The Greatest Grid The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811–2011 Edited by Hilary Ballon

Museum of the City of New York and Columbia University Press Contents

Preface 9 The Greatest Grid The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811–2011 E ditor’s Acknowledgments 11 Introduction 13 Edited by Hilary Ballon

Co-Published by 1. Before the Grid 17 Reflection: Michael R. Bloomberg 2. The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 27 The Museum of the City of New York 3. Surveying the City 57 4. Opening Streets 73 Reflection: James Traub 5. Selling Lots: From Land to Real Estate 87 Columbia University Press Reflection: Rafael Viñoly Graphic Design: Thumb 6. The Public Realm: Squares, Parks and Avenues 103

©Copyright 2011, Museum of the City of New York 7. The Development of the East Side 127 All rights reserved. Reflection: Alexander Garvin Printed and bound in the United States. 8. Improving the West Side 141 9. Counterpoint: Broadway 155 All reasonable attempts have been made to identify owners of copyright. Errors or omissions will be corrected in future 10. Rethinking the Grid Above 155th Street 169 volumes. No part of this volume may be reproduced without Reflection: Wendy Evans Joseph the written permission of the publisher, except in the context of reviews. 11. Modern Reforms 179 Reflection: Amanda M. Burden Individuals who do not use conventional print may contact the publisher to obtain this publication in an alternate format. 12. Moving on the Grid 195 Reflection: Edward Glaeser Distributed by Columbia University Press 61 West 62nd Street 13. Urban Paradigm: The Grid in Contemporary Thought 211 New York, NY 10023 212.459.0600 Contributors 219 First Edition, 2011 Selected Bibliography 220 ISBN: 978-0-231-15990-6 Please contact the publisher for Library of Congress Index 222 catalog-in-publication information. About the Museum of the City of New York 224 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Greatest Grid The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811–2011

Honorary Chairs The exhibition is supported Additional support has by generous grants from: been received from: Amanda M. Burden Chair, City Planning Commission and Director, Dyson Foundation American Continental Group, Inc. New York City Department of City Planning ConEdison AvalonBay Communities, Inc. Benchmark Builders, Inc. Scott M. Stringer The Durst Organization Suzanne Davis and Rolf Ohlhausen Manhattan Borough President Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Inc. Cooper Joseph Studio The 42nd Street Fund Gardiner & Theobald Co-chairs New York Building Foundation Major sponsorship is also The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation Richard T. Anderson provided by: Robert Derector Associates President, New York Building Congress Jill and John Chalsty Silverstein Properties Jill Chalsty The Solow Art and Architecture Foundation Structure Tone, Inc. Founder and Chairman, Community Todd DeGarmo/STUDIOS Architecture Taconic Charitable Foundation for Education Foundation Nixon Peabody LLP VVA Project Managers & Consultants Todd DeGarmo Weidlinger Associates, Inc. CEO, STUDIOS Architecture Ronay and Richard L. Menschel The exhibition is also made Ronay Menschel Vornado Realty Trust possible with funds from: Chairman, Phipps Houses Manhattan Delegation, New York City Council New York Council for the Humanities Mitchell S. Steir Chairman and CEO, Studley, Inc. The companion book is supported by: Furthermore: A Program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund

< Detail of The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, Figure 8

6E TH GREATEST GRID E ditor’s Acknowledgments

Birthdays come and go, but I am grateful that Susan Henshaw The authors of the catalog entries are indicated by the initials Jones and Sarah Henry were persuaded that this one should be listed below. noted. I thank the team at the Museum of the City of New York for their commitment to this project, most especially to Susan, whose KA Kate Ascher dynamic leadership has made the Museum of the City of New York HB Hilary Ballon as exciting as its namesake city; to Sarah, whose incisive intellect MH Marguerite Holloway and story-telling mastery make her, as far as I am concerned, an ideal BH Bill Hubbard Jr. thought partner; and to Autumn Nyiri, whose organizational skills were WEJ Wendy Evans Joseph indispensable to the realization of this project. Ever since working MK Matthew Knutzen with Wendy Evans Joseph on an exhibition about Frank Lloyd Wright’s GK Gerard Koeppel towers more than a decade ago, I dreamed of working with her on JMS Joanna Merwood-Salisbury another project as the exhibition designer. She asks questions about MM Michael Miscione how to exhibit objects that reveal new perspectives and expand MP Max Page the ways to understand the subject. In designing the book and the AR Andrea Renner exhibition graphics, Luke Bulman and Jessica Young of Thumb were JR Jeffrey Ribeiro especially thoughtful about the play between abstract and concrete RR Reuben Rose-Redwood qualities of the Manhattan grid. Jeffrey Ribeiro, an urban planner in ES Eric Sanderson the making, was the effective editorial assistant on the book. CS Caleb Smith My gratitude to Carolyn Yerkes and Andrea Renner, the assistant CW Carol Willis curator of The Greatest Grid, is commingled with intense pride and CY Carolyn Yerkes affection. As this book was completed, these two extraordinary former students of mine completed their PhDs and launched their professional careers. Carolyn demonstrated her amazing range and insight as she effortlessly moved from the early modern period, her primary field of research, into modern urban theory in her contribu- tions to this book. From the beginning of this project, Andrea infused it with her rigor, creative research, attentiveness to each object, and nuanced interpretations. The Greatest Grid could not have been com- pleted without Andrea, whose intelligence touches every part of it. I relish the chance to thank those I love and whose love sustained me during a challenging time: Elizabeth Easton, Sarah McPhee, and Mariët Westermann for their precious gift of abiding friendship; my devoted, unstinting mother Harriet Ballon Lucks of indomitable spirit; Orin Kramer, my resolute husband with invincible powers of reason- ing that bring clarity and calm, and our beloved children Sophie and Charles, a miraculous trio that gave me what no medicine could, a profound sense of connection, enveloping love, and strength. Like the grid, this book was enriched by multiple voices. New York has attracted a community of outstanding scholars and urban thinkers. I am grateful that so many were willing to participate in this project and contribute reflections, mini-essays, and catalog entries. Marguerite Holloway, author of a forthcoming book on John Randel, < Detail of The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811, Figure 8 Jr. was especially generous and assisted with the Randel materials.

10E TH GREATEST GRID 11 34 The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 36 Figure 17. Figure 18. Figure 19. credited Morris with running the street com- to his vast, mostly inherited landholdings; headstrong visionary Morris and the skilled Precedents and Context this was part of the site’s appeal. The Spanish The street grid of Lima is known as the The gridiron plan was modeled in part on 19. Philadelphia mission, which presumably chose a vision of at his death he was said to be the state’s surveyor De Witt dominating the decision- often located their cities on indigenous settle- “damero de Pizarro” (Pizarro’s draftboard) the example of ancient Roman outpost cities, Thomas Holme, “A portraiture of the order and regularity he had for Manhattan, largest landowner. He served briefly in the making. 18. Law of the Indies ments in order to establish dominion over the because he personally helped mark off the where the grid became a symbol of rational city of Philadelphia in the province of but we have no evidence. He never detailed New Jersey General Assembly and repre- Some contemporaries, prompted by the Joseph Mulder, view of Lima, in Francisco de population and to take advantage of existing lines of the streets with a ruler and cord. order imposed on a subjugated population. Pennsylvania in America,” 1683. The the commission’s work in either public or per- sented the state in the United States Senate vagaries of cursive and pronunciation, mis- Echave y Assu, La Estrella de Lima convertida infrastructure. The regular street grid formed The original grid had square blocks, 400 In the 1570s Viceroy Francisco de Toledo Athenaeum of Philadelphia sonal documents. The explanatory remarks (1790–98), resigning during his second term takenly spelled his name Rutherford, which en sol sobre sus tres coronas. (Amberes: J.B. a crucial part of their strategy: it effaced pre- feet per side, arranged thirteen blocks by launched a campaign to build reducciones, In 1681 King Charles II granted William released with the commissioners’ plan in to retire, as an obituary put it, “to the more later generations of the family, perhaps with Verdussen, 1688). Public domain vious organizational systems and divided the nine blocks with 40-foot-wide streets. In this gridiron settlement towns, throughout the Penn a huge tract of land fronting on the 1811 are written with Morris’s elegance and agreeable pursuits of private life.” It seems a sigh, eventually adopted. GK Gridiron plans were an essential feature land into even plots that could be quickly reas- view, an open square with a fountain in the region. The use of the grid marked the exten- Delaware River. A year later, Penn arrived clarity but no individual authorship was possible that he was tapped for the street of Spanish colonial settlements in the New signed to new settlers. middle is visible near the bridge across the sion of colonial power and administration in his new colony and devised a plan for the claimed and no early drafts have emerged commission through the influence of fel- World, where the conquistadors, and later the In designing the plan of Lima, Pizarro fol- river. Called the Plaza Mayor or the Plaza de from the capital to the frontier. Many of main settlement of the colony, Philadelphia. that might reveal Morris’s specific contribu- low commissioner and relative Gouverneur viceroys, used city planning to regulate and lowed the instructions of Charles V (1500– Armas, the square is another essential fea- the frontier towns were abandoned by their Over the two-mile-wide isthmus between tions. GK Morris (Rutherfurd was married to a extend the empire. This bird’s-eye view over 1558), one of many Spanish rulers who ture of Spanish colonial settlement. It is the Native Andean inhabitants who fled compul- the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, Penn daughter of Morris’s half-brother), who Lima shows the core of the city founded by issued ordinances, known as the Law of the centerpiece around which the grid develops sory labor in the silver and mercury mines, laid a grid of streets, an idea unprecedented 17. John Rutherfurd may have desired a pliant ally. Rutherfurd Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535. Lima Indies, dictating the form of colonial cities. and is the site of the major civic and reli- either to return to their traditional settle- in English America at the time. The blocks George Catlin, John Rutherfurd, nd. Oil on panel was a Morris chauvinist; after Morris’s provides a typical example of how the Spanish Although the ordinances began in the early gious buildings—including the town hall, the ments or to seek wage labor in larger cities. bounded by these streets were larger than (86.3 x 68.6 cm). Collection Zimmerli Art Museum death, Rutherfurd claimed that Morris designed new cities according to governmental sixteenth century as informal guidelines, president’s residence, the cathedral, and the But the Spanish continued to implement the the city blocks he would have been used to in at Rutgers University. Gift of Leonard F. Loree, 0356. had originated the idea of the Erie Canal, ordinances. Pizarro defeated the Inca leader they became more specific over time as settle- archbishop’s palace. As the administrative, grid model of colonial settlement across the London, some as big as 400 by 500 feet. Penn Photo by Peter Jacobs an assertion Morris never made. Judging Atahualpa and captured the capital city of ment expanded. They concerned every aspect social, and economic heart of the city, the Americas over the centuries. The Spanish intended that his town would never get as Of the three 1811 commissioners, John from Morris’s frequent diary references to Cusco, high in the Andes, in 1533. He then of colonial government, including the treat- square also has its location determined by replicated the pattern exemplified by Lima congested as central London: he wanted the Rutherfurd (1760–1840) was the only one Rutherfurd’s absences from or lateness to established the new capital, Lima, the “Ciudad ment of native populations, and contained ordinance: a location usually in the center of in hundreds of towns and cities, including houses of his “green country town” to stand born in Manhattan but brought the least meetings of the street commissioners, it de los Reyes,” (city of kings) near the Pacific specific regulations about the use of the grid the city but offset in settlements built at the Santa Domingo, Panama City, Mexico City, among generous kitchen gardens. To further relevant experience to the work. He spent seems likely that Rutherfurd contributed Coast. The spot Pizarro chose along the Rímac as an agent of control that allowed for rapid water’s edge, as with Lima. Veracruz, Cartagena, Valparaiso, Bogotá, “ventilate” this town of gardens, two 100-foot- most of his life in New Jersey, attending the least to the commission’s work, with the River had been part of the Inca empire, and implementation and expansion of the city. Santiago, and Buenos Aires. CY wide streets (now Market and Broad Streets)

