The Transitional Strip    Up until now we watched the Commissioners' Plan grid of 1811 extend north from the then city limits--plus Greenwich Village (GV)--and made note of those older roads in the expansion area that were grandfathered in to the plan. We've seen how to find the border between the two areas, which lies in a transitional strip between Houston and 14th Streets. We earlier used the term yin-yang to describe the nature of this strip, since GV and its named streets fill most of its west side, the same sort of named streets as in the original city to the south, while the east side of the strip was all within the expansion area and got numbered streets starting right at Houston.

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We've already used these two clickable maps before --hold on to them in separate windows. They each start with 14th Street at the top, which, as we know, is the first street in the new section to run river-to-river. Now we'll just concentrate on the upper half of each map, only down as far as Houston ("House-ton") Street. As a reminder, originally, only its center portion had that name. The eastern portion was called North Street, and the western portion after the bend was called Hammersley Street, so the modern Houston Street was pieced together from three older streets getting a unified name. If Greenwich Village had not been there, Houston Street would have been about as far north as New York had grown uptown by 1811, abutting GV on the west side and a more open area on the east side. Even today, Houston is the southern border of the Village. Of our two maps, for our present purposes we'll call the first map the West Strip and the second the East Strip, and we'll have the whole area covered.

The Border    To review how to trace the original border between the Old (original New York and GV, with named streets) and the New (the city outskirts that were given numbered streets) we used the memory trick Gable-Cable-L. On the West Strip, trace the Gable along Gansevoort Street and Greenwich Avenue. Where they join is kind of broken up by that northwestern block impinging on the intersection. Otherwise, 8th Avenue cuts right through that "wasp-waist", which is just a half-block long. I often take the M20 bus uptown here right through the wasp-waist. Because of this intersection, the new area, which does stretch around GV here to reach the Hudson, is formed as a triangle, today called the Meatpacking District, and the southern end of the High Line.

The other end of Greenwich Avenue brings us to the hanging Cable, the former Sand Hill Road that swung down past 5th Avenue and Washington Square North. Most of this was lost when the blocks outside GV and south of West 8th Street were made to impinge on GV to square out the Cable, whose east end is now Astor Place (not named here, but at an angle). Continue on the East Strip with Astor Place, where the border then bends severely south into the L formed by the Bowery, then turning east into Houston Street.

It's easy to find the original GV in the West of the transitional strip, and all the street numbers are obvious here in the new area in the East. But the narrow strip of the new area wrapping around GV can be a little harder to see. What I compare the new area in the strip to is—don't laugh—the unusual geography of the state of Maryland. As we discussed in 2016/13, we drove out to the far western end at Cumberland (=Meatpacking District), then came back to cross Maryland's wasp waist in Washington County (=8th & 14th). Otherwise, the bulk of the state is in the east (= eastern transitional strip). Works for me.

The Grid in the East Strip    To best see how, within the transitional strip, the New (the outskirts) affected the Old (GV), we need to go to the southernmost part of the Commissioners' Plan grid, which is in the east strip. I think that if you ask most Manhattanites and other New Yorkers if there really is a 1st Street, I suspect many will be dubious that there is. Also asking what the shortest numbered cross street is—which is actually a clue--will probably not yield an answer, either.

But the map will show us that, yes, there is a 1st Street. It's just over two blocks long, from the Bowery to 2nd to 1st Avenues, and it really makes an effort to reach Avenue A, but doesn't quite succeed. Since the numbered streets were laid out parallel to the numbered avenues, when the grid reached Houston, this was how the southernmost streets got wedged in. It's safe to say that the northeast corner of the Bowery and Houston is the southernmost reach of the grid.

The following picture was taken at a most interesting location, at the east end of Houston and East 1st (Photo by Jim.henderson). With Avenue A roughly to our backs (see map), we are looking west, with Houston (ex-North) Street on the left and E 1st Street on the right, in other words, right on the border between Old (left) and New (right), along the bottom of the Bowery/Houston "L" shape. If you click on the left, the green street sign says Allen Street in the Old area, which means that to the right, in the New area is its "duplicate", 1st Avenue. That means that, in this wintry view, the wedge-shaped parklet in front of us is Peretz Square (unnamed on the map), named after a Polish Yiddish-language author and playwright, Isaac Peretz.

At the traffic light on the right, 1st Street crosses 1st Avenue (1st & 1st), one of only two places in Manhattan where such numerical twins occur, the other being nearby 2nd & 2nd. That's it. Of the 12 avenues as originally laid out and not as later tampered with (see below), none of the other avenues (3rd to 12th) comes down to the area of 3rd to 12th Streets to cause additional numerical twins, since GV is in the way, with its own street names.

Ahead of us in the picture, but not visible (so check the map), the wedge widens, and abutting 1st & 1st and running down to 2nd Avenue , is the very appropriately named First Park, a pleasant bit of whimsy.

We now come to the problem in the transitional strip between 14th & Houston where the yin and yang are in conflict, that is, the named streets versus the numbered streets. I mentioned above about streets being tampered with, a topic we now arrive at. The conflict was totally one-sided, with the numbers attacking the names. Five of the E-W streets did only "confusional" damage, but caused a weird situation that exists to this day. Two of the N-W avenues did physical destruction in GV, and are among the four teardown streets we'll discuss below.

Push-Thru Streets    For want of a better name, I'm calling push-thru streets the E-W streets that were made to invade the old mini-grids of GV. Perhaps it was an attempt to blend the New into the Old, giving the false impression that the Village somehow lay within the new numbered grid. Check on the map to see which ones they were and just what confusion they caused. South of Astor Place, only two streets were made to jump the border at the Bowery to invade the Village, East 3rd and East 4th Streets. Since the Bowery was the border, there shouldn't be anything called West 3rd and West 4th, but sadly, there are. You have to flip between the maps of the East and West transitional strips to follow.

Across the Bowery from East 3rd is Great Jones Street. Along with Bond Street below it, this was part of the elegant neighborhood dating back to Astor. Apparently, Great Jones was too well known to be vanquished by E 3rd, so it wasn't, and its name continues for two blocks to Broadway (mismarked on the map). But west of Broadway there used to be Amity Place, a friendly name. You heard the name last since it was one of Poe's addresses. But Amity Place was squashed, and renamed W 3rd all the way to 6th Avenue, another intruder of the Village (see below).

The other Bowery jumper is E 4th. Actually, it keeps that name until Broadway, the E-W dividing line in this neighborhood, and only then does it become W 4th Street. I've spent quite a bit of time on old maps and elsewhere looking for what street name it replaced, and have not been able to find one. It's possible that W 4th was one of the earliest invaders of GV, but I've found no details. As the map shows, it runs from Broadway for a few blocks, then becomes Washington Square South—no surprise—before becoming W 4th again. When it also meets the intruding 6th Avenue, there's a major subway hub there, the W 4th Street station of the 6th and 8th Avenue subway lines. There's much more to the notorious W 4th, which we'll come back to later.

Those two are the only invaders that hopped the Bowery. Looking again at the East Strip map, we see that the Astor Place border is first cleared by 8th Street, then by all through 13th Street, before 14th Street forms our river-to-river border. So move to the West Strip map to see which ones of 8th to 13th Streets invade GV. The barrier here is now the right-hand side of our Gable, Greenwich Avenue. Most of these streets behave themselves and stay "legitimately" in what was originally the outskirts area, but three hop the border, somewhat spectacularly.

When W 10th, W 11th, and W 12th Streets meet the Greenwich Avenue border, by chance they match up with three streets that were formerly named. The fact that the match-up involves a steep, approximately 30° angle to the southwest apparently didn't prevent those named streets from being given the invading numbers to create the illusion of numbered continuity. In this case W 10th subsumed Amos Street, which comes with a story.

We have two more push-thrus. W 11th took over the former Hammond Street, named for Elijah Hammond who owned an estate formerly part of the Warren estate. One of Hammond’s houses still stands at what is now called 282 W 11th. Finally, W 12th took over the former Troy Street.

13th Street is the first of these streets below 14th that was allowed to behave itself. As the map shows, it had the potential of subsuming Horatio Street, but Horatio is still with us. Since 13th is right at the wasp waist at the top of our Gable, it pauses politely at Greenwich Avenue, disappears for a moment to allow for the triangular Jackson Square Park (not named on map), and then resumes on the other side of the Gable in the Meatpacking District. But wait. There's a problem in the Meatpacking District. The street south of W 13th has to be W 12th. But we already have the push-thru pseudo-W 12th that took over Troy Street! To use a very fancy word, we find that W 12th Street is bicephalous, or two-headed, with one bending and one going straight. This is another ludicrous situation resulting from these push-thrus. As it turns out, this Doppelgänger of W 12th Street one block north of the southern end of the High Line, has the highly unusual name of Little W 12th Street!

