Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and
Speaker 1: this is Stuff You Should Know another in our Endless
Speaker 1: Annals of New York City edition. That's right. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is pretty interesting episode, I think. And my favorite part
Speaker 1: about it this was Dave rus Are one of our writers.
Speaker 1: I'll put this together and Dave, Uh, it's clearly annoyed
Speaker 1: about this whole thing, And I think it's hysterical how
Speaker 1: many times he gets annoyed by the laziness of the commission.
Speaker 1: I have to say I agree with Dave two. I
Speaker 1: was annoyed by it as well. I think, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's always annoying when you see somebody like have a
Speaker 1: great opportunity and just pee it away, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm mean. Yeah, And we should also point out Dave
Speaker 1: got a lot of his information from a really wonderful
Speaker 1: book called A City on a Grid colon How New
Speaker 1: York Became New York by Gerald Uh Keppel, not Gerald McCraney.
Speaker 1: Different Gerald, right or is it Copple? I think it's Keppel.
Speaker 1: If it's Koe. That's what I was going with, was Keppel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get this book though. This is uh, this
Speaker 1: is right at male because you know, I'm obsessed with
Speaker 1: the history and the sort of formation of New York
Speaker 1: City as we know it today. Yeah, where'd you get
Speaker 1: the idea for this episode? Just my constant desire to
Speaker 1: learn about Mannahatta and how that became eventually Manhattan that
Speaker 1: we know and love. I'm just fascinated by. I love it.
Speaker 1: I love everything about it. This is definitely a big
Speaker 1: chapter in it because what we're talking about is the
Speaker 1: plan called the Commissioner's Plan of eighteen eleven that basically
Speaker 1: laid out Manhattan as we know and understand and love
Speaker 1: it today. Everything north of Austin Street, I should say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And here's sort of a quick primer is Manhattan above
Speaker 1: Houston is almost a perfect grid. Um Broadway kind of
Speaker 1: screws everything up, but you know, great Street, but it's
Speaker 1: it's just broadways, Like I'm not following any rules, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to confuse people. But aside from that, it's
Speaker 1: it's pretty much a grid of eleven numbered avenues that
Speaker 1: run north to south generally speaking. Then you've got Lexington
Speaker 1: Park and Madison Avenues and then two hundred and this
Speaker 1: was at the time numbered streets running roughly east to west.
Speaker 1: And if you want to get a little more granular
Speaker 1: than that, um, the southernmost street in the East Villages
Speaker 1: East first, as you would imagine, the northernmost is two
Speaker 1: D Street as we live in Breathe today and in
Speaker 1: wood Well, that's on the island technically in Manhattan, And
Speaker 1: if you're talking about the borough, it goes up to
Speaker 1: two hundred and twenty seven, I believe, right, And if
Speaker 1: you want to go through the Bronx, you go all
Speaker 1: the way up to to sixty three. Man, that's crazy. Um,
Speaker 1: you've got so many streets. That's so many streets. You've
Speaker 1: got a two hundred and sixty streets. You've got an
Speaker 1: east and West signifier which says and this is sort
Speaker 1: of a dummies guy to getting around New York for
Speaker 1: the first time too. If you broke your smartphone, and
Speaker 1: you also don't want to walk around just staring at
Speaker 1: your smartphone the whole time, No, you're gonna miss a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so try and get a little into it a field,
Speaker 1: because it's really easy to get around. If you know
Speaker 1: this stuff, um, east and west will signify whether you're
Speaker 1: in east or west of Fifth Avenue. And then uh,
Speaker 1: here's a little trick to odd numbers street. Uh, streets
Speaker 1: run west, even numbers streets run east. So if you
Speaker 1: come out of a subway and you and you know
Speaker 1: which a north, south, east and west are, then you
Speaker 1: will never do the thing that I always do and
Speaker 1: walk in the wrong direction trying to go up or down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because that's the thing. Like, if you know what direction
Speaker 1: you're facing, and you know where you're trying to go
Speaker 1: and where you are right now, you can basically make
Speaker 1: make your way anywhere in Manhattan above. Yeah. And if
Speaker 1: you're like me and you have no idea ever what's north, south,
Speaker 1: east and west? And you either I had an easy
Speaker 1: time in l A because l A has uh the sun,
Speaker 1: well they have they have that, but they also have
Speaker 1: um geographical landmarks that make it super easy to tell
Speaker 1: which way north and like the Hollywood Sign and the
Speaker 1: hills and stuff like that. Is that real? Is the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Sign real? What do you mean? Is it real? Okay? Um?
Speaker 1: So that makes a lot easier in New York when
Speaker 1: I come out there, all those big tall buildings. I
Speaker 1: never know. I can never come out and say like,
Speaker 1: well that's north. Um. But if you know that stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know that the even numbered streets run east
Speaker 1: the odd ones run west, then you can you won't
Speaker 1: walk in the wrong direction for a block and then
Speaker 1: get there like I do and go, oh, we should
Speaker 1: have gone the other way. Yeah, because depending on what
Speaker 1: direction you're walking, if you're walking north or south, going
Speaker 1: the wrong direction and a block isn't that bad. But
Speaker 1: if you're going east or west, it's real bad because
Speaker 1: very long blocks going east to west. And that's all
Speaker 1: part of that Commissioner's plan that was laid out in
Speaker 1: eighteen eleven. And on the one hand, you know, we've
Speaker 1: kind of hit upon the pros and the cons of it.
