Exactly 350 days ago today , New York City became New York City . The city itself already subsist , of course : As the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam . But on September 8th , 1664 , the British return it its lasting moniker , which makes today its name - solar day .
We ’ve seenall manner of mapsillustrating how NYC has grown over the centuries , but one of the cool — and least appreciated — is the razz ’s eye view . These are mental image that are , loosely utter , maps ; but thanks to a small artful view , they give us much more of a mother wit of what the city was like in each case . You ’ll note that the formatting was pop in the last half of the 19th century , as artists searched for path to draw the immensity of the growing city not just horizontally , but vertically .
In honor of NYC ’s nameday , we ’ve rounded up some of the best , leaning onBibliOdyssey ’s astonishing 2011 roundupandDavid Rumsey ’s collectionas sources . Enjoy .
Drawn four years before New Amsterdam became New York , this is the earliest known mapping of the city — puff by Jacques Cortelyou , the surveyor full general of the tiny Dutch colony . The urban center was mostly a garrison , and most of Manhattan was wilderness .
icon : NYC99.org .
This unusual view of the city was cast from Wallabout Bay , or the present - mean solar day site of the Brooklyn Navy Yard , which is already emerge in the center of the map .
Image : NYPL .
Up until the late 19th hundred , you took a piss hack to cross from Manhattan to Brooklyn . But by 1873 , the urban center ’s first — and arguably best — bridge was use up soma … And of a sudden , the to - be prohibited boroughs did n’t seem so far away . It would n’t be long before they ’d become part of the city in name , as well as use .
This romantic map , sop up just a year later , generate us a just look at the dense lines of docks that became the neural system of rules of the urban center .
Image : Columbia University .
This 1880s view of the metropolis come from this splendid roundup of bird’s - eye mapping of New York byBibliOdyssey . With the Great Bridge intact , New York no long appear like two competing metropolis — though it would be a few more years before Manhattan and Brooklyn joined forcefulness .
range : Peacay / Bibliodyssey .
Thanks to this fantastic lithographic bird ’s eye opinion , also uncovered byBibliOdyssey , we get a sense of what NYC was like in the 1890s : An industrial hive that was growing exponentially as 100 of thousands of immigrants arrived to work in this boomtown .
Just one more fromBibliOdyssey‘s incredible collection : A 1909 map showing the verdant countryside around the metropolis .
In 1939 , NYC hosted the World ’s bazaar — and this mapping , a promo print by Sinclair Oil , was plan to give visitant an estimate of where to see the slew . They appear passably similar to today ’s .
picture : David Rumsey .
The German creative person Herman Bollmann create this painstakingly accurate view of Midtown in the other 1960s , beguile the race upward and the development of important opus of base .
Constantine Anderson spent two decades drawing an incredible axonometic view of Midtown , which he published in 1985 ( above is a detail).According to Codex99 , it demo “ every single windowpane , door , awning , even telephone John Wilkes Booth and mailbox in Midtown . ”
Image : Codex99
An unbelievable sight of Central Park from the melodic phrase , create byAirPano , shows the city as it stands today . The burst of magniloquent construction on the right wing is about to get even higher , though , as ahandful of supertall residences riseon the southerly edge of the car park .
simulacrum : AirPano / Mashable . Lead effigy : Columbia University .
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