New York City: Named & Numbered

It is a cold Thursday evening and 20-year-old Eugene Lang student Patrick Nicholas is waiting for his takeout to arrive.  It has been almost thirty minutes since he ordered from the deli around the corner from his Stuyvesant Town apartment, and his food has not yet arrived.

“I bet he got lost,” Patrick says, “Nobody knows how to find there way around this place.”

Stuyvesant Town sits on eighty acres of land and stretches from 14^th street to 20^th street and First Avenue to the Avenue C.  Peter Cooper Village, Stuy Town’s sister development, is located just above it.  The two communities are home to over 11,000 apartments and an estimated 25,000 occupants.  Stuy Town’s lay out does not follow the grid system of the rest of Manhattan, instead, its 35 buildings are scattered throughout the land.

“It’s just kind of lots of the same buildings in a giant park” Patrick says.

Patrick’s roommate calls the deliveryman, who is lost, and goes outside to meet him.

Deliverymen aren’t the only ones getting lost in Stuy Town.  When Patrick has friends coming to the apartment he has to walk out of the community and meet them at the entrance on 20^th street.

“Its very overwhelming” he says, “especially when you leave the of city, which is so ordered, it can be very disorientating.”

Stuyvesant Park is one of the many areas in New York City named after a famous historical figure.  Peter Stuyvesant was the last Dutch director-general to rule New Amsterdam (later named New York) from 1647 until the English took control in 1664.

Commissioners' Plan of 1811
(thecuriousg.com)

The Museum of New York City’s current exhibition, The Greatest Grid, The Master Plan of Manhattan1811 – 2011 celebrates the mapping of Manhattan and its numbered, grid system.  The 1811 plan established a grid from the southern tip of the island to 155^th street with 12 avenues running from east to west.

The exhibition includes a short film by Neil Goldberg entitled “12x15”, which shows a number of New Yorkers saying two numbers; the cross street of where they live.  According to Patrick’s address (450 East 20^th St.) his numbers would be 20^th and 1^st, despite the fact that his apartment sits about 500 meters away from 20^th street, tucked inside the community.

There are, of course, other residents in Manhattan whose addresses would not fit the description of Goldberg’s film.  Eve Houston, a 20-year-old NYU student lives on Bond and Bowery and although, unlike Patrick, she lives in a grid, the lack of numbers in her address leads her to similar problems as Patrick.

“There’s a restaurant a few blocks away on 2^nd street and 1^st ave and they have their delivery zone on their website,” she says.  “Bond and Bowery is four blocks inside their zone but every time I call to order they tell me that they don’t deliver that far.”

According to the Greatest Grid exhibition, Bowery was one of three roads existing before the cities 1811 plan to grid Manhattan, along with Broadway and Bloomingdale.

“Everybody knows where Bowery is,” Eve says, “But no one has a clue where Bond is because it only runs for two blocks.”

Many believe that the city’s structure is crucial for it’s functioning.  According to the exhibition, when the plan was established in 1811, the population was 100,00.  A recent article in The Business Journal marked the current population of New York City in excess of 19 million.

The Greatest Grid exhibition calls the 1811 plan “the first great civic enterprise and a vision of brazen ambition,” the exhibition states. “

Dan Zolot, a twenty-one year old aspiring radio host has lived in New York City for three years.  His currently lives in a studio apartment on 5^th street and 3^rd avenue; a numbered cross street within the 1811 grid.

“The city wouldn’t work without the grid,” he says.  “There’d be too many people trying to get too many places and it would just be a mess.”

Dan has lived in three different apartments since moving to New York.  He lived in the New School dorm in his freshman year on 15^th and 2^nd before getting an apartment on 14^th and 1^st. Each apartment has been on numbered cross streets within the grid.

“The numbers make everything so much easier” he says.  “I get so confused on the Westside because you think you’re walking down a street then all of a sudden you’re walking down an avenue and you didn’t even turn.”

Not only is the grid system “a metropolis of fluid chaos,” it’s also a desirable aspect of city life to some people.

“I mean Stuy Town is nice” Dan says, “But if I’m going to live in New York, I’m gonna live in New York, not Stuy Town.”

The Greatest Grid exhibition runs in The Museum of the City of New York until April 15 2012.