Speaker 1: That it's easy to get around, which is really saying
Speaker 1: something because New York is absolutely huge. But you could
Speaker 1: make it from one end to the other without a map,
Speaker 1: just knowing that that it's on a grid and how
Speaker 1: the grids laid out, um, even roughly. But the problem
Speaker 1: is it's on a grid, and a grid is one
Speaker 1: of the least organic shapes around and because this grid
Speaker 1: stretches over almost all of Manhattan. Most of Manhattan for sure. UM,
Speaker 1: it's viewed by a lot of people is kind of
Speaker 1: soulless and canyon esque because you're just totally surrounded almost
Speaker 1: constantly by big, imposing buildings, all at these right angles,
Speaker 1: which it feels like a very built environment. UM. And
Speaker 1: until Central Park came along, which we did an episode
Speaker 1: on in what the eighteen fifties or sixties like that
Speaker 1: was it? That was New York. There was nothing but
Speaker 1: that built environment. I got a few more of my things, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's have them. But uh, Manhattan's about thirteen and a
Speaker 1: half miles long. And then so this grid makes sense.
Speaker 1: But then once you get north of fifty ninth Street,
Speaker 1: you start to get like Atlanta does, and a road
Speaker 1: will just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta is very
Speaker 1: famous for that, and people get very confused. Here. It's
Speaker 1: very confusing also because the road will will change names,
Speaker 1: but one of the names, Peachtree, will still be there,
Speaker 1: but it's a totally different street and it does not
Speaker 1: help things. That's right, So north fifty nine UM avenues
Speaker 1: on the west side change names, but avenues on the
Speaker 1: east side do not. So eight becomes Central Park West
Speaker 1: ninth becomes Columbus Avenue becomes Amsterdam Avenue, and eleventh becomes
Speaker 1: West End Avenue. What about Avenue of the America's well,
Speaker 1: that's sixth, right or is that seventh? Oh man? I thought,
Speaker 1: I think it's sixth. I think, but that's really not
Speaker 1: a name change. That's just that's something that that tourists
Speaker 1: call it, right. I remember you making fun of me
Speaker 1: when I call it that? Did I really? Yeah? That
Speaker 1: sounds a good right, it was really jarring. Uh. And
Speaker 1: then to get people really confused between third and fifth Avenue,
Speaker 1: there are three avenues, uh, instead of what you would
Speaker 1: think would be one, because Lexington Park and Madison fall
Speaker 1: between those YEA, and then south of twenty three you've
Speaker 1: got your lettered avenues A, B, C, and D, which
Speaker 1: is alphabet city. So you would need to have to
Speaker 1: pull out a map. You just have to stand in
Speaker 1: the middle of New York and listen to the first
Speaker 1: like ten minutes of this episode, and you'll find your way,
Speaker 1: no problem. All right? Should we get into this? He said,
Speaker 1: people don't like the grid. There are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people. Um, I mean, what did Walt Whitman
Speaker 1: call it? Uh? Icky? I think now I think he
Speaker 1: said he called he called it one perpetual dead flat Yeah,
Speaker 1: and streets cutting each other at right angles are certainly
Speaker 1: the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation.
Speaker 1: How about this one from Edith Wharton Rectangular New York.
Speaker 1: This cramped horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, porticos, fountains,
Speaker 1: or perspectives, hide bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like hide bound. That's great. That's a great word.
Speaker 1: And mean ugliness definitely captures like a certain sense of
Speaker 1: New York, depending on your your mood or mindset, you know. Um.
Speaker 1: There's one a guy named Peter Mark Huse who's an
Speaker 1: architecture critic. He said that the grid layout of Manhattan
Speaker 1: was one of the worst city plans of any major
Speaker 1: city in the developed countries of the world. Right, but
Speaker 1: some people love it. Some people said it was pragmatic.
Speaker 1: Some people said it really accommodated for the one thing
Speaker 1: it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth. Uh.
Speaker 1: Let me see here. An architect named Raphael Vin Vinoly
Speaker 1: who was I think a modern architect. Not modern, I
Speaker 1: just mean current architect, but he may do modern work,
Speaker 1: you knows. Uh. He said, the grid is the best
Speaker 1: manifestation of American prag mattism, pragmatism in the in the
Speaker 1: creation of urban form. And then in Dutch architect name
Speaker 1: rim Cool has said that the grid was the most
Speaker 1: courageous act of prediction in Western civilization, clearly talking about
Speaker 1: the the growth. Yes, but a courage this act. That's
Speaker 1: like architect talk, right that right there. So, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, from what I understand, and definitely Dave
Speaker 1: says the same thing. Um, most New Yorkers, especially born
Speaker 1: and raised New Yorkers, we're not happy that that's how
Speaker 1: their city is laid out. That there's a lot of
Speaker 1: room for improvement. Yeah, your experience too, sure, I mean
Speaker 1: Central Park is great. But you know, as we'll find out,
Speaker 1: they did not, uh they doesn't didn't really plan for
Speaker 1: green spaces, and New York has done their best to
Speaker 1: kind of carve them out since then. But you know,
Speaker 1: let's let's get into this commission. Well, let's talk about
Speaker 1: grids first. Do you want to Yeah, all right, do
Speaker 1: you want to take a break and then talk about
Speaker 1: the grid story? Yes? Uh? So New York didn't invent
Speaker 1: the grid. As much as they liked to boast that
Speaker 1: they did, they did not. In fact, a grid layout
Speaker 1: of a city. Um. Goes back to that Indus Valley
Speaker 1: civilization that for some reason keeps popping up in the
Speaker 1: last like year or so. I guess they're going to
Speaker 1: make a comeback or something like that. But they've just
Speaker 1: been coming out all over the place. Um. But one
Speaker 1: of the what was it, chuck, was it? Did they
Speaker 1: invent the zipper? I don't think it was a zipper?
