you broke
your smartphone, and you also don't want to walk around
just staring at your smartphone.
Speaker 4 (05:10):
The whole time, No, you're going to miss a lot.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
Yeah, So try and get a little intuitive feel, because
it's really easy to get around if you know this stuff.
East and west will signify whether you're in east or
west of Fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
And then.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Here's a little trick too. Odd number street streets run west,
even numbers streets run east. So if you come out
of a subway and you and you know which way north, south, east,
and west are, then you will never do the thing
that I always do and walk in the wrong direction
trying to go up or down.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, because that's the thing, like, if you know what
direction you're facing, and you know where you're trying to
go and where you are right now, you can basically
make make your way anywhere in Manhattan above Houston Street.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, and if you're like me and you have no
idea ever what's north, south, east and west? And you know,
I had an easy time in LA because La has
the sun, well they have, they have that, but they
also have geographical landmarks that make it super easy to
tell which way north and like the Hollywood Sign and
(06:19):
the hills and stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
Is that real? Is the Hollywood Sign real?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What do you mean?
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Is it real?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (06:29):
So that makes a lot easier In New York when
I come out there are all those big tall buildings.
Speaker 1 (06:32):
I never know. I can never come out and say like, well,
that's north.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
But if you know that stuff and you know that
the even numbered streets run east the odd ones run west,
then you can You won't walk in the wrong direction
for a block and then get there like I do
and go, oh, we should have gone the other way.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Yeah, because depending on what direction you're walking, if you're
walking north or south, going the wrong direction in a
block isn't that bad. But if you're going east or west,
it's real bad. We are very long blocks going east
to west. And that's all part of that Commissioner's plan
that was laid out in eighteen eleven. And on the
one hand, you know, we've kind of hit upon the
pros and the cons of it. That it's easy to
(07:12):
get around, which is really saying something because New York
is absolutely huge. But you could make it from one
end to the other without a map, just knowing that
it's on a grid and how the grid's laid out,
even roughly. But the problem is is it's on a grid,
and a grid is one of the least organic shapes around.
(07:33):
And because this grid stretches over almost all of Manhattan,
most of Manhattan, for sure, it's viewed by a lot
of people as kind of soulless and canyon esque because
you're just totally surrounded almost constantly by big, imposing buildings,
all at these right angles, which it feels like a
very built environment. And until Central Park came along, which
(07:56):
we did an episode on in what the eighteen fifties
or sixties, Yeah, like that was it.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
That was New York. There was nothing but that built environment.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
I got a few more of my things, Oh, okay,
let's have them. But Manhattan's about thirteen and a half
miles long. And then so this grid makes sense. But
then once you get north of fifty ninth Street, you
start to get like Atlanta does, and a road will
just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta's very famous for that,
and people get very confused here.
Speaker 3 (08:25):
Hey, it's very confusing also because the road will will
change names, but one of the names, Peachtree, will still
be there, but it's a totally different street, right, and
it does not help things.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
So north of fifty ninth, avenues on the west side
change names, but avenues on the east side do not.
So eighth becomes Central Park, west ninth becomes Columbus Avenue,
tenth becomes Amsterdam Avenue, and eleventh becomes West End Avenue.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
What about Avenue of the Americas?
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Well, that's six right or is that seventh?
Speaker 4 (08:58):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (08:58):
Man, I thought I think it sixth. I think it's
might understanding. But that's really not a name change. That's
just that's something that tourists call it, right.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
I remember you making fun of me when I call
it that? Did I really? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (09:11):
That sounds about right.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
It was really jarring.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
And then to get people really confused between third and
fifth Avenue, there are three avenues instead of what you
would think would be one because Lexington Park and Madison
fall between those. Yeah, and then south of twenty third
you've got your lettered avenues ABC and D, which is
(09:35):
alphabet city.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
So you wouldn't need to ever pull out a map.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
You just have to stand in the middle of New
York and listen to the first like ten minutes of
this episode, and you'll find your way.
Speaker 4 (09:44):
No problem.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
All right, should we get into this? He said, people
don't like the grid. There are a lot of people.
I mean, what did Walt Whitman call it.
