Review: The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811–2011

Abstract

The Greatest Grid: The Master Plan of Manhattan 1811–2011 Museum of the City of New York 6 December 2011–15 July 2012 Though New York City can be a socially and physically stressful urban environment, this usually is not a result of the layout of its streets. Indeed, despite the cacophony and chaos, finding one’s way around this megapolis is surprisingly easy thanks to its orderly configuration—a grid. While New Yorkers and visitors alike may take this spatial arrangement for granted, this remarkable facet of the city is worth examining because its careful parceling shapes how we live in New York today. To commemorate the bicentennial of the Commissioners Plan of 1811 that imposed a grid on the island of Manhattan, The Museum of the City of New York hosted an exhibition portraying the processes of devising and developing the grid, as well as its place in the contemporary imagination of some architects and artists. Curated by Hilary Ballon, The Greatest Grid is composed of over two hundred historical documents, maps, photographs, and artifacts. Ballon has also edited an accompanying volume, which is a helpful guide that effectively narrates the show and also includes better reproductions of the maps. The central questions that lurk behind this show is “why a grid for New York City,” and moreover, why is this one the “greatest grid”? The answer to the first question would initially seem to lay in the practicality of this design. As any architectural historian knows, grids have existed since the earliest cities, from the Old Kingdom of …