Commissioner\'s of 1811: The Manhattan Grid PDF

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The Commissioner's Plan of 1811 to completely redo Manhattan's urbanscape represents their passion for rationality and aesthetic proportionality....

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Ariana Tsanas Professor Elizabeth Blackmar American Landscapes 22 December 2019 The Aesthetic Grid In 1609, Dutch explorers established New Amsterdam. In 1664, the English claimed the island and renamed it New York. European colonists built clusters of buildings at the southern tip of the island. Further north, makeshift roads, farms, forts and small buildings were built scattered throughout the wilderness. The British expanded the Dutch-built street network, but during the American Revolution, there was inadequate manual labor available or incentive to maintain the city's streets and roads.1 In the early 1800s, New York became the largest city in the United States. 2 In response, the Common Council, the municipal authority of New York City, sought to improve public infrastructure. In 1807, the Common Council appointed three Commissioners, Simeon De Witt, Gouverneur Morris and John Rutherfurd, to develop an urban plan to accommodate the city's rapid growth. In 1811, the Commissioners published a map with accompanying remarks of their vision: a grid system of 155 east-west oriented streets and fifteen north-south oriented avenues. The grid was superimposed on pre-existing property lines and structures between North Street (presentday Houston Street) Street and 155th Street. Utility is the state of providing the maximum benefit to the greatest number of people. In the 17th-18th centuries, the utility of a city or large town was largely based on how its constructed layout benefitted its citizens. Early American urban planners presumed that the utility of a city could not be achieved by a grid alone. As such, many gridded cities were installed with irregular streets and open spaces. Utility was equally important to the New York City Commissioners in the 19th century, who sought to establish a grid of vertical avenues and horizontal streets to maximize the

During the American Revolution, the city was a major battleground. The British had little interest in providing labor for maintenance and city residents limited incentive. In August of 1776, The British assumed control of Manhattan following the Battle of Long Island. In 1778, a fire that swept across the city destroyed streets and buildings (Reps, 296). 2 Rothschild, 126

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2 use of space for the largest number of people. The Commissioners recalled that this plan would be one of "least inconvenience" to the majority.3 However, the architectural historian Spiro Kostof claimed that this design was "predicated on a capitalist economy, and the conversion of land to a commodity to be bought and sold on the market." He argued that the grid was an undemocratic device that served to, "perpetuat[e] the privileges of the property owning class descendent from the original settlers, and bolster[] a territorial aristocracy." 4 On the other hand, the American legal historian Hendrick Hartog argued that the grid was part of the new nation's democratic republican agenda: "government ought not to act in such a way as to create inequality of special privilege." Instead of being built for economic or political gain, the grid "reconstructed the natural environment to fit the requirements of republican authority."5 The Commissioners likely foresaw the potential political and economic utility of a uniform city, but these theories do not take into account the Commissioners' admiration for scientific reasoning. Parallels between the Commissioners' interests, the Commissioners' Map of 1811, and the accompanying "Explanatory Remarks," evoke a deep admiration for rational thinking and logical order. This paper will evaluate the Manhattan grid of 1811 as an expression of aesthetic form and rational order. Its utility combined an aesthetic and an ideological understanding of rational order. Initial opposition to the grid was widespread amongst city residents. Many felt that the Council was overexerting its political power. Historically, the Common Council rarely exerted authority over private property or street construction. In 1665, the Dongan Charter authorized the Council to lay out streets and highways.6 In 1670, a municipal ordinance authorized surveyors to estimate the monetary value of property taken for the city and compensate those owners for the full

(Commissioners' Remarks, Ballon, 40-41) Redwood, "Gridded Spaces, Gridded Worlds" 5 5 Ibd., 6-7 6 "...establish, appoint, order and direct the establishing, making, laying out, ordering, amending, and repairing of all streets, lanes, alleys [and] highways...in and throughout the city of New York and Manhattan Island...necessary, needful and convenient for the inhabitants." Koeppel, 9 3 4

