City on a grid : how New York became New York Gerard Koeppel

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Koeppel, Gerard T., 1957-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

City planning--New York (State)--New York--History.

City planning.

Streets--New York (State)--New York--History.

Streets.

Grids (Crisscross patterns)--New York (State)--New York--History.

Grids (Crisscross patterns).

City and town life--New York (State)--New York--History.

City and town life.

Social change--New York (State)--New York--History.

Social change.

Manhattan (New York, N.Y.)--History.

Manhattan (New York, N.Y.).

New York (N.Y.)--History.

New York (N.Y.).

Physical Description:

xxiv, 296 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustratons ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston, MA : Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group, [2015]

Summary:

"City on a Grid tells--for the first time--the fascinating story of the creation and long life of New York City's distinctive street grid: its many streets crossed at right angles by a few parallel avenues laid upon a rural Manhattan two centuries ago. The grid made New York what it is today, and defined the urbanism of a rising nation. When it was first conceived at the start of the nineteenth century, the grid was intended to bring order to the chaos of 'Old New York'--the quaint, low-scale, but notoriously dirty and disorderly place of jumbled colonial streets that had sprouted from the southern tip of the island from its earliest days. Turning the swamps and hills of Manhattan into the city we know today was a project on the scale of building the Erie or Panama Canals or the Transcontinental Railway. Like those epics, it is a story filled with larger-than-life characters. And the hundreds of rectangular lots and buildings the grid inevitably produced gave a sense of stability and rational purpose for a young city evolving into greatness. Now, then, is the time to tell the grid's story: the events that led to it, how the commissioners and their surveyor came up with their plan, and how the lengthening life of the city has been utterly shaped by it. Whether one loves or hates New York's grid, little has been written to explain how it came to be, who did it and why, and what it has meant for New York and the cities and nation that have looked to New York as the model for American urban life. Until now"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Come hither old grid

Five acres and a rule: the great grid's common origins

The city to be or not to be?

The city not to be

Now what?

Three man island

Into the woods

A grid is born

Getting square with right-angled living

The grid that ate Manhattan

The city gridded

The city unbeautiful

Back to the rectilinear future.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-275) and index.

ISBN:

9780306822841

0306822849

OCLC:

902657028

Publisher Number:

40025287628