[URBAN NOTE] Happy 200th, Commissioners' Plan of 1811!

[rfmcdonald]

Facebook's Michael is to be thanked for letting me know that today is the two hundredth anniversary of the Commissioner's Plan of 1811, which articulated gridwork of streets in yet-to-be-inhabited areas of Manhattan, as described by the New York Times' Sam Roberts.

Henry James condemned it a century ago as a “primal topographic curse.” Rem Koolhaas, the architect and urbanist, countered that its two-dimensional form created “undreamed-of freedom for three-dimensional anarchy.” More recently, two historians described its map, regardless of its flaws, as “the single most important document in New York City’s development.”

Two hundred years ago on Tuesday, the city’s street commissioners certified the no-frills street matrix that heralded New York’s transformation into the City of Angles — the rigid 90-degree grid that spurred unprecedented development, gave birth to vehicular gridlock and defiant jaywalking, and spawned a new breed of entrepreneurs who would exponentially raise the value of Manhattan’s real estate.

Today, debate endures about the grid, which mapped out 11 major avenues and 155 crosstown streets along which modern Manhattan would rise.

The grid was the great leveler. By shifting millions of cubic yards of earth and rock, it carved out modest but equal flat lots (mostly 25 by 100 feet) available for purchase. And if it fostered what de Tocqueville viewed as relentless monotony, its coordinates also enabled drivers and pedestrians to figure out where they stood, physically and metaphorically.

“This is the purpose of New York’s geometry,” wrote Roland Barthes, the 20th-century French philosopher. “That each individual should be poetically the owner of the capital of the world.”

The grid certified by the city’s street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. It also laid the groundwork for nearly 2,000 acres of landfill that would be added to the island over the next two centuries. The commissioners concluded that New York “is to be composed principally of the habitations of men, and that straight-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.”

The grid, which incorporated some existing roads, would also prove surprisingly resilient. It accommodated motor vehicles (after sidewalks and stoops were pruned). It allowed planners to superimpose Central Park in the 19th century and superblocks like those of Stuyvesant Town and Lincoln Center in the 20th. In the 21st, the grid was extended west to include apartment houses on Riverside Boulevard.

“The 200-foot-long block is short enough to provide continuous diversity for the pedestrian, and the tradition of framing out the grid by building to the street-wall makes New York streets walkable and vibrant,” said Amanda M. Burden, the director of city planning.

“The grid does not limit us,” said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. “It gives us a foundation to adjust to and a way to navigate Manhattan.”

Me, I'm terribly fond of grids. I only wish Toronto had one to match!