Once Water, Now Land

Once Water, Now Land. Hudson River Pk. , The shoreline adjacent to Pier 76 was once further east, roughly at 11th Avenue. As early as the eighteenth century, the city began selling water lots along its edges to create more usable land. At the time, the early street system was a disordered tangle of short roads and country lanes shaped by the natural features of the island and the property boundaries of Dutch and Colonial owners. Experiencing explosive growth after the Revolutionary War, the city's population tripled, and a profusion of new building lots overwhelmed the medieval-like street plan., Searching to control urban expansion, the city's Common Council appointed a commission to "…unite regularity and order with public convenience" by creating a city-wide street plan. Starting in 1808, John Randel Jr. of Albany began the detailed survey of Manhattan Island that resulted in today's gridded street system., The new grid laid out a rational street plan that allowed commercial connections from river to river., [Captions:] , As shown in this 1811 map, urban development, originally clustered at the southern tip of the island, spread northward with the imposition of a new grid system., Even before the street grid was developed, the city had begun selling water lots along its edges; these were then filled in by entrepreneurs and speculators to create more useable land. Twelfth Avenue and the land for Pier 76 were created this way, moving the land's edge several hundred feet west from the 1609 shoreline., The new grid cut through the natural contours of the land, at times leaving preexisting buildings perched on hills high above the street.