Speaker 4 (09:56):
Ikey? I think no, I think he.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
Said he called it one perpetual dead flat.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
Yeah, and streets cutting each other at right angles are
certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty
of situation.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
How about this one from Edith Wharton Rectangular New York.
This cramped horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, porticos, fountains,
or perspectives, hide bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Yeah, I like hide bound. That's great.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
That's a great word.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
And mean ugliness definitely captures like a certain sense of
New York, depending on your mood or mindset, you know. Yeah,
there's one a guy named Peter Markhuse who's an architecture critic.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
He said that the grid layout.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Of Manhattan was one of the worst city plans of
any major city in the developed countries of the world.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Right, but some people love it. Some people said it
was pragmatic. Some people said it really accommodated for the
one thing it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
Right.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Let me see here an architect named Raphael Vinoli, who's
I think a modern architect. Not modern, I just mean
current architect, right, but he may do modern.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Work, it knows.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
He said the grid is the best manifestation of americangmatism,
pragmatism in the creation of urban form. And then in
nineteen seventy eight, a Dutch architect named Rim Kool has
said that the grid was the most courageous act of
prediction in Western civilization.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Clearly talking about the growth.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes, but courageous act. That's like architect talk right that
right there. So, but for the most part, from what
I understand, and definitely Dave says the same thing, most
New Yorkers, especially born and raised New Yorkers, are not
happy that that's how their city is laid out. That
there's a lot of room for improvement. Yeah, your experience too, sure.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
I mean Central Park is great. But you know, as
we'll find out, they did not. They didn't didn't really
plan for green spaces, and New York has done their
best to kind of carve them out since then. But
you know, let's get into this commission.
Speaker 4 (12:13):
Well, let's talk about grids first.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Do you want to Yeah, all right, do you want
to take a break and then talk about the grid story?
Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (12:42):
So New York didn't invent the grid, as much as
they like to boast that they did, they did not.
In fact, a grid layout of a city goes back
to that Indus Valley civilization that for some reason keeps
popping up in the last like year or so. I
guess they're going to make a comeback or something like that,
but they've just been coming out all over the place.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
But one of the what was it, Chuck, was it?
Did they invent the zipper?
Speaker 1 (13:10):
I don't think it was a zipper?
Speaker 4 (13:11):
What was indigo?
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Uh?
Speaker 4 (13:15):
There's been a number of them.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
But anyway, about at least five thousand years ago, the
Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create
Mohan Joe Daro, which was a seven and fifty acre
city on a grid. And then shortly after that the
Greek said, I really like this. In fact, there's a
Greek thinker and mathematician named Hippodamus who's known as the
(13:41):
father of city planning, and he was bully for grids too.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, if you have a grid, that's still they people
still call that the Hippodamian plan, which is kind of
great all these years later to still get recognized for
your grid work.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, if you're ever talking to somebody and they refer
to a grid as a Hippodamian plan, that person knows
what they're talking.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
About, or listens to this show. It's one in the
same basically. And you were going to say that.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Let me see, the conquistadors of Spain, they kind of
had a habit of coming in conquering and then having
their template in place to create these grids as what
they call the law of the Indies, and they would
sort of just come in setup shop. You got a
town with a big central plaza and then a grid
(14:29):
surrounding that central plaza.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Right, and they use that for everything from Lima to
Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
And this took me back in my mind to.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
What was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala
that we visited.
Speaker 1 (14:46):
Oh yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
It was wonderful, driving crazy, It really was wonderful. Is
one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in.
But it had like a central plaza with a fountain.
It was a much smaller town. But now that I
think about, it was laid out on a grid too,
And it was part of that law of the Indies
that you were mentioning that it was just like, this
is how you build a town. And apparently the reason
(15:10):
that they they used that law, like in town after
town after town that they just basically took over and
said this is ours now it's Spain's is applying a
grid was kind of a metaphor for applying order and
civilization to a formerly disordered and wild indigenous.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
You know town.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, which makes sense from a colonizer's perspective, but I'm
sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Like everything else.
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, that's with this stupid right angle stuff.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
So New York City comes along. Philadelphia had been laid
out in a grid by William Penn very deliberately, though,
and that grid was kind of roomy and spacious, because
William Penn did not like the congestion of London. But again,
Philly very much purposeful too.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
Yeah. Boy, DC has has kind of a crazy grid.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
Yeah, but once you understand it, it makes total sense.
