I’ve been playing with a Google Earth overlay of the 1865 Viele Map (officially known as the “Sanitary and Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York”) all afternoon instead of, you know, doing productive stuff. I keep telling myself that I’ll use the results in the class I begin teaching in a few weeks (never mind that the syllabus is still rough around the edges).
The folks at the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection have kindly plugged a high-resolution image of the Viele Map into Google Earth, allowing anyone with free time on their hands to figure out whether or not their apartment is built over what used to be a fetid marsh. I’ve been focusing on the area downtown surrounding what the old Collect Pond. Today it’s a maze of government buildings and courts, but years ago this spot was an idyllic retreat for Dutch settlers crowded on the southern tip of Manhattan island. As the city grew northward, The Collect gradually turned into an open cesspool. By the early 1800’s, the pond was all but gone, filled with rubble from nearby excavation projects.
I’m posting four images that resulted from an afternoon of goofing off with this thing. Enjoy!
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- Downtown NY Hydrology
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- Collect Pond on the Viele Map
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- The Collect: Yesterday and Today
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- The Collect Today
Hi Philip– very cool images. I’ve been working on a project about NYC’s lost streams at http://watercourses.typepad.com/
Also am doing a slideshow you might be interested in: http://www.aiany.org/calendar/event.php?id=1010840
Thanks Steve! Any chance you’d be interested in coming to speak in my class this semester?
Oh… by the way, Minetta Stream runs underneath most of The New School campus. I may be able to get you into the basements…