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97-620: The Percy R. Pyne House (also known as the Percy Rivington Pyne House and Percy & Maud H. Pyne House ) is a neo- Federal townhouse at 680 Park Avenue , located at the northwest corner of Park Avenue and 68th Street in Manhattan . Currently, the Americas Society uses the building as its New York City headquarters. Designed by McKim, Mead & White for Percy Rivington Pyne II , grandson of

194-602: A Commission the three men suggested by the Common Council to establish a comprehensive street plan for Manhattan: Gouverneur Morris , a Founding Father of the United States ; the lawyer John Rutherfurd , a former United States Senator representing New Jersey and a relative to Morris by marriage; and the state Surveyor General , Simeon De Witt , a cousin of De Witt Clinton , who was the Mayor of New York City,

291-526: A State Senator, and the most powerful politician in New York. A month later, the legislature gave the Commissioners "exclusive power to lay out streets, roads, and public squares, of such width, extent, and direction, as to them shall seem most conducive to public good, and to shut up, or direct to be shut up, any streets or parts thereof which have been heretofore laid out ... [but] not accepted by

388-790: A centralized monarchy. This example was followed on the European continent in cities such as New Brandenburg in Germany , which the Teutonic Knights founded in 1248, and in the many towns planned and built in the 14th century in the Florentine Republic . The gridiron idea spread with the Renaissance , although in many cities, for instance London following the Great Fire of 1666 , it failed to take root. However

485-410: A commission with sweeping powers in 1807, and their plan was presented in 1811. The Commissioners were Gouverneur Morris , a Founding Father of the United States ; the lawyer John Rutherfurd , a former United States Senator ; and the state Surveyor General , Simeon De Witt . Their chief surveyor was John Randel Jr. , who was 20 years old when he began the job. The Commissioners' Plan is arguably

582-592: A degree of immunity from legal entanglements. In 1809, Randel's surveying again seems to have been focused on positioning the Common Lands, and Goerck's lots and streets in it, to the rest of the island. Goerck had shown their relationship to the Bloomingdale Road to the west, much of which would become part of Broadway, and the East Post Road to the east, a road which would be demapped by

679-406: A flatter, smoother façade and rarely used pilasters . It was most influenced by the interpretation of ancient Roman architecture , fashionable after the unearthing of Pompeii and Herculaneum . The bald eagle was a common symbol used in this style, with the ellipse a frequent architectural motif. The classicizing manner of constructions and town planning undertaken by the federal government

776-523: A grid for the entire island, should the Commission decide to go in that direction. Randel wrote afterwards that in the course of his work he "was arrested by the Sheriff, on numerous suits instituted ... for trespass and damage by ... workmen, in passing over grounds, cutting off branches of trees. &c., to make surveys under instructions from the Commissioners." In August 1808, Randel was sued by

873-479: A gridiron pattern – Goerck was not instructed to do so – most of the lots were organized into two columns of 45 lots with a 65-foot (20 m) road between the columns. The lots were oriented as the lots of the future Commissioners' Plan would be, with the east–west axis longer than the north–south axis; their five-acre size would become the template for the Commissioners' five acre blocks; and Goerck's middle road would eventually reappear on

970-428: A landowner for trespass and causing damage to the landowner's property, such as cutting down trees and trampling on crops; $ 5000 was requested in damages, but the landowner received only $ 109.63, just enough to cover his court costs. Nonetheless, the potential for future problems was real. Gouverneur Morris asked the Common Council for a means of protecting the necessary actions of the surveyors, but, for political reasons,

1067-468: A manner as to unite regularity and order with the public convenience and benefit and in particular to promote the health of the City." At the time, foul air, or " miasma ," associated with sewage, standing water and low sunlight, was thought to be the cause of many diseases, and the city had lived through decades of epidemics of yellow fever . In March 1807, the state legislature responded by appointing as

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1164-468: A regular right-angled grid tilted 29 degrees east of true north to roughly replicate the angle of Manhattan island. The Commission chose not to use circles and ovals such as Pierre L'Enfant had used in his design of Washington D.C. , convinced that simple rectangles were best, the most convenient and easiest to build on, and therefore the most conducive to the orderly development of the city. The combination of north–south avenues and east–west streets at