Numbers and letters and directions. Yeah, I always, but it
takes a little more.
Speaker 4 (16:21):
It takes more getting used to than New York too,
from my experience and what I.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Understand, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So the Commissioner's Plan of eighteen eleven is really sort
of the demarcation point between what was first New York,
New Amsterdam and then what we now know is Manhattan.
Because anyone who's ever seen almost said Games of New York,
Gangs of New York knows that those were crazy days
(16:48):
down there in Lower Manhattan and things just sort of
sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as
the layout and the design, And you know, you can
still feel that when you go down to Lower Manhattan,
which is why I love the villages.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Now.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
I think it's just I mean, I like the simplicity
of the grid, but I think what I love about
Lower Manhattan is how organic it feels.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
It's a jumble, and I mean it's a jumble for
a reason, because those streets largely follow these original organic
paths that the Dutch settlers and earliest English settlers basically said, oh,
we need to get from the waterfront up to the
common lands or whatever. It's because here's a good path. Yeah,
and this path happens to meander around a salt marsh,
(17:35):
and we avoid having to go up a hill by going.
Speaker 4 (17:38):
Around this way.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
So it's kind of like meandering, and it's it's definitely
locked in time from those streets down there in Lower Manhattan.
I like it too, but it is very easy to
be like, are you sure we're going the right direction? Still,
it's very easy to get lost in those because it
isn't at all a grid.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
I've spent enough time in Lower Manhattan now to where
I can landmarket. It's just familiar enough to me to
where I kind of know, like this block in that block, right,
so I know where I'm going. And you mentioned something important.
I don't think we've even kind of said that New
York was not all this just big, one big flat
slab thirteen miles long that we love today because you
(18:18):
can walk forever without ever getting out of breath, because
it's not Seattle, right, New York was swamp land and
it had hills and marshes and creeks and rocks, and
it was you know, it was kind of wild East
Coast territory.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
And I mean the reason that those marshes and the
ponds and hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because
of this eighteen eleven commissioners Planet basically said tear it
all down, fill it all in, build this over it.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
And they did. That's the most astounding thing is they
did that.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
They they you know, as we'll see, they passed a
law that basically said, we're going to appoint a commission
of three people. They're going to come up with three people,
and whatever they come.
Speaker 4 (19:01):
Up with is law.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
It can't be challenged in court, and we're not going
to back it up and change it in any way.
And they really didn't. As bad as the plan was
in almost every way, they really stuck to it. But
the thing that struck me, I had no idea about
this was that's the eighteen eleven Commissioner's plan was just
(19:24):
a ripoff of another earlier surveying map that basically provided
the basis of this of the Commissioner's plan, not even
the basis of it. They were like, oh, we'll take
this as a starting point. They just said, we'll take this,
print it and put our.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Names on it. And that's ultimately what happened.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
So, pre Revolutionary War, most of Manhattan was in that
lower third of the island, and we got into big
time debt because of the Revolutionary War. And so the
city said in the seventeen eighties, all right, here's what
we got to do. We own tons of land, publicly land,
and all this marshy, kind of reedy, rocky pondy area.
(20:06):
It's not developed. Let's sell this stuff off and make
some dough. It's called the common Lands. And we need
somebody to get in there and just sort of, you know,
survey this and plot it all out so we know
exactly how to best sell this.
Speaker 3 (20:20):
Yeah, so they hired a guy named Casimir Theodore Girk.
That's how I'm going with this, Girk. Sure it's not
a cucumber, it's a girkin. Do you remember mister cabbagehead
from Kids in the Hall? Sure, well this had nothing
to do with that, right, right. So this, this surveyor
actually went through the common lands. Like, basically, what we
(20:43):
understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and North Harlem.
He just went across and broke it into five hundred
acre parcels. He had a sixty six foot chain on
his surveying poles, and so he said, well, I'll just
use that as the basic measurement for the widest streets.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
Sixty six feet is what it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
I think he said, five hundred acre parcels. Weren't they
five acre?
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Oh yes, I'm sorry, this is a little bit of
a difference. They were five acre parcels. So that's even
more work. That's one hundred times more work than what
I described.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
So he laid him out as a grid because he
wasn't like, this guy wasn't out to say here's how
Manhattan should be built.
