A report on Greenwich Village and Commissioners' Plan of 1811

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

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

453–461 Sixth Avenue in the Historic District

"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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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

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

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

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

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

13 related topics with Alpha

Peretz Square, Houston Street on left; 1st Street on right

List of numbered streets in Manhattan

8 links

Little West 12th Street as viewed from the rooftop of The Standard, High Line

Irving Place Theatre, from Northeast corner of Irving Place and East 15th Street

The Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16th Street

Korea Way in Koreatown, as seen on 32nd Street, with ubiquitous street signage in Hangul (한글)

A view of the Empire State Building from 33rd Street and Park Avenue Subway Station

Mount Vernon Hotel Museum on East 61st Street

Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity

120-130 East 80th Street, with three of the four East 80th Street Houses; the Astor House is on the left, the Whitney House on the right, and the Dillon House is between them.

West 187th Street stairs to Ft. Washington Avenue

The New York City borough of Manhattan contains 214 numbered east–west streets ranging from 1st to 228th, the majority of them designated in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

Although the numbered streets begin just north of East Houston Street in the East Village, they generally do not extend west into Greenwich Village, which already had established, named streets when the grid plan was laid out by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

Manhattan

8 links

Most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City.

Pieter Schaghen's 1626 letter saying Manhattan was purchased for 60 guilders.

The Castello Plan showing the Dutch city of New Amsterdam in 1660, at the southern tip of Manhattan

Washington's statue in front of Federal Hall on Wall Street, where in 1789 he was sworn in as first U.S. president

Manhattan in 1873. The Brooklyn Bridge was under construction from 1870 until 1883

The "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", commonly known as the Viele Map, was created by Egbert Ludovicus Viele in 1865

Manhattan's Little Italy, Lower East Side, circa 1900

Manhattan personified, early 20th century

V-J Day in Times Square in Times Square, 1945

Flooding on Avenue C caused by Hurricane Sandy on October 29, 2012

Satellite image of Manhattan Island, bounded by the Hudson River to the west, the Harlem River to the north, the East River to the east, and New York Harbor to the south, with rectangular Central Park prominently visible. Roosevelt Island, in the East River, belongs to Manhattan.

Location of Manhattan (red) within New York City (remainder yellow)

Manhattan schist outcropping in Central Park

Liberty Island is an exclave of Manhattan, of New York City, and of New York State, that is surrounded by New Jersey waters

The Empire State Building in the foreground looking southward from the top of Rockefeller Center, with One World Trade Center in the background, at sunset. The Midtown South Community Council acts as a civic caretaker for much of the neighborhood between the skyscrapers of Midtown and Lower Manhattan.

The Estonian House, the main center of Estonian culture amongst Estonian Americans

A. T. Stewart in 1870, 9th Street, Manhattan

Many tall buildings have setbacks on their facade due to the 1916 Zoning Resolution. This is exemplified at Park Avenue and 57th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

The New York Stock Exchange, by a significant margin the world's largest stock exchange per market capitalization of its listed companies, at US$23.1 trillion as of April 2018.

The Financial District of Lower Manhattan, seen from Brooklyn

The Flatiron District is the center and birthplace of Silicon Alley

Times Square is the hub of the Broadway theater district and a major cultural venue in Manhattan, it also has one of the highest annual attendance rates of any tourist attraction in the world, estimated at 50 million

The New York Times headquarters, 620 Eighth Avenue

Butler Library at Columbia University, with its notable architectural design

New York Public Library Main Branch at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue

The scene at Manhattan's 2015 LGBT Pride March. The annual event rivals the sister São Paulo event as the world's largest pride parade, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June.

Madison Square Garden is home to the Rangers and Knicks, and hosts some Liberty games

A slum tour through the Five Points in an 1885 sketch

At the time of its construction, London Terrace in Chelsea was the largest apartment building in the world

Grand Central Terminal is a National Historic Landmark.

Ferries departing Battery Park City and helicopters flying above Manhattan

The Staten Island Ferry, seen from the Battery, crosses Upper New York Bay, providing free public transportation between Staten Island and Manhattan.

The Brooklyn Bridge to the right and the Manhattan Bridge towards the left, are two of the three bridges that connect Lower Manhattan with Brooklyn over the East River.