1261-475: A relatively inexperienced 20-year-old. Randel's surveying in 1808 had nothing to do with laying out the grid, which had not yet been determined as the final result of the Commission's work. Instead, he was determining the topography and ground cover of the land and the placement of natural features such as hills, rocks, swamps, marshes, streams, and ponds, as well as man-made features such as houses, barns, stables, fences, footpaths, cleared fields and gardens. He

1358-475: Is now Cortlandt Street to Christopher Street  – and offered the plots to artisans and laborers at affordable rents. The second instance came when the powerful De Lancey family decided to break up part of their vast estate in the 1760s, and laid out a grid of streets centered on "De Lancey Square". As royalists, their holdings were confiscated after the American Revolution , but

1455-694: Is part of the Samuel McIntire Historic District containing 407 buildings, and the Salem Maritime National Historic Site , consisting of 12 historic structures and about 9 acres (4 ha) of land along the waterfront. Modern reassessment of the American architecture of the Federal period began with Fiske Kimball . Commissioners%27 Plan of 1811 The Commissioners' Plan of 1811

1552-571: Is the grid's cornerstone. The numbered streets running east–west are 60 feet (18 m) wide, with about 200 feet (61 m) between each pair of streets, resulting in a grid of approximately 2,000 long, narrow blocks. With each combined street and block adding up to about 260 feet (79 m), there are almost exactly 20 blocks per mile. Fifteen crosstown streets were designated as 100 feet (30 m) wide: 14th , 23rd , 34th , 42nd , 57th , 72nd , 79th , 86th , 96th , 106th , 116th , 125th , 135th , 145th and 155th Streets. The width of

1649-804: The Adirondack Mountains and on the Oneida Reservation , mapped the Albany Turnpike between Albany and Schenectady and the Great Western Turnpike from Albany to Cooperstown , and surveyed property lots in Albany and in Central New York, particularly Oneida County When he was hired by the commission – on De Witt's suggestion and with Morris' approval – he was still

1746-567: The Civil War . Faced with opposition and conflict from various political factions, including property owners whose private deeds conflicted with the property lines of the Mangin–Goerck, and the reality that any plan the Council came up with could be overturned by a subsequent Council, the city asked the state legislature for help. The Council said its goal was "laying out Streets ... in such

1843-465: The 300-foot (91 m) square block with streets that are 60 to 80 feet (18 to 24 m) wide. This size grid can be found in Anchorage; Bismarck, North Dakota ; Missoula, Montana ; Mobile, Alabama ; Phoenix, Arizona ; and Tulsa, Oklahoma . The streets of lower Manhattan had, for the most part, developed organically as the colony of New Amsterdam  – which became New York when

1940-553: The American preference for the grid. The effects of the Ordinance of 1785 have been called "The largest single act of national planning in [American] history." There was significant variation in the size of the grids used. Carson City, Nevada , may have the smallest at 180-foot (55 m) square and 60-foot (18 m) streets, while Salt Lake City, Utah , is much larger at 600-foot (180 m) square blocks surrounded by 120-foot (37 m) streets. The most popular appears to be

2037-723: The British took it over from the Dutch without firing a shot in 1664 – grew. The roads were a mixture of country lanes, short streets and Native American and animal trails, all shaped by haphazard history, happenstance and property ownership without any overarching order, until around 1800 when the Common Council of New York began to assert authority over the streetscape, promulgating regulations to keep them clear and to require new streets be approved in advance. They also began to lay assessments on property owners to pay for

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2134-445: The Commission or the surveyors to the landowner, and they were to view the property together to assess the situation. The landowner was to present a bill for "reasonable damages", which the city was to pay within 30 days; any disagreement among the parties as to what was reasonable would, of course, end up in court. The new law did not completely stop lawsuits, but it cut down their number, and allowed Randel to go about his business with

2231-405: The Commission, their plan being almost identical to Mangin's in that area. Politics may have caused the Common Council to officially decertify Mangin's plan for the future expansion of the city, but the episode nonetheless was a step forward in the development of the city's future. In the "warning label" the Council caused to have placed on copies of Mangin's map was the statement that expansion of

2328-464: The Commissioner's remit was set at Houston Street  – "North Street" at the time – "Art Street", which was located approximately where Washington Square North is today, and "Greenwich Lane", now Greenwich Street . Greenwich Village , then independent of New York City, and the current West Village were not part of the area the Commission was to deal with. Morris