Speaker 3 (21:28):
Right right, this is the best way to promote the
future of growth in Manhattan.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
No, that was not his charge.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
His charge was like, hey, let's just to buy this
stuff up and sell it. He had some interesting constraints.
They had to be five acres, they had to have
a central road that all of these could sort of
access like fairly easily. And then he had a survey chain.
It's crazy to think about. This was one of the
things that informed what is modern New York. His survey
(21:55):
chain was sixty six feet. So he said, all right,
that's how why the road.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Is exactly So, I think that was like the widest road,
the central access road. He called that one Middle and
now I believe that's Fifth Avenue is Middle what was
originally Middle Road back in seventeen ninety six.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah, that's adorable.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
So he carved this up, this place up into into
these plots that are two hundred feet on the east
and west boundaries of it, so going up and down,
running north south, but if you're on the plot, it
would be on the east side of the plot, in
the west side of the plot. If that was not
confusing before it is now. Yeah, and then across or
(22:38):
the width was nine hundred and twenty feet and that
was the Those were the plots. He said, here you go,
this is a there's a bunch of them up there.
But I've carved up all of these common lands and
you can start selling them if you want.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, did you mention the names of the other two roads?
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Yeah, he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna put two more
in of these sixty six feet wide roads, and he
had some very clever names for them.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:00):
One was Middle, remember yeah. The one to the east
he named East, and the one to the west he
named west.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
Yeah, which which makes sense if you're looking at it
from if you're on the Middle Road to the east
is the East road to the west of the West road.
But they run north south right, man, I hate directions.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
And like you said that, it was fifth in the center,
so that's now fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
A right or fourth Avenue, fifth Avenue.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
And the avenue that are in America. You know, you're
really not supposed to say that. What a jerk. I
can't believe I said that.
Speaker 3 (23:37):
You didn't say it like that, and you just you
just made sure that you waited until the crowd had
gathered and really laid into me.
Speaker 1 (23:44):
I think I remember it was that our first trip
to New York.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
Probably, man, probably.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
That's funny. We've been back a couple of times since
then as a team. Huh.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
Yeah, I know. I've got some really great memories of
New York.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I miss it.
Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah, it's been a while.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
Twenty two. We will see you again, Yes, we will.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
New York. Don't you work at.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
Least I hope. So there are no guarantees, right.
Speaker 4 (24:06):
No, we will see New York again, all right, So do.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
We take another break? I feel like there's still a lot.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
There's still a lot. We should keep going for now,
I think, all right.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
So in eighteen oh seven, this is when the New
York State legislature said, you know what we need to like,
we're growing here. It's clear that this southern tip of
Manhattan is just the beginning. So they passed a bill
that they described as an Act of Relative, an Act
relative to improvements touching the laying out of the streets
(24:36):
and roads in the City of New York and for
other purposes.
Speaker 4 (24:39):
Right, which made sense.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
But like I said, this law they decided to just
vest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said, we're
going to follow whatever they come up with, whatever they
seems to them most conducive to public good. We're just
going to take on its face that it is most
conducive to public good and just go with it.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
That's crazy that it was just three people, and that
it wasn't like ten teams of three people submitting the
best designs that then would be gone over and voted
on like.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, took this. No one took it seriously weirdly enough,
very odd.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
So who were these guys?
Speaker 3 (25:17):
So there are three commissioners appointed. One was Governor Morris.
His first name was Governor. He was one of the
founding fathers. He wrote a lot of the Constitution, including
the preamble. Yeah, he had a peg leg. He lost
his leg in a carriage accident, although there's rumors that
it was something else. But he was known as a
Dave puts it, an energetic philanderer. But he was apparently
(25:42):
a very likable Benjamin Franklin esque kind of dude who
seemed to be fairly smart, but had really no understanding
of surveying as far as I can tell.
Speaker 4 (25:54):
No.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Then his nephew in law, John Rutherford. He was a
landowner in New Jersey, in fact, I think the largest
landowner in New Jersey at the time. And by all
accounts it looks like this was pure nepotism. He was
late for meetings, he was not especially interested, even to
the annoyance of Governor Morris.