3 value of property lost. These laws failed to organize lower Manhattan because the Council's power to determine street alignment and widths where privately owned large tracts of land prevailed were left unclear.7 Throughout the colonial period, five different acts mandated that property owners be fully compensated for lands acquired by the city for street construction, but the municipality did not have the funds.8 As a result, colonial government-funded construction was rare. For the most part, unpaved roads for pedestrian and cart traffic developed based on where people built their homes. 9 Throughout the 1790s, the state legislature gave the Common Council authorization over street and road organization, but the ambiguity of the municipality's powers left organizational proposals forgotten or rejected. Even if these plans were accepted, they did not dictate how or when land surveys were to take place, or how construction would be funded. The state law offered no direction on where to place streets in relation to current properties, or how wide or long they should be. As a result, the Common Council often encouraged landholders to build streets on their property at their own accord. Landholders individually or collectively built roads as they saw fit, as long as they did not injure their neighbors.10 Small landholders could petition the Common Council to open new streets as long as they were willing to assume the costs. In December of 1793, residents of Partition Street (present-day Fulton Street) established the Committee for Streets and Roads. The group petitioned the Common Council to authorize the numbering of houses on their street. The Council eventually adopted this system for more streets, but the initial motivation for the plan was not a matter of aestheticism. The residents wanted a logical means to navigate their individual street. It was a call to action by specific residents to organize their specific street for themselves. The numbering system established a false sense of rationale and order to the disorganized streets. The

7 REMARKS OF THE COMMISSIONERS FOR LAYING OUT STREETS AND ROADS IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK, UNDER THE ACT OF APRIL 3, 1807 William Bridges 8 Acts passed in 1741,1751,1754,1764.1774,1787, (Koeppel, 3) 9 Ibd., 11 10 i.e. the old common law doctrine to not harm your neighbor. This put a constraint on what landowners could do.

4 mere suggestion of complete street reconstruction would have been perceived as a threat to the right to private property. By 1811, years of passive authority did not prepare New York residents for the radical re-demarcation of property lines, and the destruction of property to make room for the Commissioners' system of blocks and streets. The Commissioners' Map deviated from traditional American grids. In 1791, Pierre L'Enfant designed the Washington D.C. grid with diagonal avenues that traversed horizontal streets to connect public squares across the city. It was a self-proclaimed combination of "a sense of the real grand and truly beautiful." 11 The capitol building and Presidential Palace (not yet called the White House) were placed at opposite ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to evoke the American principle of the separation of powers. His plan literally inscribed the American democratic republican ideology into the landscape.12 In contrast, the Commissioners' grid did not emphasize any park, monument, or government building. The few irregularities adopted into the system were done so without betraying the grid's basic logic. Any large breaks in the grid would counter the aesthetic logic of a space that can accommodate as many people as possible. In contrast, Philadelphia and Savannah were gridded by original design. Philadelphia was one of the first gridded towns built in the 1680s. Town squares were specifically built for storefronts and churches. Blocks were designed to fit houses separated by kitchen gardens. Blocks were made 400 to 500 feet wide to promote air ventilation and accessibility to various parts of the city.13 The Commissioners' blocks were made about 300 feet wider because while the Philadelphia grid covered a two-mile-wide space, the Manhattan grid expanded the majority of the island.14 For the Manhattan streets to provide the same health and mobility benefits, blocks needed to be larger in proportion to

Spann, 11 Kostof, 56-58 13 Spann, . 11-12 14 Ballon, 49 11 12

5 the length and width of the island. In the 1730s, Savannah was gridded into wards, each with its own public square. Each square was lined by stores and churches, making them open places for residents to congregate and conduct business. Some streets bordered parks while others intersected them.15 Both Philadelphia and Savannah considered the social and economic benefits of the grid, but not at the expense of aesthetic beauty. Both cities incorporate a variety of street lengths and widths for public squares and parks, to reduce the monotonous feel of the grid. In contrast, for the New York Commissioners, structure was the main factor that gave the grid its aesthetic appeal. The Commissioner's aestheticized logic and reason. Of the three Commissioners, John Rutherfurd was the least qualified. He was born on Manhattan island in 1760, but lived in New Jersey for most of his life. He served in the New Jersey Assembly and as a U.S Senator. American historian Gerard Koeppel hypothesized that Rutherford was appointed to the Commissioner board through his relation to Governor Morris: Rutherfurd was married to a daughter of Morris’s halfbrother. Nothing in the historical scholarship suggests that he was interested in enlightened ideas like his fellow Commissioners.16 Any ideas he had for the grid, assuming he had any at all, were likely overpowered by De Witt and Morris. Both were deeply fascinated with science and reason. Simeon De Witt was a cartographer, surveyor, and land developer in early America. During the American Revolution, he served as Chief surveyor under George Washington. In 1784, he was appointed surveyor general of the State of New York. In 1810, he was appointed a member of New York State’s Canal Commissioners board to build the Erie canal. De Witt's success as a surveyor was no doubt influenced by his interest in the classical and enlightenment schools of thought. Although proven historically inaccurate, he was credited during his time for naming the Greek and