We have one loose end. We purposely never finished what happens to W 4th Street beyond 6th Avenue, which becomes at that point perhaps the most unusual push-thru, if not the most unusual street in general, in all of NYC. There had been a street called Asylum Street that ran from where we left off, W 4th & 6th, diagonally, that is, to the northwest, all the way up to W 13th Street. It was named for the Orphan Asylum that stood between Bank and Troy (now W 12th) Streets. The asylum was demolished in 1833, and soon after, Asylum Street was renamed W 4th Street, to serve as its continuation. Only later were W 10th, W 11th, and W 12th Streets extended into GV.

The saga of W 4th Street is the most egregious anomaly of the push-thrus. It was bad enough that W 4th was bent and extended to the northwest, but it was made even worse when the other three were extended to the southwest, since obviously, they had to cross! Look again at the map, and see where the intruder, pseudo-W 4th, crosses the three other intruders, pseudo-W 10th, pseudo-W 11th, and pseudo–W 12th, to finally end by intersecting with the non-intruding W 13th (First photo by Nils R. Barth, second photo by WindowsWizard12).

It's little wonder why visitors, and even some locals, get confused by this chaotic situation. There are two advantages to numbered streets. First, you don't have to look for lots of names, there's always the next number. Second, is simple math. If you're about to walk from 40th to 45th streets, you know it's five blocks. But from pseudo-W 10th to pseudo-W 11th, you'll walk not one but three blocks, and another three to pseudo-W 12th. What's the good of that? Better still, how many blocks is it from pseudo-W 4th to pseudo-W 10th? Zero!, since you'll be standing on both at their intersection. Is this any way to set up a street plan?

Teardown Streets in New York    Now that we fully know about the expansion grid so that the following makes sense, it's finally time to talk about the destruction of four streets that were cut through in the early 20C, similar to what Haussmann did in Paris in the mid-19C. As it turns out, two of the four in New York were particularly egregious because they involve the physical invasion of GV by physical avenues, not just renamed streets. All four teardown streets unfortunately involve subway construction that started after the turn of the 20C. However, we'll discuss the destruction involved in the order in which it happened.

We need to make sure we know what "cut-and-cover" means. Some subways are built as tunnels bored underground. The London Underground is particularly notable for having a number of lines like this, whose stations in the early days were reached by lift, and now are reached by long escalators. New York has some of those, too. A major advantage of subways in genuine, bored tunnels, especially if they're deep enough, is that the line can go anywhere, under buildings, streets, even waterways, finding exits wherever they're needed.

But tunneling is more expensive. The "quick and dirty" way to build a subway—also cheaper—is to dig a cut into an existing street, lay tracks and platforms at the bottom of the cut, and then roof over the cut, that is, cover it. Any station one enters that's only a flight or two of stairs below street level has surely been built by the cut-and-cover method. Members of the public on the street level that don't think this through might believe they're walking on terra firma when in reality they're walking on a subway roof. I'm sure that has to be true of the New Year's Eve revelers in Times Square who have no idea that the "ground level" they're standing on are subway roofs actually suspended high above the actual ground level of today, as below.

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But if the plan is to build a subway line under a long, straight avenue, it becomes obvious that New York is one place that's going to be popular. You can tell it in the names: 8th Avenue Subway, 7th Avenue Subway, 6th Avenue Subway, Lexington Avenue Subway (the Lex), Broadway Subway, 14th Street Subway, and more.

But the cut-and-cover method gets destructive when there's NO avenue or street available to dig up, so, instead of resorting to the more expensive tunneling, buildings, historic and otherwise, are mercilessly torn up to make a routing for both a new avenue and also for the new subway to run beneath it, to say nothing of the effect on those people who are displaced and lose their homes. It's a dirty business.

Lafayette Street    It's only uptown that the Lexington Avenue subway runs under Lex itself. In the area of Astor Place it runs under Lafayette Street, which itself didn't exist with exactly that name until three streets were joined into one to form it. In other words, it was constructing Lafayette Street itself that involved tearing down buildings, making it what I've been calling a teardown street. In fairness, the new street wasn't built just to accommodate the subway, since there had been interest in a through street earlier to connect traffic in the Astor Place area (and north) with Brooklyn Bridge to the south, in order to relieve traffic on nearby Broadway and the Bowery. The road project began in 1897 and was due for completion by the turn of the 20C, but was delayed due to the construction of the Interborough Rapid Transit subway (IRT) beneath it. As a result, the new road and subway were under a constant state of construction for close to ten years. The subway was dedicated in October, 1904 and, in 1905, the newly-enlarged and extended street was officially designated Lafayette Street.

The new Lafayette Street was composed of three earlier streets, one of which was Astor's short Lafayette Place, though its upper-class fame yielded the umbrella name for the whole new construction. The bulk of the new street's length came from a street with a small-town sounding name, Elm Street, and one block in the middle was taken from two-block Marion Street. The best overall view of the three streets forming the new Lafayette Street can come from this 1895 map, before construction started:

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Click to inspect two areas in green, City Hall Park near the Brooklyn Bridge in the south and Washington Square further north. (Only a dozen years after its completion, it was still quite logically called the New York & Brooklyn Bridge.) A block north of City Hall Park, Elm Street started at Reade and ended at Spring. At that point, a two-block extension of Centre Street called Marion Street appeared, and its upper block continued to Prince Street. North of that, a number of blocks of buildings are "in the way" before we reach Astor's Lafayette Place, between Great Jones Street and Astor Place. We've used this map to get the overall picture, but we have better views.

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Let's start from the north with the area we've already discussed. This is an 1897 map showing the intersection of Astor Place and Stuyvesant Street (not named) crossing the Bowery, with the newer 8th Street (not named) confusing the intersection, as well as 3rd Avenue. We mentioned before that Astor, the real-estate speculator, in 1825 bought this land and later cut his new, elegant street through, Lafayette Place. At 100-ft (30-m), it was comparatively wide for its time, and ran uninterrupted from Astor Place to Great Jones Street with no cross streets (4th Street was a later addition). This layout created two huge superblocks that still exist today, except for the 4th Street separation. Lafayette Place was at that time an elegant cobblestone backwater, which was the most fashionable area in New York City. However, as so often is the case, its heyday was limited, in this case to the mid-19C, when upper-class tastes shifted, and by 1860, Murray Hill in the East 30's became more fashionable, and the Lafayette Place area started its decline.

The following map runs further south (click):

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Note at the top the ghost of Sandy Hill Road, whose eastern end became Astor Place. Then note how extending Lafayette Place forces the cutting through to elegant Bond Street, then to Bleecker (not named) then between Crosby and Mulberry to Houston, then three more blocks beyond (not shown).

To get a better idea of the former elegance of this neighborhood, find East 4th Street, look east of Lafayette Place, north side; after the first large building lot, find the third smaller one. This is the lot of the 1832 Merchant's House Museum (Photo by Elisa Rolle) at 29 E 4th Street, a favorite venue I'm a member of and have written about.

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This pair of maps shows the progress of the teardowns in the northern area of construction, before and after. The left is 1897, the right is 1899 after the new Lafayette Street finally went through. Construction resulted in the total or partial demolition of many buildings in this area. The evidence is still seen today in the exposed joint walls and oddly-shaped sliver lots. The construction of Lafayette Street remains a scar in the urban fabric. Though building owners were compensated (as had estate and farm owners in the land north of the city), valuations were often in dispute.

This 1895 map is titled "Elm Street Improvements", the last word being a euphemism for "destruction", but it does indicate that Elm was the longest and most important of the three streets that were joined together. Click to start at the right (north) end and work your way to Prince Street. You can see that the more northern block of Marion Street was subsumed into the new road (the other block was renamed Cleveland Place in 1907, and was subsequently split into two blocks by the new Kenmare Street in 1911.). Then follow the teardown of one side of Elm Street. The last blocks between Worth and Reade no longer exist, as the route was then bent through more buildings to come closer to the Brooklyn Bridge.

