Before
The Grid
The
1811 Plan
BUILDING
THE GRID
19TH-CENTURY
DEVELOPMENT
20th century–
Now
living on
the grid
other
Grids
Living on the Grid
The Underground Grid
The look and feel of New York’s streets would be transformed by two things in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the opening of the subway and the burying of communications and electricity cabling that had wound itself into increasingly intricate patterns above city streets by the late 1880s. KA
Although initiatives to place both trains and cables underground had been proposed earlier, the blizzard of 1888 gave the idea momentum. Read More
New York’s utilities, like its transport system, have at times lived above ground and at times below. Read More
The commissioner’s grid did more than lay out a plan for streets and real estate.
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The building of New York’s subway in the early decades of the 20th century relied on a number of construction technologies, some more disruptive to life on city streets… Read More
This 1904 photograph documents the cut-and-cover construction of the first subway line, along Broadway at the 96th Street stop.