48E TH GREATEST GRID The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 49 17. >

22. The rectangular survey of This idea was completely without prec- townships (to be called a range of townships) the United States edent in the history of land distribution. and dividing every other one into thirty-six “Plat of the seven ranges of townships being By the eve of the Revolution, it had become lots. Hutchins was dogged by Indian raids, part of the territory of the United States, N.W. common practice in New England to survey and in three surveying seasons he could of the River Ohio / surveyed in conformity to unclaimed land into six-mile-square town- complete only seven of these ranges of town- an Ordinance of Congress of May 20th, 1785 ships and then sell them to “proprietors.” ships. This is the map Hutchins presented under direction of Thos. Hutchins, late geog- But within those square boundaries, the to Congress to record his survey of what has rapher to the United States”; engraved by W. proprietors laid out farms in patterns that since been called the Seven Ranges. BH Barker, 1796. Hand-colored lithograph. Library of accorded with the topography and in sizes Geography and Map Division Congress, rarely exceeding a few acres. No one had ever 23. Plans to rebuild London In 1785 the Continental Congress con- conceived the idea of a family farm fully one John Rocque, Views of the city of London before ceived the idea of selling its lands north- mile square—640 acres—laid over the land- and after the 1666 fire, after Christopher Wren’s west of the Ohio River to help pay down the scape with no regard to natural features. Plan for rebuilding the city, 1758. Yale Center for Charles II formed a commission of archi- Christopher Wren imagined a new London to sell their lots—a solution that was neither Revolutionary War debt. Its plan was to And yet, this was the charge Congress British Art, Paul Mellon Collection tects and surveyors who were tasked with with a regularized grid of rectangular blocks practical nor desirable for a monarch wor- divide the territory into townships six miles laid before its new Geographer of the When the Great Fire of London burned out leading the rebuilding of London. Several of running parallel to the Thames, crossed by ried about his public image in the wake of a square, then to divide every other town- United States, Thomas Hutchins. He was on September 5, 1666, the conflagration had the commissioners, as well as John Evelyn, broad avenues radiating out from the rebuilt major crisis. Parliament debated the propos- ship in a checkerboard of thirty-six one- to go to the recently surveyed point where destroyed much of the city’s medieval core. drew up their own designs for a new city. St. Paul’s cathedral. But although it had lost als and the Privy Council reviewed them, but square-mile lots (later called sections). The the Pennsylvania border touches the north John Evelyn, a witness to the devastation, Their plans reflected a common desire that its buildings, London was not a blank slate; in the end no plan that ignored the previous undivided townships would be sold to land bank of the Ohio River, and from there proj- wrote that the fire had burned London’s the incineration of the old city fabric, though rather, it was covered with property lines property divisions was endorsed. London was companies, while the square-mile lots would ect a line due westward. At intervals of one “churches, public halls, exchange, hospital, tragic, should be taken as an opportunity to that the city’s inhabitants wanted to main- rebuilt according to a pre-fire survey, with be sold directly to individual settlers as fam- mile along that line, a team from one of the monuments, and ornaments …I went again replace London’s narrow, twisting streets tain. Instituting any of the proposed plans moderate improvements like widened streets ily farmsteads. thirteen states would drive southward back to the ruins, for it was no longer a city.” In and fragmented neighborhoods with a mod- for redesigning the city would have meant and new city churches, but nothing on the to the Ohio River, laying out a column of response to the disaster, the government of ern urban vision. displacing all its residents and forcing them scale of what Wren had proposed.

52E TH GREATEST GRID The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 53 The plans to rebuild London after the 24. Edinburgh the competition to design the New Town with creating blocks-within-blocks removed 25. Washington, D.C. was an implied contrast between their vision York individual structures were submerged Great Fire demonstrate the widely held Alexander Kincaid, “A Plan of the City and his proposal for an axial street grid laid out from the principal axes. The New Town John Reid, “Plan of the City of Washington in of New York, with rectangular house lots, in the overall unity of the street and block. belief that a great city should incorpo- Suburbs of Edinburgh From Actual Surveys by between two open squares. In Craig’s plan, was designed at a fine grain because the the Territory of Columbia ceded by the States and the capital city, designed for government The scale of Washington was also monu- rate figural space like open squares into Alexander Kincaid, Engraved by John Beugo,” the New Town was set parallel to the Old city planners had a specific vision of what of Virginia and Maryland to the United States and the representation of power. mental: L’Enfant’s avenues had an 80-foot the street grid. In rejecting this idea for 1784. Engraving. National Library of Scotland, Map Town and connected to it by a bridge. Craig’s they wanted it to be: an upscale residential of America and by them established as the In L’Enfant’s plan an orthogonal grid is carriageway with 40 feet on each side for a Manhattan, the commissioners of the 1811 Collection plan covered only four rows of city blocks, neighborhood of row houses and small apart- Seat of their Government after the Year 1800,” overlaid with a larger-scale grid of diagonal tree-covered walk, or 160 feet in total, com- plan departed from the Baroque model that In the mid-eighteenth century, the medieval between Queens Street and Princes Street. ment buildings. The Commissioners’ Plan of 1795. Hand-colored engraving. Barry Lawrence streets punctuated by frequent squares. The pared to 100 feet for New York’s avenues. had been used to design the new capital city city of Edinburgh had reached its capacity, Seven other sections of the New Town were Manhattan is inherently more flexible in this Ruderman Antique Maps, Inc. intersections of the two grids produced non- Washington and New York now stand for of Washington, D.C. only a decade earlier. with a dense collection of buildings clus- planned and built piecemeal by different respect because by keeping the scale of the In 1790 Washington, D.C. was selected as rectangular lots that added to the cost and two different approaches to city planning, The commissioners also demonstrated the tered up against the single wide street that architects over the next 120 years. streets the same, it does not give some loca- the site of the national capital, and in 1791 complexity of construction, complications and it is clear that the commissioners saw it boldness of their vision by successfully connects Castle Rock to Holyrood House. Although Craig’s New Town plan also tions more prestige than others. CY architect-engineer Pierre Charles L’Enfant the commissioners wished to avoid. But an this way in 1811. HB implementing their plan. Whereas the To entice wealthy residents to remain in has a rectangular grid, it incorporates established the plan of the federal city. The advantage of the plan of Washington is that Crown was unwilling to change property Edinburgh instead of decamping for London, greater formal variation than the 1811 New York City commissioners inevitably con- it creates opportunities for buildings to call lines to lay out a new city, the Manhattan city planners made several efforts to extend Commissioners’ Plan does, as smaller streets sidered this landmark plan of only twenty attention to themselves in the urban fabric. commissioners accepted that task. CY settlement to the north plain, which is sepa- cut into the blocks bound by the major ave- years earlier and purposefully chose to reject Monuments could be sited at the end of a rated from the Old Town by a dramatic ridge. nues. The result is an intricate network of it as a model. While their “Remarks” refer vista, such as the Capitol, or face a square, In 1767 the young architect James Craig won open and closed spaces, the interior streets explicitly only to Paris and London, there such as the White House, whereas in New

54E TH GREATEST GRID The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 55 How Manhattan’s Topography Changed and Stayed the Same

Most historical accounts suggest that the grid plan dramatically still bears a striking resemblance to conditions in the early nine- transformed Manhattan’s topography over the course of the past teenth century. In short, two centuries after the grid was laid out two centuries. It is conventionally noted by historians and other across the island, Manhattan remains an “island of hills” upon urban commentators that the island’s early topography was so which an imposing metropolis has been built. rugged that the name Mannahatta translates as “island of hills,” and the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 is said to have resulted in Reuben Rose-Redwood the leveling of hills and filling of valleys to produce a flat surface for the grid. However, only recently have there been attempts to document the extent of topographic change that resulted from the implementation of the 1811 grid plan. The island’s hilly origins can be seen most clearly in its parks. Many areas with significant rock outcroppings were preserved in the city’s emerging system of parklands during the nineteenth century, the most famous of which is Central Park. Opened in 1857, Central Park was not part of the original grid plan, which would have cut straight through what are now the park’s bound- aries. While elements of the original topography remain, Central Park was aesthetically altered to create the appearance of an Figure 53. English pastoral landscape. Anyone who has walked the city’s streets can attest that the landscape is still somewhat hilly. For instance, there is a major drop of over 115 feet in elevation on the West Side around 125th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, which has remained largely hand of improvement.” Additionally, as the rural expanse. Steep hills with formations unaltered topographically since the grid was laid out in the first poet Clement Clarke Moore remarked, of Manhattan schist—a notoriously hard quarter of the nineteenth century. Manhattan’s highest point, in “nothing is to be left unmolested which does rock to cut—presented topographical obsta- Washington Heights above 155th Street, lies 265 feet above sea not coincide with the street-commissioner’s cles that the 1811 grid ignored. In this view level, much as it did in 1811. plummet and level. These are men, as has from 106th Street from about 1869, a team In general, Manhattan’s West Side was and remains more topo- been well observed, who would have cut of laborers excavates through a hillside to graphically uneven than the East Side. Its elevation has always down the seven hills of Rome.” The topo- extend Eighth Avenue north, using a crane been higher, and the greatest absolute change in elevation, 118 graphical changes that resulted from the to hoist large loose or loosened rock out feet, was on the West Side, compared to 46 feet on the East Side. Commissioners’ Plan were nowhere more of the path. The section of the hill visible Both sides used approximately 24 million cubic yards of earth to evident than in the view shown here of on the right is today part of Central Park, fill low areas, but it was necessary to remove over 40 million cubic the northward path of Second Avenue on where stone steps lead pedestrians up and yards west of Central Park, as opposed to 16 million cubic yards Manhattan’s East Side. RR over the ridge. Nothing remains of the hill on the East Side. Figure 52. on the left, which, like most of the natural Recent research demonstrates that within the historical shore- 52. A house “in the air” to the one shown here, where the avenue 53. Grading Eighth Avenue topography of the West Side, was demolished line between 1st and 155th Streets, the infilling of low areas Egbert L. Viele, View of 2nd Ave. Looking up from had been laid out but the surrounding hills Regulating and Grading Eighth Avenue, looking to clear the land for development. CY resulted in an average increase of 9 feet in elevation and leveling 42nd St., 1861. Lithograph. Museum of the City of were not yet leveled to align with the street North from 106th Street, ca. 1869. Collection of led to an average decrease of 12 feet. However, the elevations New York, Gift of Mrs. Wendell T. Bush, 28.153.215 grade. Houses were left up in the air as the The New-York Historical Society, #55940 in some areas changed very little while the topography of others Looking north at the intersection of East streets and avenues were cut through the Formidable terrain made road building on were changed by more than 100 feet—roughly the equivalent 42nd Street and Second Avenue today, hills. A significant number of buildings the West Side particularly difficult. As late of a ten-story building. Much of the island’s shoreline was also one sees a canyon of high-rise buildings had already been demolished to make way as the 1860s, a horsecar could travel up extended into the Hudson and East Rivers through infilling. extending far into the distance. If one were for the city’s thoroughfares and those that Eighth Avenue only as far as 84th Street The establishment of the grid considerably changed the to travel back to the same intersection in remained would soon be swept aside by what before the way became impassable, and appearance of Manhattan’s topography, yet today’s topography the early 1860s, the scene would be similar one commentator referred to as the “leveling most of northern Manhattan remained a