Finally, refer back to the East (Transitional) Strip map to see what it looks like today. At the top end, Lafayette has been extended two blocks to merge with 4th Avenue at 9th Street. At Prince Street, you see the iconic bend in Lafayette where it was made to take over one block of Marion Street, the other block being now Cleveland Place, with Kenmare now butting in.

IRT Subway    But one may wonder why the subway was built under Lafayette Street in the first place. Broadway, which runs the length of Manhattan from the Battery to Washington Heights and Inwood, would have been a much more logical route, a veritable main street of Manhattan. So why not use Broadway? I'm delighted to have just finally found out the crazy story of what happened. And I'd thought I knew this stuff!

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This 1904 map will illustrate the story perfectly. If interested, click to inspect on the left what Marble Hill looked like, and also that Manhattan Avenue in Manhattanville had not yet been renamed to be part of 125th Street, so that elevated station between tunnel portals had a different name from today's. The main thing that may surprise you is all the blue lines. These are the four elevated routes that hovered over the avenues of Manhattan, the 9th (1868-1940), 6th (1878-1938), 2nd (1878-1942), and 3rd (1878-1955) Avenue els. Berlin has often built els running discretely mid-block to mid-block, so there're often out of the way. Having these broad avenues is what prompted building the els along them in NYC. Interesting to see them, but disregard all blue lines for the former els for now and concentrate on the red line, which was famously the first subway line built in NYC.

It had originally started at City Hall then immediately stopping at Brooklyn Bridge, a major public transit hub back in the day, and went north (left) as shown, first up the newly extended Elm (Lafayette) Street, then up Fourth (Park) Avenue to Grand Central, where it made its well-known zig over to Broadway at Times Square, and then up Broadway to 168th, then skipping a bit of Broadway, but rejoining it in Inwood. But why all this zig-zag nonsense? Later on, when extended, this was reassembled to separate East Side and West Side lines, living the zig between Grand Central and Times Square to be the well-known shuttle. But downtown where it started, why did it merely shadow Broadway one block east in the first place? That's the answer I now discovered.

Subway planning began way back in 1894 and the city let contracts to the builders. The City of New York (Manhattan) and the City of Brooklyn were just merging in that period (1898), and so the ► Interborough Rapid Transit company was formed in 1902 to connect the former two cities by rail from a Manhattan base. The IRT built this first subway in Manhattan. On the Brooklyn side, the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company (BRT) had been formed in 1899, and was reconsolidated in 1923 as the ►Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit Company (BMT) to better identify its expansion into Manhattan. (In 1940, the city took over both the IRT and BMT and joined them to its own ►Independent Lines [IND].)

When the IRT was awarded building rights in 1900 for the very first line, a restriction in the contract was that property owners along the route had to be in agreement with the construction. While the original plan was the logical one, starting from the Broadway (west) side of City Hall and continuing up Broadway to Times Square and beyond (see map), a legal battle erupted with property owners along the route, which led to the courts denying in 1896 permission to build under the central part of Broadway. Therefore, the Elm (Lafayette) Street route one block east of Broadway was chosen later that year as a second choice, finally being able to cut west to Broadway later on via 42nd Street to Times Square. Subway construction lasted from 1900 to 1904, when the route opened. But this explains the triangle on the map between Broadway as the hypotenuse and the actual Elm/42nd route.

The very next year, 1905, the IRT got the extension south of City Hall, this time along lower Broadway and then under the East River to Brooklyn, giving credence to its Interborough name. Thus the IRT had the top and bottom of Broadway, but not the middle, where it had a "detour" under Elm/Lafayette Street!

Then, in 1911, the city handed more goodies out in the form of additional routes. For instance, that's when the IRT got the route under Lexington Avenue north of Grand Central, giving a new name to its East Side line. By this time the court issue was settled, and the middle stretch of Broadway could get its subway, but it didn't go to the IRT to further connect its upper and lower Broadway routes. Instead, the central section of Broadway was given to the BMT. The BMT built a tunnel from Brooklyn to the Battery, but obviously had to avoid lower Broadway, since the IRT was there. It was forced to sneak in via Whitehall Street (see map), then Church Street, ironically one block west of Broadway, just as Lafayette is east. The route then sneaks over to City Hall, and every time I ride this route I hear the screeching of wheels as the train maneuvers the bends in the tunnel to make the route end up in the right place. The BMT then continues up Broadway from City Hall to Times Square, after which it has to shift to 7th Avenue, because the IRT has Broadway from there on! Is this a sensible way to have built a subway? As you can see, all of Broadway does have a subway under it from the Battery to 168th Street, but rather piecemeal, as no single route goes the whole way.

Well-Abutting Avenues    At some point within the transitional strip N-S avenues in the newer area had to meet up with the older streets from the original city and GV. Fortunately, this usually worked out well, but where it didn't, destruction followed. Let's start by seeing what happened on the East Side by using the East Strip map.

Surprisingly, Avenues A, B, C, and D, as well as 1st and 2nd Avenues, mesh quite well across Houston with streets dating to the former De Lancey estate. 3rd Avenue runs into the Bowery, and 4th Avenue as we know led to the Bowery so that its name appears along the upper Bowery, so the traffic flow there is no problem.

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We've used this map before when renaming numbered avenues, but now let's use it to see how West Side avenues mesh. Working our way southbound (click), we can see, as we did when discussing the Meatpacking District (2017/8), that, co-named with the West Side Highway, 12th Avenue runs along the Hudson into 11th Avenue, which then runs into 10th Avenue, which ends just past Gansevoort Street (this is mismarked on the West Strip map), then becoming West Street. It's significant that Gansevoort Street is the western side of our Gable that is part of our new/old border.

9th and 8th Avenues behave themselves and are hardly invasive of Greenwich Village. Leave this map and go back to the West Strip map, which shows them more clearly. 9th does breach 14th Street to reach Gansevoort, our Gable border, but does so in the Meatpacking District, which is north of the border, and quite proper. There it blends nicely into Greenwich Street, although Hudson (at 14th) does siphon off a lot of the traffic.

It's 8th Avenue that, below 14th, enters the wasp waist of the transitional strip, and makes a very short, minimal incursion into the traditional area of GV by also merging with Hudson Street. The bus I usually take, the M20, has its northbound route here, and I always enjoy watching the shapes of the blocks change as I ride up to and through the wasp waist.

This summary leaves us with 5th, 6th, and 7th Avenues. I have some good news, but then double the bad news. Good news first.

5th Avenue    Look at 5th Avenue on the West Strip map, and you'll see one of several places where the new grid clashed with the older streets. 5th starts—or ends—right at Washington Square North, facing Washington Arch. There is no direct route for traffic to flow between the north and south sides of the park. Whoops.

Some familiar with New York history might think of Robert Moses as the New York equivalent of Haussmann in Paris. While he built bridges, tunnels, beaches, Worlds Fairs, Lincoln Center, and highways, he was mid-20C and in the auto age, and the highways he built were expressways and parkways that were almost always an alternate layer of road transportation in addition to the actual street-and-avenue streetscape of the city. These are his projects (Map by New York Department of Parks). Some shown here were never completed (thank goodness both of his cross-Manhattan expressways were nipped in the bud). But his roads were limited-access expressways, often elevated, more similar to the Périphérique than to an actual city street.

But there was an exception to this expressway building, back on the level of city streets, and it was where 5th Avenue abutted Washington Square Park. It was just an unfortunate result of how the grid met the older area (as were 6th and 7th Avenues), and so Robert Moses tried to resolve that situation to his liking. It came down to wanting to put the flow of vehicular traffic above the interests of pedestrians in Washington Square Park, as this map shows.

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The situation was already rather unusual. Despite the fact that the park was meant for pedestrians, the hatched area on the map shows where cars were allowed to enter the park to connect between its north and south sides around the circular fountain, connecting 5th Avenue with two streets to the south, making this pedestrian area also sort of a park drive.

As Parks Commissioner in 1940, Moses's first solution was to build a "double highway" snaking along one side of the park to connect 5th Avenue traffic with streets to the south. But his idea was shot down by local opposition from residents, businesses, and NYU, which surrounds the southeastern side of the park. But Moses didn't give up. In 1952, Moses made plans to extend 5th Avenue as an actual street right through the park. It was still two-way at the time (it's now one-way southbound) and his suggestion had the southbound lane going right through Washington Arch (!!!) with the northbound one next to it (see map), and then connecting down to West Broadway, the upper three blocks of which are now called LaGuardia Place. His 14.6 m (48 ft)-wide highway would have bisected the park and would have connected 5th Avenue just to West Broadway, which would have been widened and renamed 5th Avenue South. Actually, he was trying to revive a similar 19C situation, which is when carriages had first been allowed into the park area (see below).

