The City Museum of New York

The City Museum of New York is a modest museum that holds various contributions to people and places throughout the year. The Greatest Grid is a current exhibition that highlights the structure and layout of the city of New York in the 1800s. The presentation has handmade and professional maps and blueprints of the city. As you walk around, the cities layout is broken down in different sections; each major neighborhood has its own dedicated area in the exhibition. The neighborhoods were divided by their geographic location so it made it easier to connect and understand each blueprint. I liked that I could walk around and examine how these neighborhoods have evolved throughout the years. There were so many attributes that changed over time but also stayed exactly the same. The city was urbanized step by step and created a new dynamic for the residents of Manhattan.

             In 1811 the concept of avenues were introduced and in the 1830s, developer Samuel B. Ruggles initiated the effort to expand avenues. By creating these broad roads, the city built its foundation of a grid. The grid design of the city made it much easier for cars and people to navigate throughout the city. All avenues are parallel to one another (from east to west) and the same thing goes for roads; this added a flow to Manhattan. Everything is evenly spaced out and the beauty of the city is that no matter where you are, the blocks and avenues will always be the same. (Towards the very east or west side of the city the grid can be slanted.) The museum also showed how numbering streets where enforced in order to make it convenient for cars and people to make their way around.

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Since the 1800s the gird has already gone through many advancements. Subway maps have changed drastically creating many new train routes; there was a specific picture on display at the museum that had a subway map from the 1800s. It was extremely different because it was very simple and did not have as many train routes as it does today. Today this grid can act as a tool of education by being able to access its entire layout off the Internet (via google maps etc.) The future of the gird is known as the "unfinished grids." Cartographers are constantly redesigning and educating themselves on any changes made.