A report on Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Manhattan, Sixth Avenue and Commissioners' Plan of 1811

The "skyscraper alley" of International Style buildings along the avenue looking north from 40th Street to Central Park

An 1893 redrawing of the 1807 version of the Commissioners' grid plan for Manhattan, a few years before it was adopted in 1811

"Chelsea", drawn by a daughter of Clement Clarke Moore

Looking north from 14th Street in 1905, with the Sixth Avenue El on the right

The city blocks of Portland, Oregon; Savannah, Georgia; and Manhattan shown at the same scale

453–461 Sixth Avenue in the Historic District

The Cushman Row, 406-418 W. 20th St., dates from 1840

The historic Ladies' Mile shopping district that thrived along Sixth Avenue left behind some of the largest retail spaces in the city. Beginning in the 1990s, the buildings began to be reused after being dormant for decades.

"A Portraiture of the City of Philadelphia" (1683) by Thomas Holme, the first map of the city.

The intersection of West 4th and West 12th Streets

London Terrace occupies the entire block bounded Ninth and Tenth Avenues and 23rd and 24th Streets.

A portion of a map of the city from 1776; De Lancey Square and the grid around it can be seen on the right

Street signs at intersection of West 10th and West 4th Streets

The Mangin–Goerck Plan of 1803; the "warning label" can be seen at the bottom under "Plan of the City of New York"

Map of old Greenwich Village. A section of Bernard Ratzer's map of New York and its suburbs, made ca. 1766 for Henry Moore, royal governor of New York, when Greenwich was more than 2 miles (3 km) from the city.

Chelsea Market contains a popular food hall

Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village

The only known image of John Randel Jr., the Commission's chief surveyor, by an unknown artist, probably Ezra Ames.

Gay Street at the corner of Waverly Place; the street's name refers to a colonial family, not the LGBT character of Greenwich Village

InterActiveCorp headquarters on Eleventh Avenue, designed by Frank Gehry

The park-like grounds of the American Museum of Natural Historycalled "Theodore Roosevelt Park" since 1958, but officially part of Central Parkis the only one of the planned public spaces of the Commissioners' Plan which still exists; it was to be "Manhattan Square".

Whitney Museum of American Art's original location, at 8–12 West 8th Street, between Fifth Avenue and MacDougal Street; currently home to the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture.

The Starrett–Lehigh Building with the rising skyscrapers of Hudson Yards rising in the background

This one of John Randel's survey bolts marked the location of what would have been Sixth Avenue and 65th Street; the location later became part of Central Park

The Cherry Lane Theatre is located in Greenwich Village.

An eastward facing view from the High Line. London Terrace is visible on the left.

One of Randel's 92 detailed "Farm Maps", showing how the Manhattan grid would sit on the island's topography and extant farms and homesteads. This one is bounded by West 36th Street, Sixth Avenue, West 15th Street, and the Hudson River.

The annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade is the world's largest Halloween parade.

The Chelsea Piers, New York City's primary luxury ocean liner terminal from 1910 until 1935

The Stonewall Inn, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the June 1969 Stonewall riots and the cradle of the modern gay rights movement.

Central Park is by far the largest interruption of the Commissioners' grid, running from Central Park South (59th Street, at the right) to 110th Street (on the left), and from Fifth Avenue (at the top) to Central Park West (Eighth Avenue, at the bottom), and at 843 acre, taking up a little over 6% of the area of Manhattan island.

Andrew Haswell Green, a critic of the Commissioners' Plan, headed the Central Park Commission, which created the street plan for Manhattan above 155th Street

The Washington Square Arch, an unofficial icon of Greenwich Village and nearby New York University

The Knapp map of 1870 shows the progress made in laying out streets above 155th Street as called for in the Central Park Commission's 1868 plan

396-397 West Street at West 10th Street is a former hotel which dates from 1904, and is part of the Weehawken Street Historic District

The Bayard Rustin Educational Complex in 1931, when it was Textile High School

In 1945, Sixth Avenue was officially renamed "Avenue of the Americas", and was adorned with circular signs for each member country of the Organization of American States, such as this one for Venezuela. The name never caught on with New Yorkers, though, who still insist on calling it "Sixth Avenue". After decades of requiring only one official name, the city at last began to co-sign the avenue with both names. Currently, "Avenue of the Americas" is generally only seen on business stationery and official city documents, or heard from the mouths of tourists.

Washington Mews in Greenwich Village; an NYU building can be seen in the background

The Muhlenberg branch of the New York Public Library

Frederick Law Olmsted, vociferous critic of the Commissioners' Plan (c.1860)

Christopher Park, part of the Stonewall National Monument

Clement Clarke Moore objected to the Plan, but made a fortune developing his estate once the Plan's streets were laid down through it. (1897)

Lewis Mumford, a vehement critic of the Commissioners' Plan

Jefferson Market Library, once a courthouse, now serves as a branch of the New York Public Library.

Thomas Janvier, an illustration from In Old New York (1894)

Dutch artist Piet Mondrian drew inspiration from the vibrancy of the grid, displaying it in paintings such as Broadway Boogie Woogie (1942).

90 Bedford Street, used for establishing shot in Friends

From this beginning, Sixth Avenue traverses SoHo and Greenwich Village, roughly divides Chelsea from the Flatiron District and NoMad, passes through the Garment District and skirts the edge of the Theater District while passing through Midtown Manhattan.

- Sixth Avenue

Sixth Avenue was laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

- Sixth Avenue

Adjacent to Greenwich Village are the neighborhoods of NoHo and the East Village to the east, SoHo and Hudson Square to the south, and Chelsea and Union Square to the north.

- Greenwich Village

The western part of Greenwich Village is known as the West Village; the dividing line of its eastern border is debated but commonly cited as Seventh Avenue or Sixth Avenue.

- Greenwich Village

As Greenwich Village was once a rural, isolated hamlet to the north of the 17th century European settlement on Manhattan Island, its street layout is more organic than the planned grid pattern of the 19th century grid plan (based on the Commissioners' Plan of 1811).

- Greenwich Village

Despite his objections to the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, which ran the new Ninth Avenue through the middle of his estate, Moore began the development of Chelsea with the help of James N. Wells, dividing it up into lots along Ninth Avenue and selling them to well-heeled New Yorkers.

- Chelsea, Manhattan

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.

- Commissioners' Plan of 1811

It was founded in Greenwich Village in 1971 by Steina and Woody Vasulka, taking its name from the original location, the kitchen of the Mercer Arts Center.

- Chelsea, Manhattan

The Center for Jewish History, a consortium of several national research organizations, is a unified library, exhibition, conference, lecture, and performance venue, located on 16th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.

- Chelsea, Manhattan

In 1818, Clement Clarke Moore, the author of A Visit from St. Nicholasprobably better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas"whose estate "Chelsea" would be chopped up by the plan, wrote in "A Plain Statement, addressed to the Proprietors of Real Estate, in the City and County of New York" :

- Commissioners' Plan of 1811

A report on Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Manhattan, Sixth Avenue and Commissioners' Plan of 1811

0 related topics with Alpha