Big Apple History . Early New York . The Grid Plan


	The Commissioner's seal

Manhattan's population was growing so rapidly around 1800 that the state government realized it needed a plan for organizing the land on the island. The government wanted to simplify how land was bought and sold and to promote public health by encouraging "free and abundant circulation of air" between buildings.

Back then, much of Manhattan was still filled with forests, hills, ponds, and swamps. Rather than let nature determine the city's layout, a commission -- lead by Mayor De Witt Clinton -- proposed reshaping the land and planning for its future development. This meant leveling hills, filling in swamps, and laying out a plan for future streets, as the city expanded to the north.


The Commissioner's map of the Grid

In 1811, the commission presented its plan on an eight-foot map. It recommended that New York be divided up into twelve avenues running north to south, and 155 streets running east to west. This plan sliced Manhattan into about 2,000 blocks. In the spirit of democracy, the avenues and streets were assigned numbers rather than names.

The commission was clearly looking toward the city's future, since fewer than 100,000 people lived in Manhattan at the time. The 1811 grid was planned for a day when the population would be more than a million!

Illustrations: from the Plan of the City of New York, 1800, by Goerck and Mangin, courtesy of the Collection of the New-York Historical Society.