80 THE GREATEST GRID Opening Streets 81 54. Rock on 71st Street Dewitt McClellan Lockman, Plan of Rock Figure 55. Figure 56. Uncovered as of October 1857. Collection of The New-York Historical Society, #84754b 55, 56. Rocks on 81st Street and pickaxe often required gunpowder to This plan from October 1857 shows a mass Robert L. Bracklow, Rocks, 81st Street and 9th remove. In these photographs by Robert of rock blocking the middle of 71st Street Avenue, December 1886. Museum of the City of Bracklow (1849–1919), a team of laborers between Avenues A and B (now York Avenue New York, Gift of Sonia and Alexander Alland, Jr., uses a system of pulleys and winches to pull and FDR Drive). The diagram at the center 93.91.420 large rocks from a site at 81st Street and outlines the uncovered rock, but beyond the Robert L. Bracklow, Rocks, 81st Street and 9th Ninth Avenue, near where the American north and south edges of the street it fell to Avenue, December 1886. Museum of the City of Museum of Natural History stands today. the lot owners, not the street graders, to deal New York, Gift of Sonia and Alexander Alland, Jr., Horse-drawn carts would drag away the with its removal, as a note at the bottom of 93.91.421 rubble, which then could be used as building the plan makes clear: “The rock taken out Issachar Cozzens, in his Geological History material or to fill in swamps and valleys. By to this point where Mr. Pendleton became of Manhattan or New York Island of 1843, this time, the Department of Public Works responsible. The earth excavation on the described the challenges the graders faced employed over one thousand laborers. CY block was all done.” The diagram records the in opening the streets: “the Diluvium is rock’s features and dimensions, with a tally a tough cement of clay, gravel, and boul- of its total area running down the right side ders, very hard to dig. In digging through of the drawing. According to the note in the 42nd Street, the pickaxes had to be used center, the graders were able to dig out this for every shovelful of this clayey cement rock, but more drastic measures were neces- which formed what is called, a hard-pan, of sary to remove other topographical elements about fourteen or more feet in thickness.” from the street grid. CY Bedrock that could not be cleared by shovel

82E TH GREATEST GRID Opening Streets 83 James Traub Manhattan has no center. Older European cities do, of I guess the right answer would be “proud.” Manhattan Reflection course, and you find them by following the signs that say is a remorseless place to which its citizens are peculiarly centre ville or centro citta. There you will typically find a adapted, and of which out-of-towners seem unaccount- broad, serene pedestrian space, often demarcated by ably fond. It was designed that way: In their report, the an ancient cathedral and the old city hall. If you asked commissioners of the 1811 plan noted rather scornfully a New Yorker for directions to “the center of town,” he that they had eschewed the “circles, ovals and stars would be bewildered, and might, for want of better, send which certainly embellish a plan” in favor of “conve- you to Times Square, or Columbus Circle, which are nience and utility.” I would never say that what I love simply nodal points that New Yorkers pass through, often about New York is its “utility,” but I would say that the at their peril. For this, we have Manhattan’s original city utilitarian street plan has made possible the helter-skelter, planners to thank. pell-mell life of the city — which is what I do love.

Figure 57. Figure 58. Is “thank” the right word? Paris is charming, Vienna is charming — even Washington, D.C. is charming. Manhattan 57. Lots below street level of making vain protests against the practice.” of the island’s natural beauty, stating that Robert L. Bracklow, Fifth Avenue and 117th In Robert L. Bracklow’s photograph of the “these magnificent places are doomed. The is not. The very word “square,” so pleasing elsewhere, Street, ca. 1870. Museum of the City of New York, grading at 117th Street and Fifth Avenue, spirit of Improvement has withered them in Manhattan means “place where Broadway diagonally Gift of Sonia and Alexander Alland, Jr., 93.91.367 the lot in the foreground sits below street with its acrid breath. Streets are already Grading left some lots below street level. level while the blocks across the intersection ‘mapped’ through them, and they are no crosses an avenue.” In 1925 the essayist Benjamin de When that happened, lot owners had to fill remain above grade on rock outcroppings. longer suburban residences, but ‘town-lots.’” Casseres described Times Square as “a ganglion of streets in their land themselves to bring their prop- CY When the grid plan was extended northward erty back up to grade. For the owners unwill- on the West Side, the Brennan farmhouse that fuses into a traffic cop.” So the question we must ask 58. Farm house at 84th Street ing or unable to take on this task, living in was demolished and the hill upon which it when we think about what those planners of 1811 wrought a pit had its consequences. As he explored Brennan Farm House, 84th and Broadway, 1879. stood was leveled. In 1980 the City Council northern Manhattan in December 1897, look- Collection of The New-York Historical Society, renamed West 84th Street from Broadway to is: How do we feel about charming? How do we feel about #84696d ing for natural springs, James Reuel Smith Riverside Drive after Poe to commemorate living in a city without a center? encountered a German man whose house and This image captures a glimpse of the Brennan the time that he spent at the Brennan Farm the vacant lots around it had been left seven Farm House at what is now the intersec- House. RR feet below 115th Street after the graders had tion of West 84th Street and Broadway, as finished their work. “The old man says he it appeared in 1879. In the 1840s the writer is going to move on account of the careless- Edgar Allan Poe and his family rented a ness of his new and citified neighbors,” Reuel room at Patrick and Mary Brennan’s farm- reported. “They live in very nice-looking flats house, which is likely where he wrote his behind his house, on the north side of West famous poem, “The Raven.” During his time 114th Street, but are prone to throw into the in New York, Poe came to appreciate what he vacant lots whatever material they wish to saw as the “sublime” nature of Manhattan’s dispose of in haste, and he has grown tired rugged terrain. He dreaded the destruction

84E TH GREATEST GRID 85 Figure 99.

Central Park Blockhouse No.1, this stone fortification was respects the grid most clearly at its boundar- constructed during the War of 1812 as part ies, as it covers an area exactly three blocks 98. Randel Farm Map: future site of Manhattan’s defenses against the British; wide and forty-seven blocks long, from Fifth of Central Park today it is the oldest building in the park. to Eighth Avenue between 59th and 106th Randel Farm Map no. 53, vol. 3, p. 15, showing On the left of the sheet, the blocks bound by Streets. (Central Park was extended to 110th 101st to 109th Streets from Sixth Avenue to Ninth Eighth and Ninth Avenues were eventually Street in 1863.) Within that rectangle, a cir- Avenue, June 15, 1819. Pen and ink with water- built without regard to the irregular terrain culation system combines north-south and color on paper. Used with permission of the City and the previous property divisions that the east-west routes to form a relaxed grid of of New York and the Office of the Manhattan map records. CY gently curving roads and paths. This system Borough President connects to the surrounding 1811 street grid Central Park was not part of the Commis- 99. Greensward Plan for Central Park at regular intervals around the perimeter sioners’ Plan of 1811 and thus does not Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, of the park, allowing for continuous travel appear on the Randel Farm Maps of north- Greensward Plan, 1858. Pen and ink on paper. from one side of the city to the other. The ern Manhattan. Instead, the proposed street New York City Department of Parks, The Arsenal Greensward Plan offers an escape from the grid covers the entire area, including the In 1853 the city used an act of eminent grid but it does not ignore it. CY two columns of blocks on the right side of domain to acquire the land in the center the sheet that are bound by Sixth, Seventh, of Manhattan for the creation of a public and Eighth Avenues. These blocks were park. Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert never built because this section of the grid Vaux won the competition to design the new became the northwest corner of the park. At park with a proposal that erases the 1811 the top of the sheet, a square building can be grid within its borders, even as it hints at seen near the proposed intersection of Sev- the grid’s formal regularities. Olmsted and Figure 98. enth Avenue and 109th Street. Known as Vaux’s entry, called the Greensward Plan,

118E TH GREATEST GRID The Public Realm 119 Figure 101. Figure 102.

Figure 100.

100. View of Central Park, 1864 west side hills. Despite the lack of uptown that swath remained undeveloped. Taken on 102. The Willowdell Arch and the Central travelers on foot could move safely through- Pierre Martel, Central Park, 1864. Lithograph residents, Olmsted anticipated that when August 4, 1921, by Lewis McSpaden for the Park designers out the park without crossing paths with published by H. Geissler. Museum of the City the street grid eventually filled out, property Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation, this Victor Prevost, Bridge No. 3, September 23, horses and carriages. In addition, four of New York, Gift of J. Clarence Davies, near the park would increase in value, and composite reveals how by the early twentieth Central Park, 1862. Courtesy of George Eastman sunken transverse roads were cut into the 29.100.2568 he defended the park’s size on these grounds. century the 1811 grid had filled out almost House, International Museum of Photography earth, allowing traffic on the street grid to When construction began on Olmsted and When the construction of the grid was com- completely. Central Park had become an 843- and Film pass through the park without interrupting Vaux’s plan for Central Park, the population plete, Olmsted expected that an “artificial acre oasis on an island with little other open In his remarks on the plan for Central Park, the landscape. of Manhattan was concentrated downtown wall, twice as high as the Great Wall of space, its terrain sealed off from the rest of Olmsted wrote that the most difficult prob- Over forty bridges were built to separate and the grid’s northern reaches remained a China, composed of urban buildings” would the city by a continuous street wall of build- lem facing the park designers was how to the circulation systems vertically from each projection. “The time will come when New circle the park; by the year of this view, it had ings. Although this site was chosen for the incorporate a transportation system into other. In this photograph of Willowdell Arch, York will be built up,” Olmsted observed started to rise. CY park in part because the rocky land there the landscape: “How to obtain simply the the men who helped create Central Park— then, “when all the grading and filling will was cheaper to acquire and more difficult required amount of room for this purpose, including Andrew H. Green on the far left, be done, and when the picturesquely-varied, 101. Aerial view of Manhattan, 1921 to develop than in the other neighborhoods without making this class of its construc- Vaux third from the left, and Olmsted on rocky formations of the Island will have been Lewis McSpaden for Fairchild Aerial Camera initially proposed, the park’s location in the tions everywhere disagreeably conspicuous, the far right—stand on a larger road, East converted into formations for rows of monoto- Corp., Aerial Survey of Manhattan Island, New middle of the island offers a practical sym- harshly disruptive of all relations of compo- Drive, at the point near 67th Street where nous straight streets, and piles of erect build- York City, August 4, 1921. Library of Congress, metry, as it provides equal access from both sition between natural landscape elements it passes over a smaller pedestrian path. ings.” In this 1864 view of Central Park from Geography and Map Division the east and west sides. CY on their opposite borders, and without the These crossing points demonstrate how the southeast corner entrance, the conversion Pieced together from one hundred aerial pho- absolute destruction of many valuable top- Olmsted and Vaux developed an alternate that Olmsted foresaw had begun only on the tographs, this eight-foot-long photomosaic ographical features.” Olmsted and Vaux’s transportation grid for Central Park: a grid east side, where the terrain was flatter than of Manhattan demonstrates the foresight of solution separated circulation according to without intersections. CY on the west side. Already buildings line the the Central Park commissioners in reserv- means of locomotion, with carriage roads, edges of the blocks along Fifth Avenue, while ing such a long swath of the grid for public equestrian paths, and pedestrian walks the streets have not yet been cut through the use at a time when much of the land around organized into independent systems so that

120E TH GREATEST GRID The Public Realm 121 Figure 150. Figure 151.

Figure 147. Figure 148.