Speaker 1: What was indigo? There's been there's been a number of them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, about at least five thousand years ago, the
Speaker 1: Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create
Speaker 1: Mohan Joe daro Um, which was a fifty acre city
Speaker 1: on a grid. Um. And then shortly after that the
Speaker 1: Greek said, I really like this. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: Greek um I think, or mathematician named Hippodamus who's known
Speaker 1: as the father of city planning, and he was bully
Speaker 1: for grids too. Yeah, if you have a grid that's
Speaker 1: still these people still call that the Hippodamian plan, which
Speaker 1: is kind of great all these years later to still
Speaker 1: get recognized for your grid work. Yeah, if if you're
Speaker 1: ever talking to somebody and they refer to a grid
Speaker 1: as a Hippodamian plan, that person knows what they're talking about,
Speaker 1: or listens to this show that it's one in the
Speaker 1: same basically, and you're going to say that, Uh, let
Speaker 1: me see. The conquistadors of Spain, they kind of had
Speaker 1: a habit of coming in conquering and then having their
Speaker 1: template in place to create these grids um as what
Speaker 1: they call the law of the Indies, and they would
Speaker 1: sort of just come in, set up shop. You got
Speaker 1: a town with a big central plaza and then a
Speaker 1: grid surrounding that central plaza, right, and they they use
Speaker 1: that for everything from Lima to Los Angeles. Um. And
Speaker 1: this took me back in my mind to uh, what
Speaker 1: was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala that
Speaker 1: we visited. Oh, yeah, I know, I know what you mean.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful, driving me crazy, It really was wonderful.
Speaker 1: Was one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in.
Speaker 1: But it had like a central plaza with a fountain.
Speaker 1: It was a much smaller town. But um, now that
Speaker 1: I think about, it was laid out on a grid too,
Speaker 1: and it was part of that law of the Indies
Speaker 1: that you were mentioning that it was just like this
Speaker 1: is how you build a town. And apparently the reason
Speaker 1: that they they um used that that law like in
Speaker 1: town after town after town, that they just basically took
Speaker 1: over and said this is ours now it's Spain's. Is
Speaker 1: applying a grid was um kind of a metaphor for
Speaker 1: applying order and civilization to a formerly disordered in wild
Speaker 1: indigenous you know town, which make sense from a colonizer's perspective,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective
Speaker 1: like everything else. Yeah, that's with this stupid right angle stuff.
Speaker 1: So New York City comes along. Um. Philadelphia had been
Speaker 1: laid out in a grid by William Penn very deliberately though, um,
Speaker 1: and that grid was kind of roomy and spacious because
Speaker 1: William Penn did not like the congestion of London. But again,
Speaker 1: Philly very much purposeful. Yeah, boy, d C has a
Speaker 1: has a kind of a crazy grid. Yeah, but once
Speaker 1: you understand it, it makes total sense. Numbers and letters
Speaker 1: as in directions. Yeah, but it takes a little more.
Speaker 1: It takes more getting used to than New York to
Speaker 1: from from my experience and what I understand, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So the Commissioner's Plan of eighteen eleven is really sort
Speaker 1: of the demarcation point between what was first New York,
Speaker 1: New Amsterdam and then what we now know as Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Because anyone who's ever seen almost said Games of New York,
Speaker 1: Gangs of New York knows that those were crazy days
Speaker 1: down there in Lower Manhattan and things just sort of
Speaker 1: sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as
Speaker 1: the layout and the design. Uh. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can still feel that when you go down to Lower Manhattan,
Speaker 1: which is why I love the villages. Now. I think
Speaker 1: it's just I mean, I like the simplicity of the grid,
Speaker 1: But I think what I love about Lower Manhattan is
Speaker 1: how organic it feels. It's a jumble, and I mean
Speaker 1: it's a jumble for a reason because those streets largely
Speaker 1: follow these original organic paths that the Dutch settlers and
Speaker 1: earliest English settlers basically said, oh, we need to get
Speaker 1: from the waterfront up you know, to the common lands
Speaker 1: or whatever. Here's a good path. And this path happens
Speaker 1: to meander around as salt marsh, and we avoid having
Speaker 1: to go up a hill by going around this way,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like meandering, and it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: locked in time from those streets down there, and um,
Speaker 1: Lower Manhattan I like it too, but it is very
Speaker 1: easy to be like, are are you sure we're going
Speaker 1: in the right direction? Still, it's very easy to get
Speaker 1: lost in those because it isn't at all a grid. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've spent enough time in Lower Manhattan now to where
Speaker 1: I can landmark it, like it's just familiar enough to
Speaker 1: me to where I kind of know, like this block
Speaker 1: in that block, so I know where I'm going. Um,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned something important. I don't think we've even
Speaker 1: kind of said that New York was not all this
Speaker 1: just big, one, big flat slab thirteen miles long that
Speaker 1: we love today because you can walk forever without ever
Speaker 1: getting out of breath. Because it's not Seattle. Um. New
Speaker 1: York was swamp land and it had hills and marshes
Speaker 1: and creeks and rocks, and it was you know, it
Speaker 1: was kind of wild East Coast territory. Yeah. And I
Speaker 1: mean the reason that those marshes in the ponds and
Speaker 1: hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because of this
Speaker 1: eighteen eleven Commissioner's planing. It basically said tear it all down,
Speaker 1: fill it all in, build this over it. And they did.
Speaker 1: That's the most astounding thing is they did that. They
Speaker 1: they you know, as we'll see, they passed a law
Speaker 1: that basically said, we're gonna appoint a commission of three people.
