Cody Merritt
Prof. Hilary Ballon
October 21, 2009
The Shape of New York: The Greatest Grid
Mapping New York
When unfolded, Humphrey Phelps’ The Strangers guide through the
city of New York is barely sixteen inches tall and twenty inches long. The
visual depiction of lower Manhattan takes up most of the space, but there
are margins on both edges for written details. Manhattan is canted at a 40°
angle west of true north to compensate for the city’s magnetic meridian
variation. This causes the upper-left tip of 14th Street to divide the top edge
of the map into early two even spaces. Although north is not the top of the
map, the canted angle maximizes the small space, enabling Phelps to fill
more of the page with map. As a hypothetical “stranger” to the city, this
would be especially appreciated, as even shrinking the map slightly would
lose some of its comprehension.
The map itself is clearly divided into seventeen sections, each one
representing the boundaries of each ward. The numbering begins in the
bottom-left corner, Battery Park, and continues in a hopscotch pattern of
sorts, sweeping from left to right and down to up. The ward numbering
system is at times perplexing; for some odd reason, the twelfth ward is
located in the top right corner of the map, a fraction of it depicted as
adjacent to the seventeenth ward.
The side margins prove to be the most interesting aspect of The
Strangers guide through the city of New York, and are what would
presumably be the most helpful aspect for someone who did not know the
city. The left-hand column begins with, “One stroke of the City Hall Bell
indicates fire in the 1st District, two do 2nd District, three do 3rd District,
four do 4th District. A continual ringing 5th District” (Phelps). With the Great
Fire of New York (which happened little more than five years before this
map’s publication) still fresh in the collective memory, mentioning of a city’s
fire procedures would important to know when staying in an unfamiliar city.
Below this quote, the map divulges the locations of many important
municipal buildings. City Hall, placed in the center of the park, begins the
list. It is interesting to note that below City Hall’s location is the total cost of
the building’s completion, $50,000 over the span of nine years. Further down
the margin is a section devoted to New York’s population growth; from 1629
(the year New York was sold) to 1830, New York City has seen its population
steadily rise to 203,015 people.
Underneath this basic information is a longer list containing the usual
markings of an urban environment, along with their locations on the map. It’s
interesting to note that the map itself does not mark where the buildings it
points out are; instead, the person using the map must discern where each
point of interest is based on the intersection provided next to its name.
Instead of having the locations spoon-fed to them with a key, the “stranger”
must now acquaint themselves with the intersections.
The list of popular locations covers banks, colleges, theaters, gardens,
museums, markets, a hospital, a “lunatic asylum” (an addition that reveals
this map’s age), and libraries. Another fascinating note is the two high
schools in Manhattan: Male High School and Female High School. I was
surprised to find that the two schools were closer to each other
geographically than I had assumed.
The right margin of the map is devoted entirely to Manhattan’s
churches, a feature that would be very important to New York City visitors in
the mid-nineteenth century. Protestant Episcopal churches contribute the
most to the list at seventeen, while the Roman Catholic section includes only
four. It was interesting to find that only the Presbyterian and Baptist sections
had an African church, and there were only two synagogues to be found in
the entirety of lower Manhattan.
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