Selects: The Manhattan Grid

9:42Chuck Bryant:Oh, okay. Let's have them, bud.

9:45Josh Clark:Manhattan's about 13 and a half miles long. And then, so this grid makes sense. But then once you get north of 59th Street, you start to get like Atlanta does and a road will just change names out of nowhere. Atlanta's very famous for that. People get very confused here.

10:00Chuck Bryant:It is very confusing also because the road will change names, but one of the names, Peachtree, will still be there, but it's a totally different street.

10:09Josh Clark:Right. It does not help things. That's right. So north of 59th, avenues on the west side change names, but avenues on the east side do not. So 8th becomes Central Park West, 9th becomes Columbus Avenue, 10th becomes Amsterdam Avenue, and 11th becomes West End Avenue.

10:27Chuck Bryant:What about Avenue of the Americas?

10:29Josh Clark:Well, that's 6th, right? Or is that 7th?

10:33Chuck Bryant:Oh, man, I think it's 6th. I think it's 6th. That's my understanding.

10:36Josh Clark:But that's really not a name change. That's just something that tourists call it.

10:42Chuck Bryant:Right. I remember you making fun of me when I called it that. Did I really? Yeah. That sounds about right. It was really jarring.

10:49Josh Clark:And then to get people really confused, between 3rd and 5th Avenue, There are three avenues instead of what you would think would be one because Lexington Park and Madison fall between those. Yeah. And then south of 23rd, you've got your lettered avenues.

11:08Chuck Bryant:Okay.

11:08Josh Clark:A, B, C, and D, which is Alphabet City.

11:11Chuck Bryant:So you wouldn't need to ever pull out a map. You just have to stand in the middle of New York and listen to the first, like, 10 minutes of this episode, and you'll find your way no problem.

11:21Josh Clark:All right. Should we get into this? You said people don't like the grid. There are a lot of people. I mean, what did Walt Whitman call it? Icky, I think. No, I think he said he called it one perpetual dead flat.

11:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and streets cutting each other at right angles are certainly the last things in the world consistent with beauty of situation.

11:44Josh Clark:How about this one from Edith Wharton? Rectangular New York, this cramped horizontal gridiron of a town without towers, porticos, fountains, or perspectives. Hide bound in its deadly uniformity of mean ugliness.

11:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I like hide bound. That's great. That's a great word. And mean ugliness definitely captures like a certain sense of New York depending on your mood or mindset, you know?

12:09Josh Clark:Yeah.

12:11Chuck Bryant:There's one, a guy named Peter Marcuse, who's an architecture critic. He said that the grid layout of Manhattan was one of the worst city plans of any major city in the developed countries of the world.

12:23Josh Clark:Right, but some people love it. Some people said it was pragmatic. Some people said it really accommodated for the one thing it needed to accommodate for, which was massive growth.

12:32Chuck Bryant:Right.

12:33Josh Clark:Let me see here. An architect named Raphael Vinoli, who's, I think, a modern architect, not modern. I just mean current architect. Right. But he may do modern work, who knows? He said the grid is the best manifestation of American pragmatism in the creation of urban form. And then in 1978, a Dutch architect named Rem Koolhaas said that the grid was the most courageous act of prediction in Western civilization, clearly talking about the growth. Yes, but a courageous act, that's like architect talk right there.

13:17Chuck Bryant:But for the most part, from what I understand, and definitely Dave says the same thing, most New Yorkers, especially born and raised New Yorkers, are not happy that that's how their city is laid out, that there's a lot of room for improvement. Is that your experience, too?

13:34Josh Clark:Sure. I mean, Central Park is great, but as we'll find out, They didn't really plan for green spaces, and New York has done their best to kind of carve them out since then. But, you know, let's get into this commission.

13:48Chuck Bryant:Well, let's talk about grids first. Do you want to?

13:51Josh Clark:Yeah, all right. Do you want to take a break and then talk about the grid-story? Yes.

14:07Josh Clark:Ice Cube's Big 3 season has come down to this. The Big 3 Championship is coming to Charlotte. Who will be crowned the Big 3 Season 9 champion? Plus the Big 3 All-Star Game. The biggest names in the game. All on one court, one more time. Two games of the most physical, competitive, and nonstop three-on-three action. The game played the way you love. Watch live Saturday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific. And catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. A-yay-yay!

