The Textbook of Architecture

Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt and John Rutherfurd; surveyed by John Randel Jr

Remarks of the Commissioners for Laying Out Streets and Roads in the City of New York

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New York · 1811 · English

Summarised and illustrated here; the text is not reproduced.

The plan that laid a single rectangular grid over the whole of Manhattan north of Houston Street: twelve north–south avenues and some one hundred and fifty cross streets, with blocks two hundred feet deep.

The commissioners were appointed by the New York legislature in 1807 and reported in 1811. Their map ruled the island, still mostly farmland, into long narrow blocks: avenues 100 ft (30 m) wide running up the island, cross streets 60 ft (18 m) wide (a few of them 100 ft) at intervals giving blocks 200 ft (61 m) from street to street. The grid follows the axis of the island rather than true north, and is turned about 29° from it.

Their short Remarks defend the choice in practical terms: a city is composed chiefly of houses, and houses with straight sides and right angles are the cheapest to build and the most convenient to live in. They left few open spaces, reasoning that the rivers round the island supplied air enough. Central Park was cut into the grid only in the 1850s. The grid fixed the lot on which every later New York building, including the skyscrapers of the 1920s, had to be designed.

The book, part by part

I The grid

Avenues, cross streets and 200-foot blocks, laid out regardless of topography.

Rules: One grid for the whole island

Rules drawn from Commissioners’ Plan (1811)

One grid for the whole island

Lay the whole island out in a single rectangular grid regardless of the ground: avenues 100 ft wide running its length, cross streets 60 ft wide across it, and blocks 200 ft deep between them, the houses to be straight-sided and right-angled because such houses are cheapest to build and most convenient to live in.

avenue 100 ft (30 m) · street 60 ft (18 m) · block 200 ft (61 m) deep, 600–900 ft long

Cite this page Chris Paton, “Gouverneur Morris, Simeon De Witt and John Rutherfurd; surveyed by John Randel Jr, Remarks of the Commissioners for Laying Out Streets and Roads in the City of New York”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/source/commissioners-plan-1811. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.