Speaker 3 (26:13):
All the reasons to not exercise nepotism. This guy brought
to the table is one third of this commission, who's
figuring out how to lay out the plan for New
York City.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
And then the third guy, Simon Lebon No, no, no,
Simeon DeWitt, excuse me. And this guy actually knew what
he was doing. He was a really very respected, accomplished surveyor,
worked with George Washington, I think eventually became the which
I didn't even know was a thing, was the official
(26:44):
surveyor for the Continental Army, and then the surveyor General
of New York State.
Speaker 3 (26:49):
Right, So he knew what he was doing, which makes
his role all the more shameful that he didn't say like, oh, well,
we really got to we gotta get cracking. It's been
three years and we've got four year to do.
Speaker 2 (27:00):
Maybe he did, though, who knows, he might have been
completely run over by these other two jumps.
Speaker 4 (27:04):
Oh and he just got shouted down. I guess.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I don't know.
Speaker 4 (27:07):
Well, at the very least.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
Governor Morris was also one of the founding members of
the commission that created the Erie Canal, which was for
a very long time considered one of the greatest public
works projects in the history of America, certainly in the
history of New York State, and that kind of energy
and imagination and drive just did not make it to
this eighteen eleven Commission for the Planning of New York.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
I wonder if he, I mean this sounds cynical, but
I wonder if he literally was, like, man, that Erie
Canal project really was a big bummer in how hard
we had to work, and let's just kind of, Hey,
look at these maps that this guy drew to sell
off New York.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Let's just use those.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
So that's I mean, that's kind of what they did.
Like they had four years or they took four years.
I'm not sure how long they had, but they took
four years from eighteen oh seven to eighteen eleven to
turn in their report. Four years of meeting sporadically true,
but they still met. Over this four year period, they
(28:09):
came up within eleven page report to lay out these
thirteen miles in length, not even square miles of Manhattan,
these common lands, all the way from House and Street
up to North Harlem. They came up with eleven pages
to explain their map, and their map really made sense
as a grid. But again they stole the grid from
(28:31):
Kashmir Gork. I can't remember what I called them before, Girk.
I'm going with Gork now, okay, sure, but they didn't
give them any credit for it whatsoever.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
No, I mean, I don't want to go so far
as to call it a tracing project. But you know,
they borrowed pretty heavily. Like the streets and the avenues
were basically the exact same when you know, earlier you
mentioned the blocks were two hundred by nine hundred and
twenty feet in Girk from Kirk, right, Yeah, this had
the exact same way out and that was no accident.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
No, and they were in virtually the same spot. They
did do some stuff, you know, they didn't just take
his map like you were saying and trace it and
call it their own. They made some changes to it.
They created instead of the three middle, east and West,
they created twelve avenues running north south and not true
(29:26):
north south, but just you know, for our purposes north
and south. And then they created one hundred and fifty
five numbered streets.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
What they added this stuff, but it's sort of just
copy paste kind of.
Speaker 3 (29:39):
But the big thing is so adding the twelve numbered
avenues was definite change to the Girk's. Gorks never going
to say the same thing twice. But was it Yeah,
because he only had the three, I know.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
But he just had the three and they were like, well,
we need more, so let's just do what he did
all over the place.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Sure, sure, okay, all right, yeah, you know what I'm saying,
that's fair. Yeah, I'm they're these guys are definitely not
a hill I'm willing to die on, So say what
you will about I think they're lazy schmos too, all right.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
And then they took these they took these cross.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Streets that are formed by the surveying of these blocks
and turn them into numbered streets. So avenues running north south,
they were the big ones, one hundred and fifty five
numbered streets running east to west. They they widened the avenues.
They said they're going to be one hundred feet.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Why. I guess they had a longer survey.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
In the bigger chain, right, And then they widened some
of the cross streets. I guess ease congestion. I think
they widened fifteen of them total.
Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah, they I think the other streets were sixty feet,
and then fifteen of them went to one hundred at fourteenth, twenty, third, thirty, fourth, forty, second,
fifty seven to seventy two, seventy nine, eighty six, ninety six,
one o six, one sixteen, one twenty fifth, one thirty fifth,
one forty fifth, and one fifty fifth.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
Right, but why why those particular ones?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
It doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason because
if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride into
keeping them separated by ten cross streets until eighty sixth Street. Yeah,
so there's not really much rhyme or reason there.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
When they only did that for three of them.