14:37Chuck Bryant:Shortly after I enrolled at Rasmussen, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was like a bomb had just been dropped in my life. I reached out to Rasmussen. They immediately were like, Rosa, take what time you need. You can come back when you're ready. We are cancer-free today, and I'm just so grateful for Rasmussen, for all of their support throughout my journey, and for my own village.

15:01Josh Clark:Rasmussen University. Find your seat and start now at rasmussen.edu. I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? The endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat, chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir-fry to even grilled meats.

15:55Josh Clark:Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious.

16:05Chuck Bryant:When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com.

16:22Chuck Bryant:So, New York didn't invent the grid, as much as they like to boast that they did. They did not. In fact, a grid layout of a city goes back to that Indus Valley civilization that for some reason keeps popping up in the last year or so. It does. I guess they're going to make a comeback or something like that. But they've just been coming out all over the place. But one of the—what was it, Chuck? Was it—did they invent the zipper? I don't think it was a zipper. What was it? Indigo? I don't know. There's been a number of them. But anyway, at least 5 ,000 years ago, the Indus Valley civilization was using the grid layout to create Mohenjo-Daro, which is a 750-acre city on a grid.

17:10Chuck Bryant:And then shortly after that, the Greeks said, I really like this. In fact, there's a Greek thinker and mathematician named Hippodamus who's known as the father of city planning. And he was bullied for grids too.

17:25Josh Clark:Yeah, if you have a grid, people still call that the Hippodomian plan, which is kind of great all these years later to still get recognized for your grid work.

17:35Chuck Bryant:Yeah, if you're ever talking to somebody and they refer to a grid as a Hippodomian plan, that person knows what they're talking about.

17:42Josh Clark:Or listens to this show.

17:44Chuck Bryant:It's one and the same, basically.

17:46Josh Clark:I knew you were going to say that. Let me see. the conquistadors of Spain, they kind of had a habit of coming in, conquering, and then having their template in place to create these grids as what they called the law of the Indies. And they would sort of just come in, set up shop. You got a town with a big central plaza and then a grid surrounding that central plaza. Right.

18:11Chuck Bryant:And they use that for everything from Lima to Los Angeles. and this took me back in my mind to what was the name of that colonial town in Guatemala that we visited?

18:27Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. I know what you mean. It was wonderful.

18:31Chuck Bryant:It's driving me crazy. It really was wonderful. It was one of the most beautiful towns I've ever been in but it had like a central plaza with a fountain. It was a much smaller town but now that I think about it, it was laid out on a grid too and it was part of that law of the Indies that you were mentioning that it was just like, this is how you build a town. And apparently the reason that they used that law, like in town after town after town, that they just basically took over and said, this is ours now, it's Spain's, is applying a grid was kind of a metaphor for applying order and civilization to a formerly disordered and wild indigenous town.

19:16Josh Clark:Yeah.

19:17Chuck Bryant:Which makes sense from a colonizer's perspective, but I'm sure it sucked from the indigenous person's perspective.

19:23Josh Clark:Like everything else.

19:24Chuck Bryant:Yeah. That's what this stupid right angle stuff.

19:28Josh Clark:So New York City comes along. Philadelphia had been laid out in a grid by William Penn very deliberately, though. And that grid was kind of roomy and spacious because William Penn did not like the congestion of London. No. But again, Philly, very much purposeful. Same with D.C.

19:49Chuck Bryant:too.

19:49Josh Clark:Yeah. Boy, D.C. has kind of a crazy grid.

19:53Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but once you understand it, it makes total sense numbers and letters wise and directions. Yeah. I always get lost there. It takes more getting used to than New York, too, from my experience and what I understand.

20:06Josh Clark:Yeah, for sure. So the Commissioner's Plan of 1811 is really sort of the demarcation point between what was first New York, New Amsterdam, and then what we now know as Manhattan. because anyone who's ever seen, I almost said games of New York, gangs of New York, knows that those were crazy days down there in lower Manhattan. And things just sort of sprouted up organically from the river upward as far as the layout and the design. And, you know, you can still feel that when you go down to lower Manhattan, which is why I love the villages now. I think it's just, I mean, I like the simplicity of the grid, but I think what I love about Lower Manhattan is how organic it feels.

20:53Chuck Bryant:It's a jumble. And I mean, it's a jumble for a reason because those streets largely follow these original organic paths that the Dutch settlers and earliest English settlers basically said, oh, we need to get from the waterfront up, you know, to the common land or whatever. Let's go this way. Here's a good path. And this path happens to meander around a salt marsh, and we avoid having to go up a hill by going around this way. So it's kind of like meandering. And it's definitely locked in time from those streets down there in lower Manhattan. I like it too, but it is very easy to be like, are you sure we're going the right direction still?