This raised an even greater hullabaloo. The urbanist Jane Jacobs became an activist, and an even more notable name against the proposal was ex-First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who lived at the time on Washington Square West. By 1955, the proposal was further modified as follows:

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On the left is the current layout, and on the right is the proposal dig an open cut through the park for a depressed, four-lane highway, still going through the Arch. To aid in pedestrian flow across the two parts of the bisected park it was further suggested to have an elevated, 11 m (36 ft)-wide pedestrian overpass over the highway. In the UK, the Daily Mail published this artist's sketch of the proposal:

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The New York Times protested that mothers and children, NYU students, and others would be disserviced by having to clamber across this footbridge. Opposition continued to be fierce, with Jane Jacobs leading the fight and Eleanor Roosevelt and Lewis Mumford supporting her. An activist named Shirley Hayes, with her Park Committee, went further. Not only did they reject any new road through the park and any widening of streets around it, they wanted to back up even further by totally eliminating all cars from the pedestrian area as was shown in that crosshatching, and converting it back into parkland, with emergency access only. Moses retreated, and since August 1959, all of Washington Square Park has been for pedestrians only, and completely closed to traffic.

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This is a contemporary map of the Park—showing the Manhattan tilt of course! I remember at least twice driving south on 5th Avenue and stopping at the traffic light at Washington Square North, which its iconic view south (click) of Washington Arch (Photo by Jean-Christophe BENOIST), though this view is from the side. Notice the potted tree barriers and stanchions keeping traffic out. You'll see the brown street signs, indicating this is an official Historic District. The view is to NYU. And both times I was here I had no trouble making a left turn onto Washington Square North over to Broadway to continue southbound, which you can confirm on the West Strip map. And enjoy this view from within the park to the north, with only pedestrians (click) around the fountain (Photo by Matthew Jesuele). This is a rare example of: Nature, in the form of a park, Wins—Grid Connections Lose.

7th Avenue South    Perhaps Moses felt he could get away with extending 5th Avenue to the south because four decades earlier and two avenues west, 7th Avenue South was sliced through historic Greenwich Village (followed by 6th Avenue a decade later). These are the two items of bad news I was referring to earlier.

This segment of an 1865 map (north is to the right) will show how a time bomb had been built into the grid when it was laid out—actually three, but 5th Avenue was resolved positively. The planned purpose of this map is to show some historical geography in GV, specifically the former Minetta Creek, since covered over. It also shows hills, and landfill in brown on the river. Notice again how neatly 8th Avenue was worked into the system, but also note 7th and 6th Avenues.

7th Avenue quite properly breaches 14th Street north of our Gable, and then ends right at the east side of our Gable on Greenwich Avenue. Originally, southbound traffic would have dispersed at an angle on Greenwich Avenue, or on Hammond (now W 11th) Street, or on genuine 11th Street, eastbound. Before we leave this map, look at Varick Street to the south (left). Could you possibly imagine anyone dynamiting their way through historic GV in order to connect 7th Avenue to Varick Street? But that's exactly what happened.

I think that two forces sadly coincided in the name of "progress", a two-pronged attack. I understand it was real estate interests in the West Village that wanted a new through street for fear that the lack of one would make the area a backwater. They apparently wanted unbridled growth in a period when historic preservation wasn't considered a priority, seeking an oversized through street that was incompatible with the traditional petite street scale. I'm positive this could never have happened today, in an era understanding the importance of historic preservation. Today we have historic districts to preserve past monuments, but this was the early 20C with no such protections.

Those interests weren't very hopeful until it was determined that the IRT subway wanted a West Side line, and so two forces joined to cut through GV. It all goes back once again to the fact that there were legal issues with the central part of Broadway, and so the first subway ever built in NYC, the IRT, had to be satisfied with its zigzag route to Grand Central, and only then to Times Square and Broadway, a route that can be called its "Z System". That laid the pattern for routes that followed, not only for the BMT to run on central Broadway then north on 7th, but for just how the IRT eventually developed its distinctive "H System" (Map by John De Bruges). The original Z System completed in 1904-1908 (click) is in dark green and dark red, starting on the East Side, but finally ending on the West Side, since running up Broadway had been the IRT's original goal. The "crossbar" of the H in gray was the zigzag connection between the two. When the route was split into three pieces, this crossbar became today's 42nd Street Shuttle between the new East Side and West Side lines.

Construction began in 1917 and the two added arms of the H went into service in 1918. On the East Side, the IRT Lexington Avenue Line (in light green), extended the East Side line from Grand Central north on Lex, giving that entire route its new name. On the West Side, the 7th Avenue Line (in light red) extended that line on 7th Avenue south from Times Square to the Battery, completing the H connected by the shuttle in the middle. (Remember, the BMT was already using 7th Avenue north of Times Square.) The following shows both routes in isolation.

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It's a quirk that both newly extended lines were named after their newly added sections. You also see something rather unique to the NYC subway, both express (in red) and local (in blue) trains. You also see both 7th Avenue and Varick Street mentioned on the left route.

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Hold on to this yellow map, which shows, in addition to Lafayette Street, the three other teardown streets we'll be discussing. However, as you can see, the most egregious of the cuts was the extension of 7th Avenue. That's because the cut was done at a severe angle to the existing street grids in GV. It clear-cut a 30 m (100 ft)-wide swath right through 11 solidly-built blocks from where 7th met Greenwich Avenue at 11th Street to where it was pushed through to meet a purposely widened Varick Street at Clarkson/Carmine Streets. The cut sliced some square blocks into two triangles and lopped off corners of others. It left unusually shaped triangular lots, some oddly petite. It also left facing the street ugly, blank party walls (walls serving two adjoining properties) where one building was torn down, but its adjoining building was still standing. Aside from the historical nature of the destruction in this particular neighborhood, the roughly 300 buildings demolished under Eminent Domain had housed several thousand residents and hundreds of businesses. It can be described as working on killing a neighborhood in an attempt to help it.

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Map A shows (click) the West Village in 1911 when 7th Avenue ended at W 11th Street. (Also note how nearly 8th Avenue was blended into the GV fabric.) It also displays the cross-streets intact, along with their buildings, on W 11th, Perry, Charles, W 10th, Christopher, Grove, and Barrow Streets. (South and off the map, Morton and Leroy Streets were also affected, as well as the perpendicular streets Waverly Place, W 4th, Bleecker, and Bedford Streets.) The subway and roadway would demolish all of these buildings, and also eliminate the Bedford Methodist Church, a landmark since 1840. By 1916, as seen in Map B, the removal of cross-street buildings showed a newly carved out wide road heading downtown. You can see how its width is substantially greater than others in the petite neighborhood, and so is nearby 6th Avenue (see below).

This map also indicates that this new cut would be called the 7th Avenue Extension. But it was soon realized that keeping the name 7th Avenue would require renumbering every building up to its uptown terminus at West 155th Street. The final decision was to call this new cut 7th Avenue South to make it its own street with its own house numbering system.

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This rather nondescript black-and-white picture from 1912 might seem of little interest, until one realizes that we're looking due south from the original end of 7th Avenue in an era of few automobiles. Picture us standing in the 6:00 position, with Greenwich Avenue (part of our Gable) crossing us between the 10:00 and 4:00 positions. At 2:00 W 11th Street also crosses us, but then disappears at 9:00. This view wouldn't last much longer as 7th Avenue plunged forward. Thus the headquarters of Monahan’s shipping company would be one of the first victims, meeting the wrecking ball a year later as 7th Avenue South came bursting into existence.

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Here’s roughly the same stretch of the Village today. While we can't tell that Greenwich Avenue crosses here, to the right, that traffic light at 2:00 is on W 11th, which would mean the other traffic light is also on it. Straight ahead, at 12:00, is the unlovely 7th Avenue South that was bulldozed through. The building with the conical roof is on the next block, Perry Street (see map). You can already find side-street buildings at odd angles on both sides here, and that street-level shop on the right appears to have been built on an odd-shaped left-over piece of land.

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These two views are typical of 7th Avenue South. The first shows a garage shoehorned in to an odd-shaped lot with apartment buildings oriented to the side streets. In the second, the restaurant is out of kilter with the buildings on the side streets. Rather than illustrating a coordinated street scene, we see the patchwork quilt that it really is.