Speaker 4 (31:15):
Right of them, and then the.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
Streets that they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make
much sense one way or the other. Like, for example,
seventy first Street was already fairly wide. It was definitely
wider than seventy second Street, but they decided to make
seventy second Street the widened the widen cross street rather
than seventy first, And apparently no one knows why. The
(31:41):
closest thing I could find is there's some record in
eighteen fifty seven of somebody having to remove a big
rock from seventy second Street to widen it. But that
doesn't even explain it. It makes sense because there was a
bunch of houses that had to be torn down to
make seventy second Street widen rather than seventy first, which
(32:01):
was already.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
Wide and had almost no houses exactly.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
So these guys were just when you start to compile
all the evidence, we'll kind of pay more out. It
really seems like these guys didn't even go to the
common lands, that maybe they were just working from Girk's map,
or if they did go to the common Lands, they
took zero notes or paid zero attention, and that all
(32:26):
of this came from a place of laziness and ignorance,
like not knowing that seventy second was wider than seventy
first or vice versa would explain that decision more than
anything else.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Yeah, if the another example is if you've ever been
on the West Side and you feel like, man, these
avenues are big, it's because they are. The avenues on
the east side are spaced at six hundred and fifty
and six hundred and ten feet apart or six hundred
and ten feet apart, and on the west they are
all eight hundred feet apart for no reason.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Reason at all.
Speaker 3 (33:00):
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Again, it just it
seems like they just phone this in and what's even
more astounding is that New York's founding father said, Okay,
we're going to do exactly what you say without questioning it.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah, and actually we kind of do have the reason
if you read closely, and we'll tell you the secret reason.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
Right after this was that for a cliffhanger, it was great.
Speaker 4 (33:43):
I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay
it all.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
All right, here's the real reason everyone, and it all
lies in this quote that is pulled from their commission report.
If it should be asked, why was the present plan
adopted in preference to any other? The answer is because
after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be
the best or in other more proper terms, attended with
(34:11):
the least inconvenience.
Speaker 4 (34:13):
And I think that's the magic phrase right there.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That last phrase attended with the least inconvenience. And Dave
rightfully says, what is obvious which is inconvenient for the
three commissioners.
Speaker 3 (34:28):
Yeah, because their plan was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved.
Like there was from the people who were in charge
of like making this this like building this grid or
this plan, to the people who were already living in
places that were torn down. Yeah, forty percent of places
(34:50):
were torn down to adhere to this plan, this eighteen
to eleven commission plan. Yeah, that's crazy. And again when
you start to add all stuff up, it does seem
like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
And the fact that if that is true and they
just included that is kind of like a cheeky little joke.
You know, these guys are They're not necessarily burning in hell,
but they're probably in purgatory somewhere.
Speaker 1 (35:19):
I also have a lot of respect for that kind
of laziness at times, So.
Speaker 4 (35:22):
The kind that makes fun of itself in public documents, Well.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Just is that upfront about the fact, Like, you know what,
I didn't really want to work too hard on this, so.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
Here's here it is, right.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
So, yeah, it was very inconvenient for everyone but them.
They did this because of the growth population they expected,
so it sort of made sense.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
But they even got that wrong.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
They were wrong by about half of what they thought
the growth rate was going to be.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
Yeah, that's the thing is they were saying, like, Okay,
this is this affords enough population growth, afford a population
greater than any other this side of China.
Speaker 4 (36:03):
Is how they put it.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
So they clearly did have at least growth on their mind,
and that if you build on a grid, it affords
for the most growth.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
It's the easiest to build on.