21:32Chuck Bryant:It's very easy to get lost in those because it isn't at all a grid.

21:35Josh Clark:Yeah, I've spent enough time in lower Manhattan now to where I can landmark it. Like it's just familiar enough to me to where I kind of know like this block and that block. Right. So I know where I'm going. And you mentioned something important. I don't think we've even kind of said that New York was not all this just big one big flat slab 13 miles long that we love today because you can walk forever without ever getting out of breath because it's not Seattle. Right. But New York was swampland, and it had hills and marshes and creeks and rocks, and it was kind of wild East Coast territory.

22:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I mean the reason that those marshes and the ponds and hills and stuff aren't there anymore is because of this 1811 commissioner's plan. It basically said, tear it all down, fill it all in, build this over it. And they did. That's the most astounding thing is they did. that they, you know, as we'll see, they passed a law that basically said, we're going to appoint a commission of three people. They're going to come up with a plan. Three people. And whatever they come up with is law. Yeah. It can't be challenged in court. We're not going to back it up and change it in any way. And they really didn't.

22:51Chuck Bryant:As bad as the plan was in almost every way, they really stuck to it. But the thing that struck me, I had no idea about this, was that the 1811 Commissioner's Plan was just a ripoff of another earlier surveying map that basically provided the basis of the Commissioner's Plan. Not even the basis of it. They weren't like, oh, we'll take this as a starting point. They just said, we'll take this, print it, and put our names on it. And that's ultimately what happened.

23:21Josh Clark:Yeah, so pre-Revolutionary War, most of Manhattan was in that lower third of the island. and we got into big-time debt because of the Revolutionary War. And so the city said in the 1780s, all right, here's what we got to do. We own tons of land, publicly owned land, and all this marshy kind of reedy, rocky, pondy area, it's not developed. Let's sell this stuff off and make some dough. It's called the common lands. And we need somebody to get in there and just sort of survey this and plot it all out so we know exactly how to best sell this.

24:00Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so they hired a guy named Casimir Theodore Gork. That's what I'm going with, is gork. Sure. It's not a cucumber, it's a gherkin. Do you remember Mr. Cabbagehead from Kids in the Hall? Sure. Well, this had nothing to do with that, right? Right. So this surveyor actually went through the common lands. Like basically what we understand is all of Manhattan between Houston and North Harlem, he just went across and broke it into 500-acre parcels. He had a 66-foot chain on his surveying poles. And so he said, well, I'll just use that as the basic measurement for the widest streets. 66 feet is what it's going to be.

24:46Josh Clark:I think he said 500-acre parcels. Weren't they five-acre?

24:50Chuck Bryant:Oh, yes. I'm sorry. Bigger, big dip. It's a little bit of a difference. They were five-acre parcels, so that's even more work. That's 100 times more work than what I described.

24:59Josh Clark:That's right. So he laid them out as a grid because he wasn't, like, this guy wasn't out to say, here's how Manhattan should be built.

25:08Chuck Bryant:Right, right. This is the best way to promote the future of growth in Manhattan.

25:12Josh Clark:No, that was not his charge. His charge was like, hey, let's just divide this stuff up and sell it. He had some interesting constraints. They had to be five acres. Yeah. They had to have a central road that all of these could sort of access like fairly easily. Right. And then he had a survey chain. It's crazy to think about this was one of the things that informed what is modern New York. His survey chain was 66 feet. So he said, all right, that's how wide the road is.

25:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah, exactly. So I think that was like the widest road, the central access road. He called that one middle. And now I believe that's Fifth Avenue is middle. what was originally Middle Road back in 1796.

25:53Josh Clark:Yeah, that's adorable.

25:54Chuck Bryant:So he carved this place up into these plots that are 200 feet on the east and west boundaries of it, so going up and down, running north-south, but if you're on the plot, it would be on the east side of the plot and the west side of the plot. If that was not confusing before, it is now. Yeah. And then across, the width was 920 feet. And those were the plots. He said, here you go. There's a bunch of them up there, but I've carved up all of these common lands, and you can start selling them if you want.

26:29Josh Clark:Yeah. Did you mention the names of the other two roads?

26:32Chuck Bryant:Oh, yeah. He said, I'm going to put two more in of these 66 feet wide roads. And he had some very clever names for them.