2425-432: The Commissioners' Plan, without acknowledgment, as the 100-foot (30 m) wide Fifth Avenue. Unfortunately for the Common Council, the disadvantages of the plots in the Common Lands worked against their sale, and there was no run on the market to buy them. Still, sales continued at a steady, if not spectacular, pace. By 1794, with the city growing ever more populated and the inhabited area constantly moving north towards

2522-428: The Commissioners' Plan. Little is known about Randel's surveying in 1810. And in the meantime, the Commissioners were, generally speaking, distracted by various other personal and political business; although they met – infrequently – there is no record of what they discussed, or if they were getting closer to a decision about what their plan would entail. Finally, on November 29, 1810, with

2619-590: The Common Council." The jurisdiction of the Commission was all of Manhattan north of Houston Street, and into the Hudson and East Rivers 600 feet beyond the low water mark. They were given 4 years to have the island surveyed, and then to produce a map showing the placement of future streets. There were few specifications given to them about those streets, except that streets were to be at least 50 feet (15 m) wide, while "leading streets" and "great avenues" were to be at least 60 feet (18 m) wide. The baseline of

2716-441: The Common Lands, the Council decided to try again, hiring Goerck once more to re-survey and map the area. He was instructed to make the lots more uniform and rectangular and to lay out roads to the west and east of the middle road, as well as to lay out east–west streets of 60 feet (18 m) each. Later, the Commissioners would use Goerck's East and West Roads for their Fourth and Sixth Avenues. Goerck's cross streets would become

2813-567: The Council in 1803. However, Mangin had gone well beyond the terms of his commission, and the map not only showed the existing streets of the city, as instructed, but was also, in Mangin's words, "the Plan of the City ... such as it is to be   ..." In other words, the Mangin–Goerck Plan was a guide to where and how Mangin believed future streets should be laid out. It called for enlarging

2910-427: The Council, but then decided to team up. Goerck died of yellow fever during the course of the project, but Mangin completed it and delivered the draft of the Mangin–Goerck Plan to the Council in 1799 for correction of street names; the final engraved version – made by engraver Peter Maverick, who would also go on to engrave the published map of the Commissioners' Plan – would be presented to

3007-503: The East River. As Gerard Koeppel comments: In sum, Mangin's plan of the city "such as it is to be" was a synthesizing of patterns already establishing themselves at the suburban fringes of the city and, in the city proper, an orderly filling in east and west with linear streets out to continuous roads along the waterfronts. The city government hadn't asked for it, but it seemed to be just what it wanted. The Council apparently accepted

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3104-531: The Grand Parade between 23rd Street and 33rd Street , which was the precursor to Madison Square Park , as well as four squares named Bloomingdale, Hamilton, Manhattan, and Harlem, a wholesale market complex, and a reservoir. Central Park , the massive urban greenspace in Manhattan running from Fifth Avenue to Eighth Avenue and from 59th Street to 110th Street , was not a part of the plan, as it

3201-658: The Survey of the Coast (which was renamed the United States Coast Survey in 1836 and the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1878)  – so the Council was back at square one. So, in 1807, they acted again. Optimists at that time expected the city's population, then around 95,000 people, to expand to 400,000 by 1860, when, in fact, it reached 800,000 before the beginning of

3298-588: The U.S. He accepted the job, and the terms: $ 5 per day for Hassler (equivalent to $ 97 in 2023), $ 4 a day for his assistant (equivalent to $ 78 in 2023), and $ 1 per day for expenses (equivalent to $ 19 in 2023), plus a budget sufficient to hire a surveying crew. He was scheduled to depart from Philadelphia in July, in time for at least part of the 1806 surveying season, but never appeared. Finally, in October, he sent his regrets: both he and his wife had taken ill on

3395-758: The US. The Ordinance required newly created states west of the original thirteen, to have rectilinear boundaries, rather than boundaries shaped by natural features, and within the new areas, beginning in the Northwest Territory , everything was to be divided into rectangles: townships were six   miles by six   miles (9.7 km × 9.7 km) , sections were one   mile by one   mile (1.6 km × 1.6 km) , and individual lots were 60 by 125 feet (18 m × 38 m). Cities such as Anchorage, Alaska ; Erie, Pennsylvania ; Miami, Florida ; and Sacramento, California , all show

3492-431: The chief surveyor for the Commission, and finally the Commission made an agreement with Loss that he would do only the first task that had been assigned to him: to make a map of Manhattan island, and get accurate measurements for the location of certain streets which would provide a framework for the plan of future streets. For this, Loss would receive no wages but a simple fee of $ 500 (equivalent to $ 10,405 in 2023). Loss

