I’ve mentioned before the way that the numbered street grid was literally cut though the once-hilly topography of Manhattan Island. It’s hard to find visible evidence of that process today. The Dyckman Farmhouse, near the north end of the island and dating to 1784, is on a hill above the street and you can sort-of get the feeling, but the hill is not a raw cut. In 1958, Angelo Rizzuto photographed one of the few places that the cut can still be seen as such: where a hill was partly removed for Fifth Avenue but partly still remains because the rest is in Central Park:
His title left no doubt as to what the picture shows: “Upper 5th Ave. was cut thru in. Photo illus. nature of terrain encountered by road builders when the avenue and cross street of Manhattan were laid out in accord and street plan of 1807. Pay rock!” I assume the last two words were meant as a riff off “pay dirt.”
The park’s perimeter wall in this area seems redundant, but it would look odd if there was a gap, so we have a stone wall directly in front of a huge chunk of stone.
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