26:40Josh Clark:Yeah. One was middle, remember?

26:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

26:42Josh Clark:The one to the east, he named East. Yeah. And the one to the west, he named West.

26:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, which makes sense if you're looking at it from, if you're on the middle road, to the east is the east road, to the west is the west road, but they run north-south. Right. Man, I hate directions.

27:01Josh Clark:And like you said, that was 5th and the center, so that's now 4th, 5th, and 6th Ave.

27:06Chuck Bryant:Right. Or 4th Avenue, 5th Avenue, and the Avenue of America. You know, you're really not supposed to say that.

27:15Josh Clark:What a jerk.

27:16Chuck Bryant:I can't believe I said that. You didn't say it like that. I didn't. You just made sure that you waited until a crowd had gathered and really laid into me.

27:24Josh Clark:I think I remember that. Was that our first trip to New York? Probably. Yeah. Probably. That's funny. We've been back a couple of times since then as a team, huh?

27:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I know. I've got some really great memories of New York.

27:36Josh Clark:I miss it. Yeah, it's been a while. 2021. We will see you again.

27:42Chuck Bryant:Yes, we will, New York. Don't you worry.

27:44Josh Clark:At least I hope so. There are no guarantees, right?

27:46Chuck Bryant:No, we will see New York again.

27:48Josh Clark:All right.

27:50Chuck Bryant:So do we take another break? I feel like there's still a lot. There's still a lot. We should keep going for now, I think.

27:55Josh Clark:All right. So in 1807, this is when the New York state legislature said, you know what? We need to, like, we're growing here. It's clear that this southern tip of Manhattan is just the beginning. So they passed a bill that they described as an act relative to improvements, touching the laying out of the streets and roads in the city of New York and for other purposes.

28:19Chuck Bryant:Right, which makes sense. But like I said, this law, they decided to just invest absolute authority into these three commissioners and said we're going to follow whatever they come up with, whatever that seems to them most conducive to public good, we're just going to take on its face that it is most conducive to public good and just go with it.

28:42Josh Clark:That's crazy that it was just three people and that it wasn't like ten teams of three people submitting the best designs that then would be gone over and voted on.

28:51Chuck Bryant:Yeah, no one took it seriously, weirdly enough.

28:55Josh Clark:It's very odd. So who were these guys?

28:57Chuck Bryant:So there were three commissioners appointed. One was Governor Morris. His first name was Governor. He was one of the founding fathers. He wrote a lot of the Constitution, including the preamble. He had a peg leg. He lost his leg in a carriage accident, although there's rumors that it was something else. But he was known as a, Dave puts it, an energetic philanderer. But he was apparently a very likable Benjamin Franklin-esque kind of dude who seemed to be fairly smart, but had really no understanding of surveying as far as I can tell.

29:34Josh Clark:No. Then his nephew-in-law, John Rutherford, he was a landowner in New Jersey. In fact, I think the largest landowner in New Jersey at the time. And by all accounts, it looks like this was pure nepotism. He was late for meetings. He was not especially interested even to the annoyance of Governor Morris.

29:53Chuck Bryant:All the reasons to not exercise nepotism this guy brought to the table is one third of this commission who's figuring out how to lay out the plan for New York City.

30:03Josh Clark:That's right. And then the third guy, Simon LeBon, no, no, no, Simeon DeWitt, excuse me. And this guy actually knew what he was doing. He was a really very respected, accomplished surveyor, worked with George Washington. I think eventually became the, which I didn't even know was a thing, was the official surveyor for the Continental Army. and then the Surveyor General of New York State.

30:29Chuck Bryant:Right. So he knew what he was doing, which makes his role all the more shameful that he didn't say like, oh, well, we really got to get cracking. It's been three years and we've got four years to do this. Maybe he did though.

30:41Josh Clark:Who knows? He might've been completely run over by these other two chumps.

30:44Chuck Bryant:And he just got shouted down, I guess. I don't know. Well, at the very least, Governor Morris was also one of the founding members of the commission that created the Erie Canal, which was for a very long time considered one of the greatest public works projects in the history of America, certainly in the history of New York State. And that kind of energy and imagination and drive just did not make it to this 1811 Commission for the Planning of New York. I wonder if he, I mean, this sounds cynical,

31:13Josh Clark:but I wonder if he literally was like, man, that Erie Canal project really was a big bummer in how hard we had to work. And let's just kind of, hey, look at these maps that this guy drew to sell off New York. Let's just use those.