3589-463: The city by fire, warfare and other calamities offered an opportunity for the grid system to be used to replace more evolutionary street layouts, especially in outlying areas, while the central city, often sheltered behind medieval walls, remained organic and undesigned. In the United States the gridiron now predominates. In areas that were under Spanish control, the 1753 Laws of the Indies specified

3686-403: The city's economic influence. New Amsterdam , however, had not been laid out in a grid pattern by the Dutch. The streets of lower Manhattan were more organic, and incorporated Native American trails, cow paths, and streets that followed the topography and hydrology of the swampy land. By the time of the passage of the federal Land Ordinance of 1785 , the grid plan was firmly established in

3783-500: The city, such as shown on the map, was "subject to such future arrangements as the Corporation may deem best calculated to promote the health, introduce regularity, and conduce to the convenience of the City." Here the Council was showing its willingness to consider actively planning for how the city would develop. In 1806, they took a first step by hiring Ferdinand Hassler . Hassler, a Swiss mathematician and geodetic surveyor who

3880-588: The classicism of Biedermeier style in the German -speaking lands, Regency architecture in Britain, and the French Empire style . It may also be termed Adamesque architecture . The White House and Monticello were setting stones for what Federal architecture has become. In the early United States, the founding generation consciously chose to associate the nation with the ancient democracies of Greece and

3977-469: The common lands to encompass the entire island." Historian Gerard Koeppel comments "In fact, the great grid is not much more than the Goerck plan writ large. The Goerck plan is modern Manhattan's Rosetta Stone   ..." In 1797, the Council commissioned Goerck and Joseph-François Mangin , another city surveyor, to survey Manhattan's streets; Goerck and Mangin had each submitted individual proposals to

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4074-425: The cost of keeping the streets in repair. Beginning in 1803, the Council started to condemn streets which served no public purpose, and, importantly, took responsibility for building streets, which heretofore had been done by individual property owners. The first efforts at putting a grid onto Manhattan in some form came from private developers. In the early 1750s, Trinity Church laid out a small neighborhood around

4171-414: The council could not agree on a solution, and passed the buck, again, to the state legislature. With the Commissioners threatening to resign if something was not done about the "vexatious interruptions", the legislature acted in 1809 with a law providing that if the needed actions to perform the survey could not be performed "without cutting trees or doing damages" and "reasonable notice" was to be provided by

4268-465: The creation of new streets, the Council rarely did so, independent of the actions of the various landowners who developed their property and ran streets through their projects as they saw fit, which were approved after the fact by the Council. Its first effort to do so came in June 1785 as part of the Council's attempt to raise money by selling property. The Council owned a great deal of land, primarily in

4365-536: The cross streets was fixed at the boundaries of 5-acre (2.0 ha) parcels into which the land had previously been divided. The basepoint for the cross streets was First Street: this was a short and inconspicuous street, which still exists, and originally ran from the intersection of Avenue B and Houston Street to the intersection of the Bowery and Bleecker Street . Peretz Square , a small, narrow triangular park bounded by Houston Street, 1st Street , and First Avenue,

4462-400: The crosstown blocks was irregular. The distance between First and Second Avenues was 650 feet (200 m), while the block between Second and Third Avenues was 610 feet (190 m). The blocks between Third and Sixth Avenues were 920 feet (280 m), while the blocks between the avenues from Sixth to Twelfth were 800 feet (240 m). Lexington and Madison Avenues were added after

4559-404: The day they intended to leave. Why they did not send word earlier, why Hassler did not press on at some point before October, and why the Common Council never thought to inquire of the whereabouts of their missing surveyor is not known. In any case, by October, the surveying season for 1806 was over, or close to it. Hassler soon received a federal appointment – he would eventually head

4656-421: The edges of the estate the grid broke down in order to connect up with existing streets. The Bayard streets still exist as the core of SoHo and part of Greenwich Village : Mercer, Greene, and Wooster Streets, LaGuardia Place / West Broadway (originally Laurens Street), and Thompson, Sullivan , MacDougal , and Hancock Streets, although the last has been subsumed by the extension of Sixth Avenue . At about

4753-405: The grid a physical reality – although city surveyor William Bridges (see below ) also submitted a proposal to do the work  – and Randel began this work even before the Commissioners' Plan was announced publicly. A provisional contract between the Council and Randel was signed on December 31, the permanent contract being conditional on Randel delivering the final maps of

