Beautiful maps of New York City, from the 1600s to present

December 19, 2011 2:06 PM

The Streets of New York : a cartographical exploration. Part II - 19th Century Expansion and Part III - The Three Dimensional Maps (a must see for the last picture, a scale model with 895,000 structures). More amazing pictures of the Panorama of the City of New York
posted by desjardins (8 comments total)

I wish someone would do this for a place I'm familiar with.
posted by mrnutty at 2:22 PM on December 19, 2011

Crazy that the big bend where Bowery turns into Park Row has been there since the 1760s
posted by Jon_Evil at 2:22 PM on December 19, 2011

The 1811 master plan for Manhattan is on exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York until April 15, 2012: The Greatest Grid

Plus a collection of speculative maps: The Unfinished Grid
posted by nixt at 2:39 PM on December 19, 2011

Wow, this series is pretty interesting. And those maps in Part 3? Not just the last one is great... all of those went into my design inspiration folder. Great find, desjardins!

I just can't believe this guy's blog, with its finely tuned footnotes and tasteful photo attributions, doesn't have an RSS feed. I was ready to Google Read the shit out of this site.
posted by malapropist at 3:59 PM on December 19, 2011

Just to add to the pile... I recently gathered a whole bunch of NYC Birds Eye View maps together.
Good post! I love Codex99.
posted by peacay at 4:16 PM on December 19, 2011

(a must see for the last picture, a scale model with 895,000 structures)

And if you head over to Queens, you can see it in the flesh.
posted by gwint at 5:17 PM on December 19, 2011

> I wish someone would do this for a place I'm familiar with.

Maybe they did, but would a "Beautiful maps of Rochester" or "Beautiful maps of Grand Rapids" article even survive five minutes on the front page on Metafilter before a mod pulled it?

NYC. 2.5% of the country's population.
posted by elmwood at 5:21 PM on December 19, 2011

. . . would a "Beautiful maps of Rochester" or "Beautiful maps of Grand Rapids" article even survive five minutes on the front page on Metafilter before a mod pulled it?

Uh, why wouldn't it? Assuming it was a good post, of course it wouldn't be pulled.

You seem to detect more place-ism on Metafilter than actually exists, which is something of an accomplishment in itself.
posted by General Tonic at 5:43 PM on December 19, 2011