31:27Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's kind of what they did. Like they had four years or they took four years. I'm not sure how long they had, but they took four years from 1807 to 1811 to turn in their report. Four years of meeting, sporadically true, but they still met over this four-year period. They came up with an 11-page report to lay out these 13 miles in length, not even square miles, of Manhattan, these common lands, all the way from House and Street up to North Harlem. They came up with 11 pages to explain their map. And their map really made sense as a grid. But again, they stole the grid from Casimir Gork.

32:13Chuck Bryant:I can't remember what I called them before. Gork. I'm going with Gork now. Okay, sure. Sure. But they didn't give them any credit for it whatsoever.

32:23Josh Clark:No, I mean, I don't want to go so far as to call it a tracing project. But, you know, they borrowed pretty heavily. Like, the streets and the avenues were basically the exact same. When, you know, earlier you mentioned the blocks were 200 by 920 feet.

32:40Chuck Bryant:From GERC, right?

32:42Josh Clark:Yeah, this had the exact same layout, and that was no accident.

32:46Chuck Bryant:No, and they were in virtually the same spot. They did do some stuff. You know, they didn't just take his map, like you were saying, and trace it and call it their own. They made some changes to it. They created, instead of the three, Middle, East, and West, they created 12 avenues running north-south. And not true north-south, but just, you know, for our purposes, north and south. And then they created 155 numbered streets.

33:13Josh Clark:Yeah, but they added this stuff, but it's sort of just copy-paste.

33:18Chuck Bryant:Kind of. Kind of, but the big thing is, so adding the 12 numbered avenues was a definite change to Gorks. Gorks. Never going to say the same thing twice. But was it? Yeah, because he only had the three.

33:31Josh Clark:I know, but he just had the three and they were like, well, we need more, so let's just do what he did all over the place.

33:37Chuck Bryant:Sure, sure. Okay, all right. You know what I'm saying? That's fair. Yeah, these guys are definitely not a hill I'm willing to die on. So say what you will about them. I think they're lazy schmoes, too. All right. And then they took these cross streets that are formed by the surveying of these blocks and turned them into numbered streets. So avenues running north-south, they were the big ones, 155 numbered streets running east to west. They widened the avenues. They said they're going to be 100 feet wide. I guess they had a longer surveying chain. Yeah, the bigger chain. Right. And then they widened some of the cross streets to, I guess, ease congestion.

34:15Chuck Bryant:I think they widened 15 of them total.

34:19Josh Clark:Yeah, I think the other streets were 60 feet, and then 15 of them went to 100 at 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 72th, 79th, 86th, 96th, 106th, 116th, 125th, 135th, 145th, and 155th. Right. But why? Why those particular ones?

34:39Chuck Bryant:There doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason, because if you notice, they didn't really hit their stride into keeping them separated by 10 cross streets until 86th Street.

34:50Josh Clark:Yeah.

34:50Chuck Bryant:So there's not really much rhyme or reason there.

34:53Josh Clark:When they only did that for three of them.

34:55Chuck Bryant:Right. Four of them. And then the streets that they did choose to widen didn't necessarily make much sense one way or the other. Like, for example, 71st Street was already fairly wide. It was definitely wider than 72nd Street, but they decided to make 72nd Street the widened cross street rather than 71st. And apparently no one knows why. The closest thing I could find is there's some record in 1857 of somebody having to remove a big rock from 72nd Street to widen it. But that doesn't even explain or make sense because there was a bunch of houses that had to be torn down to make 72nd Street widened rather than 71st, which was already wide.

35:42Josh Clark:And had almost no houses.

35:44Chuck Bryant:Exactly. So these guys were just, when you start to compile all the evidence, we'll kind of pay more out. It really seems like these guys didn't even go to the common lands, that maybe they were just working from Girk's map. or if they did go to the common lands, they took zero notes or paid zero attention. And all of this came from a place of laziness and ignorance, like not knowing that 72nd was wider than 71st or vice versa, would explain that decision more than anything else. Yeah.

36:18Josh Clark:Another example is if you've ever been on the west side and you feel like, man, these avenues are big, it's because they are. The avenues on the east side are spaced at 650 and 610 feet apart or 610 feet apart. And on the west, they are all 800 feet apart for no reason.

36:39Chuck Bryant:No reason at all.

36:40Josh Clark:Yeah.