4850-548: The grid to Piraeus , Rhodes , and other cities in Greece. The grid plan, or "Hippodamian plan", was also utilized by the Ancient Romans for their fortified military encampments, or castra , many of which evolved into towns and cities; Pompeii is the best-preserved example of Roman urban planning using the gridiron system. In France, England, and Wales, castra evolved into bastides , agricultural communities under

4947-480: The gridiron concept from the beginning  – in Philadelphia's case, William Penn specified the city's orthogonal pattern when he founded it in 1682, although its 400-foot (120 m) blocks turned out to be too large, encouraging the creation of intermediate streets, while James Oglethorpe 's Savannah, with its significantly smaller blocks, was not conducive to large-scale development, restricting

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5044-513: The law, shewing [ sic ] all the streets which to be laid out   ..." Randel then spent a considerable amount of time in December meeting with Morris and perhaps the other Commissioners at Morris' estate in the Bronx, during which time it appears that the grid plan was born. At Morris' suggestion, the Common Council hired Randel to actually do the extensive work involved in making

5141-523: The long-established Bayard family, relatives of Peter Stuyvesant , hired surveyor Casimir Goerck to lay out streets in the portion of their estate west of Broadway, so the land could be sold in lots. About 100 acres (40 ha) accommodated 7 east–west and 8 north–south streets, all 50 feet (15 m) wide, making up 35 whole or partial rectilinear blocks of 200 feet (61 m) width from east to west, and between 350 feet (110 m) and 500 feet (150 m) long north to south – although near

5238-437: The middle of the island, away from the Hudson and East Rivers, as a result of grants by the Dutch provincial government to the colony of New Amsterdam. Although originally more extensive, by 1785 the council held approximately 1,300 acres (530 ha), or about 9% of the island. Unfortunately, the land was not only of such poor quality – being either rocky and elevated or swampy and low-lying – that it

5335-420: The most famous use of the grid plan or "gridiron" and is considered by many historians to have been far-reaching and visionary. Since its earliest days, the plan has been criticized for its monotony and rigidity, in comparison with irregular street patterns of older cities, but in recent years has been viewed more favorably by urban planners. There were a few interruptions in the grid for public spaces, such as

5432-475: The most practical and cost-effective, as "straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in." In order for the Commissioners to determine what the future of New York City's streets would be, they needed to know the precise location of the current streets, which meant that most of the four years they were given for their task would be taken up with surveying Manhattan island. The Commission's first chief surveyor

5529-455: The natural environment to fit the requirements of republican authority." Even though "[t]he Commissioners wrote as if all they cared about was protecting the investments of land developers and maintaining government-on-the-cheap ... the plan ... however, served to transform space into an expression of public philosophy," which emphasized equality and uniformity. "In a city shaped by rectangular blocks, all structures and activities would look roughly

5626-464: The new King's College – which would later become Columbia University  – in rectangular blocks. However, because the plan required landfill in the Hudson River , which would not happen until much later, the streets were never laid down. In 1762, the church had streets surveyed and laid down in a rectilinear grid in the "Church Farm" – which ran from what

5723-614: The noted financier Moses Taylor , it was built from 1909 to 1911. Its materials and scale established a character that was followed by the architects of all the subsequent houses on this Park Avenue blockfront. The building was occupied by the Soviet Mission to the United Nations from 1948 to 1963. The generous actions of the Margaret Rockefeller Strong de Larraín, Marquesa de Cuevas , in acquiring

5820-475: The numbered east–west streets of the later plan. Goerck took two years to survey the 212 lots which encompassed the entire Common Lands. Again, impeded by tools and topography, Goerck's work was somewhat less than precise. In 1808, John Hunn, the city's street commissioner would comment that "The Surveys made by Mr. Goerck upon the Commons were effected through thickets and swamps, and over rocks and hills where it

5917-607: The one street in Manhattan oriented closely to true east and west. Despite the fact that the city's charters over the decades – the Dongan Charter (1686), the Cornbury Charter (1708) and the Montgomerie Charter (1731) – supported by specific laws passed by the province or state in 1741, 1751, 1754, 1764, 1774 and 1787, gave the city's Common Council full powers over

