Commissioners’ Map and Survey of Manhattan Island

The streets of early Manhattan, laid out around private land and natural barriers such as creeks and hills, created a tangle of roads familiar to anyone who has explored Greenwich Village. After the population tripled between 1790 and 1810, three commissioners established a plan to regulate the city’s anticipated northward growth. This is one of three original manuscript versions of the 1811 plan, which lays out a grid to replace existing roads and farms, also included on the map. The expansion would take 60 years and significantly reshape the island’s geography.