At this point we can discuss overkill versus underkill. You'll recall that in Paris, Haussmann made his cuts much wider than what the boulevard would have needed. Although this overkill took out more buildings, it allowed Haussmann to line both sides of the new street, not only with new buildings, but buildings coordinated in style to present a beautiful new streetscape. In NYC on the other hand, their method was underkill. That took out fewer historic buildings, but allowed the new street to leave an ugly scar in its wake.

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In contrast to the brazen boulevard we've been looking at, we have here a picture of Jane Street, which you can find at the top of the yellow map. Though it wasn't affected by 7th Avenue South, we show it as a typical, quiet backwater GV street. It has cobblestones (really Belgian blocks) and early 19C residences. We mentioned this street before regarding Alexander Hamilton and the duel. The Bayard house where Hamilton died is one of the townhouses on the right. Now picture houses like this being torn down for the road and subway cut. The real estate people back in the day were being penny wise and pound foolish. The median sales price of houses in GV today near Washington square is $1.4 million, and in the West Village, such as right here on Jane Street, it's $2 million. Historic preservation is financially viable.

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But back to the boulevard. In the first picture, we're looking north from the southern end of 7th Avenue South. We see Leroy Street crossing it at a steep angle, coming from 8:00 (off camera) and going to 2:00 between the low building and red building. The second picture looks south again, with a very wide 7th Avenue South coursing from 6:00 behind us to 12:00 ahead. Otherwise, it's interrupting what had been a simple X intersection, with Christopher Street coming diagonally from the left at 10:00, running in front of the green-roofed building, then leaving at 4:00 off camera. Meanwhile, W 4th Street comes out of the left at 8:00 and crosses diagonally to leave at 2:00 on the right.

To help visualize that X intersection, check out this map of the area (Map by Moni3). Look at the intersection of West 4th and Christopher as 7th Avenue South comes barreling through, confusing the entire local grid. Notice also that 6th Avenue (Avenue of the Americas), while just as broad, at this point does not yet run diagonally against any smaller grid. We also might point out two other locations on this map close to this intersection, both of which are part of the Stonewall National Monument, the first US National Monument dedicated to LGBT rights and history. One is Christopher Park with its Gay Liberation Monument, four bronze statues covered in white lacquer commemorating the Stonewall riots of 1969. The block of Christopher Street behind the fence is also part of the National Monument, since the next building to the right of the right-hand brick building is the Stonewall Inn, which, along with the now separated brick building to its right, was the site of the uprising.

Dylan Thomas said "Do not go gentle into that good night, . . . Rage, rage . . ." While that might very well reflect the Stonewall story, my actual purpose in quoting it here is in regard to one David Hess, who illustrates rebellion in his own way, showing that not everyone in the way of this cut through GV accepted it. David Hess's minor contribution to history is in the form of the Hess Triangle.

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As you can see, the Hess Triangle is just down Christopher from the Stonewall Inn and opposite Christopher Park, just across from where 7th Avenue South comes barreling across, disturbing the streetscape that was. On that unusually sharp corner is located this oddly-shaped, pointed building called Village Cigars. To the right is Christopher Street, to the left is 7th Avenue South. So where's the Hess Triangle? The man exiting the wildly narrow entrance to the store caused by 7th Avenue South is about to step onto it.

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David Hess was a landlord who owned the Voorhis, a large, five-story apartment building (1st map) located at the intersection we've been discussing, where Christopher (8:00 to 2:00) crossed W 4th (11:00 to 4:00). Grove Street (7:00 to 2:00 also) is the other street that formed, and still forms, a side of Christopher Park. From this map, the Voorhis and its plot (55) did really seem formidable in size, compared to plots 51-54, and seems to have had a perfect view across W 4th to the Park. But the 2nd map shows how doomed it was, since it couldn't have been more directly in the path of the onrushing cut through GV. Plot 51 made it through with the least trouble, but plots 52-54 were greatly diminished; perhaps the change in color indicates the buildings were razed to be replaced by smaller ones. That would mean Plot 54 on the 2nd map is today Village Cigars. But wait! To the left, a bit of Plot 55 still shows! That would have once been the westernmost point of the Voorhis. (The Jersey RR tunnel reference in both maps is to the PATH system, whose route still runs here between its Christopher and 9th Street stations.)

And that it just what it was. Surveyors had made an error, and left that tiny piece of the Hess property isolated. The city asked the Hess family to donate it, and the family refused. They even went to court to assert their property rights, and won. It was then the heirs of David Hess who were deemed the rightful owners of the smallest piece of property in NYC history. In 1922 they installed in the sidewalk the infamous, defiant mosaic message (Photo by Chris Hamby): Property of the Hess Estate which has never been dedicated for public purposes. The plaque is an inverted isosceles triangle 65 cm (25.5 in) at the base and 70 cm (27.5 in) on each side. It covers 500 in² of land (3.5 ft² or 0.3 m²).

In 1938 the triangular property was sold to Village Cigars for $1,000 (about $17,000 today). Once it was lumped into the larger plot, it lost its claim to being the smallest piece of privately-owned land in the city. Here's another view between subway exits (Photo by Harrison Leong). And the plaque remains in place as a permanent reminder of David (Hess) resisting Goliath.

6th Avenue    We've already gotten a glimpse of the story of 6th Avenue on earlier maps. It was somewhat less destructive than 7th Avenue South, but still did its own damage. Let's again look at this 1865 Minetta Creek map. I find it odd that 6th Avenue invaded GV earlier than any others. As you can see, at this early date, it already not only breached 14th Street, but reached as far as Amity Place, which became West 3rd Street, as mentioned earlier. I can only attribute this to the fact that the area north, and possibly west of Washington Square was redeveloped right at the beginning of the Commissioner's Plan, since the Cable (Sand Hill Road) that swept down from Greenwich Avenue first to the Square and then to Astor Place was totally redeveloped as part of the new numbered area, despite some of it being below the border.

But also notice how some GV streets grew naturally. Minetta Creek caused several streets to run at an angle in order to follow it, including Carmine Street, which connects directly to 6th Avenue. (Carmine was the official terminus of 6th Avenue in the Commissioners' Plan.) It also connects to Varick Street, which is why I thought it could have been an alternate to having built 7th Avenue South. In any case, when it was decided in 1926 to widen, then extend 6th Avenue, it plunged more or less straight ahead, then a bit left (east). In doing so, it subsumed a trio of small streets, which we can find on this older map.

Generally speaking, while 7th Avenue South carved its route through the heart of GV, 6th Avenue did more damage further south, in the South Village, SoHo, and TriBeCa. Refer back now to the yellow map, which shows the extension of 6th Avenue plunging beyond Carmine Street and actually breaching Houston Street, something 7th Avenue South, which never went beyond GV, never did. You can judge how it even breaches Canal Street, on its way south. This construction resulted in considerable dislocation to existing residents. It's been said that ten thousand people were displaced, most of them Italian immigrants. Many buildings were demolished, including the original Church of Our Lady of Pompeii, located at 210 Bleecker and within the first block of destruction (later rebuilt nearby at 25 Carmine). As always, the extension resulted in small, leftover spaces and ugly, blank party walls facing what was called an uninspiring thoroughfare. The extension to the new terminus down to Church and Franklin Streets (see below) was opened to traffic in 1930. It's the only numbered street from uptown that penetrates into the original New York south of Houston, and does so very deeply. Oddly, unlike 7th Avenue, the entire length of 6th Avenue was renumbered from its new terminus way down in southern Manhattan all the way uptown. In other words, there's no such thing as *6th Avenue South.

Subway construction was also a factor in extending 6th Avenue, but not exactly in the way you might imagine. Starting in the 1920s, plans were being made for the city to build its own Independent Subway (IND) in addition to the private IRT and BMT (all three were eventually consolidated under public ownership in 1940). During the 1930s, construction took place for, among others, both the 8th and 6th Avenue Subways, which would merge at the above-mentioned W 4th Street Station in GV. For our purposes, consider these two in the form of an X, then click on this subway map to check it out. First find the W 4th Street station hub. In blue is the 8th Avenue line, coming down 8th to Greenwich Avenue (our old trail!) to W 4th; it then continues down LOWER 6th Avenue, where it opened in 1932. In orange we see the 6th Avenue line coming down UPPER 6th Avenue, where it opened in 1940, to W 4th, then turning east down Houston (see below). In other words, the 6th Avenue Subway is barely a factor in the expanded 6th Avenue, it's the 8th Avenue Subway that runs under the southern extension. Crazy, right?

