#122: The Grid - Commissioners Plan of 1811

The Bowery Boys: New York City History

Tom Meyers

Society & Culture, History, Documentary, Places & Travel

4.8 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 15 April 2011

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How did Manhattan get its orderly rows of numbered streets and avenues? In the early 18th century, New York was growing rapidly, but the new development was confined on an island, giving city planners a rare opportunity to mold a modern city that was orderly, sophisticated and even (they thought at the time) healthy. With the Commissioners Plan of 1811, uniform blocks were created without regards to hills and streams or even to the owners of the property! Join us as we recount this monumental event in New York's history -- how land above Houston Street was radically transformed and also how the city revolted in many places. What about those avenues A, B, C and D? Why doesn't the West Village snap to the grid? And why on earth did the early planners not arrange for any major parks?! ALSO: A podcast within a podcast as we focus on the biography of one of those commissioners. Give it up for Gouverneur Morris, the casanova with Constitutional connections, a Bronx estate and a wooden pegleg. www.boweryboyspodcast.com Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/boweryboys

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Bowry Boys episode 122, New York on the grid.
0:04.4	Hey, it's The Bowry Boys!
0:06.0	Hey!
0:08.0	The Bowry Boys is brought to you by EuroChipo.com.
0:12.0	EuroChipo editors personally visit and review the best budget hotels in Europe.
0:17.0	Now with hotels in New York City, on the web at EuroChipo.com.
0:21.0	Hi there, welcome to The Bowry Boys. This is Greg Young.
0:24.0	And this is Tom Myers.
0:25.0	And we are recording in the midst of the thunderstorm right now.
0:28.0	Exciting.
0:29.0	So if you hear the sound of someone hitting a strike at a bowling alley in the back.
0:34.0	It's unfortunately just a mid-April shower.
0:37.0	It's yes.
0:38.0	So today in the podcast we're going structural with a story about how Manhattan got its avenues and streets.
0:46.0	We're talking about the commissioners plan of 1811,
0:49.0	which sounds kind of like a dry topic, especially that phrase commissioners plan.
0:55.0	So if you want, you can also call it the grid plan.
0:58.0	It's also why it's sort of easier in Manhattan to kind of find your way around,
1:02.0	especially above 14th Street, for instance,
1:05.0	as opposed to walking around other burrows or even other major cities,
1:09.0	just because of that numbered and lettered system.
1:11.0	Yet it's so easy to take for granted.
	...

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