NEW YORK — The skyline of Manhattan, along with the actual width of the island, has grown a lot over the decades.<\/p>\n
Some of the oldest maps of New York City — maps still used by experts today — tell this story vividly.<\/p>\n
The New York Public Library has a vast collection of more than 400,000 maps.<\/p>\n
“For maps of New York City, we are second to none,” said Ian Fowler, who serves as the curator of maps, history and government information for the NYPL.<\/p>\n
The maps show where the city has been and where it’s going.<\/p>\n
“What was there before and what can that tell us about where we could go in the future,” said Fowler. “A lot of these maps can unlock those questions.”<\/p>\n
The collection includes one of the oldest maps, the Castello Plan, of Dutch-controlled New Amsterdam in the 1600s, to British-made maps from the 1760s.<\/p>\n
The maps also show how, in a short period of time, British named streets were replaced by American street names. For example, “King” Street became “Pine” Street.<\/p>\n
Other historic maps show what the island used to look like before development, full of hills and streams.<\/p>\n
The maps are still used by scientists and developers today.<\/p>\n
They also show how thin the island used to be before the coastlines were built out.<\/p>\n
“While we were building out the island, especially after the Revolution, we took a lot of that rubble and a lot of oyster shells and put that in the East River and Hudson River and then the tip of Manhattan, and then we built it out,” said Fowler.<\/p>\n
And what’s on the maps from so long ago is just as important as what is not on them.<\/p>\n
“What’s interesting is the depiction of the lands and the depiction of the native people,” said Fowler. “The French portray them more prevalently while still from a colonial lens, while the British were more aggressive in their mapping, they delete more native peoples and more native places.”<\/p>\n
“I think 250 years from now, I think it’ll be such a different city that these will look even more antiquated than they do now,” said Fowler.<\/p>\n