Let's compare newer and older maps to trace the path of the 6th Avenue street extension in and south of Greenwich Village. But first, we can recognize on the right the IRT Lexington Avenue line on Lafayette Street and its 7th Avenue line on 7th Avenue South. Our current interests lie in the IND 6th Avenue line (orange) running under both upper 6th and Houston, and the 8th Avenue line (blue) running on 8th, Greenwich Avenue, and lower 6th. We see the green triangular park (click) where the extension destroyed the church at Bleecker, since moved to Carmine, and we approach Houston, about to leave GV for SoHo ("South of Houston"). Concentrate on 6th between Bleecker and Houston, and also on adjacent MacDougal. But since we're on the border, let's also have handy the SoHo map, which the extension also invades (Both maps by PerryPlanet).

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This is the first of three circa 1890 maps to guide us. The gray line is where 6th Avenue sliced through some four decades later, showing both north of Houston (GV) and south of it (SoHo). We see the area between Bleecker (unnamed) and Houston, and MacDougal is the first street to the right of the red circles. The upper circle encompasses the westernmost street of the Bayard Estate (2018/2), Hancock Street, also known as Cottage Place (as on the map shown above), which ran for a block from Houston north to Bleecker. Most of it was obliterated by the extension, but I understand a small piece of it can be discerned in a widening of 6th Avenue at Bleecker. The lower circle indicates Congress Street (aka Smith Street), which ran for a single block, from Houston south to King Street. 6th came just to the east of Congress, and so failed to obliterate it; it simply became a west turning lane from northbound 6th onto Houston.

But we have to realize we are now in a particularly sensitive historic area. In that same posting about the Bayard Estate, 2018/12, which ran (see SoHo map) from what is now 6th Avenue to Broadway, we discussed Aaron Burr's estate, Richmond Hill, which now is the Charlton–King–Vandam Historic District west of 6th Avenue.

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First note here that 6th, which runs northbound, is wider at Houston, where part of Congress Street still serves as a left-turn lane. Otherwise, the Historic District was declared in 1966 as part of the contemporary shift toward historic preservation. While the bulk of it is west of present 6th Avenue, there is that small section to the east. In explanation, I'll remind about when I said that, in setting up Richmond Hill for later subdivision into streets and houses, Aaron Burr also acquired a portion of the Bayard Farm adjoining the estate, which I believe is the small part of the historic district presently across the modern 6th Avenue up to MacDougal Street. That extended portion is obvious on the map.

This 1905 map, with north to the right and showing an area larger than today's Historic District (click), confirms that narrow Congress Street already separated two of the blocks, but 6th Avenue cutting through it in 1926 widened it, obviously eliminating some buildings that would have been, at a later date, part of the Historic District. That would also have been the case in the next block to the left, and possibly beyond. We can see here what the widening of Varick Street in 1917 did to what would surely have been Historic District buildings along it and the western ends of Charlton, King, and Vandam, since the Historic District map shows that Varick isn't included. The buildings preserved in the District today are thus just a remnant of what was.

The Landmarks Preservation Committee said that the Historic District contains "the city's largest concentration of row houses in the Federal style, as well as a significant concentration of Greek Revival houses." It emphasized that this area was and had "always been, since its beginning, a distinct and separate neighborhood." In 1973, the Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places. This is the north side of Charlton Street (Photo by Beyond My Ken) showing houses in the Federal style built c1820. Click to review the detail, especially of the fabulous ironwork.

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Now look at the above similar houses on the northwest corner of King Street and 6th Avenue. There is every reason to believe that that right-hand building was not originally the last one on the street, as the exposed party wall would indicate. In any case, I understand that King Street has a varied mix of styles, including Greek Revival houses, notably those at #40-42-44. Friends Paul and Mayra in the 1970s used to live on the south side of King, but closer to Varick, in #42 and the top floor #44. Small world.

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Finally for the Historic District, this building is on the southwest corner of Vandam and 6th. It's much more typical of the ugly, exposed party walls on teardown streets. At least those apartments, which obviously used to face an airshaft, now have a wide city view. There are two other items of interest here. Since 6th is technically Avenue of the Americas, we see on the lamppost one of the aging coats-of-arms of a nation of the Americas. A close-up view on Google maps indicates that it's of the island of Dominica. There's also one of the subway exits for the Spring Street Station one block to the left (south). This subway under 6th Avenue is at this point, as we know, the 8th Avenue Subway. Smirk if you will.

Since we're well into SoHo now, we'll repeat here the SoHo map (Map by PerryPlanet), where we can now see the Spring Street Station. Note what seems to be a separate street coming south out of Spring down to Broome with a blue #4 next to it, which seems to indicate something called the HERE Arts Center. Oddly, its address is 145 6th Avenue, though it doesn't seem to be located on 6th Avenue.

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Back on another of our c1890 maps we see that bit of land was Clark Street, with the future route of 6th Avenue dangerously close to it. Oddly, Clark Street was never fully subsumed by the tearing through of 6th Avenue. Instead, it was stripped of its identity and became an extra western lane of 6th for these two blocks down to Broome. The western slice of that large block on the red map, which was the eastern side of Clark has become a parklet called SoHo Square.

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We are looking north here into that parklet, located between 6th Avenue on the right and--well, 6th Avenue on the left, formerly Clark Street, which explains why that building had a 6th Avenue address.

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While Broome Street was at the bottom of the last red map, it's at the top of this final one, which takes us down to Canal Street.

Now look again at the most recent red map. While we know Hancock had been obliterated by 6th Avenue, we see the first couple of names coming down from the Bayard days, Sullivan and Wooster. But we also see the gray line of 6th Avenue cutting across the intersection of Grand and Sullivan. Take note of the west end of the block along Canal that 6th is destined to cut off. Check that again on our SoHo map. The whole southern end of Sullivan Street running down to Canal is truncated from the main body, which now officially ends two blocks north at Broome & 6th. However, the last block of Sullivan was never eliminated, but, as we saw before, is designated 6th Avenue, which means that once again, we have a park with 6th Avenue on both sides.

6th Avenue as we said doesn't only invade GV and SoHo, it actually breaches Canal Street, as far downtown as that is, and goes some distance further into TriBeCa ("TRIangle BElow CAnal", actually a quadrilateral) (Map by PerryPlanet). Its goal was to join with Church Street, at Franklin Street, thus becoming the numbered avenue that penetrates deepest into the older part of New York. Both Church and 6th are one-way northbound.

My primary personal irritation with this Frankensteined junction involves once when I was driving north on Church, planning on turning right on (two-way) Canal to go to a travel bookstore. On arriving at the cutoff, I was first rebuffed by a do-not-enter sign when I found out that those four northern blocks of Church are one-way southbound. Unwillingly, I was swept—swept—into 6th Avenue traffic. At Canal, the sharp angle indicated I couldn't make a right, so I had to wander around back streets until I found my destination. A thoroughly unexpected and unpleasant business.

Houston Street    Take another look at the yellow map you've been holding in another window and you'll see that Houston Street will be the final teardown street we'll discuss. You can tell from that map immediately that its situation was different. It was a widening, so teardowns were along the street, actually on both sides—no new cut was made through already existing blocks.

The name can be said to serve as a shibboleth between locals and others that know that it's pronounced "House-ton" and not "Hyu-ston", as some visitors might think. It was named for William Houstoun, whose name had an odd spelling. He was the distinguished son-in-law of the owner of land through which the street was cut. The Houstoun spelling appeared in records in 1808, and also on the 1811 map drawn by the Commissioners for their grid. In those years, the Texas hero Sam Houston was still an unknown teenager in Tennessee. The Texas city named Houston in his honor wasn't incorporated until 1837. The logical explanation for the confusion in the street name would seem to be that Sam and the Texas city later became much more famous than William with his quirky spelling, which was apparently casually altered to "Houston" while still retaining its original pronunciation.

The original Houston Street was the center stretch of the present one. As we mentioned earlier, the city later extended the name to include the former North Street at the eastern end and Hammersley Street at the western end, so that that name now runs from river to river. We now know that the 6th Avenue Subway turned east off 6th to run under Houston and eventually to Brooklyn, so it was starting at 6th Avenue (see yellow map again) that Houston was widened, not only for the subway but also to have a major two-way east-west boulevard with a wide central median in this neighborhood. However, the ex-Hammersley part which runs at a sharp angle west of 6th (see yellow map) remains narrow and one-way to this day.

