Suburban Development

A chunk of what is now called east Midtown, in 1867:

This was officially part of the city, but the opening of the numbered street grid had created more buildable lots than were needed, so development was, as can be readily seen, patchy. There is very little on this map that is recognizable or still present. I’ll flag those things that are, everything else is gone.

• Reservoir Square at the lower left, is still there and now called Bryant Park.
• The big distribution reservoir next to it is the site of the New York Public Library.
• St. Patrick’s Cathedral was under construction at Fifth And 50th, listed here as R. C. Cathedral.
• Columbia College was at Fourth Avenue, soon to move to Fifth Avenue (on the current Rockefeller Center site) before moving uptown.
• There’s no Grand Central – not even the first (Grand Central Depot). There’s a way station at 42nd on the west side of Fourth Avenue, but the line continued south to 23rd Street, and partially south of that.
• The “1st & 2nd Av. R.R. Depot” at 43rd and Second was for horse-drawn streetcars.
• The site along the East River from 42nd Street north that is now the site of United Nations was not yet the collection of slaughterhouses it would later become before getting an upgrade after World War II. There are some breweries west of First, including Ruppert’s, which would move to the Upper East Side, and whose owner would one day own the Yankees. The UN site has a pencil factory and whatever the New York Melting Association was.
• The very straight river edge was the result of landfill, and the dashed line shows the original ragged edge, including, at 46th and 47th streets, the Turtle Bay for which the neighborhood is named.
• Note the winding path of the Old Road to Boston, wrapped around hills that are long gone.
• Avenue A, east of First, is on the same line as the still extant Avenue A in the East Village, but is now named Sutton Place below 60th Street and York Avenue above.
  I could keep this up far long than anyone wants to read, so I’ll quit here.