36:41Chuck Bryant:It doesn't make any sense. Again, it just, it seems like they just phone this in. And what's even more astounding is that New York's founding father said, okay, we're going to do exactly what you say without questioning it.

36:54Josh Clark:Yeah, and actually we kind of do have the reason if you read closely and we'll tell you the secret reason right after this.

37:24Josh Clark:one more time. Two games of the most physical, competitive, and nonstop three-on-three action. The game played the way you love. Watch live Saturday on CBS at 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific, and catch replays Monday on BET. Presented by iHeart. A-yay-yay! I have been with Rasmussen University since 2013. All virtual. All of my professors throughout the entire journey have been nothing but supportive of making me reach my dreams. Rasmussen professors, they want to see you grow so that you can be what you went to school to be. I'm so thankful for Rasmussen University for being able to make it so easy and seamless.

38:06Josh Clark:Rasmussen University. Find your seat and start now at rasmussen.edu. I'm Martha Stewart from the Martha Stewart Podcast. You know what I love about cooking? the endless inspiration, sharing exceptional flavors, and of course, the best ingredients. I refuse to make a dish without them. McCormick has been and is an essential in the kitchen. Now McCormick's new line of signature seasonings make bringing fresh inspiration and endless versatility to everyday dishes easier than ever. There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir-fry to even grilled meats.

39:00Josh Clark:Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious.

39:09Chuck Bryant:When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com.

39:25Josh Clark:How's that for a cliffhanger?

39:27Chuck Bryant:It was great. I'm still a little tense waiting for you to pay it off.

39:31Josh Clark:All right. Here's the real reason, everyone. And it all lies in this quote that is pulled from their commission report. If it should be asked why was the present plan adopted in preference to any other, the answer is because after taking all circumstances into consideration, it appeared to be the best or in other more proper terms, attended with the least inconvenience.

39:58Chuck Bryant:And I think that's the magic phrase right there.

40:01Josh Clark:That last phrase, attended with the least inconvenience, And Dave rightfully says what is obvious, which is inconvenient for the three commissioners.

40:13Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because their plan was extraordinarily inconvenient for basically everyone involved. Yes, it was. From the people who were in charge of, like, making this, like, building this grid or this plan to the people who were already living in places that were torn down. 40%. Yeah, 40 % of places were torn down to adhere to this plan, this 1811 commission plan.

40:40Josh Clark:Yeah.

40:41Chuck Bryant:That's crazy. And again, when you start to add all this stuff up, it does seem like the least inconvenient for the three commissioners. Yeah. And the fact that if that is true and they just included that as kind of like a cheeky little joke, you know, Wow. Those guys are not necessarily burning in hell, but they're probably in purgatory somewhere.

41:04Josh Clark:I also have a lot of respect for that kind of laziness at times.

41:07Chuck Bryant:The kind that makes fun of itself in public documents?

41:10Josh Clark:Well, just is that up front about the fact like, you know what? I didn't really want to work too hard on this, so here it is.

41:18Chuck Bryant:Right.

41:20Josh Clark:So, yeah, it was very inconvenient for everyone but them. they did this because of the growth population they expected. So it sort of made sense, but they even got that wrong. They were wrong by about half of what they thought the growth rate was going to be.

41:37Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's the thing is they were saying like, okay, this affords enough population growth to afford a population greater than any other, this side of China is how they put it. so they clearly did have at least growth on their mind in that if you build on a grid it affords for the most growth it's the easiest to build on right angled structures are the easiest to build and settle and live in but the thing is part of that law, the 1807 law that established the commission charged them with creating public squares although it said in size and form and all that in number that the commissioners see fit.

42:21Chuck Bryant:Unfortunately, the commissioners didn't see fit to make almost any kind of public gathering places, especially green spaces, for mental health, I guess is what you would call it.

42:34Josh Clark:Yeah, and their reasoning is kind of BS, actually. I'm not sure which one it was. I guess it was Morris. I'm not going to read the whole quote, but he basically said, hey, listen, we don't have the Seine River or the Thames winding through the middle of town, but what we do have are these two wonderful rivers that just kind of hug Manhattan, and that's enough because everyone's just going to go hang out at the river all the time because it's beautiful and gorgeous and you can swim in it. And the East River and the Hudson River will forever be our green space, basically.

43:11Chuck Bryant:Yeah, basically, the city had enough. It didn't need green spaces because of the east and the Hudson Rivers. And in about 40 years, people were like, no, we do. We need to build Central Park.