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Ibd., 50 Rutherford appeared to have no interests outside of politics and attending to his New Jersey properties (Koeppel,77)

6 Roman inspired towns of upstate New York. 17 In 1813, two years after the publication of the Commissioners’ Map, he published a text called the Elements of Perspective. The text argued that the world, "could be remapped to conform to Cartesian calculability." 18 He believed that symmetry, order and proportion could have a “wholesome influence on the morality and happiness, as well as the usefulness of men and members of society.”19 The Commissioners' grid would discipline the mind by orienting travelers to reason their way through it. The exercise of reason could remedy the "idleness and dissipation” of urban city life. De Witt did not view the lack of nature as the destruction of the natural environment, but rather the recreation of "[nature] perfect in all varieties of proportion, shape, color and purpose." With the exception of a marsh and a few parks, the grid was mostly devoid of all nature. The proportional reorganization of nature prevented viewers from observing it with "a brute, unconscious gaze,” or in an unintelligible manner.20 The Commissioners’' admired a structured version of nature as a means to train urban dwellers to be rational beings. Governor Morris was a Founding Father of the United States and New York State Senator from 1800-1803. Elected as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1777, he is credited with formulating the preamble of the Constitution.21 He was an avid federalist against popular government in favor of a strong executive. Like De Witt, Morris was also informed by enlightened ideas. As president of the New-York Historical Society, he questioned human rationality and insisted man was a "contradictory creature" in nature. Morris himself was a contradictory man as he often blended religion, science and philosophy. He argued that Christian scripture could provide "the principle of all sound political science." In 1821, he praised Columbia University as a "child of

17 As a Syracuse resident recalled in 1802: "Simeon DeWitt, the State Surveyor General, had already passed over the country with his Lempriere in hand, erasing the Indian nomenclature, and giving to townships and villages names ludicrous in their misapplication, provoking the most biting [Greek] comparisons."17 (George, "The godfather of the christen'd West") 18 MYTHOLOGIES OF THE GRID IN THE EMPIRE CITY, Redwood, 405 19 Ibd., 406 20 Ibd., 405-406, 409 21 The text: "...form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” (Morris, Gouverneur, 1-2)

7 science" that would "meliorate the condition of man." 22 He credited God with the spread of rational thought that propelled forward "the moral orbit of empire" 23 His religious rhetoric emphasized the aesthetics of higher education by equating it to a God-like divinity that imposed rational thought on citizens of the new American empire. After publishing the grid plan, Morris lamented that, "Men sore with present suffering have not temper to reflect on remote consequence. In the maddening moment, they are deaf even to the voice of a prophet...Oh man! How short thy sight. To pierce the cloud which overhangs futurity, how feeble." 24 Citizens "sore with present suffering" were "too feeble" to understand that short term gain should be sacrificed for the long-term interests of the majority. Only moral and rational beings could comprehend the utility of the grid for the long-term. The rationale of the Commissioners' grid has its origins in the Casmir Goerck land survey of the Common Lands. Goerck was a Polish immigrant and well-known mapmaker of the time.25 In the 1780s, the city wanted to sell the northern regions of the island for profit. In 1785, the Common Council hired Casimir Goerck to survey the Common Lands (extending from present day 23rd Street to the Central Park reservoir along 90th Street) into a grid of 212 rectangular lots, each roughly five acres in size.26 Few of these inarable lots sold, but Goerck's work demonstrated that the use of spatial geometry could order a previously unknown, rocky terrain. The plots, with the exception of the middle row, which had two, had only one access point to a street or road.27 The plots were not designed to bring a sense of aesthetic pleasure to travelers or residents, but to sell as much land as possible. It was the first instance of New York City planning that prioritized convenience over pastoral beauty or custom and rural irregularity. In 1796, Goerck was hired again to create straight,