Outcroppings On the right in the photograph, 124th Street 148, 149. Riverside Drive between atop this rock spur that spanned the block 150. Amsterdam Avenue at 123rd Street 151. Bennett Avenue between has recently been graded, while in the fore- 93rd and 94th Streets between 93rd and 94th Streets on Riverside Caleb Smith, P.S. 36 at 123rd Street and 181st and 186th Streets 147. Amsterdam Avenue and ground, Amsterdam Avenue already has Riverside Drive, Rock between 93rd and 94th Drive, but the difficulties of its removal were Amsterdam Avenue, 2006. Digital photograph. Caleb Smith, Rock outcropping on Bennett 124th Street stone pavers and streetcar tracks. Smith Streets, ca. 1903. Collotype. Museum of the City such that it remained in the lot into the early Courtesy of the photographer Avenue between 181st and 186th Streets, 2006. James Reuel Smith, View of the southwest noted that the “land immediately round of New York, Prints and Photographs Collection, twentieth century, even as the surrounding Certain blocks of the 1811 grid retain their Digital photograph. Courtesy of the photographer corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 124th Street, about the spring is thirty feet below the X2010.11.3102 lots filled with apartment buildings. Figure rock outcroppings despite having been devel- On the west side of northern Manhattan, November 16, 1898. Collection of The New-York present level of the street and Avenue but West 94th Street. View south on 94th Street near 148 shows the southern side of the rock, oped. Built over a schist formation, P.S. topography takes over from the street grid. Historical Society, #84700d is being rapidly filled in and built upon. On Riverside Drive, ca. 1895. Cyanotype. Museum exposed by the grading of 93rd Street, while 36 stands atop the rock on concrete foot- A long ridge of rocky hills lies parallel to As the street graders continued north a high bluff to the west of it is a cottage of the City of New York, Prints and Photographs in Figure 149, the grading of 94th Street ings. Completed in 1967 to the designs of the river, crossed by few east-west streets. above Central Park, development of the built sixty-five years ago, which is one of Collection, X2010.11.3099 has sheared off the rock’s northern side. Frederick G. Frost, Jr. and Associates, the The ridge culminates at the island’s highest blocks followed. This view of the intersec- the oldest dwellings now left standing in Street grading often required so much exca- Although this rock was eventually demol- elementary school consists of four buildings point, a schist outcropping 265 feet above tion of Amsterdam Avenue and 124th Street Manhattanville.” The newly graded streets vation that it lowered the level of the street ished, the outcroppings in nearby Riverside located on the western side of the block on sea level, located in Bennett Park. Nearby shows the convergence of new and old, the brought more residents to the neighborhood, to well below the level of the adjacent blocks. Park, off the street grid, remain. CY Amsterdam Avenue that is bound by 123rd on Bennett Avenue, this photograph shows a Acropolis apartment building on the left tow- and within twenty years these farmhouses Owners of the individual lots on these blocks Street and Morningside Drive. This 1.35-acre lot north of 181st Street that is occupied by ering over the farmhouses clustered near a had been replaced by apartment buildings. were responsible for clearing and leveling site had formerly been a part of Morningside another schist outcropping, a 50-foot-wide groundwater source known locally as Indian CY their land, but they were not required to do Park, which it adjoins to the east, and thus rock ledge that stands where 182nd Street Spring. James Reuel Smith (1852–1935) so. In 1898, James Reuel Smith described it was never cleared and leveled. In 1964, should cross the avenue. CY photographed this corner in 1898 as part what happened when East 78th Street was over objections that public park space should of his effort to document the city’s remain- cut through the high bluffs near the property not be developed in densely populated areas, ing natural springs, images that were even- of a Dutch farmer named Mr. Fuer, “leav- Figure 149. the land was transferred to the Board of tually published in Springs and Wells of ing his castle and farm ‘in the air.’ Mr. Fuer Education to address overcrowding. CY Manhattan and the Bronx, New York City, has lived on and cultivated his ‘sky-farm’ for at the End of the Nineteenth Century (1938). thirty-seven years.” There were no sky-farms

152E TH GREATEST GRID I mproving the West Side 153 11. Modern Reforms

If the construction of the Manhattan grid is a nineteenth- the blocks itself. Although the commissioners’ plan for the premium, developers took advantage of the legislation by century story, the twentieth-century sequel tells of the grid’s streets had been altered already in the nineteenth century, including plazas and arcades at the street level in exchange erosions, alterations, and erasures. Although the relentless- those changes were mainly limited to the insertion of streets for more stories on their buildings. This resulted in a steady ness of the 1811 plan had been eased by exceptions like and avenues, such as Broadway and Madison Avenue, which erosion of the grid as chunks of the street wall were traded Central Park, technological advances in the new century added to the original grid rather than subtracting from it. The for vertical square footage—as in the XYZ Buildings on Sixth exaggerated the grid, as skyscrapers climbed higher with the incorporation of superblocks into the grid—created by eras- Avenue—and mid-block arcades were created. help of steel skeletons and passenger elevators, and devel- ing sections of street from the plan—marked a departure of By the end of the twentieth century, the grid had become opers sought to maximize their land values by building out to a different kind. Some superblocks were formed for monu- less vulnerable to attack. The heyday of the tower-in-the-park the edges of their lots. Critics of the grid continued to fight mental buildings, like the New York Public Library and Grand housing model had come and gone, and today the density this density with wholesale urban reforms, replacing vast Central Terminal at the beginning of the twentieth century; of existing construction and high real estate values make it swaths of the grid with superblocks beginning in the 1930s. others contained monumental ensembles, such as Columbia prohibitively expensive and logistically complicated to clear Two major zoning laws formalized long-standing complaints University, Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center. multiblock tracts of land for superblock projects. Instead, the about the grid’s density and lack of open space, and one From the 1930s through the middle of the century, large prevailing trend in Manhattan has been to reassert the grid, of these, the 1961 Zoning Resolution, ultimately sought to sections of the grid were obliterated to create open tracts as the recent development of Battery Park City and the cur- undermine its defining qualities: the continuity of the street of land for tower-in-the-park housing projects, which were rent proposal to rebuild lower Manhattan demonstrate. wall, the uniformity of the rectilinear pattern, and the density endorsed by many housing reform advocates as preferable to of building coverage. block-based tenements. Robert Moses, for example, pursued Hermann Bollmann’s 1962 drawing of Manhattan (see a decades-long program of slum clearance, replacing entire Figure 177) highlights how the three-dimensional grid of the neighborhoods with superblocks under the banner of urban city is formed from individual buildings. The view demon- renewal. Although the housing superblocks fit neatly into the strates that the integrity of each rectangular block depends orthogonal street system, they completely changed the grain on the buildings that stand at its edge, and shows how the of the city. The oversize blocks did not have the grid’s walk- Midtown skyscrapers maximize that edge vertically as well as able character, and because they were generally reserved for horizontally on the lot surface. In the early twentieth century, only one building type—residential—they lost the mixed-use this combination of height and bulk worried urban reformers, quality of the building-lined street wall. The superblocks pro- who were concerned about the ground-level congestion, vided opportunities for architectural monumentalism that the citywide shadows, and cavernous street corridors that such grid did not otherwise afford. These opportunities were usu- towers would create. In 1916, opposition to the high-and- ally missed, as the housing developments on the superblocks wide construction ethos had reached critical mass, and the most often consisted of undistinguished slabs like those of city’s Board of Estimate passed a resolution that dictated the Manhattanville Houses. In changing the scale and density what types of building could be built in what areas of the city, of the grid, the superblocks destroyed what made it unique. how tall buildings could reach, and how much of the block By the 1950s, the 1916 Zoning Resolution had been they could cover. The 1916 Zoning Resolution, New York’s qualified by so many amendments that it was no longer first zoning law, meant that buildings could no longer be both considered to be a useful tool for modulating the density of as tall as possible and cover the entire lot: once a building the grid. In 1960, the Board of Estimate passed a new zoning crossed a certain height limit, its footprint had to step back a resolution, to become effective the following year, which certain distance from the line of the block. The 1916 Zoning replaced the old law with a set of rules designed to encour- Resolution introduced the setback tower to Manhattan and age builders to incorporate open space onto their lots. Using changed the shape of the street wall. Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building on Park Avenue as a It was not only the shape of the buildings on the block model, the 1961 Zoning Resolution rewarded property own- that changed in the twentieth century, but the pattern of ers who reserved a portion of their lots for public space with floor area bonuses that allowed them to build taller towers. < Detail of Seventh Avenue Looking North from 35th Street, Figure 180 In Midtown in particular, where real estate values are at a

178E TH GREATEST GRID 179 The superblock made possible an approach Plazas Seagram Building broke with the dominant 188. XYZ Buildings, Sixth Avenue to planning which was otherwise impos- typology of the bulky step-back buildings View up Sixth Avenue with the McGraw-Hill sible in New York: the grouping of several 187. Seagram Building that line Park Avenue in an unbroken street Building (1969) at 1221 Sixth Avenue in the buildings around a public space. (Columbia Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Seagram Building, wall. Its site plan addressed the perception foreground, the Exxon Building (1967–71) at University and Rockefeller Center set the 375 Park Avenue between East 52nd and East that the streets and sidewalks of the 1811 1251 Sixth Avenue in the center, and the precedents: these urban compositions on a 53rd Streets, view from the northwest, 1958. grid had not provided the city with sufficient Time & Life Building (1959) to the right, 1974. superblock yield, respectively, an expan- Photograph by Ezra Stoller © Esto open space. Photograph by Ezra Stoller © Esto sive campus quadrangle and an ice rink.) In 1958, the same year that the architec- Although the reduced footprint of the The impact of the 1961 Zoning Resolution on The platform over 65th Street is visible in ture and urban planning firm of Voorhees Seagram Building meant a loss of floor the Manhattan grid can be seen most clearly the photograph, although the adjoining Walker Smith & Smith submitted its new area—some of which was compensated by on Sixth Avenue, along the stretch between block had not yet been cleared for Alice zoning proposal to the New York City the lower buildings to the east of the tower— 47th and 51st Streets, where the street wall Tully Hall and the Juilliard School. The Planning Commission, the Seagram the overall effect was immediately appreci- has disappeared. There, the buildings are set designers of Lincoln Center intentionally Building on Park Avenue was completed to ated as a masterpiece of urban design. It back into the blocks and open plazas line the detached the plazas from the surround- the designs of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. was partly in response to this project that avenue, an arrangement that took advantage of ing streets to create a serene enclave for The Voorhees proposal, which was the basis the 1961 Zoning Resolution offered height the height incentives the new resolution offered the arts. The recent renovation of Lincoln for the 1961 Zoning Resolution, cited the bonuses to buildings that incorporated open for including public space at the ground level. Center undertaken by Diller + Scofidio + Seagram Building as a model for its radical spaces at the ground level. The setback pla- In this photograph by Ezra Stoller looking Renfro (completed 2010) has, among other new approach to massing and site planning. zas that were built as a result reduced the north up Sixth Avenue, three adjacent plazas things, reconnected it to 65th Street; the Instead of maximizing the building footprint city’s density and changed a fundamental are visible, all built by Harrison, Abramovitz platform that cast the street in permanent by extending it to the edges of the lot, Mies characteristic of the grid’s three-dimen- & Abrams as part of Rockefeller Center’s west- shade has been removed, and new theater had opted for a slender tower set back from sional realization. CY ward expansion. Of the four skyscrapers in the entrances and other animating features the street on a landscaped plaza. By pre- center of the photograph, the northernmost have brought the street back to life. CY serving this open space at ground level, the one, second from the right, is the Time & Life

186E TH GREATEST GRID Modern Re 187forms Building, completed in 1959. Designed before are rectangular slabs anchored by lower build- framing Grand Army Plaza at the south- public space gave General Motors a height the zoning resolution had passed, the site has ings to the rear with open plazas to the front. eastern tip of Central Park at Fifth Avenue. bonus for its tower under the 1961 Zoning an open plaza along the avenue and another Yet unlike their predecessor, these plazas are Along with the Sherry-Netherland Hotel to Resolution, but critics of the design remarked along 50th Street. In 1963, plans were unveiled not isolated interruptions in the street wall, the north, the Squibb Building, Bergdorf that in addition to being redundant with the to construct three more skyscrapers—originally small punctures in a plane, but rather they Goodman, and the Paris Theater to the Grand Army Plaza immediately adjacent, called the XYZ buildings—between 47th and are a linked sequence that erases that plane south, and the Plaza Hotel, these buildings the sunken plaza was difficult to access and 50th Streets, an ensemble of towers arranged entirely. This places a greater emphasis on the filled in the street wall around the Carrère remained unused for much of the year. One of around a central square, akin to Rockefeller avenue over the streets, and diminishes the and Hastings–designed pedestrian plaza, those critics was Donald Trump, who filled in Center. As the plans progressed, the centralized perception of the grid at the ground level. CY which opens to the park on its north side. the plaza when he bought the General Motors plaza fell out of the proposal, and the three tow- Built by McKim, Mead & White in 1927, the Building in 1998; the glass cube of the Apple ers were built instead with a series of forecourts 189. Savoy Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue Savoy Plaza Hotel fronted on Fifth Avenue Store now marks its former spot. Designed by along the avenue. Because they had reserved between 58th and 59th Streets with a line of retail shops at its base, concen- Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and built in 2006, these areas at the ground level for public space, Wurts Bros., Savoy Plaza Hotel, Fifth Avenue trating activity at the street while contrib- the cube restores a small fragment of the lost under the 1961 Zoning Resolution the archi- between 58th and 59th Streets, 1942. Museum uting to the sense of enclosure within the street wall. CY tects were allowed to build taller. The effects of the City of New York, Prints and Photographs central square. can be seen in the enormous slabs of the Exxon Collection, X2010.7.1.8255 That enclosure was broken when the Building (1967–71) at the center of the photo- 190. General Motors Building, Fifth General Motors Building replaced the Savoy graph and the McGraw-Hill Building (1969) at Avenue between 58th and 59th Streets Plaza in 1968. Edward Durell Stone, working the left; the Celanese Building (1973), which The General Motors Building, 767 Fifth Avenue be- with Emery Roth & Sons as the associated was the last of the XYZ buildings to be com- tween 58th and 59th Streets, 1968. General Motors Figure 189. Figure 190. architects, pulled the new skyscraper back pleted, is just out of sight to the south. LLC. Used with permission, GM Media Archives from the street perimeter and sank another Like the Seagram Building which inspired Until its demolition in 1964, the Savoy Plaza plaza, below street level, into the space the change in the zoning law, the XYZ buildings Hotel formed part of the ring of buildings along Fifth Avenue. The addition of this

188E TH GREATEST GRID Modern Re 189forms Figure 195.

