NYC Public Library Map Room

As the group entered the beautifully ornate Map Room of the New York City Public Library, we were greeted by Matt Knutzen, our guide to their collection of historical maps of Manhattan and the evolution of the city through documentation in maps. We began with a map from the 1700’s where the “city” was concentrated almost entirely around the City Hall area. The rest of the island was mostly divided into plots of farmland, which is somewhat hard to fathom nowadays. As the city grew and developed, it eventually resorted to a grid system that aligned with the island of Manhattan and not north and south. In order for this to be achieved, the natural topography of the land had to be flattened. One of the traces of pre-developed Manhattan is Broadway, which used to be an old Indian trail traversing the island. Matt showed us a map where the old divisions of farmland had been placed over the developed landscape to show where points would correlate between the old and new Manhattan. Once the island was almost entirely developed and the shoreline had turned into shipyards, the city decided that it needed some green-space to hold onto some pastoral ideal. Frederick Law Olmsted’s firm was hired to create the “natural” landscape of Central Park in the middle of an urban jungle. To go along with one of our themes, the last representation of our world that we looked at was Google Earth. Not only does this amazing technology have the ability to tag information to a geographical location, some of its newest software allows the Map Room to lay historical maps on top of Google Earth’s satellite information. Wow.

Casey Wolf

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[oakley sunglasses]

|+|This topic will also be a great resource for our readers who are visiting Boston or new to the area. We think many readers will thank Robert for his request.