Redwood, 404 Ibd., 404-405 24 Ibd.,405 25 In the 1760s, the DeLancey family gridded their 340-acre estate (land east of present-day Bowery street north of present-day Houston Street) with six north-south running streets. The state confiscated the family's land after the American Revolution due to their loyalist sympathies. In 1788, the new owners of the land, the Bayard family, hired Goerck to survey the land. He carved blocks out of seven east-west and eight north-south streets. This grid surely inspired his Common Lands survey (Koeppel, 13-14). 26 Ballon, 22 27 "A Map of the Common Lands between the three and six stones belonging to the Corporation of the City of New York" 1796, (Ballon, 22)

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8 north to south oriented roads: East, Middle and West. The East and West roads were 60 feet wide, and exactly 920 feet distant from the Middle Road which was 100 feet wide.28 These widths and distances would become those of the Commissioner's 4th, 5th and 6th Avenues.29 The 1811 Commissioners were clearly inspired by Goerck's attempt to fit as much land as possible into a logical structure. In 1803, Joseph Mangin, another city surveyor, combined his work with Goerck's to publish the Mangin-Goerck Plan.30 The map straightened and widened the colonial streets. Gridded blocks and streets were interwoven with irregular paths to make room for public squares and park s.31 Historian Gerard Koeppel explained that Mangin's presentation of both "order and ornament, urban function and natural form," was an efficient distribution of space, enhanced with touches of irregularity for aesthetic purposes. 32 Street Commissioner Joseph Brown rejected it on the grounds that it "deviates so much from the Streets as laid down by Banker [sic] that the adoption of it would create great difficulties from its total derangement of a great number of the Lots...now owned by a variety of proprietors."33 Brown's concern for the "derangement of a great number of the Lots" was a concern for maintaining the peace. The large-scale project would infringe property rights. Soon after, the Council appealed to the state legislature for a law mandating a street planning commission that would be responsible for: “Laying out Streets... in such a manner as to unite regularity and order with the public convenience and benefit and in particular to promote the health of the City..." 34 The desire to "unite regularity and order" for the "public convenience and benefit" is an important concept for the remainder of this paper.

"A Map of the Common Lands between the three and six stones belonging to the Corporation of the City of New York" 1796, (Ballon, 22) Koeppel, 25 30 Ballon 22 31 Ibd., 22 32 Koeppel, 45 33 Ibd., 53 34 Koeppel, 76 28

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9 The Council could not continue to exercise passive authority to appease everyone's shortterm wants. The Commissioners’ task was to establish "public convenience" for the long-term. In order to do so, they went beyond the rectangular gridded plots and streets of the Goerck and Mangin proposals. Goerck only included the Common Lands; the area bounded by the intersection of Bloomingdale and Post Road (later named Broadway) and the Harlem border. The survey was oriented with north to the right-hand side. This orientation depicted the vastness of available land for sale. Mangin re-envisioned the existing streets of the city (the land below a diagonal boundary along present-day Bank Street up to the corner of East 23rd Street). The map is oriented with north at the top, but the upper boundary is shifted horizontally along the map's frame, as if no land above exists. The Commissioners adopted this logical orientation of the cardinal directions, but unlike previous plans, the Commissioners' Map included the entire island. The 1807 Act instructed the Commissioners to create, "three similar maps of such streets and roads, so to be laid out by them as aforesaid, and of the shores bounding the lands by them surveyed, to be made upon an extensive scale, accompanied with such field notes and elucidatory remarks, as the nature of the subject may acquire." 35 The Commissioners had the freedom to choose what features to include. Their only restriction was the land below Greenwich Lane, Art Street, Bowery Road and North Street.36 The act did not mention a northern-most boundary, nor did it require that the map include the entire island. The Commiss...