Title: The City Expands
(Picture 1)
Subtitle: New York in 1767
Text: Towards the end of the colonial era, British officer Bernard Ratzer mapped a small settlement of New York. The West Ward, along the North River (now the Hudson), was primarily residential, with modest wood and brick houses and stores erected by artisans and shopkeepers on a relatively regular grid of rectangular blocks. A few commercial wharfs and a ferry terminal anticipate the major port activities that would engulf this area. Along the river ran a road, now Greenwich Street, connecting the city with outlying Greenwich Village. Church Street extended north only from Partition Street (now Fulton Street). Many streets had royal names that would be changed after the Revolutionary War--most dramatically, Crown Street became Liberty Street.
(Picture 2)
Subtitle: New York in 1867
Text: A hundred years later, New York was a great metropolis of densely built up streets and blocks divided into many building lots. Commerce invaded much of the west side, with dozens of piers jutting into the Hudson River. Early nineteenth-century landfill had added the blocks between Greenwich and West Street, so-named because no streets were envisioned farther west in the river. A few years after this map was drawn, Church Street was extended south to connect with Trinity Place in order to facilitate the construction of an elevated railroad. This created the twelve-block site that would later be cleared for the World Trade Center.
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