Speaker 1: They're going to come up with three people, and whatever
Speaker 1: they come up with is law. It can't be challenged
Speaker 1: in court, and we're not going to back up, back
Speaker 1: it up and and change it in any way. And
Speaker 1: they really didn't. As bad as the plan was, and
Speaker 1: almost every way, they really stuck to it. But the
Speaker 1: thing that struck me, I had no idea about this
Speaker 1: UM was that the the eighteen eleven Commissioner's Plan was
Speaker 1: just a rip off of another earlier surveying map that
Speaker 1: basically provided the basis of this of the Commissioner's plan,
Speaker 1: not even the basis of it. They were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we'll take this as a starting point. They just said,
Speaker 1: we'll take this print and put our names on it.
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately what happened. Yeah, So pre Revolutionary War UM,
Speaker 1: most of Manhattan was in that lower third of the island,
Speaker 1: and we got into big time debt because of the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War. And so the city said in the seventeen eighties,
Speaker 1: al right, here's what we gotta do. We owned tons
Speaker 1: of land, publicly owned land, and all this marshy kind
Speaker 1: of ready rocky pondi area. Um, it's not developed. Let's
Speaker 1: sell the stuff off and make some dough. It's called
Speaker 1: the common Lands, and we need somebody to get in
Speaker 1: there and just sort of, you know, survey this and
Speaker 1: plot it out out so we know exactly how to
Speaker 1: best sell this. Yeah, so they hired a guy named
Speaker 1: Kasimir Theodore Girk. That's how I'm going with this. Girk.
Speaker 1: Sure it's not a cucumber, it's a gherkin. Do you
Speaker 1: remember Mr Cabbagehead from Kids in the Um? Well this
Speaker 1: had nothing to do with that, right right. Um. So this,
Speaker 1: this surveyor actually went through the common Lands like basically
Speaker 1: what we understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and
Speaker 1: North Harlem. He just went across and broke it into
Speaker 1: five hundred acre parcels. He had a sixty six ft
Speaker 1: chain on his um surveying poles, and so he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll just use that as the basic measurement for the
Speaker 1: widest streets. Sixty six ft is what it's going to be.
Speaker 1: I think he said five acre parcels. Weren't they five acre?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I'm sorry, it's a little bit of a difference.
Speaker 1: They were five acre parcels. So that's even more work.
Speaker 1: That's a hundred times more work than what I described.
Speaker 1: That's right. So, um, he laid him out as a
Speaker 1: grid because he wasn't like, this guy wasn't out to
Speaker 1: say here's how Manhattan should be built, right right, this
Speaker 1: is the best way to promote the future of growth
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. No, that was not his charge. His charge
Speaker 1: was like, hey, let's just to buy this stuff up
Speaker 1: and sell it. Um. He had some interesting constraints. They
Speaker 1: had to be five acres, they had to have a
Speaker 1: central road that um all of these could sort of
Speaker 1: access like fairly easily. And then he had the survey chain.
Speaker 1: It's crazy to think about this was one of the
Speaker 1: things that informed what is modern New York. His survey
Speaker 1: chain was sixty six ft. So he said, all right,
Speaker 1: that's how wide the road is. Yeah, exactly, So I
Speaker 1: think that was like the the widest road, the central
Speaker 1: access road. He called that one Middle and now I
Speaker 1: believe that's fifth Avenue is Middle what was originally Middle
Speaker 1: Road back in Yeah, that's adorable. So he carved this up,
Speaker 1: this place up into um into these plots that are
Speaker 1: um two feet on the east and west boundaries of it,
Speaker 1: so going up and down, running north south. But if
Speaker 1: you're on the plot, it would be on the east
Speaker 1: side of the plot, in the west side of the plot,
Speaker 1: if that was not confusing before it is now. And
Speaker 1: then across Austar the width was nine twenty ft and
Speaker 1: that was Those were the plots. He said, here you go,
Speaker 1: this is a there's a bunch of them up there.
Speaker 1: But I've carved up all of these common lands and
Speaker 1: you can start selling them if you want. Yeah. Did
Speaker 1: you mention the names of the other two roads? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, I'm gonna I'm gonna put two more in
Speaker 1: of these sixty six ft wide roads, and uh, he
Speaker 1: had some very clever names for them. Yeah. One was Middle, remember,
Speaker 1: the one to the east he named East, and the
Speaker 1: one to the west he named west. Yeah, which which
Speaker 1: makes sense if you're looking at it from if you're
Speaker 1: on the Middle Road to the east is the East
Speaker 1: road to the west of the West Road, but they
Speaker 1: run north south right, man, I hate directions. Uh, And
Speaker 1: like you said, that was fifth in the center, so
Speaker 1: that's now fourth, fifth and sixth or fourth Avenue, fifth
Speaker 1: Avenue and the avenue. You know, you really not supposed
Speaker 1: to say that. What a jerk. I believe that said that.
Speaker 1: Didn't say it like that, and you just you just
Speaker 1: made sure that you wait until the crowd had gathered
Speaker 1: and really late into me. I think I remember, was
Speaker 1: that our first trip to New York? Probably? Yeah, probably,
Speaker 1: That's funny. We've been back a couple of times since
Speaker 1: then as a team. Huh. Yeah, I know, I've got
Speaker 1: some really great memories of New York. I miss it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been a while. One. Well, we will see you again, Yes,
Speaker 1: we will New York, don't you, at least I hope.
Speaker 1: So there are no guarantees, right, No, we will see
Speaker 1: New York again. All right? So, uh do we take
Speaker 1: another break? I feel like there's still a lot. There's
Speaker 1: still a lot. We should keep going for now, I think.