Eighth Avenue, looking northward ("Uptown"), in the rain; most streets and avenues in Manhattan's grid plan incorporate a one-way traffic configuration

Tourists looking westward at sunset to observe the July 12, 2016 Manhattanhenge

Ferry service departing Battery Park City towards New Jersey, see from Paulus Hook

Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, and the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, part of the Stonewall National Monument, is considered the birthplace of the modern gay rights movement.

The Commissioners' Plan of 1811 laid out the island of Manhattan in its familiar grid plan.

14th Street looking west from Fifth Avenue

14th Street (Manhattan)

6 links

Major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, traveling between Eleventh Avenue on Manhattan's West Side and Avenue C on Manhattan's East Side.

It is also considered the northern boundary of Greenwich Village, Alphabet City, and the East Village, and the southern boundary of Chelsea, Flatiron/Lower Midtown, and Gramercy.

West of Third Avenue, 14th Street marks the southern terminus of western Manhattan's grid system.

Houston Street

6 links

Major east–west thoroughfare in Lower Manhattan in New York City.

East Houston Street between Clinton and Suffolk Streets in the 1920s

Houston Street at Lafayette Street in 1974

Houston Street generally serves as the boundary between neighborhoods on the East Side of Manhattan—Alphabet City, the East Village, NoHo, Greenwich Village, and the West Village to the north, and the Lower East Side, most of the Bowery, Nolita, and SoHo to the south.

The numeric street-naming grid in Manhattan, created as part of the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, begins immediately north of Houston Street with 1st Street at Avenue A.

Lower Manhattan

6 links

Southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with over 8.8 million residents as of the 2020 census.

The pre-9/11 Lower Manhattan skyline in May 2001, seen from the Empire State Building. The skyline was dominated by The Twin Towers.

New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it "New York".

The Cooper Union at Astor Place, where Abraham Lincoln gave his famed Cooper Union speech, is one of the area's most storied buildings.

Photo of Lower Manhattan pictured in 1931

Norman Friend. Sidney's Map Twelve Miles Around New York, 1849. Chromo lithograph, Brooklyn Museum

View from the Woolworth Building in 1913

The Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, 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.

United Airlines Flight 175 hits the South Tower of the original World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

Picture of Lower Manhattan skyline, including the One World Trade Center; taken from Little Island at Pier 55 in November 2021

Chinatown is home to the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere.

The park and surrounding neighborhood of Union Square, located between 14th and 17th Streets, may be considered a part of either Lower or Midtown Manhattan.

New York City Hall in Lower Manhattan's Civic Center neighborhood

North of Canal Street and south of 14th Street are the neighborhoods of SoHo, the Meatpacking District, the West Village, Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Nolita, and the East Village.

Immigration resumed after being slowed by wars in Europe, and a new street grid system, the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, expanded to encompass all of Manhattan.

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

Sixth Avenue

5 links

Seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown".

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

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.

Jefferson Market Library in Greenwich Village

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 was laid out in the Commissioners' Plan of 1811.

East Village, Manhattan

5 links

Neighborhood on the East Side of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

Stuyvesant Street, one of the neighborhood's oldest streets, in front of St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. This street served as the boundary between boweries 1 and 2, owned by Peter Stuyvesant.

Former German-American Shooting Society Clubhouse at 12 St Mark's Place (1885), part of Little Germany

The Village East Cinema/Louis N. Jaffe Theater was originally a Jewish theater

St. Nicholas Kirche at East 2nd Street, just west of Avenue A. The church and almost all buildings on the street were demolished in 1960 and replaced with parking lots for the Village View Houses

The Phyllis Anderson Theater, one of several theaters that were originally Yiddish theaters

A wall in the East Village in 1998, featuring a mural of two men

"Extra Place", an obscure side street off of East 1st Street, just east of the Bowery

East 5th Street between Second Avenue and Cooper Square is a typical side street in the heart of the East Village

Once synonymous with "Bowery Bums", the Bowery area has become a magnet for luxury condominiums as the East Village neighborhood's rapid gentrification continues

Taras Shevchenko Place, with St. George's Church on the north side, and St. George Academy on the south side.

1st Avenue, looking north at 10th Street

The Nuyorican Poets Café has been located off Avenue C and East 3rd Street since its founding in 1973.

