The Greatest Grid Exhibit Showcases Manhattan’s Transformation From Farmland to City Streetscape

The <a href="http://www.mcny.org/" target="_blank">Museum of the City of New York</a>’s latest exhibition celebrates Manhattan’s historic transformation from farmland into the highly organized street system it is today. “<a href="http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html" target="_blank">The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan, 1811-2011</a>,” takes visitors on the journey from the former rocky terrain to our current city streets. Through extensive historical maps, photographs, and paintings, the story of how Manhattan came to be comes alive before your eyes.

The structure of our easily navigable numbered streets and avenues was born in 1811 through the “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commissioners'_Plan_of_1811" target="_blank">Commissioners’ Plan</a>.” The design reorganized the rural valleys, streams, and farms into the present-day Houston Street all the way to 155th Street. Visitors begin with lush paintings of farm life, gorgeous estates, and almost unrecognizable maps of wooded areas, ponds, and meadows that are now bogged with skyscrapers. <br> <br> Pictured: J.S. Johnston, <em>Aerial View of Madison Square</em>, 1894 (Museum of the City of New York)

The lay of the land in 1811 was beautifully captured by surveyor and cartographer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Randel,_Jr." target="_blank">John Randel Jr.</a>, who created the colorful Randel Farm Map series, ten of which are on display in The Greatest Grid. <br> <br> Pictured: Randel Farm Map no. 55, vol. 1, p. 16, showing 101st to 109th Street, from Third Avenue to the East River, July 21, 1820. (Used with permission of the City of New York and the Office of the Manhattan Borough President)

<a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/japanese-artist-carves-two-ton-marble-map-of-manhattan/" target="_blank">Maps of Manhattan</a> over the years show the transformation from sprawling farms to private estates, and further to row homes and shared properties. Pictured: Houses of Riverside Drive and 94th Street, June 1890 (Museum of the City of New York)

Many hold original land owners’ names inscribed on the lots, in which many have made their way to becoming the names of alleys, streets and <a href="http://inhabitat.com/nyc/new-waterfront-park-in-brooklyn-will-spruce-up-columbia-streets-industrial-area/" target="_blank">small parks</a> we recognize today. Pictured: Albertis Del Orient Browere, Junction of the Bowery and Broadway, Union Square, 1885. Oil on canvas. (Museum of the City of New York, J. Clarence Davies Collection)

The creation of the grid was a more arduous undertaking than one might think- a total reconstruction of the land. <a href="http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/The-Greatest-Grid.html" target="_blank">The Greatest Grid</a> illustrates this undertaking with historic photos that document the blasting of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_schist" target="_blank">Manhattan rock</a>, leaving some homes that were on even land to being perched on high cliffs. Pictured: Robert L. Bracklow, <em>Rocks, 81st Street and 9th Avenue</em>, December 1886 (Museum of the City of New York)

Through this extensive exhibition, New Yorkers will come away understanding just how the Manhattan we navigate each day came to be, while getting a glimpse of the rural land that used to be under our feet. <br> <br> Pictured: Shanty Town, 1896 (Museum of the City of New York, Jacob A. Riis Collection)