Speaker 3 (36:15):
Right angled structures are the easiest to build and settle
and live in. But the thing is is part of
that law, that eighteen oh seven law that established the commission,
charged them with creating public squares, although it said in
size and form and all that in number that the
Commissioners see fit. Unfortunately, the Commissioners didn't see fit to
(36:39):
make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green
spaces for mental health, I guess is what you would
call it.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yeah, And the reasoning is kind of kind of bs. Actually,
I'm not sure which one it was. I guess it
was Morris that I'm not going to read the whole quote,
but he basically we said, hey, listen, we don't have
the sin River or the Thames winding through the middle
of town. But what we do have are these two
wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan. And that's
(37:13):
enough because everyone's just going to go hang out the
river all the time, right, because it's beautiful and gorgeous
and you can swim in it, and the East River
and the Hudson River will forever be our green space.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Basically, Yeah, basically that was the city had enough. It
didn't need green spaces because of the East and the
Hudson rivers, and like in about forty years people were like, no,
we do we need to build Central Park.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Yeah, which was a savior because I think it says
here on their original plan, only five percent of the
grid was public green space, and two hundred and forty
of those four hundred acres was a parade ground.
Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yes, which I didn't know exactly where that was, so you.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
No, I'm not sure, I don't know. I mean, you know,
there's Washington Square Park, there's some cool kind of central
promenades and things like that, and then these you know,
New York's famous for these tiny little slivers of park
kind of all over the place, but they're small.
Speaker 3 (38:16):
They are very small, especially compared to the surrounding areas.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
For sure, in the buildings.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
That's why the highline was such a big deal.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
Yeah, it was a big deal. And I remember not
quite grasping why. I know, I definitely do, because there's
just people need that. People need green space, they need nature,
they need to be like outside of a built environment,
even if it's a built natural environment, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
Yeah, And Central Park is amazing and we love it,
but that's a long way if you're in southern Manhattan
to get up there.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
Right right.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
But basically, these guys said, you don't need it, go
hang out at the hud center of the East River.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
It's so wonderful and lovely.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
So there were a lot of people, like we said,
that were really unhappy with this. This was a huge
exercise of eminent domain. There were a lot of people
on these lands already. Remember Seneca Village that was destroyed
to create Central Park. They managed to survive the eighteen
(39:15):
eleven commission. I can't remember how long that was around,
but I want to say Seneca Village was around for
a good fifty years before it was leveled in the
eighteen fifties, so it would have been around on the
common lands during this time. But there were, like you said,
about thirty nine or forty percent of homeowners or established
(39:36):
buildings had to be torn down. They filled in ponds,
they filled in salt marshes, they completely altered the ecosystem
of stuff that could have been built around or incorporated
had they stopped and thought about how to do that.
They just leveled everything and built a grid over it.
And so a lot of people were really really unhappy
about us, and they were particularly unhappy that the city
(40:00):
the administration was just sticking to this no matter what.
And there were a lot of lawsuits in all of them,
from what I understand, were unsuccessful.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
Oh yeah, for about sixty years, there were tons of
lawsuits going on. And I know you said it was
a big eminent Domain Act, but it was I think
still the largest act of eminent domain in New York City. Yeah,
and that includes Central Park and the how they get
their water, which was another good episode.
Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, because I mean Central Park was huge, but it's
just a small sliver of this larger area.
Speaker 1 (40:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
This one quote from landowner Clement Clark Moore. He published
a pamphlet about the Tyrannical Commissioner's plan, and in it
it says this nothing is to be left unmolested, which
does not coincide with the street Commissioner's plummet and level.
These are men who would have cut down the Seven
Hills of Rome.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Burn big time yeap, So it didn't matter, though.
Speaker 4 (41:00):
It really didn't matter.
Speaker 3 (41:01):
They just went ahead with it blindly and thoughtlessly and
did and again like it did accommodate growth, although they
underestimated the growth. But it took a little while for
this stuff to fill up. This plan was delivered in
eighteen eleven, but it wasn't until eighteen seventy five that
enough people had started to move in that there were
(41:22):
more New Yorkers living above fourteenth Street than there were
living below it. Because remember, I mean, Lower Manhattan was
where it all began, so that I mean it took
a little while to fill in, and it didn't even
necessarily fill in uniformly. By that same year, in eighteen
seventy five, there were still forty thousand vacant lots left
(41:44):
in this grid plan, and that was like about half
of the space.
Speaker 1 (41:48):
Yeah, I love that fact. That's good. Dave has some
nice facts here. At the end.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
Eighteen sixty nine, the very first apartment build in New
York was built, called the Stivesant and they called them
I don't even think they called them apartments at the time.
It was called a French flat or a French house.
