Five Historic Maps Of Manhattan's Morphing Borders
Earlier this week, Ephemeral New York posted an image of the first known map of Manhattan, the 1660 Castello Plan. It shows a charming little settlement with canals along Broad Street and a real 12-foot-tall wall at Wall Street, and it inspired Gizmodo to dig up other historic maps. They mashed them together into a cool GIF that shows Manhattan's ever-expanding border, and we picked out five of our favorites. The colored map above dates to 1770, when most of Manhattan was covered with farms. Across the river, Greenpoint, Brooklyn was mostly forests and meadows
1814: The Great American Grid explores this 1814 map created by William Bridges, and they highlight the area around 34th and Fifth Avenue: "At the time this map was originally drawn, that area of town was inhabited mostly by squatters, pigs, trees, and hills. The city commissioners had no idea the Empire State Buildinglet alone elevators, steel, or a city population of 7 millionwas just over 100 years away." Click through for a huge 12,000-pixel wide image of the map
More at this link.
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/05/09/five_historic_maps_of_manhattans_morphing_borders.php