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6014-469: The original plan. The shorter blocks near the Hudson and East River waterfronts was purposeful, as the Commissioners' expected that there would be more development there at a time when water-based transportation was still significant. The Commission expected that street frontage near the piers would be more valuable than the landlocked interior, the waterfront being the location of commerce and industry of

6111-602: The plan as "the new Map of the City" for four years, even publishing it by subscription, until political machinations perhaps engineered by Aaron Burr acting through the city's street commissioner, Joseph Browne Jr., brought it into disrepute. Burr – the political enemy of Mangin's mentor Alexander Hamilton – may have been upset that the design of New York's City Hall had gone to Mangin and his partner John McComb Jr. , and not to Burr's candidate, Benjamin Henry Latrobe , but for whatever reason,

6208-448: The plan was disavowed by the Council, and was no longer to be considered "the new Map of the City." The Council ordered that copies which had already been sold be bought back if possible, and that a label warning of inaccuracies be placed on any additional copies sold. They stopped short at totally destroying the plan, but, still, neglect may have had the same effect: the original 6-foot (1.8 m) square engraved map has disappeared, and of

6305-529: The plan, which he did on March 22, 1811; the maps were filed by the Council's clerk on April 2, two days before the Commission's legal deadline. Randel's survey of the entire island – 11,400 acres (4,600 ha)  – had begun in 1808 and was completed in 1810, and he now prepared the drafts of the new grid without regard to the topography of the land. The three maps were large, almost nine feet in length when connected together. Commissioner Simeon De Witt said of Randel's work that it

6402-691: The property in 1965 and presenting it to the Americas Society, saved the building from destruction. Together with the buildings of the neighboring Oliver D. Filley House (now the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute ) at 684 Park Avenue and the Henry P. Davison House (now the Italian Consulate General) at 690 Park Avenue, it forms one of the last intact architectural ensembles on Park Avenue. The building

6499-545: The quintessential New England meeting house, with their lofty and complex towers by architects such as Lavius Fillmore and Asher Benjamin . This American neoclassical high style was the idiom of America's first professional architects, such as Charles Bulfinch and Minard Lafever . Robert Adam and James Adam were leading influences through their books. In Salem, Massachusetts , there are numerous examples of American colonial architecture and Federal architecture in two historic districts: Chestnut Street District , which

6596-675: The rapid expansion of towns and cities during the early industrial revolution developed using a grid street plan such as Whitehaven in Cumbria. In British Empire cities, it necessitated the adoption of new neoclassical urban plans in particular the Scottish Enlightenment 'New Towns' of Edinburgh of 1767 and Glasgow of 1781 were particularly influential in the English-speaking countries. In some European cities, such as Amsterdam and Paris , destruction of parts of

6693-684: The republican values of Rome . Grecian aspirations informed the Greek Revival , lasting into the 1850s. Using Roman architectural vocabulary, the Federal style applied to the balanced and symmetrical version of Georgian architecture that had been practiced in the American colonies ' new motifs of neoclassical architecture as it was epitomized in Britain by Robert Adam , who published his designs in 1792. American Federal architecture typically uses plain surfaces with attenuated detail, usually isolated in panels, tablets, and friezes . It also had

6790-486: The same time as the Bayards, Petrus Stuyvesant, the great-grandson of Peter Stuyvesant, intended to lay out a small grid of streets, nine by four, to create a village on his estate. The orientation of the streets was to be true north–south and east–west, not shifted, as Manhattan Island is, 29 degrees east of true north. The only street to actually be laid was the grid's central east–west axis, Stuyvesant Street, which remains

6887-613: The same. Individual distinctions, whether cultural, charitable, economic, or whatever, would have to find their place within a fixed, republican spatial organization." The Commissioners published their plan in March 1811 in the form of an eight-foot (2.4 m) map – redrawn by the otherwise little known William Bridges from Randel's original, and engraved by Peter Maverick  – with an accompanying 54-page pamphlet. The grid had 12 primary 100 feet (30 m) wide north–south avenues and numerous cross streets arranged in

6984-455: The smaller versions only less than a dozen are extant, none in good condition. Nevertheless, despite the Council's official disavowal of Mangin's layout of future streets, as the city grew the Mangin–Goerck Plan became the de facto reference for where new streets were built, and when the Commissioners' Plan was revealed in 1811, the area of the plan which the public had been warned was inaccurate and speculative had been accepted wholesale by