43:24Josh Clark:Yeah, which was a savior because I think it says here on their original plan, only 5 % of the grid was public green space, and 240 of those 400 acres was a parade ground.

43:38Chuck Bryant:Yes, which I didn't know exactly where that was. Do you?

43:42Josh Clark:No, I'm not sure. I don't know. I mean, there's Washington Square Park. There's some cool kind of central promenades and things like that. And then these, you know, New York's famous for these tiny little slivers of a park kind of all over the place, but they're small.

44:01Chuck Bryant:They are very small, especially compared to the surrounding areas for sure in the buildings.

44:06Josh Clark:That's why the High Line was such a big deal.

44:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it was a big deal. And I remember not quite grasping why. No, I definitely do because there's just people need that. People need green space. They need nature. They need to be like outside of a built environment, even if it's a built natural environment. You know what I mean?

44:24Josh Clark:Yeah. And Central Park is amazing and we love it. But that's a that's a long way if you're in southern Manhattan to get up there. Right.

44:32Chuck Bryant:Right. But basically, these guys said, you don't need it. Go hang out at the Hudson or the East River. It's so wonderful and lovely. So there were a lot of people, like we said, that were really unhappy with this. This was a huge exercise of eminent domain. There were a lot of people on these lands already. Remember Seneca Village that was destroyed to create Central Park? They managed to survive the 1811 Commission. I can't remember how long that was around, But I want to say Seneca Village was around for a good 50 years before it was leveled in the 1850s. So it would have been around on the common lands during this time.

45:15Chuck Bryant:But like you said, about 39 or 40 percent of homeowners or established buildings had to be torn down. They filled in ponds. They filled in salt marshes. They completely altered the ecosystem of stuff that could have been built around or incorporated had they stopped and thought about how to do that. They just leveled everything and built a grid over it. And so a lot of people were really, really unhappy about this. And they were particularly unhappy that the city administration was just sticking to this no matter what. And there were a lot of lawsuits, and all of them, from what I understand, were unsuccessful.

45:52Josh Clark:Oh, yeah. For about 60 years, there were tons of lawsuits going on. And I know you said it was a big eminent domain act, but it was, I think, still the largest act of eminent domain in New York City. Yeah. And that includes Central Park and how they get their water, which was another good episode.

46:12Chuck Bryant:Yeah, because, I mean, Central Park is huge, but it's just a small sliver of this larger area. Yeah.

46:19Josh Clark:Yeah. This one quote from landowner Clement Clark Moore. He published a pamphlet about the tyrannical commissioner's plan, and it says this, Nothing is to be left unmolested, which does not coincide with the street commissioner's plummet and level. These are men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome.

46:39Chuck Bryant:Burn.

46:40Josh Clark:Big time. Yep. Didn't matter, though.

46:44Chuck Bryant:No, it really didn't matter. They just went ahead with it blindly and thoughtlessly and did. And again, like it did accommodate growth, although they underestimated the growth. But it took a little while for this stuff to fill up. This plan was delivered in 1811, but it wasn't until 1875 that enough people had started to move in, that there were more New Yorkers living above 14th Street than there were living below it. because remember, I mean, lower Manhattan was where it all began. So that, I mean, it took a little while to fill in and it didn't even necessarily fill in uniformly. By that same year in 1875, there's still 40 ,000 vacant lots left in this grid plan.

47:30Chuck Bryant:And that was like about half of the space.

47:33Josh Clark:Yeah, I love that fact. That's good. Dave has some nice facts here at the end. 1869, the very first apartment building in New York was built. called the Stuyvesant. And they called them, I don't even think they called them apartments at the time. It was called a French flat or a French house. But prior to that, it was, you know, tenement houses and houses. And so the Stuyvesant is built, and everyone thinks it's silly that anyone would want to live in the same building as other people. And they called it Stuyvesant's Folly. But that was at 142 East 18th, 18th between Irving Place and 3rd. And it was a huge hit.

48:18Josh Clark:Like people made fun of it in the newspapers, but people signed up to live there. Almost immediately it filled up. It was demoed and replaced in 1960. But so this is 1869. Very, it didn't take long though. In 1884, the Dakota was built, which still stands today. So apartment buildings kind of came into fashion, and I think probably due to Stuyvesant's Folly.

