![]() ![]() Analysis of the Commissioners’ actions shows that the grid plan was not a “plan” so much as a convenience to satisfy a deadline. Over the generations, great intention has been ascribed to the Commissioners that does not exist. Their personal writings practically ignore their work. The document, dubbed “Explanatory Remarks,” explains little of the Commissioners’thinking. The only record the Commissioners left for posterity was an eleven-page document outlining the basics of the map that gridded Manhattan from North (now Houston) to 155th Streets. Myth #2: The Commissioners as Visionaries Randel was an employee of the Commissioners it was they - three venerable, nationally prominent men - who chose to adopt and expand Goerck’s plan Randel, a barely twenty-year-old Albany provincial, followed their instructions. While his efforts were Herculean, the plan derived not from Randel’s head, but rather was based directly - and without acknowledgement - on the work of late surveyor, Casimir Goerck, who had mapped out a large central section of rural Manhattan in the 1780s and 1790s. But the truth is that Randel did not create the plan. The conventional wisdom is that the grid plan was created by John Randel, Jr., the chief surveyor for the commission charged with coming up with a future street plan, and who tirelessly trudged through the wilds of Manhattan in order to map it.
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