Sherry Vine and Joey Arias during the 2009 HOWL! Festival

Tompkins Square Park is the recreational and geographic heart of the East Village. It has historically been a part of counterculture, protest and riots

A production of John Reed's All the World's a Grave in the New York Marble Cemetery, which does not contain headstones

New York Public Library, Ottendorfer branch

Punk rock icon and writer Richard Hell still lives in the same apartment in Alphabet City that he has had since the 1970s

Miss Understood stops a bus in front of the Lucky Cheng's restaurant at 2nd Street on First Avenue.

This contrasted with the grid system that was ultimately laid out under the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, which is offset by 28.9 degrees clockwise.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the migration of Beatniks into the neighborhood later attracted hippies, musicians, writers, and artists who had been priced out of the rapidly gentrifying Greenwich Village.

Daytime scene on Broadway Broadway.png Broadway through Manhattan, the Bronx and lower Westchester County is highlighted in red

Broadway (Manhattan)

5 links

Road in the U.S. state of New York.

Somerindyke House, Bloomingdale Road, middle 19th century

Looking north from Broome Street (circa 1853–55)

In 1885, the Broadway commercial district was overrun with telephone, telegraph, and electrical lines. This view was north from Cortlandt and Maiden Lane.

A view up Broadway from Bowling Green, with the Chrysler Building visible in the background

Broadway looking north from 48th Street in the Theater District

X-shaped intersection of Broadway (from lower right to upper left) and Amsterdam Avenue (lower left to upper right), looking north from Sherman Square to West 72nd Street and the treetops of Verdi Square

The Washington Irving Memorial on North Broadway in Irvington, not far from Irving's home, Sunnyside

Canyon of Heroes during a ticker-tape parade for the Apollo 11 astronauts on August 13, 1969

Broadway under the IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line's elevated structure in the Bronx

International Mercantile Marine Company Building

Broadway marks the boundary between Greenwich Village to the west and the East Village to the east, passing Astor Place.

Because Broadway preceded the grid that the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 imposed on the island, Broadway crosses midtown Manhattan diagonally, intersecting with both the east–west streets and north–south avenues.

Union Square looking north from 14th Street (May 2010)

Union Square, Manhattan

5 links

Historic intersection and surrounding neighborhood in Manhattan, New York City, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century.

Union Park New York (East side), New York Public Library

George Washington Statue at Union Square

The renovated pavilion at the north end of the park in February 2011

W New York Union Square; the Everett Building can be seen at left

The outdoor Greenmarket Farmers Market, held four days each week

The former Kellogg's cafe at Union Square; the AT&T Wireless store is underneath it and next to the entrance

Spectators watch as a street chess player plays bullet chess with a customer in Union Square.

{{center|Boy selling newspapers in Union Square, July 1910}}

{{center|The square in the blizzard of 2006}}

{{center|14th Street–Union Square station entrance}}

{{center|Metronome by Kristin Jones/Andrew Ginzel (1999)}}

{{center|Metronome revision by Andrew Boyd and Gan Golan (2020)}}

{{center|Union Square West (2011), including the Bank of the Metropolis Building and Decker Building, on the left (downtown) end of the block}}

{{center|Former Germania Life Insurance Company Building, now the W New York Union Square Hotel}}

{{center|Former Union Square Savings Bank, now the Daryl Roth Theatre}}

{{center|Zeckendorf Towers with the renovated north plaza of the park in the foreground, and the Con Ed Building in the background}}

Adjacent neighborhoods are the Flatiron District to the north, Chelsea to the west, Greenwich Village to the southwest, East Village to the southeast, and Gramercy Park to the east.

When John Randel was surveying the island in preparation for the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, the Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) angled away from the Bowery at an acute angle.

West Village

3 links

The Stonewall Inn at 53 Christopher Street, a designated U.S. National Historic Landmark and National Monument, as the site of the 1969 Stonewall Riots.

173 and 176 Perry Street, rare examples of modern architecture in the Far West Village.

Gay Street at the corner of Waverly Place

The Cherry Lane Theatre is located in the West Village.

The annual Greenwich Village Halloween Parade is the world's largest Halloween parade and takes place in the West Village.

Some 18th-century streets, such as Bedford Street (pictured), are narrow.

66 Perry Street was featured in Sex and the City as Carrie Bradshaw's house.

Whitney Museum of American Art under construction in 2013

The West Village is a neighborhood in the western section of the larger Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City.

These roads were laid out in an 18th-century grid plan, approximately parallel or perpendicular to the Hudson, long before the Commissioners' Plan of 1811 which created the main street grid plan for later parts of the city.