re: #90 wheat-dogg

The London fire did not lead to a rational street grid, though. Too much tradition in the way.

That thread had some interesting historical tidbits about Manhattan that I never knew about till today, like the Hess Triangle, the intersection markers in Central Park, and the giant rocks still in place around 1903. My great-grandfather and his cousin had both moved to Manhattan from southern NJ by the 1850s, so they and my grandfather would have witnessed the evolution of the grid system.

Thanks for the link, w-d, fascinating stuff.

Actually, I think there were a couple of big, destructive fires in NYC in the early 19th C., but, like with London, once property lines were drawn, and streets laid out, it was too hard to rebuild without taking into account existing patterns, so “ improvements” had to be done in the newer, more-open areas