But prior to that it was you know, tenement houses
and houses, and so the Stuve is Ant is built
(42:14):
and everyone thinks it's silly that anyone would want to
live in the same building as other people, and they
called it stuives Ant's folly, but that it was at
one hundred and forty two East eighteenth between Irving Place
and Third and it was a huge hit, Like people
made fun of it in the newspapers, but people signed
(42:37):
up to live there almost immediately.
Speaker 1 (42:38):
It filled up.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
It was demoed and replaced in nineteen sixty, so this
is eighteen sixty nine. Very it didn't take long though.
In eighteen eighty four the Dakota was built, which still
stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came into fashion,
I think probably due just stuive's Ant's folly.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah I will yeah, I mean it went over so
well and so quickly that it really opened the way for.
Speaker 4 (43:01):
More and more to be built.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So one thing that people point to is this Commissioner's
plan of eighteen to eleven is just like that same
principle or the same significance that the Spanish coming in
and imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow
taming the wild or the organic.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
Or something like that. There's a This is the turning
point between kind of unplanned, organic, much more harmonious, naturally
New York and the planned modern New York that we
know and love today.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
This is where it went from one to the other,
almost like flipping a switch. And granted, for it took
decades and decades to realize this plan, but when it
was delivered and when it was adopted, that was that
was it. That change happened and the transition began.
Speaker 1 (44:02):
Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (44:05):
What else is there for New York?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
I mean, we figure we got water, we got the
subways covered, We've got Central Park, We've got this.
Speaker 4 (44:13):
Yeah, yeah, let's see, there.
Speaker 2 (44:16):
Can't be much else as far as just the bones
of Oh I know what I want to do is
maybe how that how the mail and the trash work?
Speaker 4 (44:24):
Okay, all right, yeah, we did the rockets once even too.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 4 (44:29):
I mean we've done a lot of New York topics,
it's true.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Or maybe we should move to a different city. Let's
start talking about des Moines.
Speaker 4 (44:37):
Holy cow, dude, it almost simultaneously came out of my mouth.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Des moines.
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Yes, it's so weird. It is weird. It's in the zeitgeist.
Apparently you got anything else?
Speaker 1 (44:51):
I got nothing else.
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Okay, Well, if you want to know more about New
York to start reading and then eventually travel there. They'll
give you the all clear when they're And since I
said that, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
Hey guys, my sixteen year old son Owen is probs
your biggest fan for real. He also has narcolepsy. I
appreciate you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding
of it to the masses. He was diagnosing his ten
and it affects every single aspect of his life. I
think it has made him wise beyond his years personally
and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
But it still sucks.
Speaker 2 (45:31):
If you ever want to read or hear first hand
accounts from people with narcolepsy, check out Julie flygare That
is f l y g a r E or flygare A.
Speaker 1 (45:41):
I'm not sure how would you say that?
Speaker 4 (45:43):
Oh? I like the one with flavor of the second one.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Who is doing all kinds of advocacy for people with narcolepsy,
including a scholarship foundation. She founded projects Sleep and Voices
of Narcolepsy. She also read a great book about her
experiences with being diagnosed during law school called Wide Awake
and Dreaming. When Owen received his diagnosis, I reached out
to her for help. She sent own a care package
with a book, a T shirt, wristbands, a very kind card, etc.
Speaker 1 (46:12):
To let him know that he's not alone. That is
very sweet, it is.
Speaker 2 (46:15):
I think she deserves an award for the work she's
doing anyway, A great resource for sure.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Thanks for the work that you do. I mean, could
we get an award?
Speaker 4 (46:24):
You know we've won a Webby before.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
I think, well that's true. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes and often it's
really important and educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of
your biggest fan. And that is from Brooke.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
Thanks Brooke, and thanks Owen for listening. It's really good
to hear from you, guys. And I feel like we
should send Owen something too. Sure, let's do it, Chuck, we'll.
Speaker 4 (46:46):
Figure it out, all right. We can't be shown up
by this flygawary person.
Speaker 1 (46:50):
No no, no, send us your physical address and we'll
mail you.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
Something that's right and in the meantime, thanks for listening,
and thanks for being a fan, and thank you for listening,
and thank you for being a fan. Tune and if
you want to get in touch with us, like Brook did,
you can send us an email, wrap it up, spanking
on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff Podcasts
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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