Figure 194. Figure 197. 25.

Figure 192. Figure 193. Figure 196.

Through-Street Arcades built since the resolution’s passage. In an 192–5. 550 Madison Avenue headquarters, the original design of 550 activity at street level. When the new land- blocks, a secondary street comprised of R egridding effort to emphasize the effect of the zoning 550 Madison Avenue, AT&T Building, ca. 1986. Madison incorporated one pedestrian arcade lord turned the mid-block pedestrian arcade linked interior and semi-interior spaces. 191. Map of Through-Street Arcades resolution on midtown Manhattan, public Museum of the City of New York, Prints and along Madison Avenue and another mid- into the Sony Plaza, home of the Sony Wonder Although many of the arcades added to cor- 197, 198. Regridding of Ground Zero Privately-owned public spaces and the spaces built before 1961, such as the plazas Photographs Collection, X2010.11.2487 way down the block between 55th and 56th Technology Lab, the outcry over the privati- porate office towers under the 1961 Zoning Original site plan for World Trade Center com- Manhattan street grid: plazas and arcades in around the Time & Life Building on Sixth Lennox Joslyn, View of the mid-block arcade Streets. Both arcades earned the building zation of an area intended for public use was Resolution were bland and uninspired, geo- plex, ca. 2000. Public domain central Midtown, 2011, based on the data of Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, are at Sony Plaza during a Spiderman promotion, floor area bonuses under the zoning law, but somewhat mitigated by the improvements metric murals by Sol LeWitt and bronze Site plan for the redevelopment of lower Jerold S. Kayden. Created by Carolyn Yerkes not shown. 550 Madison Avenue, Sony Building, March one was arguably a more successful space Sony made to the corridor, such as expand- sculptures by Barry Flanagan enliven the Manhattan, 2008. Rendering courtesy Silverstein The 1961 Zoning Resolution had its great- The data for this map were compiled 2, 2007. Digital photograph. Courtesy of the than the other. Partially exposed to the ing its square footage—an indication of the nine-story atrium at the Equitable Center. Properties est effect in midtown Manhattan, where by Jerold S. Kayden, a professor of urban photographer air, the 60-foot-high arcade along Madison general success of this particular grid altera- But the arcade’s most dramatic effect is on Before August 5, 1966, when ground was the economic incentive was strongest for planning and design at Harvard University View of the Sony Building showing the open ar- opened the building’s base to pedestrians and tion. CY circulation: it allows pedestrians a short- broken on the site of the new World Trade developers to include publicly accessible who, in conjunction with the New York cade at the street and the glassed-in mid-block created a dramatic visual effect when seen cut between the avenues that the 1811 grid Center, a continuous street grid covered space in their lots in exchange for height City Department of City Planning and the arcade at the rear. Courtesy Richard Payne FAIA from outside, but from inside the vaulted 196. 787 Seventh Avenue does not provide. Even though the blocks the western side of lower Manhattan that bonuses on their towers. The added pub- Municipal Art Society of New York, published View of the Sony Building with the filled-in spaces were dark and windswept. The Through-block passageway, Equitable Building on the Upper West Side are the longest in predated the 1811 street grid to the north. lic spaces could take various forms, from an exhaustive study of the privately owned arcade at the front, 1988. © Norman McGrath glassed-in arcade at the rear of the building, at 787 Seventh Avenue between 51st-52nd Manhattan, the arcade shortcuts built after Although its blocks were small and irregu- open plazas to covered arcades, but most of public spaces built under the 1961 Zoning Although the skyscraper at 550 Madison however, provided a convenient mid-block Streets, 1985. Photograph by Edward Larrabee the 1961 Zoning Resolution are concentrated larly shaped, for the most part this grid was these spaces were built at the ground level Resolution. Above all, the map illustrates Avenue is known best for the distinctive shortcut for pedestrians and a comfortable Barnes, courtesy Robert A. M. Stern Architects in Midtown. There, high real estate values fairly uniform and integrated into the sur- Figure 191. and thus resulted in a steady erosion of the how the succession of public plazas created broken pediment at its peak—a postmod- indoor space popular with tourists and mid- At the rear of the Equitable Center at 787 provided an extra incentive for developers to rounding traffic system. The construction street grid. The cumulative effects of the along Sixth Avenue has erased the street ern flourish by Philip Johnson that earned town workers on lunch break. Seventh Avenue, a mid-block passage cuts take advantage of the floor area bonuses that of the World Trade Center on a 16-acre site 1961 Zoning Resolution can be seen in this wall there and how the addition of mid-block the tower its “Chippendale” nickname—the After the Sony Corporation bought 550 through the block between 51st and 52nd the resolution awarded in exchange for these along the river replaced a swath of the older map of the two-block zone between Fifth and arcades between Sixth and Seventh Avenues building’s arcades at street level are more Madison in 1994, a renovation by Gwathmey Streets, the southernmost in a series of cov- public-oriented interventions. CY grid with a superblock, closing sections of Seventh Avenues from Central Park South has added a de facto secondary street to the significant and affect circulation on the Siegel & Associates filled in the arcade along ered arcades that stretches north to 57th two north-south streets (Washington and to 40th Street, which shows all the plazas 1811 grid. CY grid. Completed in 1984 by Philip Johnson/ the avenue with retail space, reaffirming the Street. These aligned passageways create a Greenwich) and three east-west streets (blue) and arcades (orange) that have been John Burgee Architects as AT&T’s corporate dominance of the street wall and commercial pedestrian route through the long midtown (Fulton, Dey, and Cortland). When complete,

190E TH GREATEST GRID Modern Re 191forms Amanda M. Burden Vibrant street life is integral to New York City’s identity. The grid was also a logical device to maximize real Reflection The rectilinear Manhattan street grid, adopted in large estate value by creating regular, geometric parcels to parts of the other boroughs as well, is the city’s armature accommodate the city’s growth. Recent master plans for sustaining a pedestrian-focused, walkable city, such as that for Battery Park City have recognized Figure 198. infused with energy and vitality. these virtues and rejected the isolation created by the superblocks of previous decades, demonstrating the

Figure 199. The Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 created 200-foot-long enduring logic and practicality of the 1811 plan. blocks, just short enough to provide continuous diversity for the pedestrian. Coupled with the tradition of framing For the last nine years, our agenda at City Planning has out the grid by building to the street-wall, the pedestrian been to build on the strengths of the grid. By requiring experience is enhanced by ensuring that all buildings are a variety of measures, including street tree plantings, connected to the street and the life of the city. restricting curb cuts, promoting sidewalk cafes, and

Figure 200. requiring ground-floor transparency, we strive to improve The street walls, short blocks, and easy orientation made the dynamic quality of the city’s street life for today’s and this plan was often criticized for the remote the Manhattan vernacular street and in the designed to attract investors. The revised conditions it created at the street level, as norms of the 1811 grid. CY plan by Alexander Cooper Associates explic- possible by the grid give New Yorkers and out-of-towners future generations. the vast site was difficult for pedestrians to itly cited the 1811 Manhattan grid as the alike the incentive to explore the city with confidence. access. The seven buildings on the superblock 199, 200. Master Plans for Battery Park model for the redesign, as it “has proven to were isolated on wide plazas, and an under- City, 1969 and 1979 be remarkably adaptable to modern building ground shopping concourse drew activity Alexander Cooper Associates, Master Plan and transportation technology.” While fine-grained at human scale, the grid also opens away from the street. for Battery Park City, 1969. Courtesy Cooper, The 1979 plan for Battery Park City con- The current plan for the redevelopment Robertson & Partners tinued the grid of lower Manhattan across up elongated vistas at the city scale, with majestic views of lower Manhattan proposes to knit much Alexander Cooper Associates, Master Plan West Street, in hopes that the street exten- up and down the avenues. As New York reconnects to its of the former World Trade Center super- for Battery Park City, 1979. Courtesy Cooper, sions would reduce the sense of isolation block back into the surrounding street Robertson & Partners in the new neighborhood. Regular blocks waterfront and its water, the grid meets the rivers without grid. Two of the closed streets will be In the original plans for Battery Park City, replace the megastructure, whose circula- interruption, providing a corridor of light and air for the reopened to traffic: the north-south axis the 92-acre landfill site along the western tion system of stacked decks was deemed too of Greenwich Street and the east-west edge of lower Manhattan had no street grid. complicated and expensive to implement. metropolis and unobstructed views to the water. axis of Fulton Street. In addition, Dey and A continuous megastructure of buildings Instead, the new plan was organized around Cortland Streets will also be extended as was to cover the area, connected by a cen- traditional streets, which emphasize ground- pedestrian walkways across the eastern tral spine of vertically-stacked decks and level circulation and allow land parcels with half of the site. This proposal reasserts the overhead walkways. The plan from 1969 pro- street frontage to remain the basic unit of grid as the primary circulation network posed a neighborhood conceived in opposition development. The 1979 master plan urges in lower Manhattan and indicates a turn to the city across West Street, with build- that “Battery Park City should take a less away from the superblock strategy that ings arranged in pinwheels. (see Figure 199) idiosyncratic, more recognizable, and more dominated urban planning in the 1960s and By 1971, the development of Battery Park understandable form”; the form the planners 1970s. It demonstrates a renewed faith in City had slowed, and a new master plan was chose was the 1811 grid. CY