Speaker 1: All right. So in eighteen oh seven, this is when
Speaker 1: the New York State Legislature said, you know what we
Speaker 1: need to like, we're growing here. It's clear that this
Speaker 1: southern tip of Manhattan is just the beginning. So they
Speaker 1: passed a bill that they described as an Act of
Speaker 1: relative and Act relative to improvements touching uh the laying
Speaker 1: out of the streets and roads in the City of
Speaker 1: New York and for other purposes, right, which made sense.
Speaker 1: But like I said, that this law, they decided to
Speaker 1: just vest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said,
Speaker 1: we're going to follow whatever they come up with, whatever
Speaker 1: they that seems to them most conducive to public good.
Speaker 1: We're just going to take on its face that it
Speaker 1: is most conducive to public good and just go with it.
Speaker 1: That's crazy that it was just three people, and that
Speaker 1: it wasn't like ten teams of three people submitting the
Speaker 1: best designs that then would be gone over and voted on.
Speaker 1: Like took this, No one took it seriously. Weirdly enough,
Speaker 1: very so who were these guys? So there are three
Speaker 1: commissioners appointed. Whate was Governor Morris. His first name was
Speaker 1: Governor Um. He was one of the founding fathers. He
Speaker 1: wrote a lot of the Constitution, including the preamble. Um.
Speaker 1: He had a peg leg. He lost his leg in
Speaker 1: a carriage accident, Um, although there's rumors that it was
Speaker 1: something else. But he was known as a dave. It's
Speaker 1: an energetic philanderer. But he was apparently a very likable
Speaker 1: Benjamin Franklin asked, kind of dude, UM, who seemed to
Speaker 1: be fairly smart but had really no understanding of surveying
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell. No. Then his nephew
Speaker 1: in law, John Rutherford, He's he was a landowner in
Speaker 1: New Jersey. In fact, I think the largest landowner in
Speaker 1: New Jersey at the time. And by all accounts, it
Speaker 1: looks like this was pure nepotism. He was late for meetings,
Speaker 1: he was not especially interested, even to the annoyance of
Speaker 1: Governor Morris. All the reasons to not exercise nepotism. This
Speaker 1: guy brought to the table is one third of this
Speaker 1: commission who's figuring out how to lay out the plan
Speaker 1: for New York City. That's right. And then the third guy,
Speaker 1: Simon Lebon No, no, no, Simeon DeWitt, excuse me. And
Speaker 1: this guy actually knew what he was doing. He was
Speaker 1: a really very respected, accomplished surveyor, worked with George Washington.
Speaker 1: I think it eventually became the UM which I didn't
Speaker 1: even know as a thing. Was the official surveyor for
Speaker 1: the Continental Army and then the surveyor General of New
Speaker 1: York State, right, so he knew what he was doing,
Speaker 1: which makes his role all the more shameful that he
Speaker 1: didn't say, like, oh, well, we really gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: get cracking. It's been three years and we got four
Speaker 1: years to do. And maybe he did, though he knows.
Speaker 1: He might have been completely run over about these other
Speaker 1: two jumps and he just got shouted down. I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know. Well, at the very least. Governor Morris
Speaker 1: was also one of the founding members of the commission
Speaker 1: that created the Erie Canal, which was for a very
Speaker 1: long time considered one of the greatest public works projects
Speaker 1: in the history of America, certainly in the history of
Speaker 1: New York State. UM and that kind of energy and
Speaker 1: imagination and drive just did not make it to this
Speaker 1: eighteen eleven Commission for the Planning of New York. I
Speaker 1: wonder if he I mean, this sounds cynical, but I
Speaker 1: wonder if he literally was like, man, that Erie Canal
Speaker 1: project really was a big bummer, and how hard we
Speaker 1: had to work, and let's just kind of, Hey, look
Speaker 1: at these maps that this guy drew to sell off
Speaker 1: New York. Let's let's just use those. Yeah. So that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's kind of what they did. Like they
Speaker 1: they had four years or they took four years, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how long they had, but they took four
Speaker 1: years from eighteen or seven to eighteen eleven um to
Speaker 1: turn in their report. Four years of meeting sporadically true,
Speaker 1: but they still met over these this four year period.
Speaker 1: They came up with an eleven page report to lay
Speaker 1: out these thirteen miles in length, not not even square
Speaker 1: miles um of Manhattan, these common lands, all the way
Speaker 1: from House and Street up to North Harlem. Um. They
Speaker 1: came up with eleven pages to explain their map. And
Speaker 1: their map really made sense as a grid. But again
Speaker 1: they stole the grid from Kazmir Gork. I can't remember
Speaker 1: what I called them before. I'm going with Gork now, Okay, sure, um,
Speaker 1: but they didn't give them any credit for it whatsoever. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to go so far as
Speaker 1: to call it a tracing project, but you know, they
Speaker 1: borrowed pretty heavily, Like the streets and the avenues were
Speaker 1: basically the exact same when you know earlier you mentioned
Speaker 1: the blocks were two Kirk from Kirk, right, yeah, this
Speaker 1: this had the exact same way out and that was
Speaker 1: no accident, no, and they were in virtually the same spot.
Speaker 1: They did do some stuff, you know, They didn't just
Speaker 1: take his his map, like you're saying, and trace it
Speaker 1: and call it their own. They made some changes to it.
Speaker 1: They created instead of the three middle, east, and West,
Speaker 1: they created twelve avenues running north south and not not
Speaker 1: true north south, but just you know, for our purposes
Speaker 1: north and south. And then they created a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five numbered streets. But they added this stuff, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of just copy pay kind of kind of.