Subway construction began in 1929, when residents were evicted along the street; stations opened in 1936. The demolition resulted in numerous, small vacant lots and in many ugly, exposed party walls. These blank walls on Houston were what impressed me first about the teardown streets in New York, and I vividly remember several of them. However, Google Maps has been showing me that several of these hitherto wasted spaces are now, after all these decades, having slender buildings erected on them (see below).

Let's take a drive down Houston from east to west. Well start with a picture we saw earlier, the view looking west from Avenue A down both 1st Street & Houston (Photo by Jim.henderson). Click to see how wide Houston is now, with two-way traffic and a median. If we move two blocks west to where Orchard Street crosses from the left, we get a better view of the present width of a more modern Houston (Photo by Gryffindor), but also a better idea of the traditional buildings remaining, especially on the left, among the new giants (click).

We pass 1st & 2nd Avenues, including the 2nd Avenue Subway station, one of only two stops the 6th Avenue line makes on Houston, and are at the Bowery, north side with Elizabeth Street crossing at the corner. This is the type of sight I've been used to on Houston (Photo by David Shankbone), an ugly blank party wall with a mural, and typically either a community garden or nursery filling in spaces where buildings had been torn down. But the good news is that Google maps shows that the nursery has been replaced by an attractive, quite shallow brick building with four large window-filled arches planned for retail space. As for the mural, apparently a thick wall has been added in front of the party wall and seven goose-neck overhead lamps now illuminate a somewhat attractive abstract mural. It's a definite upgrade of how this block has looked for decades.

We continue west on the north side just two more blocks to Lafayette, then comes tiny Crosby, then Broadway (see yellow map). To show the unimportance of Crosby, the other subway stop on this (orange) line besides 2nd Avenue is called Broadway-Lafayette. Now I'm about to show what may be the ugliest picture I've ever presented on this website. It shows the above double block as it looked in 1974 (Photo by Danny Lyon). I can't be exactly sure, but an educated guess is that we're standing at Broadway, the other side of the Gulf station is on Crosby, and Lafayette follows. I think I once got gas at this Gulf station.

But there's good news. I've now found what's there today, confirmed by Google Maps. It's this modern structure (Photo by Jim.henderson), the Adidas Brand Center, which uses the address 610 Broadway, since it remains more prestigious than Houston, in the foreground. Broadway crosses Houston at the left rear. That means that's Crosby Street on the right. Google Maps shows that the other block, between Cosby and Lafayette, is now a roomy Broadway-Lafayette subway exit, including a street elevator.

I almost have to smile at this picture (Photo by Laslovarga) taken in 2007, not only because it shows the most familiar set of blank walls I can remember, but because it's on the south side of Houston at Broadway, directly across from the previous view. Its airshafts and exposed party walls made into ads are shamed by the handsome architecture on Broadway on the right. What similar building might have been torn down here? But I'm pleased to say that a new wedge-shaped glass building is now on this site. Its back is on Crosby Street to the right, most of its façade faces Houston, with little to no frontage on Broadway, yet its address is 606 Broadway, again to take advantage of the name.

We've mentioned the NE and SE corners of Houston at Broadway, so we might as well mention what happened on the SW corner. In 1973, and artist mounted a work on the blank party wall there at 599 Broadway called simply The Wall (Photo by Beyond My Ken). It's considered a minimalist work consisting of 42 aluminum bars bolted to 42 steel braces, all painted green on a background of blue.

From Broadway it's eight blocks to the intersection of Houston and 6th Avenue (Photo by Jim.henderson). Looking west at dusk, we see 6th crossing, but also see where Houston bends, then narrows to 12 m (40 ft), and continues one-way to West Street and the Hudson. The narrow part of Houston is the former Hammersley Street, which continues to illustrate the approximate original width of all of Houston.

http://www.gvshp.org/_gvshp/victories/doc/accomplishments-map.pdf

Historic Preservation    I said earlier that cutting streets through historic neighborhoods wouldn't be possible today as it once was because of the Historic Preservation movement. The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) was formed in 1980 and functions pretty much river to river in the neighborhoods we've referred to as the transitional strip between Houston and 14th, as shown on its map above, dated July 2015 (click + to enlarge). They were responsible for saving both individual buildings and large historic districts (HDs), including the GV HD, that encompasses the Stonewall HD, the Charlton-King-Vandam HD, St Mark's HD, and more. I can't imagine either 7th or 6th Avenues being pushed through this area today. Find NoHo and its HDs to see what they've done there to protect Broadway and Lafayette. They've taken the lead in advocating for designation of the South Village as a historic district: the first section was designated in 2010, and a second in 2013, but they continue to press for—note the red borders--a third section to be landmarked (Map by GVSHP), shown here in better detail. Click to see how well it would fit in with other HDs.

Also note a tiny area within the proposed area which is already a HD, the Macdougal-Sullivan Gardens HD, facing both those streets between Bleecker and Houston. This picture shows 170 (left) to 188 (right) Sullivan Street (Photo by Beyond My Ken) on one side, while the other side of the HD covers 74-96 MacDougal Street. The 22 houses were built between 1844 (MacDougal) and 1850 (Sullivan) in the Greek Revival style, but became dilapidated until they were bought up by a preservationist in 1920 and thoroughly renovated in Colonial Revival style, with all the rear yards combined to make a common garden, hence the name of the HD. The HD is also a NYC landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

We spoke earlier about the high real estate values in GV, largely due to gentrification. The three zip codes covering GV and SoHo, 10012, 10013, and 10014, have all been ranked among the ten most expensive in the US by median housing price. And without those cut-through streets, there would have been just that many more.

Battery Park City    There are just a few add-on topics to these NYC postings. Battery Park City was built in the 1980s as an extension of Manhattan beyond West Street. Though some streets are parallel and perpendicular to each other, as is normal in urban construction, there is most definitely no grid. However, I think it's of interest to see how the new streets there were named.

https://moon.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/01_01_LowerManhattan.jpg

Click to see how there was a definite, though clumsy, attempt to extend established streets, along with their names, such as, in the north, Chambers, Warren, and Vesey. Murray curiously zigzags and splits (Park Place is a map misprint—it was never extended). On the south side, Liberty and Albany are extended. Rector Street appears as a park area, Rector Place, though there is a pedestrian walk connecting the two Rectors. The street next to my building is West Thames Street, which is most odd in that it's not really an extension. You'll find regular Thames Street some distance away, above where it says "Trinity Church". Also a little odd is how Battery Place is extended in a huge arc from Bowling Green to West Thames.

Two more oddities. Someone decided to bring numbers downtown, so we actually have a 1st Place, 2nd Place, and 3rd Place. The other is that the two main streets, which do not abut, are North End Avenue and my South End Avenue. They do position themselves logically, but there origin is confused. They cannot be named after anything in London, which has no such north-south designation. I can only imagine they are some sort of hommage to West End Avenue on the Upper West Side and the shorter East End Avenue on the Upper East Side. But since those two are already an hommage to London, wouldn't that imply that North and South End Avenues are second-hand copies?

Manhattanhenge    One of the features of Stonehenge in the UK is that one part is oriented toward the rising sun on the midwinter solstice and another toward the setting sun on the summer solstice. Just as Watergate has given us the suffix –gate to describe crimes, Stonehenge has given the suffix –henge to describe alignments with the sun, hence Manhattanhenge.

Manhattanhenge happens on two sunrises and two sunsets a year, set roughly around the two solstices, during which the setting or rising sun is aligned with the so-called "east-west" streets of Manhattan's grid. For the winter solstice on about December 21, the sunrise alignment occurs on the East Side around December 5 and around January 8. One hears less about this, probably because of the early hours and cold weather involved.

But for the summer solstice on about June 21, the sunset alignment occurs on the West Side around May 28 and around July 13. Since these happen on warm summer evenings, more people pay attention. This is the Manhattanhenge sunset phenomenon (Photo by Roger Rowlett) shot at 8:23 PM on 13 July 2006. The spire on the right is on the Chrysler Building. We are looking down 42nd Street, since it's one of the wider crosstown boulevards and better for viewing. Also on 42nd Street is this more recent sunset view (Photo by Fred Hsu) on 12 July 2016. We see (click) the photographers blocking 42nd Street, including its intersection here with 6th Avenue (name on right) and are looking across about half the width of Manhattan island, then across the Hudson to New Jersey, to see a whopper of a setting sun.