7081-474: The specified dimensions was the creation of approximately 2000 long, narrow blocks. Except in the north and south ends of the island, the avenues would begin with First Avenue on the east side and run through Twelfth Avenue in the west. In addition, where the island was wider, there would be four additional lettered avenues running from Avenue A eastward to Avenue D . Some of the avenues, such as Twelfth Avenue, ran through land that did not as yet exist, but

7178-400: The state legislation which created the Commission also authorized the city to extend its boundaries 400 feet (120 m) into the Hudson and East Rivers, so the land required for these new streets would eventually be created. Broadway, an existing road, was not included in the 1811 plan, and was added to the grid later. The plan also called for 155 orthogonal cross streets. The location of

7275-642: The streets remained – although a new street, Grand Street, was laid through the central square. The north–south streets of the De Lancey grid become the core north–south streets of the Lower East Side : Chrystie , Forsyth , Eldridge, Allen , Orchard and Ludlow Streets, and the grid became the pattern for additional streets laid out in the area. The third instance of a privately developed grid in New York City came in 1788, when

7372-407: The surveying season for that season over and only four months left before they were to report out their plan, they seemed to have arrived at a decision. On that date, Morris informed the Common Council that although more work was left to be done "on the ground", the Commission itself had "completed their work" and would be able to make a report that would "compl[y] substantially, if not literally within

7469-461: The tip of the island and using landfill to regularize its waterfront. He placed a number of street grids on land that was, at the time, agricultural or undeveloped. The grids, which had different baselines, met up, and there Mangin placed parks and public spaces. He extended the Bayard grid northward, the De Lancey grid to the east and north, and the true north–south/east–west streets of Stuyvesant into

7566-918: The use of the gridiron in newly built communities, and the results can be seen in St. Augustine, Florida ; Santa Fe and Albuquerque , New Mexico ; and in San Diego , San Francisco , and Los Angeles in California . The French also built the nucleus of New Orleans, Louisiana on a grid, in part influenced by the Spanish Law of the Indies, which provided numerous practical models in the New World to copy from. Although some English colonial cities, such as Boston , had streets that adhered more to natural topography and happenstance, others, such as Savannah, Georgia , Baltimore , and Philadelphia had been built to

7663-421: Was Charles Frederick Loss, who, like Mangin and the deceased Goerck, was an officially recognized city surveyor, a position he received contingent on becoming a naturalized American citizen. Unfortunately Loss did not appear to be a very competent surveyor, as several of his ventures had serious errors, which eventually resulted in his being relieved of his position in 1811. Loss exhibited the same lack of ability as

7760-529: Was almost impossible to produce accuracy of mensuration." Often the streets intended to intersect at right angles would not quite do so. Still, Goerck's work in surveying the Common Lands was the basis for the Commissioners' Plan, as explained by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission : "The Commissioner's Plan borrowed heavily from Goerck's earlier surveys and essentially expanded his scheme beyond

7857-408: Was also carefully noting the locations of the three north–south roads that Goerck had laid down as part of his survey of the Common Lands. Goerck had not placed the lots and roads in the Common Lands in the context of the overall island, and this Randel did, thus allowing the Commissioners to know where, exactly, Goerck's Common Lands grid was. This was important, because it could serve as a template for

7954-542: Was described by the Commission that created it as combining "beauty, order and convenience." The plan originated when the Common Council of New York City , seeking to provide for the orderly development and sale of the land of Manhattan between 14th Street and Washington Heights , but unable to do so itself for reasons of local politics and objections from property owners, asked the New York State Legislature to step in. The legislature appointed

8051-635: Was designated as a New York City landmark by the New York City Landmark Preservation Commission on November 10, 1970. A landmark plaque was provided by the New York Community Trust in 1971. [REDACTED] Media related to Percy R. Pyne House at Wikimedia Commons Federal architecture Federal style is also used in association with furniture design in the United States of the same time period. The style broadly corresponds to

8148-607: Was expressed in early federal projects of lighthouses, harbor buildings, universities, and hospitals. It can be seen in the rationalizing, urbanistic layout of L'Enfant Plan of Washington and in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 in New York. The historic eastern part of Bleecker Street in New York, between Broadway and the Bowery , is home to Federal-style row houses at 7 to 13 and 21 to 25 Bleecker Street . The classicizing style of Federal architecture can especially be seen in