Speaker 1: But the big thing is so adding the twelve numbered
Speaker 1: avenues was definite change to Girk's corks. I'm never going
Speaker 1: to say the same thing twice, But was it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because he only had the three, I know, but he
Speaker 1: just had the three and they were like, well, we
Speaker 1: need more, so let's just do what he did all
Speaker 1: over the place. Sure, sure, okay, all right, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, that's fair. Yeah, I'm they're these guys
Speaker 1: are definitely not a hill. I'm willing to die on.
Speaker 1: So say what you will about them. I think they're
Speaker 1: lazy schmos too. And then they took these they took
Speaker 1: these cross streets that are formed by the surveying of
Speaker 1: these blocks and turn them into numbered streets. So avenues
Speaker 1: running north south they were the big ones, D fifty
Speaker 1: five numbered streets running east to west. Um. They they
Speaker 1: widened the avenues that said they're gonna be a hundred feet. Why.
Speaker 1: I guess they had a longer surveying right. Um. And
Speaker 1: then they widened some of the cross streets to I
Speaker 1: guess ease congestion. Um. I think they widened fifth teen
Speaker 1: of them total. Yeah, they I think the other streets
Speaker 1: were sixty feet and then fifteen of them went to
Speaker 1: a hundred at six one. But why why those particular
Speaker 1: ones there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason
Speaker 1: because if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride
Speaker 1: into keeping them separated by ten ten cross streets until
Speaker 1: six street. So there's not really much rhyme or reason
Speaker 1: there when they only did that for three of them, right,
Speaker 1: for four of them. And then the the streets that
Speaker 1: they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make much sense
Speaker 1: one way or the other, Like, for example, seventy one
Speaker 1: Street was already fairly wide, it was definitely wider than
Speaker 1: seventy two Street, but they decided to make seventy two
Speaker 1: Street the widened Um the widen cross Street, rather than
Speaker 1: seventy one, And apparently no one knows why. The closest
Speaker 1: thing I could find is there some record in eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven of somebody having to remove a big rock
Speaker 1: from seventy Street to widen it. But that doesn't even
Speaker 1: explain or makes sense, because there was a bunch of
Speaker 1: houses that had to be torn down to make seventy
Speaker 1: Street widened rather than seventy one, which was already wide
Speaker 1: and had almost no houses exactly. So these guys were
Speaker 1: just when you start to compile all the evidence, we'll
Speaker 1: we'll kind of pay more out. It really seems like
Speaker 1: these guys didn't even go to the common Lands, that
Speaker 1: maybe they were just working from Girk's map, or if
Speaker 1: they did go to the common Lands, they took zero
Speaker 1: notes or paid zero attention, and that all of this
Speaker 1: came from a place of laziness and ignorance, like not
Speaker 1: knowing that seventy two was wider than seventy feet or
Speaker 1: vice versa. Um would explain that decision more than anything else. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the other Another example is if you've ever been
Speaker 1: on the West side and you feel like, man, these
Speaker 1: avenues are big, it's because they are. The avenues on
Speaker 1: the east side are spaced at six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: and six hundred and ten ft apart or six hundred
Speaker 1: and ten feet apart, and on the west they are
Speaker 1: all eight hundred feet apart for no reason, no reason
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. Again, it
Speaker 1: just it seems like they just phone this in. And
Speaker 1: what's even more astounding is that New York's founding father said, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do exactly what you say without questioning it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and actually we kind of do have the reason if
Speaker 1: you read closely, and we'll tell you the secret reason.
Speaker 1: Right after this U Z FORR. Cliffhanger. It was great.
Speaker 1: I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay
Speaker 1: it all. All right, here's the real reason, everyone, and
Speaker 1: it all lies in this quote that has pulled from
Speaker 1: their commission report. If it should be asked, why the
Speaker 1: why was the present plan adopted in preference to any
Speaker 1: other The answer is because after taking all circumstances into consideration,
Speaker 1: it appeared to be the best or, in other more
Speaker 1: proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience. And I think
Speaker 1: that's the magic phrase right there, that last phrase attended
Speaker 1: with the least inconvenience. And Dave rightfully says, what is obvious,
Speaker 1: which is inconvenient for the three commissioners? Yeah, because their
Speaker 1: plane was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved. Like there
Speaker 1: was very from the people who were in charge of
Speaker 1: like making this this like building this grid or this
Speaker 1: plan to um, the people who are already living in
Speaker 1: places that were torn down. Yeah, places were torn down
Speaker 1: to to adhere to this plan, this eighteen eleven commission plan.
Speaker 1: That's crazy. Um. And again when you start to add
Speaker 1: all this stuff up, it does seem like the least
Speaker 1: inconvenient for the three commissioners. And the fact that if
Speaker 1: that is true and they just included that is kind
Speaker 1: of like a cheeky little joke. You know, these guys
Speaker 1: are they're not not necessarily burning in hell, but they're
Speaker 1: probably in purgatory somewhere. I also have a lot of
Speaker 1: respect for that kind of laziness at times. So the
Speaker 1: kind that makes fun of itself and public documents, well
Speaker 1: just just is that upfront about the fact, like you
Speaker 1: know what that didn't really want to work too hard
Speaker 1: on this, So here's here it is, right. So uh yeah,
Speaker 1: it was very incon in it for everyone but them.
Speaker 1: Uh they did this because of the growth population they expected,
Speaker 1: so it sort of made sense. But they even got
Speaker 1: that wrong. They were wrong by about half of what
Speaker 1: they thought the growth rate was going to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the thing is. They were saying, like, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the this affords um enough population growth to
Speaker 1: afford a population greater than any other this side of China,
Speaker 1: is how they put it. UM. So they clearly did
Speaker 1: have at least growth on their mind, and that if
Speaker 1: you build on a grid affords for the most growth.
