{"id":6433,"date":"2011-03-21T06:50:40","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T11:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=6433"},"modified":"2011-03-21T06:50:40","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T11:50:40","slug":"happy_birthday_map","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2011\/03\/happy_birthday_map.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Map!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Times pays tribute to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/21\/nyregion\/21grid.html\">the 200th anniversary of the street grid that made Manhattan boring &#8212; er, a real estate boon<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>Two hundred years ago on Tuesday, the city&#8217;s street commissioners certified the no-frills street matrix that heralded New York&#8217;s transformation into the City of Angles &#8212; the rigid 90-degree grid that spurred unprecedented development, gave birth to vehicular gridlock and defiant jaywalking, and spawned a new breed of entrepreneurs who would exponentially raise the value of Manhattan&#8217;s real estate.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The paper floods the zone with coverage, including <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/03\/21\/nyregion\/21randel.html\">this<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>John Randel Jr., the secretary, surveyor and chief engineer for New York City&#8217;s street commissioners, was hardly the most popular public servant of his day.<\/p>\n<p>Beginning in 1808, Randel and his colleagues were pelted with artichokes and cabbages; arrested by the sheriff for trespassing (and often bailed out by Richard Varick, a former mayor); sued for damages after pruning trees; and attacked by dogs sicced on them by property owners irate at the prospect of streets&#8217; being plowed through their properties (&#8220;many of whose descendants have been made rich thereby,&#8221; Randel noted later).<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Times pays tribute to the 200th anniversary of the street grid that made Manhattan boring &#8212; er, a real estate boon: Two hundred years ago on Tuesday, the city&#8217;s street commissioners certified the no-frills street matrix that heralded New York&#8217;s transformation into the City of Angles &#8212; the rigid 90-degree grid that spurred unprecedented [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-manhattan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6434,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions\/6434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}