James Panero on the New York City Grid

+ Brandon Fuller

In the latest issue of City Journal, James Panero offers a brief history of the state commission’s 1811 plan for the Manhattan street grid. For a city widely considered among the world’s greatest, New York’s 1811 plan looks remarkably utilitarian:

Unlike Pierre Charles L’Enfant, whose 1791 plan for Washington, D.C., created grand diagonal boulevards and optimized sight lines, the New York commission had little interest in charm or pageantry. The commissioners described how they had deliberated about “Whether they should confine themselves to rectilinear and rectangular streets, or weather they should adopt some of those supposed improvements by circles, ovals, and stars, which certainly embellish a plan, whatever may be their effect as to convenience and utility. In considering that subject, they could not but bear in mind that a city is to be composed principally of the habitations of men and that strait-sided and right-angled houses are the most cheap to build and the most convenient to live in.”

The commission laid out a grid on which development would be easy and fast, capable of absorbing the city’s rapidly growing population. The simple structure could also accommodate changes after the fact. For example:

After the city failed to set aside several of the small parcels of green space planned in the original design, Central Park was neatly carved out between three avenues and, eventually, 51 blocks.

Panero’s piece is based on “The Greatest Grid” exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, an exhibit organized by NYU Wagner professor Hilary Ballon. The Museum Docent’s will tell you that the commission’s aggressive population projections for Manhattan elicited disbelief:

In 1811, the commission’s population estimates for the young metropolis exceeded that of any city outside of China. Yet by the start of the Civil War, New York City’s population of 800,000 was exceeding even the commission’s robust estimates. Today, Manhattan’s population alone is over 1.6 million.

As Ballon points out, the grid was both:

"an instrument of laissez-faire urbanism” and an “exemplar of planning” by strong government.

The grid established the public rights of way, allowed for flexible additions of public park space, and turned the development of the spaces in between over to private decisions. Though the grid eschewed artistic grandeur and a reliance on centrally-planned development decisions, the city it enabled is still universally admired as a great and dynamic human achievement.

Tile image by NYSIDLibrary.

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