Speaker 1: It's the easiest to build on. Right angled structures are
Speaker 1: the easiest to build and settle and live in. UM.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is part of that law, that
Speaker 1: eighteen o seven law that established the commission charged them
Speaker 1: with creating public squares. Although it said uh, in in
Speaker 1: size and form and all that and number that the
Speaker 1: commissioners see fit. Unfortunately, the commissioners didn't see fit to
Speaker 1: make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green
Speaker 1: spaces for um mental health, I guess is what you
Speaker 1: would call it. Yeah, and their reasoning is kind of uh,
Speaker 1: kind of b s actually, Um, I'm not sure which
Speaker 1: one it was. I guess it was Morris that I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna read the whole quote, but he basically said, hey, listen,
Speaker 1: we don't have the sin River or the Thames winding
Speaker 1: through the middle of town, but what we do have
Speaker 1: are these two wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And that's enough because everyone's just gonna go hang out
Speaker 1: out the river all the time because it's beautiful and
Speaker 1: gorgeous and you can swim in it. And the East
Speaker 1: River and the Hudson River will forever be our green space. Basically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Basically that that was that the city had enough, it
Speaker 1: didn't need green spaces because of the East and the
Speaker 1: Hudson rivers and um. Like, in about forty years people
Speaker 1: were like, no, we we need to build Central Park. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which was a savior because I think it says here
Speaker 1: on their original plan only five percent of the grid
Speaker 1: was public green space and two hundred forty of those
Speaker 1: acres was a parade ground, yes, which I didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly where that was. To you, No, I'm not sure, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean there, you know, there's Washington
Speaker 1: Square Park, there's some cool kind of central promenades and
Speaker 1: things like that. And then these you know, New York's
Speaker 1: famous for these tiny little slivers of park um kind
Speaker 1: of all over the place. But they're they're small, they
Speaker 1: are they are very small, especially compared to the surrounding areas.
Speaker 1: For sure, in the buildings. That's why the highline was
Speaker 1: such a big deal. Yeah, it was a big deal.
Speaker 1: And I remember not quite grasping why, you know, I
Speaker 1: definitely do, because there's just people need that. People need
Speaker 1: green space, they need nature, they need to be like
Speaker 1: outside of a built environment, even if it's a built
Speaker 1: natural environment, you know what I mean. Yeah, And and
Speaker 1: Central Park is amazing and we love it, but that's
Speaker 1: a it's a long way if you're in southern Manhattan
Speaker 1: to get up there, right right. But basically these guys said,
Speaker 1: you don't need to go hang out at the hudsoner
Speaker 1: of the East River. It's so wonderful and lovely. So
Speaker 1: the um there were a lot of people, like we
Speaker 1: said that, we're really unhappy with this. UM. This was
Speaker 1: a huge exercise of eminent domain. UM. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people on these lands already. Remember Seneca Village
Speaker 1: that was destroyed to create Central Park. UM. They managed
Speaker 1: to survive the U eighteen eleven commission. UM. I can't
Speaker 1: remember how long that was around, but I want to
Speaker 1: say Seneca Village is around for a good fifty years
Speaker 1: before it was leveled in the eighteen fifties, so it
Speaker 1: would have been around on the common lands during this time. UM.
Speaker 1: But they're like you said, about thirty nine or of
Speaker 1: homeowners or established buildings had to be torn down. They
Speaker 1: filled in ponds, they filled in salt marshes, They completely
Speaker 1: altered the ecosystem of stuff that could have been built
Speaker 1: around or incorporated had they stopped and thought about how
Speaker 1: to do that. They just leveled everything and built a
Speaker 1: grid over it. And so a lot of people were
Speaker 1: really really unhappy about us, and they were particularly unhappy
Speaker 1: that the UM, the city administration was just sticking to
Speaker 1: this no matter what. And there were a lot of
Speaker 1: lawsuits and all of them from what I understand that
Speaker 1: we're unsuccessful. Oh yeah, for about sixty years. There were
Speaker 1: tons of lawsuits going on. And uh, I know you
Speaker 1: said it was a big imminent domain um act, but
Speaker 1: it was I think still the largest act of imminent
Speaker 1: domain in New York City. And that includes Central Park
Speaker 1: and the uh how we get how they get their water,
Speaker 1: which was another good episode. Yeah, because I mean Central
Speaker 1: Park was huge, but it's it's just a small sliver
Speaker 1: of this larger area. Yeah. Let's this one quote from
Speaker 1: landowner Clement clark More. He published a pamphlet um about
Speaker 1: the Tyrannical Commissioner's planned and and it it says this
Speaker 1: nothing is to be left unmolested, which does not coincide
Speaker 1: with the street Commissioner's plummet and level. These are men
Speaker 1: who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome
Speaker 1: Burn big time. Yep. So um didn't matter though, No,
Speaker 1: it really didn't matter. They just went ahead with it
Speaker 1: blindly and thoughtlessly and did and again like it did
Speaker 1: accommodate growth, although they underestimated the growth. But it took
Speaker 1: a little while for this stuff to fill up. Um.
Speaker 1: This this plan was delivered in eighteen eleven, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until eighteen seventy five that enough people had started
Speaker 1: to move in. That there were more New Yorkers living
Speaker 1: above fourteenth Street than they were living below it, because remember,
Speaker 1: I mean Lower Manhattan was where it all began, so
Speaker 1: that I mean it took a little while to fill in,
Speaker 1: and it didn't even necessarily fill in uniform lee. Um.