48:41Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, it went over so well and so quickly that it really opened the way for more and more to be built. Pretty cool. So one thing that people point to is this Commissioner's Plan of 1811 is just like that same principle or the same significance that the Spanish coming in and imposing a grid over an indigenous settlement was somehow taming the wild or the organic or something like that. This is the turning point between kind of unplanned, organic, much more harmonious naturally New York and the planned modern New York that we know and love today. This is where it went from one to the other, almost like flipping a switch.

49:33Chuck Bryant:And granted, it took decades and decades to realize this plan. But when it was delivered and when it was adopted, that was it. That change happened and the transition began.

49:47Josh Clark:Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

49:49Chuck Bryant:I think so too.

49:50Josh Clark:What else is there for New York? I mean, I figure we got water, we got the subways covered, we got Central Park, we've got this. Yeah, let's see. There can't be much else as far as just the bones of New York. Oh, I know what I want to do is maybe how the mail and the trash work. It's a miracle.

50:09Chuck Bryant:Okay. All right. Yeah. We did the Rockettes once even too. Oh, that's right. I mean, we've done a lot of New York topics. It's true. Or maybe we should move to a different city.

50:20Josh Clark:Let's start talking about Des Moines.

50:22Chuck Bryant:Holy cow, dude. It almost simultaneously came out of my mouth at the same time. Yes. That's so weird. It is weird. It's in the zeitgeist, apparently. You got anything else?

50:36Josh Clark:I got nothing else.

50:37Chuck Bryant:Okay. Well, if you want to know more about New York, just start reading and then eventually travel there. They'll give you the all clear when they're ready. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail.

50:50Josh Clark:Hey, guys. My 16-year-old son, Owen, is Probs your biggest fan for real. He also has narcolepsy. I appreciate you taking on this topic and bringing some understanding of it to the masses. He was diagnosed when he was 10, and it affects every single aspect of his life. I think it has made him wise beyond his years personally and compassionate to other people with invisible struggles, but it still sucks. If you ever want to read or hear firsthand accounts from people with narcolepsy, check out Julie Flyger. That is F-L-Y-G-A-R-E or Flygare. I'm not sure. How would you say that?

51:28Chuck Bryant:Oh, I like the one with flavor, the second one.

51:31Josh Clark:With Flagari? Who is doing all kinds of advocacy for people with narcolepsy, including a scholarship foundation. She founded Project Sleep and Voices of Narcolepsy. She also wrote a great book about her experiences with being diagnosed during law school called Wide Awake and Dreaming. When Owen received his diagnosis, I reached out to her for help. She sent Owen a care package with a book, a T-shirt, wristbands, a very kind card, etc., to let him know that he's not alone. That is very sweet.

51:59Chuck Bryant:It is.

52:00Josh Clark:I think she deserves an award for the work she's doing. Anyway, a great resource for sure. Thanks for the work that you do. I mean, could we get an award? You know?

52:09Chuck Bryant:We've won a Webby before, I think. That's true.

52:12Josh Clark:Yeah. Sometimes it's fun and entertaining, but sometimes and often it's really important and educational as well. Sincerely, the mom of your biggest fan, and that is from Brooke.

52:21Chuck Bryant:Thanks, Brooke, and thanks, Owen, for listening. It's really good to hear from you guys. And I feel like we should send Owen something, too. Sure. Let's do it, Chuck. We'll figure it out. All right. We can't be showing up by this fly-gary person.

52:35Josh Clark:No, no, no. Send us your physical address, and we'll mail you something.

52:39Chuck Bryant:That's right. And in the meantime, thanks for listening, and thanks for being a fan. and thank you for listening and thank you for being a fan too and if you want to get in touch with us like Brooke did you can send us an email wrap it up, spank it on the bottom and send it off to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com

53:00Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio For more podcasts from iHeart Radio visit the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows

53:43Josh Clark:We'll be right back. and Supply Bank of America and a member FDIC. When you're a maintenance engineer in a beverage manufacturing plant, you keep production lines moving and quality on track because there is no room for slowdowns. With Grainger's vast selection of high-quality motors, sensors, belts, and hard-to-find parts, you can get what you need fast and all in one place so nothing gets in the way of getting the job done. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done.

54:17Chuck Bryant:Whether it's help with hormone therapy, weight management, or sexual health, every woman should have access to affordable prescription medication and personalized care that understands the whole woman. Join me, Dr. Doug Lucas, clinical lead of hormone optimization and longevity at LifeMD, along with other leading experts on the podcast, Here's Something Good on Women's Health and Longevity. To learn more, go to lifemd.com slash iHeart. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.