That Manhattan "tilts" has nothing to do with it. If these streets were really perfectly east west, Manhattanhenge would still occur, just on different dates. And it's not restricted to Manhattan. The same phenomenon happens in other cities that have a uniform street grid and an unobstructed view of the horizon, but again on different dates, all depending on the angle of the streets. I've heard of a Torontohenge, a Montréalhenge, a Chicagohenge, and a Baltimorehenge, and there are probably more.

Other Cities with Grids    I understand grids have been laid out since Ancient Egypt and similar ancient civilizations, but they have not spread out uniformly around the world. As a matter of fact, I seem to sense that today they're mostly concentrated in New World areas settled by English speakers.

Let's look at the Old World first, though this list might not be exhaustive. Europe has grids in Mannheim, Barcelona, Torino/Turin, Valetta (Malta), Glasgow, and Derry/Londonderry. Asia (also Africa) mostly lacks them, except for China, which has them in Beijing, Xi'an, and Datong (just west of Beijing).

When we come to the other side of the globe, as I said, it seems that areas settled by English speakers are where grids are concentrated. That would include Australia and (Anglo) North America (I know of none in Latin/South America). Note that these listings are NOT exhaustive.

Australia has grids in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Hobart, Cairns; while Sydney has many parallel and perpendicular streets, I'm informed that actual grids are found in Sydney's suburbs of Smithfield, Austral, Auburn, and Canley Heights.
Canada has grids in Toronto, Vancouver, and St John NB.
There are numerous cities in the US with grids, far too many to mention, but some well-known names are Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco, Miami, Philadelphia, Washington (with diagonal streets as well) and many more. To indicate how common grids are in the US in cities and towns large and small, we can mention Windermere FL, founded in 1888 just west of Orlando. This is the grid in tiny Windermere (Map by SPUI). The N-S streets have names, and the E-W Avenues are numbered from 1st to 12th. We show Windermere to indicate the apparent obsession with grids, even in tiny towns, particularly in the 19C.

On a larger scale, I also want to mention Minneapolis, since we discussed it earlier. Its grid has a quirk. Grids were originally laid out here on both sides of the Mississippi, and parallel & perpendicular to it, yielding diamond-shaped blocks. Then at one point in the city's growth, it was apparently decided that squares were better than diamonds and the grid starting in downtown was bent (!) after the low teens, so that from the high teens upward, the blocks were, roughly, square, all the way south and east to the Minnesota River and downstream Mississippi.

But the city that most adamantly, even obsessively, stuck to its guns to lay out a regular grid despite what natural impediments lay before it is without a doubt San Francisco (SF). This 1853 map shows it clustered along SF Bay on what is today the east side of SF, and it also already shows the two-grid nature of San Francisco that persists to this day, divided by the diagonal Market Street.

http://ontheworldmap.com/usa/city/san-francisco/san-francisco-street-map.jpg

This is SF today. Market Street still cuts its mighty diagonal swath across the city, separating the two grids. Click to inspect the grid south of Market, which introduces the neighborhood of SoMa, or South of Market (compare with SoHo, TriBeCa, above). We immediately see that this grid does what the Minneapolis grid does: in the low teens, it bends to change diamond blocks into square blocks starting with the higher teens and on to the south. Now look to the left of this area and note how, around Twin Peaks, 282 m (925 ft) high, SF roads do indeed yield to nature and become winding to reach the top. Around Twin Peaks, nature wins. But not downtown.

Our main point of interest here is the main grid downtown, north of Market. It extends today clear across the peninsula, to the Pacific Ocean. But note that the continuation on the right is highly compressed from the downtown area—it's actually about twice the width of downtown.

But it's downtown we're interested in. Unclick and "stand back" to see it all. This grid is like a checkered table cloth on a consummately flat table, right? Wrong. This grid is a fantastic optical illusion you won't see anywhere else. In reality, it would seem that someone left at least two large candlesticks on the table before laying the checkerboard on top. But the trick SF plays on us all is that you can't tell from above.

First find Nob Hill. It's center is considered the intersection of California and Powell Streets (the blue dots of the cable car routes are already a giveaway that there's some altitude here), although the actual peak is a few blocks west at Sacramento and Jones, right at Grace Cathedral. Nob Hill is 115 m (376 ft) high, though you could never tell from the checkerboard map. Now picture an invisible web surrounding this area, rising to the top of this "candlestick" and you'll understand why SF has some VERY steep streets, in all directions. The other "candlestick" raising the tablecloth is nearby Russian Hill. It's slightly downhill from Nob Hill, since its peak is just 90 m (294 ft) high.

Yet the grid was laid out relentlessly, obsessively, always straight ahead, never bend, forget the hills, don't go around or through them in a tunnel. Where routes of streets became too steep, street construction stopped, and was continued after the slope, either above or below. On the map, notice these interruptions due to altitude in Chestnut, Vallejo, and Greenwich Streets. Actually, the peak of Russian Hill is on Vallejo east of Jones, where there is a beautiful park at the dead end with a view over downtown (below), but just be aware of the height.

http://www.sanfranciscodays.com/photos/large/coolbrith-city-view.jpg

Some of these blank stretches of streets are not connected in any way, while others have steep staircases for pedestrians, including the one on Vallejo. The only yielding to the power of nature was the 1952 construction of the Broadway Tunnel (not shown), which allowed Broadway (see map) to maintain a level route under Nob Hill between Mason and Hyde.

The logical thing when building a road on a slope is to include switchbacks to make for an easier ascent or descent. We last saw this in Machu Picchu. SF yielded to this only once in this downtown area—find on the map Lombard between Hyde and Leavenworth, called for the tourists (and I do say that derisively) the Crookedest Street in the World, which would be true as long as you ignore all the other roads with switchbacks.

It was not built that way for the tourists. That block was particularly steep for traffic to serve the houses on each side, so the city rebuilt it with eight switchbacks, which is a very logical and sensible thing to do. The switchbacks are narrow, so the street is one-way, downhill. There are also planted areas in the loops of the switchbacks, which makes the street particularly attractive. But then the brouhaha of the street's nickname brings on the hoards of tourists, a fact I'm sure is not lost on the city's tourist bureau.

This is a distance view (click) of that block of Lombard Street showing all eight switchbacks from Hyde down to Leavenworth (Photo by Jon Sullivan [PD Photo.org]). You can see that the switchbacks are eminently mild, compared to how steep the street must have originally been, as evidenced by the continuation at the bottom of the picture beyond Leavenworth, steep enough so that only perpendicular parking is allowed, and that only on one side.

I've driven this block, and this is the view upon entering up at Hyde Street (Photo by Adbar). It might be a little creepy for two seconds, but when you click for detail, it's about the same as driving down a ramp in a parking garage. But do note how high you are, and also note the Coit Tower over on Telegraph Hill, as well as the Bay Bridge to Oakland. In this next picture you see the garage access on the left to a house (Photo by Érico Andrei), the garden areas, and the not-too-bad slope. But unfortunately, too many people know about this spot and it gets around two million visitors a year, including up to 17,000 a day on summer weekends, resulting in scenes like this (Photo by Gaurav1146). Woe to those homeowners.

But a less well-known view showing man trying to triumph over nature will involve the following picture. First find California Street on the map—it's easy, since it has its own cable car line in blue dots. Picture the view west on California from Sansome, past Montgomery, Kearny, Grant, Stockton, to Powell. Now leave this very flat map and take a look at reality, as seen in this view west down California Street:

https://pix-media.priceonomics-media.com/blog/1022/Nob-Hill.jpg

Well, it isn't so flat, is it? We're looking straight up Nob Hill, with cable cars going in each direction. The street sign on the right (click) tells us Sansome crosses in front of us, more or less at level. Now find the crossings for Montgomery, Kearny, Grant, and Stockton, up to Powell at the crest, which has its own cable car. So while man obsessively conquers mountain, mountain keeps on resisting.

We'll end with some trickery. I don't know exactly which street either of the following pictures is of, other than we're on Nob Hill. Here's a view of a severely tilting building (Photo by Håkan Dahlström) with cars parked on a street that's only slightly tilting. But of course, the photographer tilted to the camera to the left—cars perpendicularly parked must be on a steeply sloping street. Next we have a different, but very similar street (Photo by Andreas Praefcke). This view shows us the reality of San Francisco's obsessive, relentless grid.