192E TH GREATEST GRID 193 12. Moving on the Grid

Although the commissioners’ plan created the Manhattan grid by in Manhattan means that vehicles rarely depart from the path of the delineating only two elements, the streets and the blocks, the grid grid. That regularity results both in greater efficiency, with traffic affects almost all aspects of urban life. On paper, the plan defined lights that change according to algorithms and one-way streets that the surface of the city—the widths of the streets and the edges of alternate directions, and also in serious snarls: the traffic standstills the lots—but in reality, its orthogonal structure governs everything known as gridlock. The grid, however, is also a diffusion system, that occurs on, above, and below that surface as well. Infrastructure presenting drivers and pedestrians with alternative routes when a and architecture make the grid; utilities, transportation networks, and street is backed up. social patterns follow it. Not just vehicular traffic, but pedestrians, too, are obliged to fol- Because the grid up to 155th Street was laid out over a relatively low the grid. The area designated for them, the sidewalk, connects unpopulated area, the systems that support the metropolis developed the streets and buildings of the grid spatially and is legally associated in tandem with the grid and assumed its shape. Communications with both: though owned by the city, the sidewalk is used and main- systems, power supply, and train lines initially were all above ground tained by property owners. For their safety when crossing streets, until the late nineteenth century, when logic and convenience dic- pedestrians on sidewalks must follow the rules governing vehicles— tated that these be buried underneath the city. The physical armature at least in theory (New Yorkers are famous for jaywalking). that had respected the pattern of settlement at street level—tele- Sidewalks are not only a transit zone to get from point A to point graph and telephone wires, electricity cables, and pipes for gas and B; they provide a space for social activity, and corners especially are steam—respected it underground as well. This armature included the natural gathering places. Jane Jacobs, champion of streets as social tubes for subways, which generally followed the paths of the streets, space, preferred shorter blocks than the ones created by the 1811 like the elevated trains that the subway replaced. The first subway plan: more intersections mean more corners, and more opportunities in New York, operated by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company for human interaction. Furthermore, the long distances between the (IRT), ran north from City Hall, for the most part underneath West Side avenues in particular can be daunting to pedestrians. The Broadway. The subway continued underneath Broadway and Seventh zoning law of 1961 incentivized the creation of mid-block passage- Avenue on the west side of Central Park, and on the East Side it fol- ways to shorten the block dimensions, but relatively few of them are lowed Lexington Avenue. The two lines were connected in midtown located on long West Side blocks. by the 42nd Street shuttle. For pedestrians moving through neighborhoods, the grid’s regular Subterranean trains echo the grid underground; the rest of the numbering system—as opposed to named streets—makes it easy transportation network echoes it at street level. Because of the to navigate, and the distances between the blocks allow walkers to original emphasis on waterfront access, the grid provided many more calculate travel time with simple rules of thumb: twenty short blocks crosstown streets and travel up and down the island was concen- to a mile, one block a minute. The grid is not just the physical fabric of trated on relatively few avenues. In 1949 the Department of Traffic the city; the grid also is the systems and people moving through it. Engineering developed the one-way traffic system in part to address the limited capacity of the avenues and make north-south transit more efficient, and an automated traffic light system was designed to allow traffic to move through several intersections without stopping. Today it seems a given that vehicles in Manhattan should obey rectilinear traffic patterns, but this was not always the case. At Columbus Circle, for example, which was built in 1905, the streets connect through a rotary, and in 1920 the pioneering traf- fic engineer William Phelps Eno proposed building similar circular intersections throughout the city. His plan was never instituted, and most New York intersections now employ a “block system,” where one street of traffic stops to allow another street of traffic to < Detail of Street Games, Figure 219 pass. Common throughout the world, the use of the block system

194E TH GREATEST GRID 195 Sidewalks

Sidewalks are the invisible third element of the feet in all streets seventy feet wide; seventeen feet in all Thus the property lines of the 1811 grid determined not only Commissioners’ Plan of 1811. The plan itself does not show streets eighty feet wide; eighteen feet in all streets above the spatial aspects of the Manhattan sidewalk, but also its them, and the commissioners’ remarks never mention them, eighty and not exceeding ninety feet wide; nineteen feet in social aspects. but sidewalks are as much a part of the grid as the streets all streets above ninety and not exceeding one hundred feet and blocks that they join. Every aspect of their three-dimen- wide; and twenty feet, and no more, in all streets more than Carolyn Yerkes sional development—including their use—is tied to the two- one hundred feet wide.” Although these widths approximate dimensional grid. the one-fifth proportional rule of the previous legislation, the When the Manhattan commissioners wrote their remarks new law simplified the process by increasing the sidewalk in 1811, laws governing the creation and maintenance of side- width in one- or two-foot increments. walks had been on the books for decades. This legislation In their remarks on the 1811 grid, the commissioners pro- was simple and had remained relatively unchanged since the posed streets of only two widths: 60 feet for the east-west eighteenth century. The laws and ordinances established by streets and 100 feet for the north-south avenues as well as the Common Council in 1805, for example, stated that any for fifteen of the east-west streets. According to the ordi- street in the city measuring 22 feet across or more should nances, the sidewalks consequently should be 20 feet wide have a foot path or walk on each side equal to one-fifth the on the avenues and the wider cross-town streets, and 14 feet width of the entire street. Additional ordinances protected wide on the regular cross-town streets. Although unstated these pedestrian walks from encroachments: canopies, in the commissioners’ remarks, the design of the sidewalks awnings, stoops, or steps could project out only one-tenth was tied to the design of the grid. As alterations disturbed the width of the sidewalk. Violators were subject to fines, the original consistency and uniformity of the grid over time, including those who built bow-windows on their houses, the sidewalks reflected those changes. For example, when planted trees in the walk, or hung obstructing signs from Central Park was created at the center of the island—by far Figure 212. Figure 213. their shops. Furthermore, property owners were required the largest interruption in the 1811 grid—the park commis- to keep the walks fronting their lots in good repair—at their sioners widened the sidewalks along its borders in order engineers had wanted to for years: she reas- S treet Life by Street Cleaning Commissioner George E. 213. Cleaning the Sidewalk own expense—to the standard set by law. to create broad, shaded walks under the trees. Madison serted the grid. Waring, Jr., appointed in 1895. A sanitation Byron Company, Shoveling snow on a sidewalk, Thus, when the commissioners drew up their plans for Avenue, built between Park Avenue and Fifth Avenue in 1836, Initially enacted as a pilot program in 212. Parade of the Street Cleaners engineer, Waring had been responsible for 1899. Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of the grid, they may not have included specifications for side- is only 75 feet wide and therefore has a narrower sidewalk 2009, cars coming down Broadway were Byron Company, Street Cleaners, 1896. Gelatin the drainage of Central Park; he is one of the New York, Byron Collection, Gift of Percy Byron, walks because these were already covered by preexisting than the 100-foot-wide avenues of the 1811 grid. redirected to Seventh Avenue. Five blocks of silver print. Museum of the City of New York, Byron men pictured standing alongside Olmsted 93.1.1.14294 legislation. Yet as the extensive street-building operation In addition to the rules concerning sidewalk width, the roadbed at Times Square and three at Herald Collection, Gift of Percy Byron, 93.1.1.18233 and Vaux in Figure 102. Waring brought a Pedestrian safety can be a problem on the got underway, the old laws were no longer adequate for laws regulating sidewalk construction and maintenance also Square were converted into pedestrian pla- As the development of the grid advanced military discipline to the department and grid, not only in the streets but also on the the growing city. Laws introduced after 1811 preserved two grew increasingly specific after 1811. Legislation detailed the zas to accommodate the hoards of office work- throughout the nineteenth century, keeping overhauled its operations, as he divided the sidewalks. Although the city is responsible basic principles from the previous legislation: first, that the type of stone property owners should use to pave their walks ers, tourists, and shoppers. While there had its streets clear became an increasingly com- city into sections and assigned each zone to a for clearing the streets after a snowfall, width of the sidewalk should be correlated to the width of the as well as the proper joining method, and an 1817 ordinance been hopes that traffic would actually move plex problem. In short, Manhattan was filthy, foreman at the head of a platoon. Waring also since the early nineteenth century property street, and second, that construction and maintenance of forbade property owners from extending the walks in front faster after removing Broadway from the with gutters full of garbage, clogged sewer organized the annual Street Cleaners Parade, owners must remove snow and ice from the the sidewalk should remain the responsibility of the adjacent of their lots beyond the walks of adjoining lots. By requiring system, analysis showed that in fact there drains, and pavement coated with axle grease. in order to “stimulate and encourage the men, sidewalks in front of their lots. An 1809 res- property owner even though the city owns and regulates the all property owners to build or extend the sidewalks at their was almost no change despite the reduced The Police Department was responsible for and to increase the respect of citizens for these olution gave New Yorkers four hours after walk itself. But in their complexity, the new laws reflected lots in unison and to the same standard of construction, the amount of roadway. Decreases in pedestrian, cleaning the streets until 1881, when the city employees.” In this photograph from the every snow, hail, or rainstorm to clean the the increased scale of the street grid; they addressed both city ensured that the physical manifestation of the grid would motor vehicle, and bicycle accidents, however, Department of Street Cleaning was created to inaugural parade held in 1896, the street adjacent walks or else incur a fine—a policy the physical form and the administrative jurisdiction of the reflect the uniformity of its conception. led Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to declare handle the task. The first commissioner of the cleaners—called the “White Wings” for their that exists more or less intact today. As the sidewalk in far greater detail than the pre-1811 laws. Yet even though the ordinances required property owners the changes permanent in 2010. JR department, James S. Coleman, contracted bright white uniforms and headgear—march city grew, other laws were enacted to pro- First to go was the one-fifth rule of thumb that governed to pay for the walks fronting their lots, to keep them clear of out the cleaning of the roads below 14th Street down Fifth Avenue; they were accompanied by tect its citizens from hazards. For example, the sidewalk width for streets 22 feet wide and up. In 1812, snow and trash, and to repair them when necessary, side- and used his own forces for the northern their mechanical street sweepers, sprinklers, an 1812 resolution required contractors dig- this single proportional rule was replaced by a law that listed walks fell on the public side of the lines that demarcated streets—that is, for most of the grid. During ash-carts, and basket wagons, all polished for ging new streets to erect protective fences the specific dimensions required of sidewalks along streets the street blocks. The city controlled not only the physical the first decade of its existence, the depart- the occasion. CY or railings alongside their trenches. Anyone wider than 40 feet. Under this law, walks should be “ten feet development of this space but also the activities that could ment was notorious for graft, patronage, who damaged a street or sidewalk had to in all streets forty feet wide; twelve feet in all streets fifty be performed there. Horses and carts were not to block the and incompetence, until it was reorganized pay for its repair—an indication of the feet wide; fourteen feet in all streets sixty feet wide; sixteen sidewalks, and public auctions could not be held on them.

202E TH GREATEST GRID Moving on the Grid 203 Figure 216.

