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Street Sign Controversy – 1899
The office of the New York street commissioner created considerable controversy in 1899 when it ordered that the illuminated street signs along some of Manhattan’s busiest thoroughfares be...
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Manhattan Evacuation Plan Reveals Island’s Old Contours
As Hurricane Sandy bears down on the Atlantic Coast in October, 2012, many residents are becoming familiar with the emergency evacuation map, a part of which is shown above (taken from Google and the...
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Birmingham Street
Birmingham Street, sometimes also called Birmingham Alley, was a narrow one-block street that connected Henry and Madison Streets between Market and Pike Streets. The origin of the name is not clear,...
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Manhattan’s First Experiments with Wooden Streets
Wood block pavement is thought to have been used first in 14th-century Russia, however it enjoyed something of a revival in the 1820s and 1830s as cities in Europe and America sought alternatives to...
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Coogan Avenue
New Avenue East in 1885 James J. Coogan was a furniture man. Furniture men were not held in high esteem among the working class of 19th-Century New York City but were viewed as a necessary evil....
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Shoemakers Land
James Evetts’ 1696 chart of the Shoemakers Land In 1675 four New Yorkers purchased a tract of land outside the city wall that had earlier been part of the farm of Cornelis van Tienhoven, the Dutch...
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Bowery Number 3
When New Amsterdam was under the control of the Dutch East India Company, the company laid out several large farms, or boweries, in the countryside northeast of the city for the use of company...
View ArticleManhattan’s Memorial Street Names
Manhattan is not unique in having several streets named for famous war figures and local veterans. Where it differs from other American places, however, is that the veterans honored with Manhattan...
View ArticleNew York: Stockade City
Part of the reconstruction of the World Trade Center area in lower Manhattan includes reopening several of the streets that were closed for the initial construction. On the map, these reopenings appear...
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Edgar Allan Poe Street
West 84th Street between Riverside Drive and Broadway has been given the honorific name of Edgar Allan Poe Street after the well-known American author who briefly lived in a farmhouse in the area when...
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