![]() Sitting awkwardly between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, it is one of the very few streets in Manhattan to be aligned almost perfectly east to west. ![]() Stuyvesant Street is a poignant and lonely relic of one of several attempts to impose order on that chaos. In New Amsterdam, which occupied the southern tip of Manhattan, the streets followed old native trails, cow paths, and property lines, and generally the lay of the land. However, like most cities in the Old World, the oldest ones in the New World grew up unplanned. In French, a grid plan is called a plan hippodamien, after the ancient Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus (5th century BC), a.k.a. “These features inspired the planners of many cities to adopt the Philadelphia Plan as a model.Although Manhattan’s grid may strike us as thoroughly modern, gridded cities are by no means a recent invention. “This plan was the first city plan in the United States to provide for long-term urban growth,” reads a document from the American Society of Civil Engineers. Over the centuries, Penn’s vision for the Philadelphia influenced many other American metro centers. That neighborhood is now known as Northern Liberties. He established a community then called the Liberty Lands, which was comprised of vacant farmland that would be given out to the first people to buy lots in Philly’s central core. Penn also put forth plans to incentivize growth to the city’s outside neighborhoods. Those blank spaces represent room for opportunity. On the map created by his protege, Holme, Center City is almost dominated by lots that are unlabeled. In mapping out Philly, the city architect intentionally left a whole bunch of space totally blank - with the goal of inspiring future development. Perhaps Penn’s greatest legacy is that he left so much wiggle room for the modern day. But since the dude designed the entire grid - and since he seems like a major control freak - he very well may have been involved in the naming process. There’s Vine, Sassafras (now Race), Mulberry (now Arch), High (now Market), Chestnut, Walnut, Locust, Spruce, Pine and Cedar (now South).ĭisclaimer: In 2019, historians aren’t sure if the street names were specifically directed by William Penn himself. Though some have been renamed, they were designed with uniformity. Going north to south, almost all of our avenues are named after types of trees. ‘A mapp of ye improved part of Pensilvania in America, divided into countyes, townships, and lotts’ Credit: Library of Congress The names of those streetsĮver notice a pattern to the names of Center City streets? If not, we’re about to blow your mind. ![]() And to this day, they’re home to some breathtaking behavior. Still, Penn’s wide open streets were revolutionary. Some experts say Penn was likely influenced by Richard Newcourt, a British cartographer who considered spacious roadways in his plans for rebuilding the parts of London that had burned down in the fire of 1666. Roads fronting the river were designed to be 60 feet wide, with the remaining streets were 50 feet wide. But in the 1600s, such wide streets were totally unheard of.įirst among his urban planning colleagues, Penn’s blueprints included 100-foot-wide avenues, which at the time were broader than any street in London. Perhaps in the modern day, Broad Street doesn’t look spectacular, since cities and towns all over the country have highways and five-lane roads. The core of Philadelphia in 2019 may not look all that green, but Penn’s four public parks endure - and even more public spaces have been added. His native London was devastated by fire and plague in the 1600s, and he brainstormed that more green space would prevent the quick spread of such catastrophes in his new home. There’s also the center square, which after Penn’s death became home to City Hall.Īll of this fed into his vision of a “ greene country towne,” which was crucially important to Penn. ![]()
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