Figure 214. Figure 217. commissioner’s concern for the streets and fashionable crowd began to build their town- the 30-foot-wide sidewalks that made the 216. The Benefits of Short Blocks York, citizens had a connection to a multitude lots, and as a result it can be difficult—or sidewalks as well as for their users. CY houses farther north, Central Park became avenue so hospitable to promenades in the Diagrams of walking patterns from Jane Jacobs, of persons, businesses, and institutions. With impossible—to enter a building on the grid “the general Mecca to which all the prome- late-nineteenth century were fair game to The Death and Life of Great American Cities shorter blocks, any one person can meander from any direction except the front. A stoop 214. Promenading nades lead, whether the route be ‘the’ Avenue, street wideners in the twentieth. Since its Cities (New York: Random House, 1961.) ©1961, as efficiently as before while nurturing differ- eliminates the need for a back door by mak- Byron Company, Fifth Avenue at 23rd Street, or Madison-avenue or upper Sixth-avenue.” construction, the avenue had always been 1989 by Jane Jacobs. Used by permission of ent relationships on each trip. In her mind, ing it possible to enter a partially sub-grade 1898 . Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of Such scenes are captured in Edith Wharton’s crowded with carriages heading to and from Random House, Inc.). the hulking 800-foot blocks of Manhattan’s basement via a short flight of steps down New York, Byron Collection, Gift of Percy Byron, The House of Mirth, published in 1905 and set Central Park, and in 1908 the process of While traffic engineers viewed the grid’s West Side deterred the street life and inter- from the sidewalk. Another short flight up 93.1.1.18013 in turn-of-the-century New York, where the reducing the sidewalk to allow more room many intersections as a problem to overcome, personal city she was fighting to preserve. JR allows the building’s first residential floor When the grid began to fill out in the sec- heroine, Lily Bart, observes the social inter- for street traffic began on the stretch of Jane Jacobs sought to create more of them. to be a half-story above the street, removed ond half of the nineteenth century, its long actions of the wealthy as they play out along Fifth Avenue between 25th and 47th Streets. In her classic book of 1961, The Death and 217, 218. Stoops from noise and activity. Because of their con- axial streets provided the perfect setting Fifth Avenue. Occasionally Lily’s tone encap- Seven-and-a-half feet were removed from the Life of Great American Cities, Jacobs advised Sid Grossman, 133rd Street between Fifth and venience, stoops are one of the most common for bourgeois Manhattanites to promenade. sulates how these scenes may have struck width of each sidewalk, increasing the street that shorter blocks are better blocks. With Lenox Avenues, 1939. Museum of the City of New methods for connecting streets and buildings On January 15, 1887, the New York Times those without the means to enjoy a free day width from 40 to 55 feet. The reduction in shorter blocks come more intersections, York, Gift of Federal Works Agency, Work Projects on the grid and historically they have been a reported that “Fifth-avenue, the best cleaned promenading, as when she describes the way the pedestrian space meant that previous and the corner, the pedestrian corollary of Administration, Federal Art Project. 43.131.9.14 center of social life. Basements below stoops street in the city, is the favorite promenade,” a spring day mitigated “the ugliness of the Figure 215. encroachments on the walks also had to go, the intersection, creates a valuable point of Berenice Abbott, Harlem Street II, June 14, 1938. can be easily converted into retail storefronts an optimal place for strolling in the early long crowded thoroughfare, blurred the gaunt and on mansion-lined Fifth Avenue, these human interaction. The corner, in her view, is Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of New or income properties, while the stoop itself afternoon. In this photograph of the avenue rooflines, threw a mauve veil over the discour- 215. Sidewalk Traffic why 100-foot-wide streets can feel narrow were significant. Expensive architectural where neighbors bump into each other or stop York, Gift of Federal Works Agency, Work Projects provides a place for neighborhood residents from 1898, well-dressed pedestrians pass aging perspective of the side streets, and gave Berenice Abbott, Tempo of the City II, 1938. on the grid. In the 1930s, three types of accouterments like terraces, gardens, stone to chat, ultimately leading to social cohesion. Administration, Federal Art Project, 43.131.2.233 to congregate. CY and CS each other on the broad sidewalks and car- a touch of poetry to the delicate haze of green Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of New traffic—pedestrian, automobile, and street- steps, and entryways that projected into the The shorter blocks diagrammed on the Although they are not particular to riages ferry the traffic alongside Madison that marked the entrance to the Park.” CY York. Gift of Federal Works Agency, Work Projects car—competed for space, generating a level sidewalk had to be dismantled, much to the right indeed produce more corners per unit Manhattan, stoops are a particularly useful Square Park. “These groups of pretty pedes- Administration, Federal Art Project, 43.131.2.248 of congestion that has never abated, even as chagrin of the property owners, who also had of square measure, but they also create more architectural feature on the grid. The 1811 trians,” according to the Times, “are becom- Berenice Abbott’s photograph of the intersec- the modes of transit have changed. Although to foot the bill for their removal. CY paths. These diagrams get to the heart of plan did not include alleyways within the ing quite an incident of social life.” As the tion of Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street shows Fifth Avenue did not have a streetcar line, the way we move across our grid. In her New city blocks or spaces between the property

204E TH GREATEST GRID Moving on the Grid 205 Figure 218. Figure 219.

219. Street Games 220. Fifth Avenue Mile Street and East 60th Street as its course, a different starting point depending on how Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street, 1966. Bruce Fifth Avenue Mile race, 2009. Courtesy of New is 3:47.52, set by Sydney Maree in 1981. far north the city had developed in that area Davidson/Magnum Photos York Road Runners Organized by the New York Road Runners, of the island. As a result, the numbering Bruce Davidson spent two years photo- “Twenty short blocks equal a mile” is an the event draws thousands of runners to the systems for the avenues do not align with graphing the residents of one block of East indispensable rule of thumb for judging route along Central Park, where they mea- each other, so the Empire State Building at 100th Street in the mid-1960s. The pho- distances in Manhattan, a convenient side sure themselves against the grid. CY 350 Fifth Avenue is between 33rd and 34th tographs, which document the poverty of benefit of the grid. In the 1811 plan, the Streets while the same address on Seventh an East Harlem slum, provide a grim view commissioners determined that cross-town 221. Address Calculator Avenue is between 29th and 30th Streets. into a city that has often failed its inhab- streets should be 60 feet wide and that the “Manhattan Address Finder,” New York City 5 Determining the cross-street for an itants. This image of children playing is blocks between them should measure about Borough Atlas, 3rd ed., Hagstrom Map Company, address on an avenue requires an algorithm. a notable exception in that it records a 200 feet on their eastern and western sides. Inc., 1994. © Kappa Map Group LLC, (800) 829- For most avenues, it is possible to take the Figure 220. Figure 221.> moment of levity away from the cramped By this metric, twenty short blocks add up to 6277. Used with permission building number, divide by 20, and then interiors of decrepit buildings. With a view only 5,200 feet—just short of a mile—except In Manhattan, the grid makes it easy to add or subtract an integer specific to that but there are also exceptional cases where system virtually obsolete, algorithms for the of the Triborough Bridge in the distance, that the commissioners also determined that locate addresses on the cross-streets, because avenue and come up with the cross-street. different integers apply to different sections different avenues were printed in telephone the children use East 100th Street as their fifteen of the cross-town streets should be 100 the numbering starts at Fifth Avenue and For Lexington Avenue, the integer is 22, so to of the street, including Fifth Avenue and books, in city guidebooks and maps, and on gameboard while neighbors chat with each feet wide, which supplies the extra distance. increases as one moves east or west toward find the cross-street of the Chrysler Building Broadway. Furthermore Central Park wallet-size cards to help both residents and other on the sidewalks. Davidson’s photo- Walking at a comfortable pace and factoring the rivers. Building numbers increase by one at 405 Lexington, one divides 405 by 20 to West and Riverside Drive have a separate visitors alike locate addresses on the grid. CY graph captures the way that the streets of in some time spent waiting for traffic lights hundred at every long block, so the Times get 20.25, then adds 22 for a result of 42.25: algorithm that requires dividing the the grid provide social spaces for their resi- to change, a New Yorker can expect to cover Square Building at 229 West 43rd Street, for 42nd Street. Park Avenue has an integer building number by ten instead of twenty dents, occasionally serving as racetrack or a block a minute on foot, another useful rule example, is on the third block west of Fifth of 35, so the cross-street of the Seagram before adding the integer. Thus the New ball field when the need arises. CY for estimating travel time. The record for the Avenue. Locating addresses on the avenues Building at 375 Park is (375÷ 20)+35=53.75, York Historical Society at 170 Central Park Fifth Avenue Mile, an annual road race that can be much more complicated. When the or 53rd Street. Most avenues have a single West can be found at (170÷10)+60=77th uses the twenty blocks between East 80th grid was laid out in 1811, each avenue had integer that applies to their entire length, Street. Before smartphones made the whole

206E TH GREATEST GRID Moving on the Grid 207 Edward Glaeser Manhattan’s grid imposes clarity on the island’s burbling Cities easily splinter into separate neighborhoods, small Reflection chaos and enables ordinary pedestrians to negotiate geographic areas that are places apart. Manhattan has New York’s complex ecosystem. While many city plans many social divisions, but physically, the island feels are more beautiful in the abstract, none has done more remarkably connected—at least north of 14th Street. to facilitate the magnificent energy of the flowing human You feel that connection, in part, because you stand so city. The grid makes manageable the messy humanity of often on a long avenue that runs almost the length of the millions. island. Tenth Avenue runs from 14th Street to 190th, with only a single name change. As a teenager, I would walk The grid’s costs are obvious. The plan’s regularity home from Wall Street to 69th, almost entirely on Second eliminates the surprises that pop up in older warrens of Avenue. alleyways like Rome or Beacon Hill. Manhattan lacks the beautiful geometry of Barcelona’s more sophisticated It may not be every urban planner’s beau ideal, but as a plan and the impressive vistas of Haussmann’s Paris. machine for urban living, the grid is pretty perfect. But while the grid doesn’t celebrate the achievements of generals or architects, it provides a simple geographic framework that empowers the chaotic genius of the city. You know where you are and how to get where you are going. Even without MapQuest, you can calculate the length of your trip.

The grid encourages walking, which is important since 21 percent of Manhattanites walk to work, as opposed Figure 222. Figure 223. to 2.9 percent of Americans. The grid’s simplicity is even 222, 223. Invisible Grid where cross-streets would be, had parks, The prevalence of such signs—which also can more important for tourists, who have enough to be 69th Street plaque at the Eastbank Esplanade, superblocks, or other alterations not inter- be found above ground, on the High Line, and 2011. Photograph by Carolyn Yerkes rupted them. These two photographs show below ground, in subway tunnels—suggests confused about in Manhattan without also having to cope 69th Street and Freedom Place, 2001. Photograph signage for 69th Street in places where the the utility of the grid’s regular numbering with a convoluted street plan. by Carolyn Yerkes street does not run. On the left, a plaque on system as a directional tool, even when inde- The grid helps New Yorkers navigate in areas the Eastbank Esplanade marks where the pendent of the grid itself. CY of Manhattan where its streets do not exist. street is cut off by the FDR Drive, and on Throughout the city, there are signs mark- the right, a sign points to where 69th Street ing a “ghost grid,” indicating the locations is erased by an Upper West Side superblock.

208E TH GREATEST GRID 209 13. Urban Paradigm: The Grid in Contemporary Thought

As an urban plan, the 1811 grid of Manhattan looks like an abstrac- neighborhoods—explores methods for preserving the grid’s basic tion, a single pattern covering a landmass from edge to edge without structure while reconfiguring the internal arrangement of buildings interruption or variation. Because that plan is now a reality, built with on the blocks. Projects like the Cornell team’s, which accept certain some exceptions but in such a way that the original proposal is still aspects of the grid while rejecting others, are representative of the readily apparent, the grid has a dual nature: it is a conceptual idea ways designers have used Manhattan as a model to critique and refine with a concrete form, a theory that can be found in practice. grid-planning without discarding its archetype. Manhattan differs from other gridded cities in the way that its Manhattan’s grid has also been held up as model to emulate. In plan reaches to the extents of the available terrain and usually 1978 in Delirious New York, Rem Koolhaas offered what is perhaps the ignores geographical features. It is self-contained, nearly uniform, best-known celebration of the 1811 plan—a manifesto that lauds the and dense. In the two hundred years since it was first proposed, this plan’s general principles as well as the buildings that it produced—but extremity of execution has made the 1811 plan a point of reference others have endorsed the grid through projects that capitalize on its for architects and planners. Despite the complexity and variation of consistency. Works like Bernard Tschumi’s Manhattan Transcripts or the structures that fill it out, the grid itself can nearly always be seen the graphic novel of Paul Auster’s City of Glass use the city plan as a or felt; the diagram of the original idea remains legible. This diagram- visual frame, enlisting the grid as both a formal device and a setting matic quality allows Manhattan to stand in for all gridded cities, for narrative. For architects and artists, Manhattan offers a useful con- everywhere. If Manhattan did not exist, urban designers would have straint for organizing ideas about urban design: graph paper instead had to invent it, because the grid provides a paradigm for them to of a blank canvas. reject, temper, or celebrate. Even Manhattan’s most vocal critics have had to admit its useful- ness as a real-world demonstration of grid-planning brought to the limit. After his 1935 visit, Le Corbusier referred to Manhattan as “the fairy catastrophe which is the laboratory of the new times,” a statement that captures the surreal quality of a city whose built form adheres so closely to the first proposal for it on paper. Because Manhattan is a specific example that can stand in easily for a general idea, it makes the perfect punching bag for critics of grid-planning. When Le Corbusier sketched the plan of Manhattan to illustrate how, in his opinion, the density of blocks and the construction along the street walls deprives the city of open space, he needed only a few lines to capture both a real place and the total concept of its design. His own ideal city, an enlarged grid of superblocks with towers sur- rounded by parks, can be read as a counter-proposal to Manhattan. The extremity of Manhattan’s plan also provides an opportunity to test interventional design strategies. Architects and planners have offered a range of possible approaches to mediating the grid’s consistency. The 1811 plan simply extended the city blocks right to the water’s edge, and critics of this feature have proposed riverfront development projects in response. Those who appreciate Manhattan’s axial streets often oppose their density, and advocate incorporat- ing more open space into the city. The Cornell University team’s submission to the 1967 Museum of Modern Art exhibition The New City: Architecture and Urban Renewal—a show that investigated < Detail of City of the Captive Globe Project, Figure 230 ways to redevelop areas of New York City without clearing entire

210E TH GREATEST GRID 211 Figure 225.

