City on a Grid
How New York Became New York
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2015New York City Book Award
The never-before-told story of the grid that ate Manhattan
You either love it or hate it, but nothing says New York like the street grid of Manhattan. This is its story.
Praise for City on a Grid
"The best account to date of the process by which an odd amalgamation of democracy and capitalism got written into New York's physical DNA."--New York Times Book Review
"Intriguing...breezy and highly readable."--Wall Street Journal
"City on a Grid tells the too little-known tale of how and why Manhattan came to be the waffle-board city we know."--The New Yorker
"[An] expert investigation into what made the city special."--Publishers Weekly
"A fun, fascinating, and accessible read for those curious enough to delve into the origins of an amazing city."--New York Journal of Books
"Koeppel is the very best sort of writer for this sort of history."--Roanoke Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Koeppel (Bond of Union) continues his examinations of New York centric infrastructure with a look at the story behind the development of New York City's extraordinary 1811 street grid plan, which "defined the urbanism of a rising city and nation." Devastated by the 9/11 attacks, Koeppel launched his expert investigation into what made the city special, using a photo from the early 1880s of early Manhattan that showed the grid "a rectilinear plane of many parallel streets crossed at right angles" in the midst of the newly developing Upper East Side neighborhood now known as Carnegie Hill. Koeppel is fascinated by the history of old New York; Manhattan's grid, conceived by city planner Casimir Goerck and French designer Joseph Fran ois Mangin, came to make it both a "congested place" and an "orderly place of energy and industry." Mangin's plan met stout resistance from city commissioners and faced several challenges, but without any political alternative, it survived, sparking an influx of population and commerce. Koeppel's bold commentary on the constant evolution of Gotham may stir controversy in some quarters, but he unabashedly celebrates the metropolis that has never learned what it means to grow old or stale. Maps and b&w photos.