8245-455: Was greeted with widespread hostility from property owners, but the Commission's authority was explicit. They held, for instance, the "exclusive power" to close streets that interfered with their plan, a plan which landowners as well as the mayor, the Common Council and all other citizens of the city had no choice but to accept. At the meetings of the Commission, which were infrequent and usually not attended by all three men, their primary concern

8342-468: Was instructed to make lots of about 5 acres (2.0 ha) each – precision in such matters was not to be expected with the available surveying tools, given the topography and ground cover of the Common Lands ;– and to lay out roads to access the lots. He completed his task in December, only six months later, creating 140 lots of varying sizes. Although not laid out in

8439-527: Was invented – from where it may have spread to Ancient Greece . The Greek city of Miletus was rebuilt after destruction by the Persians on a grid plan, with Hippodamus  – often called "the father of European urban planning "  – as the local originator of the rectilinear grid system for the city centered on the agora , a concept he probably did not invent, but had heard about from elsewhere. Hippodamus went on to spread

8536-550: Was made "with an accuracy not exceeded by any work of the kind in America." Randel himself would later write that "The time within which the Commissioners were limited by the Statute to make their Plan of the streets, avenues, and public places on Manhattan [was] barely sufficient to enable them to comply with the letter , although not fully with the spirit , of the Statute." (italics in original) If it should be asked why

8633-627: Was not envisioned until the 1850s. The numbering was also extended through Manhattan and the Bronx. The gridiron layout of a town or city is not new, it is "the most pervasive city design on earth" and can be found in "Italy and Greece, in Mexico, Central America, Mesopotamia, China [and] Japan." It existed in the Old and New Kingdoms of Ancient Egypt , in the Indus Valley cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro – where many historians claim it

8730-426: Was not named the president of the Commission, but acted as such. A majority of Commissioners was required to make decisions. The Commissioners were authorized to be paid $ 4 a day for their work (equivalent to $ 83 in 2023)  – although Morris and Rutherfurd, both rich men, waived their fees  – and were empowered to enter onto private property in the daytime to undertake their duties; this

8827-483: Was not suitable for farming or residential estates, it was also difficult to get to because of both the lack of roads and access to waterways. To divide the Common Lands, as they were called, into sellable lots, and to lay out roads to service them, the Council hired Casimir Goerck , one of a handful of officially approved "city surveyors", to survey them. Goerck, who was related to the Roosevelt family by marriage,

8924-530: Was noted for his work on a topographic survey of Switzerland, had immigrated to Philadelphia in 1805, two years after the French invaded his country and made his work there impossible. Through the auspices of a merchant friend with friends in New York, in the spring of 1806, the Common Council commissioned Hassler to make an accurate map of Manhattan Island, which could be used as a basis for planning future development; it would be Hassler's first substantial contract in

9021-412: Was resonant with the political values of the country, which only recently gained independence from Great Britain. According to Hartog, the grid was: "...   the antithesis of a utopian or futuristic plan." It extolled ordinary everyday life, and emphasized that "government ought not to act in such a way as to create inequality of special privilege." The Plan's "hidden agenda" was "[t]he reconstruction of

9118-474: Was the original design for the streets of Manhattan above Houston Street and below 155th Street , which put in place the rectangular grid plan of streets and lots that has defined Manhattan on its march uptown until the current day. It has been called "the single most important document in New York City's development," and the plan has been described as encompassing the "republican predilection for control and balance ... [and] distrust of nature". It

9215-519: Was the present plan adopted in preference to any other, the answer is, because, after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best; or, in other and more proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience.      – The Commission, from their "Remarks" The format chosen by the Commissioners was a rectilinear grid, or "gridiron": straight streets and avenues intersecting each other at right angles. Legal historian Hendrick Hartog writes that their choice

9312-467: Was to deliver the map by May 1808. The Commissioners' replacement as chief engineer and surveyor, John Randel Jr. , took over the position in June 1808; the project would occupy him for most of the next 13 years. Randel had been apprenticed to De Witt, and when he became an assistant surveyor in De Witt's office, he interpreted the field reports of other surveyors to draft maps based on them of land in

9409-463: Was what kind of layout the new area of the city should have, a rectilinear grid such as was used in Philadelphia ; New Orleans ; Savannah, Georgia ; and Charleston, South Carolina , or a more complex system utilizing circles, arcs or other patterns, such as the plan Pierre Charles L'Enfant had used in laying out Washington, D.C. In the end, the Commission decided on the gridiron as being

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