Figure 224. Figure 226.

224, 225. Le Corbusier (When the Cathedrals Were White: Journey 226–8. Colin Rowe terrain itself?” The team responded with Le Corbusier: First edition of Quand les to the Land of the Timid). The titles of these From The New City: Architecture and Urban a proposal to blend two opposing views of Cathédrales Etaient Blanches (Paris: Librairie publications indicate the vehemence of Le Renewal (New York: Museum of Modern Art, city planning into one hybrid approach, an Plon, 1937). © 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), Corbusier’s reaction to New York, which he 1967), designs from the Cornell University team approach that both preserves and critiques New York/ ADAGP, Paris / F.L.C.1 sketched out in a series of vignettes that led by Colin Rowe and Thomas Schumacher with the 1811 grid. Le Corbusier, “What Is America’s Problem,” capture his conception of the city plan and Jerry A. Wells and Alfred H. Koetter. Courtesy On a swath of northern Manhattan published in American Architect, volume 148 of what it should be. Although the architect Museum of Modern Art that stretches from 96th Street to 155th (March 1936). Courtesy Cooper Union. © 2011 admired much about the Manhattan grid, In 1967 the Department of Architecture Street but excludes Central Park, the pro- Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, including its regularity and the spectacle and Design at the Museum of Modern Art posal has a central zone that maintains Paris / F.L.C.1 of skyscrapers it produced, he considered launched an exhibition centered around the street grid and two adjacent side zones “I could never have imagined such a violent, its streets too densely spaced to support a the idea that urban renewal projects on a that demolish it. Discrete interventions in such a decisive, such a simple and also such a reasonable standard of living. He proposed vast scale could address a city’s social prob- the central zone rehabilitate existing build- diversified arrangement of the ground of the regrouping the streets into larger units and lems. Four teams of architects and plan- ings and public areas, whereas in the side 25. city,” wrote Le Corbusier in 1936, remember- clearing the shorter buildings from around ners drawn from the faculties of Columbia, zones, tower-in-the-park planning replaces ing the Manhattan grid from his visit to the the skyscrapers—producing, in essence, an Cornell, and Princeton Universities and the grid with newly opened park spaces, city the year before. Invited by the Museum enlarged grid with towers surrounded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology connecting Morningside Park, St. Nicholas Figure 227. of Modern Art to give a lecture tour in the parks. He transposed the theory of urbanism were each prompted to respond to a par- Park, and Colonial Park into a continu- United States, the Swiss architect published that he had produced in his plan for an ideal ticular problem on a designated site. The ous band of green. In Figure 227, the blue his critique of the grid first in an article where city, La Ville radieuse of 1935, onto a real city question posed to the Cornell team asked: and white plan highlights the open spaces he wondered “What Is America’s Problem?,” that had developed along opposite lines. CY “How can we modify the existing grid embedded in sixteen typical street blocks Figure 228. and then again in his book describing the plan to improve circulation, encourage the of the central zone. In Figure 228, the team entire American trip: Quand les cathédrales development of parks and new neighbor- proposes a strategy to reorganize such etaient blanches: Voyage au pays des timides hoods, and clarify the order implied by the blocks by converting the private spaces,

212E TH GREATEST GRID Urban Paradigm 213 Figure 230.

plan that covers an island, then Superstudio’s 230. Madelon Vriesendorp and Continuous Monument: New York Extrusion Rem Koolhaas Project finds the grid’s illogical extreme, as it Rem Koolhaas, The City of the Captive Globe extrudes the city skyline into an object that Project, New York, Axonometric, 1972. Gouache covers the world. Founded in 1966 by Adolfo and graphite on paper. The Museum of Modern Natalini and Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY. Image Superstudio devoted itself almost entirely to by Madelon Vriesendorp; courtesy of OMA theoretical projects that critiqued globaliza- In this conceptual project based on the Figure 231. tion as a homogenizing force in architecture. Manhattan grid, each city block is imagined In the Continuous Monument of 1969—by as an island raised above the street on a Vriesendorp. Koolhaas then developed the structures like the Waldorf Hotel, the 231. Bernard Tschumi as episodes, and the drawings evoke film which time Superstudio had grown to include podium of polished granite. Every podium ideas that had informed this project into Downtown Athletic Club, and Rockefeller Bernard Tschumi, scene from “Episode 4: The stills in the way that they document aspects Figure 229. Gian Piero Frassinelli, Alessandro Magris, supports a unique building, some of which a book, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Center as case studies, Koolhaas explores Block,” of The Manhattan Transcripts Project, of urban life. Each episode tells a story set and Roberto Magris—a series of photocol- are recognizable—such as the skyscrapers of Manifesto for Manhattan, published in 1978, the Manhattan skyscraper as what he calls 1980–81. Ink and cut-and-pasted gelatin silver somewhere in Manhattan, with photographs including backyards and gaps between lots, 229. Superstudio lages depicts a monolithic megastructure Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin for Paris, planted where this painting appears as an illustra- “the reproduction of the World,” where every photographs on tracing paper. The Museum of that record the events, diagrams that tran- into pedestrian areas. This strategy com- Superstudio, The Continuous Monument: New circling the planet, a beautiful and terrible near the top center—while others are fantas- tion. In Delirious New York, an exuberant block in the grid is a self-contained universe Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY scribe the action, and drawings that rep- bines small pockets of unbuilt square foot- York Extrusion Project, New York, New York, vision of the future of urban sprawl. The tical. The podiums exaggerate the way that take on urban history, Koolhaas delivers of vertically-stacked services and programs. In The Manhattan Transcripts, a series of resent the architectural spaces where the age to produce more open space but does Aerial perspective, 1969. Graphic, color pencil, New York Extrusion Project generates the the street grid concentrates architectural an ode to the 1811 grid, which he calls “the In Delirious New York, the City of the Captive four projects created by Bernard Tschumi stories take place. Organized around figural not disrupt the street wall of the grid. CY and cut-and-pasted printed paper on board. The form of this megastructure from the profile ambition into clearly defined limits, forcing most courageous act of prediction in Western Globe is Manhattan. CY between 1976 and 1981, the architect grids, the resulting collages investigate the Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, turning the het- each block to become a world unto itself. civilization: the land it divides, unoccupied; explores the relationship between objects, conditions that the actual street grid cre- Resource, NY erogeneous architecture of the 1811 grid into The City of the Captive Globe was a proj- the population it describes, conjectural; the movements, and events in the city by combin- ates in Manhattan: the park at its center If the Commissioners’ Plan of 1811 takes the a smooth glass prism—a skyline that reflects ect produced by Rem Koolhaas and Zoe buildings it locates, phantoms; the activi- ing various techniques of architectural rep- in episode one, the regularity of its streets street grid to its logical extreme, a regularized the sky. CY Zenghelis in 1972 with paintings by Madelon ties it frames, nonexistent.” Using iconic resentation. Tschumi refers to the projects in episode two, the height of its buildings in

214E TH GREATEST GRID Urban Paradigm 215 Figure 233. Figure 234. Figure 235. Figure 236.

without the 1811 grid belong to a series of these plans of New York City were drawn by later adapted into a graphic novel by Paul that these paths contain coded messages, as drawings that focus primarily on the south- students of Gandelsonas at the Institute for Karasik and David Mazzucchelli, City of if Stillman’s walks have become thoughts ern tip of the island, where multiple older Architecture and Urban Studies in 1983 and Glass follows a writer named Quinn as he of their own. By the last panel, a scene street systems intersect and overlap. These were redrawn by Michael Stanton in 1984, loses himself in the streets of New York. near the end of the novel, Quinn has lost two plans in particular contrast the fragmen- with the collaboration of Nancy Clayton and In the first panel shown here, a scene from track of his target, and he sets out onto the tary quality of that historically layered area Allan Organsky. CY early in the novel, readers learn that Quinn grid alone. In his introduction to the 2004 Figure 232. with the monolithic system that governs the had started writing detective novels under edition of City of Glass, Art Spiegelman rest of the city. 233–6. Paul Auster, Paul Karasik and a pseudonym after the deaths of his wife describes how Karasik used the imagery episode three, and the density of its blocks architectural space itself. In the book of the 232. Mario Gandelsonas floating free from the island of Manhattan. In New York, the adjacency of several grids David Mazzucchelli and son. Without family, friends, or money— of the Manhattan grid to frame a narrative in episode four. Manhattan Transcripts that was published Mario Gandelsonas, “Plan 7: The Plan Minus Elements that disrupt the grid, such as creates a city without a single center, which is Artwork by David Mazzucchelli, from City of without even his own name—all Quinn has about confused identity. “By insisting on a The Manhattan Transcripts conclude in 1981, Tschumi describes these plays on the Gridiron” and “Plan 8: The Gridiron,” from Broadway, Central Park, superblocks, and one aspect of the condition that Gandelsonas Glass: The Graphic Novel by Paul Karasik and left is his city, and he uses his walks on the strict, regular grid of panels,” Spiegelman with “The Block,” an episode that explores conventional modes of representation as an X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American City natural topographical features like the river’s calls X-Urbanism. Gandelsonas coined the David Mazzucchelli, New York, 2004, adapted grid to distance himself from his thoughts. writes, “Karasik located the Ur-language of life within the five courtyards of a single effort to transcribe “the complex relation- (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), edge, are shown separately in the top plan. term X-Urbanism to describe a new type of from the novel City of Glass by Paul Auster. When he is mistaken for a detective, Quinn Comics: the grid as window, as prison door, city block. Those courtyards are visible at ship between spaces and their use; between pp. 88-89. Courtesy of the architect New York is one of several cities that city that he has observed developing since Courtesy of David Mazzucchelli begins to follow an old man named Stillman, as city block, as tic-tac-toe board; the grid the top of this sheet, an excerpt from the the set and the script; between ‘type’ and These two drawings capture both the conti- Mario Gandelsonas explores in his book the 1970s: a city formed of low-density sprawl In Paul Auster’s City of Glass, t he who had been in prison for years for abus- as a metronome giving measure to the nar- episode, where they provide the setting for ‘program’; between objects and events.” nuity and the peculiarities of the 1811 plan X-Urbanism: Architecture and the American and without a clearly defined core. In his Manhattan grid—seemingly a paradigm of ing his own son. Quinn tails Stillman as he rative’s shifts and fits.” CY the events captured in the photographs Here, the edge of the street grid appears by illustrating the grid as a single object City, in which he uses the figure-ground tech- analytical drawings, Gandelsonas investi- order with its numbered streets and regu- walks around Manhattan, and in the second at the bottom. At the center, movement like the sprocket holes on the side of a film removed from its urban context. In the bot- nique to represent the urban fabric at large gates the formal properties of these multi- larized blocks—is the setting for a story of panel shown here we see him charting the diagrams are drawn in axonometric pro- strip, framing the action. CY tom plan, the street system appears as a scale rather than at the scale of individual center, non-hierarchical urban areas and disorientation. First published in 1985 as man’s path on the ruled lines of his note- jection as three-dimensional figures, like black and white, three-dimensional figure buildings. The plans of Manhattan with and articulates their patterns. Published in 1999, part of the author’s New York Trilogy and book. Studying these charts, Quinn believes

216E TH GREATEST GRID Urban Paradigm 217