Speaker 1: By that same year in still forty thousand vacant lots
Speaker 1: left in this grid plan. And that that was like
Speaker 1: about half of the space. Yeah, I love that fact.
Speaker 1: That's good. Dave has some nice facts here. At the
Speaker 1: end um eighteen sixty nine, the very first apartment building
Speaker 1: New York was built, uh, called the stive is Aunt
Speaker 1: And they called them I don't even think they called
Speaker 1: them apartments. At the time, it was called a French
Speaker 1: flat or a French house. But prior to that it
Speaker 1: was you know, tenement houses and houses. And so the
Speaker 1: stive is ant Is built and everyone thinks it's silly
Speaker 1: that anyone would want to live in the same building
Speaker 1: as other people, and they called it stive his Aunt's folly.
Speaker 1: But um that it was at one forty two East
Speaker 1: Eighteenth between Irving Place and Third Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: it was a huge hit, Like people made fun of
Speaker 1: it in the newspapers, but people signed up to live
Speaker 1: there almost immediately. It filled up. It was demoed and
Speaker 1: replaced in nineteen sixty but so this is eighteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Very it didn't take long though. In the Dakota was built,
Speaker 1: which still stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came
Speaker 1: into fashion, I think, probably do just Stuyvesant's folly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well yeah, I mean it went over so well and
Speaker 1: so quickly that it really opened the way for more
Speaker 1: and more to be built. Pretty cool. Um. So one
Speaker 1: thing that people point to is this Commissioner's plan of
Speaker 1: eighteen eleven is just like that same principle or the
Speaker 1: same significance that um, the Spanish coming in and and
Speaker 1: imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow taming
Speaker 1: the wild or the organic or something like that. There's
Speaker 1: a This is the turning point between kind of unplanned organic, um,
Speaker 1: much more harmonious, naturally New New York and the planned
Speaker 1: modern New York that we know and love today. This
Speaker 1: is where it went from one to the other. Um,
Speaker 1: almost like flipping a switch. And granted for it took
Speaker 1: decades and decades to realize this plan, but Um, when
Speaker 1: it when it was delivered, and when it was adopted,
Speaker 1: that was that was it? That that change happened and
Speaker 1: the transition began. Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I think so too.
Speaker 1: What else is there for New York? I mean we
Speaker 1: figure we got water, we got the subways covered, we've
Speaker 1: got Central Park, We've got this. Yeah. Um, let's see,
Speaker 1: there can't be much else as far as just the
Speaker 1: bones of I know. What I want to do is
Speaker 1: maybe how that all the mail in the trash work? Okay?
Speaker 1: All right? Yeah, we did the Rocketts once even too,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean we've done a lot of New
Speaker 1: York topics, that's true. Or maybe we should have moved
Speaker 1: to a different city. Let's start talking about des Moines.
Speaker 1: Holy cow, dude, almost simultaneously came out of my mouth. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's so weird. It is weird. Uh, it's in the
Speaker 1: zeitgeist apparently. Ah, you got anything else? I got nothing else? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about New York, um
Speaker 1: to start reading and then eventually travel there. Uh, they'll
Speaker 1: give you the all clear when they're ready. And since
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for listener mail. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: my sixteen year old son Owen is probs your biggest
Speaker 1: fan for real. He also has a narcolepsy. I appreciate
Speaker 1: you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding of
Speaker 1: it to the masses. He was diagnosed in his tin
Speaker 1: and it affects every single aspect of his life. I
Speaker 1: think it has made him wise beyond his years personally
Speaker 1: and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles. But it's
Speaker 1: still sucks. If you ever want to read or here
Speaker 1: firsthand accounts from people with narcolepsy, check out Julie fly
Speaker 1: gear that is f L y G A r E
Speaker 1: or flag are A. I'm not sure how would you
Speaker 1: say that? Oh? I like the I like the one
Speaker 1: with flavor. The second who was doing all kinds of
Speaker 1: advocacy for people with arcalepsy, including a scholarship foundation. She
Speaker 1: founded Project Sleep and Voices of Narcolepsy. She also wrote
Speaker 1: a great book about her experiences with being diagnosed during
Speaker 1: law school called Wide Awake and Dreaming. When Owen received
Speaker 1: his diagnosis, I reached out to her for help. She said,
Speaker 1: I want a care package with a book, a T shirt,
Speaker 1: wrist bands, a very kind card, etcetera. To let him
Speaker 1: know that he's not alone. That is very sweet. I
Speaker 1: think she deserves an award for the work she's doing anyway,
Speaker 1: a great resource for sure. Thanks for the work that
Speaker 1: you do. I mean, could we get an award? You
Speaker 1: know we've won a Webby before. I think, well, that's true.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes and often it's
Speaker 1: really important in educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of
Speaker 1: your biggest fan. And that is from Brooke. Thanks can,
Speaker 1: thanks Ohen for listening. It's really good to hear from you, guys.
Speaker 1: Um and Uh, I feel like we should send Ohen
Speaker 1: something too. Sure, let's do it, Chuck, we'll figure it out,
Speaker 1: all right. We can't be shown up by this fly
Speaker 1: Gary person. No no, no, send us, uh, send us
Speaker 1: your physical address and we'll mail you something that's right. Um.
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, thanks for listening and thanks for
Speaker 1: being a fan. Uh and thank you for listening and
Speaker 1: thank you for being a fan too. And if you
Speaker 1: want to get in touch with this, like Brook did,
Speaker 1: you can send us an email, wrap it up spanking
Speaker 1: on the bottom and send it off to Stuff podcast
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